DST Modded Character Help Request - Tail Spriting/Positioning [Spriter]

[aandric]

Hey all! Quick introduction, my names aandric, and i'm currently developing a mod (my first mod on any game ever, actually) and so far everything's been pretty smooth-ish outside of spriting for reasons I will briefly mention later. But of course, you read the title, swhat I need help with specifically is spriting the tail. I don't browse these forums, let alone post on them, very often so if the formatting of this post isn't great I apologize in advance! I will try to edit my errors if the post doesn't come out clean, but I can't make any promises, sorry!

For context, this is the beloved template I am using just like many others.

My character is pretty gimmicky design wise-- They're a balloon dog, and spriting it has not been the easiest (specifically with the arms, that is. Mostly everything else is easy work.) because of the fact that balloons are transparent, and having thick limbs overlap with each other on with some transparency. Should I have tried making a more baseline character first just to test the waters? Probably! But I'm stupid and don't roll that way so here we are.

Onto the juicy bit - Tail spriting! Yippee! The process probably goes great with normal tails, but balloon dog tails don't sway to the side in the slightest, instead, they point straight up.

I'll save you the google search for a reference image and just leave this here.

Now, how do we translate this into sprite form? As far as I am aware any transformation on spriter does not apply ingame at all, not shifting, not rotating, not resizing, not anything except for pivot points.  If anyone can please correct me on this, and show me that this ISN'T the case I will be joyous.

So, with that said (excuse the minor errors on certain sprites, still working things out!), we run into this issue. We have a single tail sprite (tail-0.png) functionally being the same sprite for all viewing angles of a character, yet they're all rotated. The first solution would to be to think to just make the sprite be rotated in its png file by default, considering that you don't need the tail to be rotated specifically, you just need it to face up. Or at the very least, thats what the thought process is at first.

So we go from this. To this.  To this; to reach our final placeholder asset. 

Save due some scaling, canvas resizing, and any and all quality control (I drew this with my mouse just now, not my tablet, I promise the tail design is planned to look much better)

I kept the original tail sprite translucent so that it's easier to see where the tail lies in relation to the original sprite.

Now, in spriter, this looks like this. 
 again, bear with me here for unsightly visuals, this is just for demonstration

The backview, and even the front view will look just fine, since after all being translucent means you can see the tail even from the front. However, the side view unfortunately SUCKS. You can't see ANY of the tail. Even removing the arms for visibility shows that the tail unfortunately spends its days mostly clipped into the torso. Great news if the tail needed a place to stay for the winter, but unfortunately for the player, it just looks off. We need this tail EVICTED. Well, to at least 30-65 degrees.

Unfortunately, I'm stumped, and that's why I'm here. To see if anyone with a larger understanding of spriter and how it works can help. Is there ANY way to rotate specifically this sideview sprite? Is there some solution that I'm not seeing here? Whatever the case, I guess you could sum up to what I'm asking here into is: "Please help me make 1 single thing look/be more rotated than normal in spriter". I call the help of spriters wizards to please help me save my dear Balloon Dog's tail! Or to give me some cheese to work around! Whatever helps most!

My compromise for if all else fails is to just have the tail point to its side. Not ideal for my vision but at the end of the day it works if nothing else will. With that said, I wish to TRY to find a solution that shows consistency with a real balloon dogs tail first.

Final word: I would just like to point out, I am so, so sorry if the solution is an obvious one. I've never used spriter before. :*(
 

Edited November 17, 2025 by aandric
Minor parentheses edit; post content stays the same

[aandric]

Over 24 hours later, issue is still open.

 

I will update the post if I ever find a fix so that anyone who has a similar issue can benefit if they ever stumble upon this thread. Until then, I got nothing, sorry!

[aandric]

Ok guys, so I am back nearly a month later. Haven't had a lot of time to work on the mod due to work and school (I still have 2 finals coming up... Sad! :()

Anyways, I couldn't find a solution, still open to anyone's help, but I will say there was one thing I learned from this, and that's sprite resizing.

I ended up needing more room on the sprite itself to draw the tail, and at first you'll realize that if you try to just expand the canvas in your art program and try to upload it into your character, guess what? It get's completely misaligned!

To fix this, all you have to do is head into your .scml file with a txt editor and change the information there to match with the actual png file itself



In my new tail file, the dimensions are 250x125, so I simply just edit the height to be "125"



Now you just change your sprites pivot point to wherever you need fit, and voila, your sprite looks good in game now. Hopefully this might be a pointer for someone in the future.