Graphics

The stock Pyskool graphics are stored in PNG files in subdirectories under images/originalx1. The PNG files are:

  • bubble.png - speech bubble and lip

  • font.png - the skool font

  • inventory.png - mouse, frog, water pistol etc.

  • lesson_box.png - the lesson box background

  • logo.png - the, er, logo

  • message_box.png - the message box background

  • mutables_ink.png - doors, windows, shields, safe etc. (ink colours only)

  • mutables_paper.png - doors, windows, shields, safe etc. (paper colours only)

  • mutables.png - doors, windows, shields, safe etc. (full colour)

  • scorebox.png - the score/lines/hi-score box background

  • skool_ink.png - the skool (ink colours only)

  • skool_paper.png - the skool (paper colours only)

  • skool.png - the skool (full colour)

  • sprites.png - the characters in various ‘animatory states’

These images were extracted straight from memory snapshots of Skool Daze and Back to Skool, and are therefore identical to the graphics in the original games (hence the original prefix in the directory name), except for minor glitches that have been fixed. (See Skool Daze graphic glitches and Back to Skool graphic glitches.)

The *_ink.png and *_paper.png files are used in GraphicsMode 1 (see [ScreenConfig]) in order to emulate the Spectrum display, which was restricted to two colours (‘ink’ and ‘paper’) per 8x8-pixel block.

sprites.png is an 8x16 array of sprites for the characters in the game. These sprites are all facing left, and are flipped to obtain the corresponding right-facing sprites.

Any of these images can be customised using your favourite image editor.

Pyskool performs the following steps to determine the base directory for graphics to use in the game:

  • Collect the values of ImageSet and Scale from the [GameConfig] and [ScreenConfig] sections of the config file

  • Look for the directory images/<ImageSet>x<Scale>

  • Use images from that directory if it exists, or…

  • …use images from images/<ImageSet>x1 and scale them up

The actual image files used from the base directory are defined in the [Images] section.

If you wanted to create your own hi-res graphics at 2x the original Spectrum size, you could place them under a base directory called images/Customx2 and use the following parameter value in the [GameConfig] section:

ImageSet, Custom

and the following parameter values in the [ScreenConfig] section:

Scale, 2
GraphicsMode, 0