2D Sprite Animation & Aseprite Integration Guide (Animator Role)

This skill equips AI agents acting in the Animator Agent Role with the specifications, deterministic CLI slicing tools, and fail-fast Ebitengine v2 Go controllers required to design, validate, slice, and manage 2D character sprite sheets, animation frame sequences, tag loops, and Aseprite files (.ase / .aseprite / .json).

1. Animator Agent Role & Core Responsibilities

In a game development workflow, the Animator Agent owns all 2D sprite animation pipelines:

1. Fail-Fast Asset Validation & Grid Slicing: Validates sprite sheet images using file / mimetype and scripts/slice_spritesheet.py to verify binary integrity and exact frame grid divisibility before loading.
2. Animation Tag & State Specification: Defines animation tags (idle, walk, run, attack, hurt, death, cast), positive frame durations (40ms–200ms), and loop modes (LoopForward, LoopReverse, LoopPingPong, LoopOnce).
3. Zero-Allocation Frame Pre-Slicing: Pre-slices all ebiten.Image.SubImage frame references at load time (NewGridSpriteSheet) and reuses a persistent ebiten.DrawImageOptions field (ac.drawOp) so Draw() performs zero heap allocations.
4. Fail-Fast State Transitions: Rejects corrupt sprite sheet dimensions, non-positive frame durations, out-of-bounds tag ranges, and unknown animation tag names with rich fmt.Errorf diagnostics.

2. Technical Reference Standards & Companion Scripts