Puff

Sizes and frame counts that work

A rough guide: size the effect to your sprites. With 16 px characters, try a 16 to 24 px hit spark and a 32 to 48 px explosion. With 32 px characters, 32 px sparks and 64 px explosions. Bosses and big screen moments get 96 to 256.

Frames: 6 to 8 for a hit spark at 15 frames a second, so it's gone in about half a second, before the next hit lands; 10 to 14 for an explosion and about 12 for a magic burst, at 12 frames a second (12 frames is one second).

Colors: use your game's palette. Paste its hex list (from Lospec or anywhere, up to 32 colors) under Palette and every frame uses only those colors. Sheets export at 1×, at the size you picked, in one row up to 16 frames and eight to a row after that; the GIF scale only changes the GIF.

Getting it into your engine

Godot 4

Drag the sheet's .tres (it comes with every sheet in the $5 version, and with the free samples) onto an AnimatedSprite2D's Sprite Frames and call play(); it plays once (the fire, smoke and aura loops repeat). Without it: a Sprite2D with the sheet as its texture, Hframes set to the JSON's columns and Vframes to its rows, then animate frame. Set Texture Filter to Nearest so it stays sharp.

Unity

Sprite Mode Multiple, Filter Mode Point, Compression None, then in the Sprite Editor slice by cell size using the frame size (frame_width and frame_height in the JSON), and Apply.

GameMaker

Import Strip Image, with the frame count from the JSON.

Anything else

Use the GIF. With the $5 version, the JSON lists every frame's x, y, width, height and duration.

Questions

Is it free?

Yes, to try everything: every effect, size and palette, with GIF export. The $5 version is a file you download that adds the sprite sheet PNG and its JSON, and it works without internet.

Can I use what I make in a commercial game?

Yes, and no credit is needed.

Does anything get uploaded?

No. Every frame is drawn on your computer.