Creating pets: an overview

This is where Screen Pet Engine turns from a toy into a studio. A pet you make is two things bundled together:

1. Sprites. The artwork: one or more animations (idle, walk, …), each a sequence of frames.
2. A behavior graph. A small visual program that decides which animation plays when, and how the pet moves.

You build both inside the app. Here’s the whole loop before we go deep on each step.

The create loop: import art, build the behavior graph, preview, then save.

The create loop

1. Start a new pet. In the Library, switch to the Custom source and click New Pet. The behavior graph editor opens with a template picker: drop in one of four quick-start graphs, or dismiss it and build from a blank canvas. (Prefer to start from an existing pet? Clone a default or one of your own, then edit the copy.)

2. Bring in your art. From the editor, open the Importer to turn your image files into sprite assets. You can import a PNG sequence, a GIF, a single image, or a sprite sheet. If you import a sheet, the Slicer helps you cut it into frames. → Importing sprites, Slicing sprite sheets

3. Build the behavior. On the editor canvas, add nodes and connect them: Start → an action (Idle / Walk) → … → End (End loops back to Start). Assign each action node one of your sprites, and set how long it runs. Use a Random node to give the pet variety, and an On Click node with Emit Hearts to make it react when clicked. → The behavior graph editor, Node reference

4. Preview it. Hit Debug to run the graph right there in the editor and watch your pet animate, with the active node highlighted so you can follow the flow. → Previewing & debugging

5. Save. Press ⌘S / Ctrl+S. Now your pet appears under Custom in the Library, and you can toggle it Live like any other.

That’s the core cycle. Import art, wire behavior, preview, save, then repeat until your pet feels alive.

A few things worth knowing up front

• A pet needs a valid graph to go Live. At minimum: one Start node connected to an action, with a sprite assigned. Until that’s true and saved, the Library’s Live toggle stays disabled.
• Drag and fall are free. You don’t wire these up: in this demo every pet can be dragged and will fall under gravity automatically. (A future Early Access release makes them node behaviors you can wire up.)
• Your work is protected. Editors use a working copy, warn you about unsaved changes, and auto-back-up every 30 seconds while you have unsaved edits. Your original pet isn’t touched until you explicitly save.
• Objects are separate. Scenery (beds, plants, campfires) is made in the Object Editor, which has no behavior graph. → Objects & props