A small local web app for generating 2D game sprites and animation frames from text prompts using xAI / Grok Imagine. Generate a reference sprite → describe motion → get extracted PNG frames → compose a 1×N spritesheet with a looping animated preview.

Backgrounds are chroma-keyed to transparency automatically, so frames drop straight into a game engine. Projects can be saved and loaded by name.

Full Demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MijheSPXnDo

Requirements

• Node 20+
• ffmpeg on PATH
• An xAI API key

Install

git clone <this-repo>
cd ai-game-studio
npm install

cp .env.example .env
# then open .env and paste your key:
# XAI_API_KEY=xai-...

Run

npm run dev

Open http://localhost:5173.

This starts Vite (frontend, :5173) and an Express server (backend, :8787) together. Stop with Ctrl+C.

Using it

1. Type a sprite prompt in column 1 → Generate Reference Sprite.
2. Type a motion prompt in column 2 → Generate Frames (calls image-to-video, extracts transparent PNGs).
3. Click frame tiles to toggle which ones to include.
4. Generate Spritesheet → composes a 1×N PNG client-side, builds a looping GIF preview server-side.
5. Export PNG to download the spritesheet.
6. Header: New to start fresh, Save to name and snapshot the current project, Load to switch to a saved one.

Generated artifacts live under projects/ (gitignored). The current working state is always in projects/latest/.

Example prompts

Sprite prompts

• A pixel-art knight in silver armor with a longsword, side-view, full body, simple flat colors, standing pose
• Female ninja with red scarf, dynamic side-view, 2D sprite, anime style
• Cute green slime monster, side-view, big eyes, soft shading
• Cyberpunk hacker in a hoodie, glowing visor, side-view full body, gritty style

Motion prompts

• Smooth walk cycle, side-view, no head tilting, no camera movement
• Sword slash attack, side-view, fast, no shadows
• Idle breathing animation, subtle, looping
• Jump arc — crouch, leap, mid-air, land

Tips:

• Keep motion prompts focused on the action. Phrases like "no camera movement", "side-view", and "no head tilting" help keep frames game-ready.
• Default video duration is 2 seconds, ~30 fps → ~60 frames. Trim with the frame selector before composing.

TO-DO

• Background generation
• Tilemap generation
• Aseprite format export
• Tiled format export
• SFX generation
• Music generation
• Voice generation
• Full asset scaffolding export

More

See AGENTS.md for the full spec, architecture, endpoint list, and chroma-key tuning notes.