I built SpriteForge: A free, lightweight 2D Pixel Editor in C++17 (0% idle CPU, no Electron BS)

Hey everyone!

I was getting tired of heavy, Electron-based tools eating up my RAM just to draw some pixel art and animations, so I rolled up my sleeves and built my own from scratch.

It’s called **SpriteForge**. It's written entirely in modern C++ (C++17) using SDL2, OpenGL 3.0, and Dear ImGui. It's completely free and open-source.

I focused heavily on making it as lightweight, fast, and portable as possible.

Some cool under-the-hood stuff I'm really proud of:

* **0% Idle CPU/GPU Usage:** I hooked up the main loop to `SDL_WaitEventTimeout`. If you aren't actively drawing or playing an animation, the thread goes to sleep. It consumes literally zero CPU/GPU. No laptop heating up!
* **Ultra-Low RAM Footprint:** The undo/redo history engine just stores raw pixel byte arrays of the layers instead of duplicating heavy textures. You can run this comfortably on an ancient 256MB RAM machine.
* **Standalone Portable EXE:** I cross-compiled the Windows version using MinGW-w64 and statically linked the GCC/C++ runtimes (`-static-libgcc -static-libstdc++`). No more "missing libstdc++-6.dll" errors on fresh Windows installs. Just double-click the \~3MB `.exe` and it opens instantly.
* Added a fun, custom cyberpunk "YGCODES" boot splash screen just for the aesthetic. 😃

Features for actual drawing:

* Multi-threaded layer blending (Normal, Multiply, Add, Screen)
* Full animation timeline with Onion Skinning
* Tools: Bresenham interpolated pen (no gaps when drawing fast), stack-safe flood fill, shape tools, etc.
* Built-in retro palettes (PICO-8, DawnBringer)
* Custom `.sforge` binary project saving and SpriteSheet/PNG exports.

I’d love for you guys to try it out, poke around the source code, or use it for your indie games.

Repo link: [https://github.com/YGCODES1/SpriteAnim](https://github.com/YGCODES1/SpriteAnim)

Let me know what you think or if you have any feature requests!

https://redd.it/1tfnhgi
@r_cpp