What is Green Spew?

Sabertooth Norn with Green Spew on head and body

Green Spew is something I first stumbled across when I was creating the Sabertooth Norns. I'm not sure if it had been encountered before then; when I asked for help in online forums, everyone was baffled. Green Spew looks similar to the problem known as Rainbow Spew: it is an undesired "glitch" in which some or all of a Norn's body parts appear covered in green pixels when viewed in the game. However, Green Spew and Rainbow Spew are two separate problems.

Although uncommon, it has posed problems for some creators in the past; the Sabertooth Norns, Yautja Norns, Deep Norns, Gaius, Dustdevil Grendels, Panda Norns, and the updated C2toDS Pixie Norns have all experienced Green Spew during their development.

This is a slightly trickier problem than Rainbow Spew. We do not know exactly what causes it, but it does not appear to be caused by the same file format issue that causes Rainbow Spew. Some other mechanism appears to be at work, because Green Spew differs in certain ways from Rainbow Spew:

• Green Spew afflicts both Windows and Mac users equally, whereas Rainbow Spew is only a problem for Mac users.
• Green Spew is only visible on Creature body parts, never other agent types. Rainbow Spew is most commonly seen on non-Creature agents.
• Methods used very effectively to remove Rainbow Spew—such as converting the file to 565 format using Sprite Editor—are not always a reliable cure for Green Spew.

The best way to avoid Green Spew is to be proactive. Instead of pasting sprites into a new, blank sprite file, start with copies of pre-existing breed sprite files (eg. those for the ChiChis) and paste over the frames with your own sprites. Sprites are much more likely to develop Green Spew if the sprite files are created by pasting the sprites into a brand new file.

The quickest method I have found for fixing already afflicted sprite files is to open SpriteBuilder (in Administrator Mode if necessary) and load a sprite file for an official breed, eg. the ChiChi or Bruin Norns. Hit Save. Then load the spew-afflicted sprite file and hit Save again. The "good" attributes of the official Norn breed's sprite file should be applied to the spew-afflicted sprite file, "curing" it of the Green Spew.

If you have multiple sprite files that need to be fixed, it works best to close SpriteBuilder and re-open it "fresh" before continuing. Go back to the official breed's sprite, hit Save again, and then go on to the next afflicted file. For whatever reason, loading afflicted or previously afflicted files one after another doesn't seem to be reliably effective.