Tutorials - Avatars

By Gramps

You may want to get the current player's avatar, or someone else's, and display it in your game. This tutorial will walk you through the basics of avatar retrieval and passing it to a sprite so you can use it.

Relevant GodotSteam classes and functions

Friends class
- getPlayerAvatar
- requestUserInformation

Request the Avatar

The default Steamworks functions to get player avatars requires multiple steps. However, GodotSteam has a unique function which makes getting the avatar data incredibly easy. Just use the following:

Steam.getPlayerAvatar()

This function has optional parameters: size and steam_id. By default, it will get medium-sized (64x64) avatar data for the current player. However, you may pass any of the following for the first argument to get different sizes:

Steam.AVATAR_SMALL (32x32)
Steam.AVATAR_MEDIUM (64x64)
Steam.AVATAR_LARGE (128x128 or larger)

The numerical counterparts to these enums (1, 2, or 3) will also work.

For the second argument, if you pass nothing then it will pull the avatar for the local player. You can pass along the Steam ID64 of any player to get their avatar data instead.

Note

This only works for users that the local user knows about. They will automatically know about their friends, people on leaderboards they've requested, or people in the same source as them (Steam group, chat room, lobby, or game server). If they don't know about them then you must call requestUserInformation() to cache the avatar locally.

Retrieve and Create the Image

To retrieve the avatar data buffer, you'll need to hook the signal for the callback:

Godot 2.x, 3.xGodot 4.x

Steam.connect("avatar_loaded", self, "_on_loaded_avatar")

Steam.avatar_loaded.connect(_on_loaded_avatar)

This will return the user's Steam ID, the avatar's size, and the data buffer for rendering the image. If you have read the Achievement Icons tutorial, this should all look pretty familiar. Our _on_loaded_avatar() function will look something like this:

Godot 2.x, 3.xGodot 4.x

func _on_loaded_avatar(user_id: int, avatar_size: int, avatar_buffer: PoolByteArray) -> void:
    print("Avatar for user: %s" % user_id)
    print("Size: %s" % avatar_size)

    # Create the image for loading
    avatar_image = Image.new()
    avatar_image.create_from_data(avatar_size, avatar_size, false, Image.FORMAT_RGBA8, avatar_buffer)

    # Optionally resize the image if it is too large
    if avatar_size > 128:
        avatar_image.resize(128, 128, Image.INTERPOLATE_LANCZOS)

    # Apply the image to a texture
    var avatar_texture: ImageTexture = ImageTexture.new()
    avatar_texture.create_from_image(avatar_image)

    # Set the texture to a Sprite, TextureRect, etc.
    $Sprite.set_texture(avatar_texture)

func _on_loaded_avatar(user_id: int, avatar_size: int, avatar_buffer: PackedByteArray) -> void:
    print("Avatar for user: %s" % user_id)
    print("Size: %s" % avatar_size)

    # Create the image and texture for loading
    var avatar_image: Image = Image.create_from_data(avatar_size, avatar_size, false, Image.FORMAT_RGBA8, avatar_buffer)

    # Optionally resize the image if it is too large
    if avatar_size > 128:
        avatar_image.resize(128, 128, Image.INTERPOLATE_LANCZOS)

    # Apply the image to a texture
    var avatar_texture: ImageTexture = ImageTexture.create_from_image(avatar_image)

    # Set the texture to a Sprite, TextureRect, etc.
    $Sprite.set_texture(avatar_texture)

Naturally that texture could be applied elsewhere, depending on where you place this function.

That covers the basics of getting player avatars.

Additional Resources

Video Tutorials

Prefer video tutorials? Feast your eyes and ears!

'Getting Your Avatar Picture and Processing It' by FinePointCGI

'How Do We Load Our Friends Avatar' by FinePointCGI

GodotSteam - How It Works - Player Avatars by Gramps / GodotSteam

Example Project

Later this year you can see this tutorial in action with more in-depth information by checking out our upcoming free-to-play game Skillet on GitHub. There you will be able to view of the code used which can serve as a starting point for you to branch out from.