2D Sprites : Texture Atlas Inconsistancy?

[puggsoy]

Seems a bit out of the way to make content creators go through that when the ripper could just make a zip of each individual sprite separate?

The thing is that not all games can be ripped cleanly in a method that will just give out the frames as files. Many games, especially those on older consoles, need to be either hard-ripped (i.e. screenshotted with the background removed by hand or by disabling layers), or ripped using tile viewers. With both of these methods, the ripper has no knowledge of the bounding box or how to align them so that they animate well, at least not without tediously trying stuff out. Most rippers will align their sprites as best they can, and for viewing purposes that's sufficient.

Secondly, ZIPs aren't encouraged. While some sprites should be zipped up if they're really big, hard to organise or are just really miscellaneous and don't fit a sheet, most sprites should be sheeted. This is because the main point of the site is to archive and display the sprites for appreciation and reference. A ZIP requires a download and extraction, while a sheet can just be viewed directly on the site. This is especially useful when you're just browsing a game or looking for some references for a specific style.
When possible, people generally do organise their sprites in a way that makes them somewhat easier to animate or use in games (e.g. my Nuclear Throne sheets), but as I said this isn't always the case.

Due to the majority of sprites (anything outside of Custom) are from existing games, we focus more on displaying them than making them usable. People can of course use them in fan games and sprite comics, but ripping and organising sprites is already an effort and requiring people to make them easily usable just isn't justified. If you need to reorganise them into a usable format, well, at least you didn't have to rip them We're more of a gallery than an assets resource (despite the name), so we focus on presentation more than usability.