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Sidney is a remake of Sleep Is Death. It aims to vastly improve the accessibility of the game, through a complete overhaul of the user interface, asset management and networking. Secondarily, it expands the game to make it less restrictive for the user.

Improved or expanded features

(Only listing features that are currently implemented; many, many more are planned)

• Game grid fills the screen – SiD game area was 13×13 tiles (208×208 pixels), but Sidney supports 20×15 tiles (320×240) which is a more natural shape, especially for 2.5D games. This doesn’t mean the controller needs to use all the space in every scene, but it gives her a lot more control of how the screen is used.
• Object placement is not limited – Although the player object snaps to grid and the controller has that option, objects can be freely placed in the scene. This prevents the need for creating additional objects that are just offset a little bit.
• Sprite size is not unreasonably limited – All sprites in Sleep is Death were limited to 16×16 pixels, which made drawing anything larger than 16×16 extremely cumbersome (The size is still limited to 320×240, but that is a complete game screen).
• Objects can be placed off-screen – One problem with SiD was that it was very difficult to place an object partially off the screen. Specifically, if the action point was off the screen, you’d have to re-create the object or keep it on the screen. Sidney allows objects to be placed partially or completely off the visible screen area. The latter allows you to place objects that you expect to use in the scene, available quickly without needing to search).
• Object/sprite interaction is more intuitive – Objects are not manipulated using their action spots, but rather by clicking directly on their pixels, which makes stacking objects a lot easier (smaller objects will be selectable using a dragged box). Multi-selection possible, allowing copy, paste, delete, drag, etc. on more than one object at once.

Things not in Sidney that were in Sleep is Death

• Music – Music in Sleep is Death is rarely used, since composing music is still not really accessible to most people and, since flip-books do not include music, it is not thought to be a key part of the game.
• The search stack – The search stack was sort of a useful innovation in SiD, making up for the poor search feature, but it wasn’t really great. Hopefully, improved searching and asset tags will make up for it.