1. Re: Waiting for a retrace & svga
- Posted by Pete Eberlein <xseal at HARBORSIDE.COM>
Jun 29, 1997
-
Last edited Jun 30, 1997
Faerun McLeam wrote:
> Question from me and other unedjucated listeners.... What the
> hell exactly is sprite? What does it do? Thank you.
> Faerun Mcleam
My definition of a sprite is a graphics image that can be moved around
on the screen. Oftentimes sprites are animated, changing the image that
is displayed. I think sprites were originally implemented in hardware,
on Apple and Commodore machines. Us IBMers were not so lucky to have
that kind of stuff in hardware and we usually have to write our own
sprite handlers in software. Some newer SVGA cards have a hardware
graphics cursor, which is the closest to a sprite I've seen. But
there's only one of those (whoopee) and it's generally used for the
mouse cursor. Sprites are almost exclusively used in games. If you
watch Michael Packards "OidZone" game you can see that each animated
objects on the screen is a sprite. There's one sprite for the ship, one
for each bullet, one for each asteroid, and one for each explosion.
Sprite handler code is pretty complex. The programmer must take into
account sprites overlapping, keeping the background intact, clipping
sprites at screen edges and transparency effects and so forth. I am
waiting excitedly to see Ralf's graphics library. It should be way
cool. Also for more info, read Michael Packards game tutorial at
http://exo.com/~lgp/euphoria/
--
Pete Eberlein <xseal at harborside.com>
