Sprite Programming article, would like to add a screenshot or video

[Photon]

I wrote this article because I'm coming back to Creativity and saw this as a topic that was frequently explored here on EAB. I've taken an extensive break, so I couldn't go entirely from memory and made myself check everything on the real deal.

As it is, it turned out longer more technical than an overview, but the sprite hardware is really intriguing and this is as short as I can make it without being incomplete.

I think I got it perfect in the end, but if you see something important missing or an outright error, I definitely want to correct that. I want this to answer all questions about OCS sprites.

Now for another subject... the article is a wall of text, and my test screens look pretty freaky. And not that nice/interesting. And the sprites I use in my demos always have some trick, it wouldn't be obvious how sprites work normally.

So... I'm looking for a nice screenshot from an OCS demo or game showing 8 sprites, or something you suggest.

Just to give the idea of what sprites are. It could be a short embedded video too.

[mcgeezer]

Originally Posted by Photon

I wrote this article because I'm coming back to Creativity and saw this as a topic that was frequently explored here on EAB. I've taken an extensive break, so I couldn't go entirely from memory and made myself check everything on the real deal.

As it is, it turned out longer more technical than an overview, but the sprite hardware is really intriguing and this is as short as I can make it without being incomplete.

I think I got it perfect in the end, but if you see something important missing or an outright error, I definitely want to correct that. I want this to answer all questions about OCS sprites.

Now for another subject... the article is a wall of text, and my test screens look pretty freaky. And not that nice/interesting. And the sprites I use in my demos always have some trick, it wouldn't be obvious how sprites work normally.

So... I'm looking for a nice screenshot from an OCS demo or game showing 8 sprites, or something you suggest.

Just to give the idea of what sprites are. It could be a short embedded video too.

Bomb Jack Beer Edition uses the hardware sprites.

If I can recall correctly the following are all hardware sprites

• Jack (1 Attached sprite)
• Powerball (1 Unattached)
• The Extra and Bonus icons (2 Unattached)
• Start sequence (8 Unattached)
• Game-over sequence - (4 Unattached)

All of the rest are 5 bitplane bobs

[Photon]

Ooh, Bomb Jack is actually a really good suggestion!

Maybe I can add a screenshot with your description, and then near the end of the article a video showing Playfield priorities (still not advanced)?

The most advanced tricks should be compatible with the facts and claims in the article, and there should be no information missing in the article to achieve all tricks that are possible.

It's just that if I show the advanced tricks I have to add a lengthy explanation of how it's done, and it's really long reduced to minimum already.

[mcgeezer]

Originally Posted by Photon

Ooh, Bomb Jack is actually a really good suggestion!

Maybe I can add a screenshot with your description, and then a video showing Playfield priorities (still not advanced)?

The most advanced tricks should be compatible with the facts and claims in the article, and there should be no information missing in the article to achieve all tricks that are possible.

It's just that if I show the advanced tricks I have to add a lengthy explanation of how it's done, and it's really long reduced to minimum already.

See attached... ones I put in Purple are unattached sprites, ones in Yellow are Attached.

Hope this helps!

[Antiriad_UK]

Originally Posted by Photon

I wrote this
So... I'm looking for a nice screenshot from an OCS demo or game showing 8 sprites, or something you suggest.

Just to give the idea of what sprites are. It could be a short embedded video too.

8 sprites here. You can tell which is which from the colours. If you watch a particular colour you can see how obvious the multiplexing is. (Falling balls endpart, go to 2m30s)

[ Show youtube player ]

[Photon]

Thx Antiriad! The endpart demonstrates sprite chains and priorities really well.

Might go with these two then! Hybris and Shadow of the Beast have been mentioned, but yours are more representative of the topics.

[saimo]

@Photon

If you don't have control words and graphics data decoupling covered, this picture shows it in action (there's also a video, but it's long):



Quite obviously, the sprites are used for the UFOs and the spaceship.

The topmost red UFO has the same shape of the rightmost green UFO, but the data is not duplicated in RAM: both the sprites are using exactly the same data. The same goes for the bottommost brown and the blue UFO.

Additional details:
* 6 3-color sprites (the UFOs)
* 1 15-color sprite (the spaceship)
* 1 3-color sprite (the afterburner flame) obtained by reusing one of the sprites used by the spaceship.

[Photon]

Nice screenshot! But if I wrote all the sprite tricks I know, the article would be ten times longer.

The point is rather that my article should serve as a much shorter, but perfect, replacement for HRM (adding a few extra points about limits and behavior from testing) to do - anything - sprites can do.