Gold Medal Software 2/Gold Medal Software Volume 2 (Gold Medal) (1994).iso/prog/sprite21.arj/SPRITES.DOC

Text File | 1993-08-22 | 15KB | 317 lines

                          S P R I T E S


                   G r a p h i c   E d i t o r







                           Version 2.0







                    (c)1992 by Scott Harbour
INTRODUCTION - 'Insert coin.'

     You may freely copy and distribute this program by disk and
through electronic bulletin board systems provided that the program
is not modified in any way, all files described in the READ.ME file
are included in all transfers, and the total fee charged for
shipping and handling for a single copy does not exceed $5.00.

     After having received a copy and found this program to be of
use or enjoyment, you are asked to send $10.00 to the author to
support further development and modification.  You will receive a
free upgrade disk by mail when any new version is available.  If,
however, you do not wish to support the development of this
software, but find it interesting, your comments and suggestions
are also welcome.

     Sprites v2.0 will allow the user to design small, detailed
graphics images on the display screen.  A variety of image
manipulation functions are available, activated by moving the mouse
pointer over a graphical button and "pressing" it by clicking the
left mouse button.  Rotate, Invert, and Shift are only a few of the
many commands available.  In addition, a group of 4 sprites may be
loaded in sequence and animated on the screen.  Creative use of
such display tools can be very rewarding, and anyone with
intermediate programming ability can create very graphical and
entertaining games and animation demonstrations.  But, as I've
found, the most enjoyment is found by just sitting down and
drawing; most of the time, the little sprites look like just a blob
of pixels, but occasionally--springing forth excitement--they turn
out great.

     The following items (or compatible versions thereof) are
required for this program to begin operation:  an IBM 8086/8088
computer with a BIOS dated after 1986; MS-DOS 3.3 or higher; a 256k
VGA adapter; a 640x480 VGA monitor; and Microsoft mouse driver
version 6.0 loaded.  If these items are not found, the program will
either fail to load or come to a screeching halt and repond with a
snide remark.

     After the requirements have been confirmed, the following
items are recommended for the program to behave moderately:  a
mouse (it works with a mouse driver loaded but no mouse connected,
but all you get to do is look, admire, and then reboot), a usable
arm, a click-ready finger, a sense of direction, the ability to
draw realistic images with only 16 colors, an active imagination (a
little artistic ability can go a long way), and a sense of humor
(chances are, if YOU laugh at your little designs, others will
too!).
DESCRIPTION - 'Welcome, brave adventurer!'

     Now, down to the nitty-gritty.  The graphics images are
referred to as "sprites" in this program since they may be used as
individual elements of a program's display (such as icons) or
as the building blocks for larger pictures, such as the terrain of
a map.  Some users may not understand the practicality of such a
program; this program relies on the simplest feature of the
computer's display:  the pixel.  Therefore it is possible to endow
your sprites with great detail.  There are no drawing tools of any
kind in this program (such as line, circle, or rectangle).  The
only drawing tool available is pixel editing.

     Detailed maps, spooky dungeons, soaring waterfalls, concrete
roads, battle fields, rpg characters, heinous monsters, powerful
starships, elegant chess pieces, devastating explosions, colorful
music notes, blue hedgehogs, wild tazmanian devils, yellow pac-men
and pac-women, race cars, and even a kitty cat licking its paw
(check out the animator) can all be designed with this program.
(Of course, if you are a hard-core business executive whose primary
interest lies in WYSIWYG word processors and 3-D spreadsheets, this
program may not be for you.)  I wrote this program to hasten the
process of designing sprites for games, which is my primary
interest.

     I almost choked with enthusiasm when this program came to
mind.  I am an avid video game player, and I have seen many
different types of graphics styles and animations.  Two of my
favorite computer games of all time are Star Control (Accolade) and
Starflight (Electronic Arts).  These two games, like many others,
are very strongly sprite-oriented.  I don't declare to know how
these games work, but it is quite obvious that, in Starflight,
sprites are used for the planetary excursions in the terrain
vehicle; and in Star Control, there are many beautifully-drawn
spaceships, planets, asteroids, and moons that must have been drawn
with some sort of graphic editor.
THE THEORY OF VIDEO GAMING - 'Choose your character.'

     Many people own a home video game such as Nintendo, Super
Nintendo, Nintendo GameBoy, Sega Genesis, NEC TurboGrafix 16, NEC
Turbo Express, Sega Game Gear, Atari Lynx, or other.  The companies
that create the games for these systems have their own development
software, and a computer with the same microprocessor as the system
for which they are creating game cartridges (a cartridge is just a
program burned onto a chip, surrounded by a plastic case).  The
difference between their video game development system and your
home video game is that they probably have a keyboard, monitor,
disk drive, PROM burner, mouse, and other peripherals built-in, and
all you have are a couple of controllers and a ROM cartridge port.
The graphics in these video games are almost entirely sprites!!
The other graphics are called background images, which can be
scaled and rotated to suit the needs of the game, and these
graphics functions are usually built into the hardware.

     Take a closer look at a game such as Zelda (Nintendo) if you
have not yet paid close attention to the image sizes.  You will
notice that most of the graphics in the game are about the same
size.  Many video games use sprites in roots of 8 (1 byte = 8
bits).  So, many of the images in a game are probably 8x8, 16x16,
32x32, or 64x64.  32 is most common (Sprites v2.0 uses 30x30 for
its sprite size.  To create a sprite of smaller or larger
dimensions than 30x30, you can use a portion of the grid (such as
a fourth) or combine 30x30 sprites into four pieces to make one
large 60x60 sprite.  This process can become quite time-consuming,
depending on the programming language and speed of the computer, so
it is usually best to design an editor for each size of image, or
allow the artist to change the image size inside the program
configuration.

     I had been churning over a Star Trek game for months but I
still could not comprehend how to design a realistic combat
scenario that would take place on the VGA graphics screen.  I knew
exactly how I wanted the ships to look and move (something like a
mixture of Star Control and Starflight) and I had already written
the data structure for the quadrant (a small piece of a fictional
galaxy) with 150 star systems, 600 planets, and ten alien races.
I tried drawing the ships using TDRAW, my own full-screen drawing
program, but that program is a full-screen background editor, so
there was no detail control.  Then I tried a professional drawing
program and discovered (again) the ZOOM feature.  I could zoom in
on my drawing and edit pixels in a larger grid.  Sprites v1.0 was
born.
HISTORY - 'You will die!'

     The original version of Sprites has undergone a major refit to
fulfill the requirements for an entirely new version.  The
following is a revision history:

     0.1 - 06/26/91, designed main screen layout
     0.2 - 07/10/91, basic graphic editor finished
     0.3 - 07/23/91, 320x200x256 mode added
     0.4 - 07/28/91, image shift, rotate & invert
     0.5 - 07/30/91, pull-down menus for 256 mode
     0.6 - 08/21/91, drivers & fonts stored in EXE file
     0.7 - 09/17/91, multi-sprite files (sprite cramming)
     0.8 - 09/18/91, added a new error handler routine
     1.0 - 09/19/91, Released to the public
     1.1 - 03/15/92, null and redraw, 320x200x256 discontinued
     1.2 - 06/02/92, direct video writes to speed operation
     1.5 - 06/03/92, Animation with a group of 4 sprites
     1.7 - 06/05/92, file browser load and save
     2.0 - 06/10/92, Second public release

     I chose to drop the 256-color extension with little thought on
the matter.  It worked great with the 3-button mouse I used to test
the program, but did not seem to work correctly with any other
mouse!  I cannot explain this phenomena, but it existed; so instead
of dealing with the problem, I eliminated it.  I know, this sounds
like giving up, but I didn't like the feel of the program.  It
didn't seem to run smoothly.  But not all is lost of the extension;
I integrated the pull-down menus into TDRAW v1.0, which enhanced
the program greatly.
FEATURES - 'Warrior needs food, badly.'

     In Sprites v2.0, several changes are apparent.  The direct
video writes have speeded up the screen update whenever the sprite
is displayed, such as with the SHIFT arrows and rotate and invert.
The animator was added for convenience, since I had been running a
separate program to animate several sprites on the screen.  Some
very good animations can be created with only 4 sprites swapping
over one another.

     A much more distinct change than the animator, however, is the
file browser.  Now, rather than trying to remember the names of all
the sprites within a sprite file (.SCF), all you must remember is
the sprite file name.  The sprites in the file are displayed on the
screen (up to a maximum of 50), where one may be chosen to load.
The same file browser is used to save sprites as well.  The sprite
file name and description are requested.  If the file exists, the
sprites in the file are displayed and you may choose to place the
new sprite over one of the existing sprites (thus overwriting it),
or you may click on the next empty square to append the new sprite
to the file.  So far, I haven't seen the need for a sprite deletion
routine, since they may be overwritten quite easily with the save
command.  If you wish to delete a large number of sprites, I
suggest copying the sprites you wish to keep to a new file and
deleting the old file at the DOS prompt.
OPERATION - 'Warrior...is about to die.'

     Use of the mouse can be a bit tricky at times.  It just takes
a little patience and practice; but until you are used to the
program, you may find it frustrating having your newly drawn sprite
erased.  The two mouse buttons are used to transfer between the
animation BUFFER and the CURRENT sprite.  When you load a sprite,
it will be the CURRENT sprite.  In order to move it into one of the
animation buffers, you click the RIGHT mouse button on the BUFFER
you wish, and the CURRENT sprite will be copied into that buffer.
The other button works in the opposite way.  In order to move one
of the animation BUFFER sprites into the CURRENT sprite buffer, you
click the LEFT mouse button on the animation buffer to copy.

     For instance, suppose you want to load the animation sequence
of a soldier shooting his gun (included in the sample sprite file)
into the animation buffers.  First load SHOT1 from the file SAMPLE
by clicking on the <LOAD> button on the screen, then typing SAMPLE
for the file name.  Now, SHOT1 is the CURRENT sprite.  To move
SHOT1 into the first animation BUFFER, click the RIGHT mouse button
on the first square, or first animation buffer.  The current sprite
is then copied into the first animation buffer.  Next, load SHOT2,
and copy it into the second animation buffer by clicking the RIGHT
button on the second square.  Next, load SHOT3, and copy it into
the third animation buffer by clicking the RIGHT button on the
third square.  Finally, load SHOT4, and copy it into the fourth
animation buffer by clicking the RIGHT button on the fourth square.
You have now loaded the animation sequence from disk into the
animation buffers.  To perform the animation, click on the button
labeled ANIMATE.  The buffers will then be drawn in sequence.  At
this time, the mouse is limited to a small location on the screen.
The only options are the speed arrows.  Click on the LEFT ARROW
diagram on the screen and the animation will slow down.  Click on
the RIGHT ARROW diagram on the screen and the animation will speed
up.  To EXIT from the animation, click the RIGHT mouse button once.
To save the animation sequence you have newly drawn, simply move
the sprite from each animation buffer into the current buffer and
click the <SAVE> button.
CONTROLS - 'You have defeated the villain!'

     Following is a list of all of the functions in the program:

     NULL      Remove all blank characters from the sprite.  This
               is useful for speeding up the loading process and
               may be  used to facilitate placing a black outline
               around the  image.


     INFO      Displays information about the program and author.

     LOAD      Invoke the file browser to load a sprite.

     SAVE      Invoke the file browser to save a sprite.

     CLEAR     Remove the sprite from memory and clear the screen.

     QUIT      Halt the program and exit.

     REDRAW    Refresh the screen by clearing it and restoring the
               image again.  Useful if any stray pixels spill on
               the screen.

     ROTATE    Rotate the sprite 90 degrees.

     INVERT    Rotate the sprite 180 degrees.

     SHIFT     Scroll the sprite up, down, left, or right.

     ANIMATE   Animate the sprites in the 4 buffers.

     SPEED     Increase or decrease the animation rate.

     DESCRIPT  Shows the description of the current sprite.

     FILENAME  Shows the sprite file name of the current sprite.

     CONTENTS  Shows how many sprites are in the sprite file.

     COLOR     Shows the current drawing color.

     COLOR BAR Located above the grid, shows the 16 available
               drawing colors.

     GRID      A zoomed image of the current sprite where all
               pixel editing takes place.
CONCLUSION - 'The End'

     Well, that about covers it.  I'm sure you have seen all of
these functions in action since it is a well-known fact that very
few people read the documentation before trying the product.

     I thank you for your interest in this program and await your
reply.  There is no greater incentive to hacking software than the
reply of someone who has used it.  All replies will receive a
personal response from the author, including complaints.

Scott Harbour
8759 Quail Valley Drive
Redding, CA  96002