Issue 14
Contents
Features
- | Foreword
- | Tip of the day
- | A Bird's Nest
- | Snap Happy
- | The SCSIDRV programming interface
- | Sprite Editor
- | Atari UK
- | E-Jag Day 2k1
- | Put some Charm in your Chaos
- | Anodyne Competition results
Reviews
- | PhotoTip 3.10
- | AtarIRC and AtarICQ
News
Sprite Editor MiKRO's new Atari 8-bit graphics utility Hi all, some weeks (or months?) ago I released my small tool called Sprite Editor. This was patched after some days and here we have version 1.1. So, why did I do it? A long time ago I started coding my game for Atari XE/XL machines and I needed to edit and (mainly) animate sprites. The only tool I knew was by Lufa of Satantronic. This tool is very simple and has some bugs. My program, Sprite Editor (SE) consists of two parts - editor and animator. I'll try to explain the main functions and features. Editor Nice graphics interface :-) I didn't use standard Graphics 0 mode because of problems with the cursor (you know - priority backround vs players vs playfields...), so I redefined the font for Graphics 12 which you can see on the picture. There are only 4 bits/character used, but I think it looks nice - a lot of editing functions. You can mirror the sprite horizontally or vertically, edit a sprite that is bigger than the screen, invert it, move it, edit 6-color 8-bit sprites or 3-color 16-bit sprites (creating third color by overlapping sprite 1/2 or 3/4). 26 positions for every player are available at all times. It's enough for everyone I hope! Each sprite and each position can have its own, independent color! How is it possible? Download my tool and read the documentation! Animator This part makes full use of the Antic hardware. You can switch collisions of sprites ON/OFF, 1x, 2x or 4x zoom and, the feature I'm most proud of, size correction ON/OFF. What does that last one mean? Probably you know how Antic works - you want (for example) 4x sprite size, one pixel really has a width of 4 pixels, but the height is only one scanline! And we need what? Square pixels! So, here you are them. Parameters can be changed in real-time. This is a hidden(?) feature of my animator - you can change speed, collisions, correction and definitions of animation in real-time without stopping the animation! I was very surprised when I discovered that. At the moment sprite data must be ripped direct from memory, no save or load function. Some things like free-directional moving with each sprite (in the animator) are still missing, too. Maybe in version 2.0.
Useful contacts Sprite Editor 1.1 download http://mikrosoft.miesto.sk Email mk20432@decef.elf.stuba.sk
MyAtari magazine - Feature #6, December 2001
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