Text from Chars Sucks
| Description: | Scrolltext |
| Text: | disclaimer: no characters or bitmaps were harmed in the making of this demo. ...welcome to the triad contribution for the 'only sprites compo 2020', hosted over at csdb! all timing sensitive bit-wrangling was performed by powerslave and matched with the phonics from soviet childrens show 'crocodile gena and cheburashka', interpreted by the dungeon master. as you can see, this intro sports the classical 40x6 logo and a likewise classical dycp-scroller, using sprites (some x-expanded) and ghostbytes. naturally, there was some trickery to get this to work with the c64 limitations in mind. it is not like we have '96 sprites per scanline' which the old neo-geo mvs arcade system offers, but that only makes this more rewarding to pull off... according to most computer history scholars, the term sprite was first coined by danny hillis back in the late 70's, when he worked at texas instruments. however, it was signetics who invented the first chip that could generate hardware sprites. the chip was named the 2636 video processor and came to market in 1978, being used in very early video game consoles. others were soon to follow though, with the atari vcs (also known as the atari 2600) having basic hardware sprites (although very cumbersome to use, and not called sprites in the atari lingo). this was enhanced in later atari 8-bit computers, like the 400 and 800 models. the c64 is vastly superior when it comes to sprite-handling though, and that was also one of the major selling points for our beloved 8-bitter. actually, many 16-bit machines could not display more than 8 sprites on a rasterline either, just like several of their 8-bit cousins. there were later exceptions though, both among 16-bit and 8-bit machines, with the turbografx-16 mustering 16 per rasterline, the original gameboy coming in on 10, the sega megadrive with 20 and the super nintendo reaching no less than 34 per line. but back then, nothing could even come close to the 96 sprites per line on the neo geo arcade hardware (on the market from 1990 and onwards), or the massive 128 sprites on the sega out run arcade board... however, sometimes less is more and we hope you like our contribution in traditional triad style for this 'sprite-only' competition! be careful out there, and keep the blue screen faith! |
<-- Back
|
|
|
