Self-Training in Sprite Animation

With UFOs and the floating head of Nefarious no less!

Last night and tonight I put together another graphics test program, this one intended to investigate methods of doing shaped sprite animations, as well as scrolling endless backgrounds, collision detection, and on the fly modifications of the sprite and layer bitmaps. I think it turned out pretty nicely so I’m posting it as a tutorial-minded application that includes all the source code and source images that I used.

Due to a great many embedded graphics that I haven’t bothered to optimize or compress — mostly a nice picture of Costa Rican — this exe is uncharacteristically large at about a meg and a half. You cand download the executable (which contains everything you need to try this) here: ZenSpriteTest.exe

You can also download the fully-commented source code here: ZenSpriteTest.bas and ZenSpriteTest.rc

You can also download the images and icon here (these really explain instantly how the shaped sprites are composited): ZenSpriteTest-images.rar

Feel free to check out the YouTube video I made of the program running… As always, the capture process has caused some degredation in quality and framerate. Anyway, I had fun putting this together and it was much easier than I’d thought it would be. On Monday I’m going to quickly write a more complex collision detection function, and also maybe do a little OpenGL work before I dive into coding the “PUNG” video game with Saira. BTW, feel free to open the video in its own window instead.

4 Comments

  1. Ed wrote:

    So, we see UFOs and IFH :P
    (IFH = Identified Flying Head ) :P

    That Sprite Test… looks like it could be used to make mini – videos (like you did) — but for trance/ electronica/ techno music.

    One word description of program: Awesome! :)

    Saturday, January 16, 2010 at 11:06 am | Permalink
  2. Shannon wrote:

    I have some other projects but I was just reading up on how to read data from a microphone and webcam, and thought I might do a psychedelic visualization screensaver some time.

    Saturday, January 16, 2010 at 11:47 am | Permalink
  3. Ed wrote:

    I can’t wait to see the screensaver when you make it.
    Here is something for you to look at on the same idea – a website that suggests viewing it while sonted. And while I’m not stoned, it still blows your eyes.
    https://acid-trip.org/

    Have a great night! :)

    Sunday, January 17, 2010 at 9:36 pm | Permalink
  4. Brent wrote:

    Shannon –

    What’s the audio track?

    Tuesday, January 19, 2010 at 10:21 am | Permalink
Wow Shannon, that's really annoying! What is it, 1997 on Geocities? Retroweb is NOT cool!

Post a Comment

Your email is never published nor shared. Required fields are marked *
*
*