FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT:
Karl Bunker
KarlBunker@aol.com
Vern Jensen
Vern_Jensen@lamg.com
SPRITEWORLD 2 RELEASED
A FREE, FAST, POWERFUL, AND EASY TO USE PROGRAMMER’S LIBRARY FOR CREATING
SPRITE ANIMATION IN MACINTOSH PROGRAMS
Karl Bunker and Vern Jensen today officially released SpriteWorld 2 as
freeware to the Macintosh programming community. SpriteWorld 2 is an update
to the widely respected SpriteWorld animation library originally written by
Tony Myles in 1993-94. SpriteWorld 2 offers a huge number of improvements
over the original SpriteWorld, as well as correcting all of the bugs that
plagued that earlier version. SpriteWorld 2 is released with the permission
of Tony Myles, and is available free of charge to all Mac programmers.
SpriteWorld 2 will be of particular interest to Macintosh game programmers.
Using the SpriteWorld 2 library, programmers can easily produce highly
complex sprite-based animation effects, with high frame rates, smooth
overlapping, pixel-precise collision detection, unlimited size and number of
sprites, optional scrolling backgrounds, optional tiled backgrounds, and many
other features. Capabilities like these are necessary for arcade games such
as space shoot-em-ups, or any program in which objects move around in 2D
space and interact with each other.
The release of SpriteWorld 2 represents an excellent opportunity to Mac game
programmers, especially those who are independent or shareware programmers,
and don’t have huge resources at their disposal. With SpriteWorld 2, all of
the “grunt work” of sprite animation programming has been done for you, so
you can concentrate on the design of your game itself. In SpriteWorld 2,
everything is logically organized, highly optimized for speed, and thoroughly
tested and debugged.
Some notable features of SpriteWorld 2:
* Free!
* Written in C, with the full source code to SpriteWorld included as part of
the package.
* A variety of high speed custom blitters, many times faster than CopyBits.
Includes a 68K blitter for all bit depths.
* Optional direct-to-screen blitting.
* An option for interlaced display, to allow fast frame rates on slower Macs.
* “Compiled sprites” for even greater speed on 68K Macs.
* The ability to create scrolling games, featuring an extremely fast
scrolling engine developed for SpriteWorld 2 by Vern Jensen.
* Support for “tiled backgrounds”; suitable for both scrolling and
non-scrolling games. These routines (also written by Vern Jensen) allow you
to easily build a background from sets of graphic tile images.
* Optimized for both 68K Macs and PowerMacs. The most speed-critical sections
of code are written in two versions: a 68000 assembly language version for
68K compiles and a C version optimized for PPC compiles.
* Extensive documentation, patterned after Apple’s “Inside Macintosh” books,
with clear explanations of each SpriteWorld routine, and discussion of the
general principles involved in using SpriteWorld.
* Several demo programs, with full source code in C, to give you examples of
how to use SpriteWorld.
Karl Bunker describes the history of SpriteWorld and SpriteWorld 2:
“Tony Myles’ original SpriteWorld was a beautiful piece of design. The
logical structure of the library and the clarity of the C code are exemplary.
Unfortunately, Myles wasn’t able to support the package after the release of
version 1.0b4 in April 1994, and a number of bugs and limitations were never
dealt with. I started revamping the library to use in a game I was working on
in early 1995. Some time after that I started corresponding with Vern Jensen,
and he convinced me that between us we could — and should — bring
SpriteWorld to a point where our version would be a worthy successor to
Myles’ last release. Thanks largely to Vern’s wonderful scrolling and tiling
additions, I think we’ve succeeded in that goal.”
Vern Jensen on why you should get SpriteWorld 2.0:
“SpriteWorld 2.0 is, in my opinion, one of the best animation libraries
available. Not only does it come loaded with features, but since it comes
with full source code, you are free to modify or add anything you need,
making SpriteWorld very flexible. And since Karl and I are going to be using
SpriteWorld in our own games, we have the motivation to continue to update
and improve it for our own benefit, as well as for others, which means that
SpriteWorld will continue to evolve into a better product. Add the fact that
it’s free, and, well, what are you waiting for? Go download SpriteWorld 2
right now!”
SpriteWorld 2 requires System 7.0 or later, a 68020 or later Mac, CodeWarrior
C or Think/Symantec C programming environment.
The SpriteWorld 2 package is available in the Mac programming library of AOL,
and on the World Wide Web at:
http://users.aol.com/spritewld2/
It will also be appearing at the major ftp archives, accessible through URLs
such as:
ftp://ftp.dataplex.net/pub/info-mac/_Development/_Library/
ftp://ftp.pht.com/mirrors/info-mac/_Development/_Library/
http://hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/HyperArchive.html
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