FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
A MAJOR UPDATE TO THE FREE, FAST, POWERFUL, AND EASY TO USE PROGRAMMER’S
LIBRARY FOR CREATING SPRITE ANIMATION IN MACINTOSH PROGRAMS
February 12, 1999
Vern Jensen today officially released SpriteWorld 2.2 as freeware to
the Macintosh programming community. SpriteWorld 2.2 is the latest
update to the widely respected SpriteWorld animation library
originally written by Tony Myles in 1993-94, and updated to version
2.0 by Karl Bunker and Vern Jensen in 1996. SpriteWorld 2.2 is a
major update to that release, and provides many new features,
improved routines, and even some bug fixes.
As with the earlier versions, SpriteWorld 2.2 will be of particular
interest to Macintosh game programmers. Using the SpriteWorld
library, programmers can easily produce highly complex sprite-based
animation effects, with high frame rates, smooth overlapping,
pixel-precise collision detection, an unlimited size and number of
sprites, optional scrolling and tiled backgrounds, and many other
features. Capabilities like these are necessary for arcade games such
as space shoot-em-ups, or any game in which objects move around in 2D
space and interact with each other.
Here are just some of the improvements in SpriteWorld 2.2:
– A dramatically improved circular scrolling engine.
– Support for multiple tile layers, as well as a background picture behind
your tiles!
– Assertions were added to SpriteWorld. Now, if you forget to do
something important (such as locking the SpriteWorld before starting
the animation), you will (hopefully) get a polite dialog box
reporting the problem instead of having your program crash.
– New routines for playing asynchronous sounds.
– New routines for quickly drawing and copying lines and framed
rectangles in both scrolling and non-scrolling SpriteWorlds. – Many
new functions, such as SWPauseSpriteLayer, SWDisposeAllSpritesInLayer,
SWCountNumSpritesInLayer, and SWCloneSpriteFromTile.
– Various bug fixes and speed improvements.
– Plus a whole lot more!
SpriteWorld has a colorful and impressive history. Originally written
by Tony Myles, it was “adopted” and updated for its second major
update by Karl Bunker and Vern Jensen. Vern Jensen took over the role
of head programmer for 2.1 and later releases. Since its inception,
SpriteWorld has not been solely the work of one or a few programmers,
but has benefited from the contributions and input of many Macintosh
developers. The full list of contributors is too long to include
here, but among those whose work on the project demands at least some
mention are: Ed Harp, David Johnson, Brigham Stevens, Ben Sharpe,
Tony Wilson, Brian Roddy, Tim Carroll, Cary Farrier, Peter Lewis,
Stefan Sinclair, Christofer Akersten, and Anders Bjorklund.
The SpriteWorld 2.2 package can be downloaded from the SpriteWorld 2
web page at:
http://users.aol.com/spritewld2/
It will also be appearing at InfoMac archives, such as:
http://hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/HyperArchive.html
ftp://ftp.ou.edu/mirrors/info-mac/_Development/_Library/
ftp://ftp.pht.com/pub/mac/info-mac/_Development/_Library/
http://src.doc.ic.ac.uk/packages/info-mac/_Development/_Library/
A C++ version of SpriteWorld is being maintained by Stefan Sinclair. His web
page is at:
http://home.earthlink.net/~trickys/SpriteWorld2Plus/index.html
No Pascal interfaces have been done for SpriteWorld 2.2, since no one
volunteered to do them.
Requirements:
System 7.0 or later, 68020 or later Mac, and a CodeWarrior or Think/Symantec
programming environment.