| There are Sprite and Bob editors available on Fred Fish PD disks (many
Amiga dealers keep these around and let you copy them for a dollar or
two, disk contents are listed in the back of Amazing Computing
Magazine). One such program is called SpriteMasterII.
When developing a program that uses Sprites and Bobs, finding a good
way to do the art work and get it into your program is a problem. Once
you overcome this barrier, the fun really starts. I urge you not to
use a Sprite/Bob editor, but instead use a paint program such as deluxe
paint. Generally, paint programs offer superior editing facilities.
You can save a small picture as a BRUSH. All the Amiga paint programs
I know of use the same file format to store brushes: the IFF format.
Assuming you are using C.
To get the images into Bob/Sprite format. You have a few choices. The
best one is the learn the IFF file format and write a file reader. Or
steal an IFF image file reader routine from another PD program.
Another way to go is to get a conversion program. Such as "BRUSH2C"
which reads an IFF brush file and writes out a text file with a
corresponding C structure. The dissadvantage is that you have to
recompile everytime you alter an image.
A few more points, Bobs and Sprite images are stored in different
formats. A problem for Bob and Sprite editors if they only output one
type of image but not the other.
Before you use Bobs and Sprites, see if you really need them. You
could just set up a BitMap structure, read in the image, and use the
BltBitMapRastPort or BltMaskBltMapRastPort routines to render the
image. The GEL system (bobs and sprites) has some nice features, but
it takes alot of coding and manual reading and re-reading to use it.
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