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From: toml@xrxns.UUCP (Tom Love)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: need info on LineA and Animation programming
Message-ID: <156@xrxns.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 28-May-87 17:04:35 EDT
Article-I.D.: xrxns.156
Posted: Thu May 28 17:04:35 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 30-May-87 09:44:13 EDT
Organization: Xerox: EGP/CAD, Leesburg, VA
Lines: 39
Keywords: sprites, low-level graphics programming

hello -

with the intention of doing some games-type programming i began looking 
through the meager ST documentation which is available.  in particular, i
referred to the Mark Williams C v2.0 manual (already discussed and 
recommended in this forum) and the Abacus "ST Internals" book (also discussed
and generally disparaged).  both sources are very, very lean on info 
describing use of the LineA routines.  i am particularly interested in
the pseudo-sprites and bitblt.  does anyone have pointers to more documentation
of any quality on this stuff?  i don't have the devpac - how well does it
cover linea?  any and all pointers to docs or PD source code GREATLY appreciated.

on a slightly different topic - how are you hackers out there implementing 
animation?  using linea, or other rom/bios routines, or rolling your own?
how reasonable is it to attempt to manage multiple display buffers as an
assist to animation?  (might as well make use of the ram and the relocatable
display base, as long as the result is reasonably fast and leaves time
inbetween to update the other buffers).  or does this result in flicker or
other undesirable side effects?

i am mostly interested in moving little goobers around on the screen, sort
of pacman style, as opposed to (for example) moving a big object which occupies
a majority of the screen, though the techniques involved in that sort of animation
might also be interesting.

hopefully this set of questions will not be received as naive, and will spark
some genuinely interesting technical discussions (as opposed to the relentless
atari bashing, amiga bashing, and enless queries for the latest version of uniterm!
 :-) :-) :-)

please reply to me and/or the net.
thanks.

tom love
xerox edds
leesburg, va 22075
703-729-8000
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