The Spritemaster 64 animation program is designed as a sprite generator and editor for use by programmers or as a fun and creative playmate for children or adults.

Sprites are movable object blocks which, through the power of the new Commodore 64 computer, can be made to imitate almost any moving object.

Spritemaster helps you build your sprite, then copy and modify it to produce a sequence of pictures which represent the object in motion. The Animate command will then put each picture on the screen in rapid succession to create the animation. This is similar to what takes place in a movie projector where still photographs, each a slightly different picture, are rapidly projected one after another onto the screen to produce a “ motion picture.”

Spritemaster lets you modify your sprite picture sequence to produce colors, shapes and sizes which give the best effect. In addition, you may change the speed of animation (the rate at which the still frames are displayed) or the speed of travel (the vertical or horizontal movement across the screen).

Once you have created your animated figure, you can save the informaton to tape or disk for retrieval at a later time. You may want to refine several figures for use in a game program. Although Spritemaster is not a game program, it is a program to create game objects. For example, it cannot display a pitcher throwing a baseball to a catcher. It can, however, be used to create the pitcher as a separate sprite, including the throwing motion, then the baseball as another sprite, and then the catcher as the final sprite. Each object is created separately and then transfered to other programs for interaction and movement as desired. The programmer’s reference section provides guidance on how to manipulate sprites in your own programs.