Re: ASCII versions - for animation

[imc@comlab.ox.ac.uk (Ian Collier)]

Andrew Cadley SYS Staff entertained comp.sys.sinclair with the following story:
>I've been thinking about this and, while it *sounds* like a good idea, I
>can already anticipate a couple of problems. While machines like the C64
>and BBC have text based screen modes, others like the CPC and Speccy
>don't. Writing ASCII characters to the screen in those cases is going to
>be just as slow as working with a full-on bitmap and you're not going to
>get much of a frame rate.

Don't be such a spoil sport. :-)

Without using terribly sophisticated techniques you can fill the 32x22
Speccy screen in about 3/50 of a second, which is enough for the Star
Wars animation at 15 frames per second.  However, you are very unlikely
to be repainting the whole screen for every frame so in practice it will
be faster than that.

>The colour thing might also be a bit iffy as far as the Speccy goes,
>because it's graphics are somewhat limited in those respects. 

Colour will be absolutely fine for 32x22.  If you want to go for 64x22 then
things start to get a bit more complicated for printing the characters, but
you can still have reasonable looking colours.
-- 
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