- Added support for non-color quickdraw machines, and removed dependency on GWorlds. This resulted in changes too numerous to mention, mostly in Frame.c. The minimal system requirements for SpriteWorld to run now go too far back in time for me to grasp.
- The core animation engine does more rigorous checking as to whether a sprite needs to be drawn offscreen or not. This resulted in vast speed improvements in animations that had inactive sprites.
- Added two new sample games to the package. This games are incomplete, but serve to demonstrate several important concepts for the use of SpriteWorld in games.
- Added a maskType parameter to SWCreateFrameFromCIconResource, SWCreateFrameFromPictResource, SWCreateSpriteFromCIconResource, and SWCreateSpriteFromPictResource. This allows you to specify the type of mask you want the frames to use. The choices are a region mask, a pixel mask, both, or no mask at all.
- Added a SWSetPortToBackGround routine to make it easier to draw directly on the offscreen background area.
- Made several changes/improvements to color blitting code. Added BlitPixieMask, a custom masked blitter. Thanks Ben!
- SpriteTest now runs a test for 30 seconds, rather than for 1000 frames.
- SpriteTest now aborts the current test when the mouse button is clicked.
- SpriteTest now hides the menubar before running the test.
- SpriteTest now disables the BlitPixieMask menu item if the bit depth != 8.
- SpriteTest now does a preflight memory check.
1.0b2 -- 5/17/93
- Fixed a bug in SWAnimateSpriteWorld that caused artifacts to be left by sprites when running in bit depths less than 8.
- Cleaned up SpriteTest a bit. Added an alert to report the performance statistics.
- All the samples now do more stringent checking for the Color Quickdraw, AppleEvents, etc.
- Added a separate project file for the SpriteWorldDebugLib library.
The SpriteWorld API itself is 99.9% complete. There are a very few items left to attend to. Any suggestions for improvements or additions to the API may still be considered for this version if they are simple enough. Any changes not simple enough will be deferred to the next version.
There has been very little testing done on non-color quickdraw machines. Such machines are getting rarer around these parts. I have only limited access to one SE.
As always more testing is needed. There has been only one bug reported that was in SpriteWorld itself. Every other bug, had to do with the cheesy little application shell used in the sample code. These have been addressed to some degree, but the point of the sample applications is to show a *programmer* how SpriteWorld is used, NOT to provide the next great application shell. I don't think it is necessary to write MacApp just to display some cheesy little animation.
Any bugs, anomalies, undocumented features, should be reported immediately. They will be fixed forthwith.
SimpleBreakOut - Due to a great improvement in the ability of SpriteWorld’s core animation engine to deal with inactive sprites, games such as "BreakOut" are now much more feasible. This sample is about 60% complete. It currently lacks sound, a score, muliple levels, and other important game elements. It does prove the feasibility and usefulness of SpriteWorld for such a game.
SpaceRocks - This sample is about 30% complete. Right now you can fly around and shoot the rocks, which break up into smaller rocks. Currently this sample lacks sound, explosions, a score, multiple levels, and many other important game elements.
SpriteTest - This sample continues to change. I plan to eventually showcase each of SpriteWorld’s key features in this one application. Currently it shows off a couple of pretty cool custom pixel-blitting routines, and some collision detection stuff.
