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SPORTSware's ANIMATION STATION By Paul L. Olmstead Copyright 1991, SPORTSware, Toledo, Ohio All Rights Reserved, version 1.0 SPORTSware 3524 River Road Toledo, Ohio 43614 (419) 389-1515 COPYRIGHT NOTICE ANIMATION STATION Program (c) 1991 SPORTSware, Toledo, Ohio All Rights Reserved. All portions of this software are copyrighted and are the proprietary secret information of SPORTSware and/or it's licenser. Use, reproduction or publication of any portion of this material without prior written authorization by SPORTSware is strictly prohibited. No data created with this software may be sold, bartered, traded, or exchanged with any person, company, corporation or other entity without prior written authorization from SPORTSware. ANIMATION STATION Documentation (c) 1991 SPORTSware, Toledo, Ohio All Rights Reserved. Reproduction or use, without express written permission from SPORTSware, of any portion of this manual is prohibited. While reasonable efforts have been taken in the preparation of these materials to assure accuracy, SPORTSware assumes no liability resulting from any errors or omissions in the material, or from the use of the information contained herein. SPORTSware MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EITHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, WITH RESPECT TO THE SOFTWARE PROGRAMS RECORDED ON THE DISKETTE OR THE PROGRAMS DESCRIBED IN THE MANUAL, THEIR QUALITY, PERFORMANCE, MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE PROGRAMS ARE SOLD "AS IS". THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THEIR QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE IS WITH THE BUYER. IN NO EVENT WILL SPORTSware BE LIABLE FOR DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES RESULTING FROM ANY DEFECT IN THE PROGRAMS EVEN IF SPORTSware HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE. (SOME STATES DO NOT ALLOW THE EXCLUSION OR LIMITATION OF IMPLIED WARRANTIES OR LIABILITY FOR INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES, SO THE ABOVE LIMITATION OR EXCLUSION MAY NOT APPLY TO YOU.) INTRODUCTION This program was originally designed as a crude programmer's tool to design and save graphic pictures (icons) to be used as background, foreground and animated characters for arcade type games. As time went by more drawing features were added and the ability to preview animation. At some point, I noticed my seven year old daughter was frequently asking to "play" with it again. That's when I decided to add a lot of safeguards, instructions, multiple file handling and "demo" file creation features to it. The purpose was to keep it usable as an animation tool but make it easy enough to use that it could be considered a "toy" too. If you are a programmer, you will find the STATION a valuable tool for creating icons for action arcade games, animated demonstrations and other projects that require graphic icon creation. If you are not interested in creating games, etc., you might enjoy creating icons and animated demo files for your own enjoyment. A great deal can be learned about animation just by playing with it. This program was written entirely in assembly language. Note the small size of ANIMATE.EXE. Every effort was made to get maximum data handling speed from the hardware. Note that the demos display 3D animation, that is, animated characters pass both in front of and behind objects. Whatever your purpose, we hope you enjoy ANIMATION STATION. Please note that this program is shareware and the only compensation the author receives is from your registration. Please register your copy. Thank you! PROGRAM FEATURES ANIMATION STATION allows you to: Create files of icons that measure 32 pixels by 32 pixels. Each file can contain 30 different icons. Each icon can contain 64 different colors. Icons created with this program can be used in other programs you write. Create animated 3D sequences and save them for later viewing. On-line help is available for most functions. SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS ANIMATION STATION can be run on any IBM/compatible that has VGA graphics. A single disk drive will suffice. Memory requirements are minimal. FILES ON YOUR EVALUATION DISK ANIMATE .EXE The program file. ICONS1 .VGA A file that contains graphic images (icons). There are 4 icon files numbered 1-4. Icon files must have the VGA extension to be recognized by ANIMATE.EXE FISH .ANI A demo file. This file contains keystrokes recorded by ANIMATE.EXE that can be played back to present an animated demo. All demo files must have the .ANI extension. There are 5 demo files on the evaluation disk. TITLE .SCR The title screen. there are 4 files with the SCR extension. These are saved text screens that contain information, such as help screens, displayed during execution of ANIMATE.EXE. GO .BAT The easy way to start the program. Just type GO and press ENTER. REGISTER.BAT Run this program to print an order form. You must have a printer to use this program. FORM .TXT The ASCII text file containing the order form. REGISTER.TXT A text file. SPORTSware's current BONUS offer. Please read. USING ANIMATION STATION Before you use this program, please make a work copy and put your original disk in a safe place. That way, if you accidentally overwrite a file or otherwise loose a file, you will still have the original. If you are going to use the STATION on a hard disk system, be sure the files are all in the same directory. ANIMATE only searches the current directory for files. To execute the program, type GO and press ENTER. When in doubt during execution, press F1 for on-line help screens. THE DISPLAY SCREEN ICON FILE DISPLAY At startup, the upper portion of the display contains 30 "empty" icon boxes. When you load an icon file, this is where it is displayed. When you save an icon file, whatever appears here is exactly what is saved. CLIPBOARD Below the icon file display to the left side of the screen is the clipboard. This area is shaded in Gray stripes and has room for 10 icons. You can use the clipboard to temporarily store icons. You can move icons from one file to another using the clipboard. This area is also used by the animation routine. See ANIMATION for more on that. DESIGN BOX To the right of the clipboard are 2 boxes. The small one shows an icon actual size, the large one shows the same icon four times actual size. This box is where you can create or alter icons. The command summary explains all of the editing functions. RECORDER INDICATOR LIGHT To the right of the big design box is a small Red square. This "light" indicates if the record keystrokes function (F7) is on or off. The animation commands summary explains it's use. PEN POSITION INDICATOR Below the recorder indicator light is the pen position indicator. At startup, this appears as a small red block above a larger white block. The red block indicates that the pen is "lifted" off of the paper (white block). When a small green block appears touching the white block, the pen is on the paper. See pen up/down in the drawing commands. MESSAGE CENTER Below the clipboard on the left side of the screen is a one line text window. Any messages or requested text input take place in this window. PALETTE At the bottom of the display are two rows of 32 colored blocks. These are the colors you may use to draw with. Two indicator bars highlight the currently selected color, one bar above and one below the current color box. COMMANDS Brief descriptions of the following commands are available on-line. Press F1 to get on-line help while running ANIMATE. FILE INPUT/OUTPUT COMMANDS ANIMATION STATION allows you to load and save icon files, load and run animation demo files, name and save demo files you create yourself. All letter commands must be entered in lowercase. Here are the commands: l Press the letter l to load one of the 4 icon files. Three of them contain icons already drawn. The 4th is blank and ready for use. s Press s to save the currently displayed icon file to disk. Any changes you made will be saved. F5 F5 allows you to enter a filename to save the current demo buffer data to disk. Use this function to save your own demos to disk. F6 F6 saves the current demo file data to disk. A demo file must be loaded from disk before this function is active. F9 Press F9 to load and execute a demo from disk. The name of each demo found on the default drive will be displayed in the message center. If you want to see that demo, press y and it will immediately be loaded and run. If you do not want to see that demo, press n and the name of the next demo found will be displayed. Press escape to abort demo selection. Pressing F9 clears the demo data buffer. That means that any demo in memory when F9 is pressed is erased from memory. F10 Press F10 to quit and exit to DOS. DRAWING COMMANDS These drawing commands allow you to edit existing icons or create your own from scratch. Use the number keypad for directional drawing commands (be sure you have set NUM LOCK to ON). All letter commands must be in lowercase. Here are the commands: On the number keypad, 7 move drawing cursor up/left. 8 move drawing cursor up. 9 move drawing cursor up/right. 4 move drawing cursor left. 5 toggle the "pen" up/down draw as you move cursor [pen down] or just move the cursor [pen up] 6 move drawing cursor right. 1 move drawing cursor down/left. 2 move drawing cursor down. 3 move drawing cursor down/right. letter commands, g Press g to get an icon. A multicolored cursor will appear in the upper left corner of the icon display. Move the cursor over the icon that you want to get and press ENTER. The icon will appear in the design box, replacing whatever was there before. All icon movement is done through the design box. The cursor can also be moved into the clipboard area to get icons placed there with the "k" command. k Press k to copy the icon currently in the design box to a space in the icon display area or clipboard area. When you press k, the cursor will appear in the upper left of the icon display. Place the cursor where you want to put the icon and press ENTER. e Press e to erase the design box. Any graphic image in the box will be lost and the box will be white with a black border. c Press c to select a new drawing color. After you press c, a message appears in the message center telling you to select a color. To select a color, use the number keys to highlight the color you want and press ENTER. This command is only active while the pen is DOWN. h Press h and the image in the design box will be flipped horizontally. v Press v and the image flips vertically. u Press u to move the image in the design box up one pixel row. d Pressing d will shift the image in the design box down one row. x To quickly change one color of the image in the design box to another color, press x. You will be asked what color you want to change. Highlight the color you want to change with the cursor at the bottom of the screen and press ENTER. Next highlight the color you want to change to and press ENTER. Every pixel in the design box that is the FROM color will change to the TO color. F2 Press F2 to erase the icons in the clipboard area only. IMPORTANT! You may have noticed when watching the demos that came on the disk that the animated objects and foreground objects do not appear as rectangular blocks while the objects you are drawing do! Why is that? ANIMATE examines each pixel of the icons used for animated and foreground objects for color 7 (white or light gray or whatever is in palette slot number 7). If it sees color 7 it skips it, that is, does not copy it onto the background. SO, when you are drawing icons to be used for animated objects or foreground objects, use color 7 as the background. If you already drew a bunch with a different color background, just put each in the design box and use the X command to quickly change the background color to color 7. Note that the numbering system begins with zero. Color 7 is the 8th color in the top row of colors at the bottom of the screen. ANIMATION Animation is the process of showing slightly different images one after the other in rapid succession. The person viewing the images believes that the object or objects pictured are moving when in fact they are not. All animated games simply draw images out of the player's sight and present them one after the other at the proper speed to simulate movement. Cartoons are also created this way, consisting of thousands of drawings viewed in rapid succession. In our high tech video world it is easy to overlook the basic reality of what we see. Thanks to technology, YOU can create these wonderful illusions too, with ANIMATION STATION. If you want to learn the intimate details of animation, your local library is the best place to look. For now, we'll just concentrate on how we do it with ANIMATION STATION. HOW IT WORKS ANIMATE uses whatever graphics are in the third row of icons as the background. Whatever objects are in the first five positions of the first row of icons will be in the foreground. The object or objects to animate must be in the first five positions of the clipboard. If that sounds confusing, execute ANIMATE, press F9 to run a demo, press y when "Run FISH.ANI Y/N" appears in the message box and watch what happens. Was it too fast for you? Let me explain what you saw. First, the icon set with the fish pictures in it was loaded and appears in the icon display area at the top of the screen. Second, the five fish pictures are moved to the clipboard in the first five positions. These will be the object animated (the fish swims back and forth). Why five pictures? Each is slightly different. When shown rapidly, one after the other, the eyes move and the fins move. This is called INTERNAL animation. Not only does the fish move across the screen (EXTERNAL animation), but the fish looks around, makes swimming movements and blows bubbles. The fish appears to be "alive", not just a picture of a fish being moved back and forth. Third, icons from different parts of the screen are placed in the first five positions of the top row. ANIMATE will use whatever is in those five positions as FOREGROUND object, things closest to the viewer, things the fish swims behind. Fourth, various icons are placed in row three to create the BACKGROUND. This is the picture our fish swims in front of. Fifth, the animate key (a) is selected to show the animation. Three questions must be answered before the animation appears. 1. How many cells (pictures) do we want to use for the INTERNAL animation? In the FISH case we want to use five. That makes the fish look ALIVE, he moves his fins, looks around and blows bubbles. 2. How many pixels in front of the last picture should we place the next picture? (EXTERNAL animation) To create movement, each succeeding picture needs to be in a different place than the last one. The farther away the next picture is placed from the last picture, the faster the object appears to move. 3. How long should we SHOW each picture before we show the next one (DELAY)? If you "flip" the pictures too fast, the moving object becomes a blur, too slow and the movement is jerky. This display speed is often referred to in frames per second. Fifth, the animation appears, the fish casually swims in front of the background and behind the foreground until you press a key and stop him. What's actually happening is this. ANIMATE has copied the icons in the third row to a place in memory "off screen". There, it places one of the icons of the fish in it's proper place on the background. Then it places the pictures that are in the first row of icons at predetermined positions on the background (the foreground objects). Then the whole "picture" is copied to the screen where we see it. While we are looking at it, the next one is prepared. This cycle continues endlessly until you press a key and stop it. To see the same demo again, just press the A key. At the prompts, just press ENTER (ANIMATE remembers the last set of answers). To experiment, answer the prompts. For example, to see the fish swim at super speed, press 1 for number of cells, 9 for pixel movement rate and 0 (zero) for speed. The fish flies across the screen! THE ANIMATION COMMANDS The following keys are used in the animation process. a Press the A key to activate animation. Put the icons to animate in the clipboard, prepare the background and place the foreground objects in the top row before you press a. If you don't, the animation you see probably won't make any sense. After this key is pressed, you must answer these three questions; 1. How many icons are to be used for the internal animation? You can select 1 to 5 icons. These must already be placed in the top row of the clipboard. 2. How many pixels from the current icon should the next icon be placed? Possible answers are 0 to 9. 0 means the object does not actually move across the screen (see FACE demo). 9 simulates high speed. 3. How long should each picture be shown? Possible answers are 0 to 6. 6 shows the pictures for the longest time, 0 shows them as rapidly as possible. F7 Press F7 to "record" a set of keystrokes and create a demo. When you press F7, a tone sounds and the recorder light turns green to remind you that you are recording. You can record up to 254 keystrokes. If you do not turn the recorder off (by pressing F8) and exceed 254 keys, the recorder turns itself off. F8 Turns the recorder off. A tone sounds and the indicator light turns red to show that the recorder is off. MAKE YOUR OWN DEMO To make a demo yourself, you need only turn the recorder on, press a series of keys to accomplish what you want the demo to do, turn the recorder off, and save the demo to disk. YOUR DEMO, STEP BY STEP First, press F2 to clear the clipboard and press e to erase whatever is in the design box. Second, turn the recorder on by pressing F7. Each key you press will be remembered. Do not record as you draw an icon as the recorder ignores drawing commands. Only use the recorder to create demos. Third, load the icon file you will be using by pressing l and y for yes when it's name appears in the message box. (Even if the correct icon set is already on screen, load it. It may not be when you want to run the demo!) Fourth, Place the icon(s) to be used for animation in the clipboard top row starting with the leftmost position. Fifth, construct the BACKGROUND by placing icons in the third icon display row. Do this until the background picture is finished. Sixth, Put the icons you want to use as FOREGROUND objects in the first five positions of the first row of the icon display. If you don't want any foreground objects, put five solid blocks there that are color 7. Seventh, Press the A key to animate. Answer the three questions. The animation will appear in the lower portion of the screen. Eighth, The very next key you press should be F8. TURN THE RECORDER OFF. This will also stop the animation but don't worry, your demo is still there, in the demo buffer. Ninth, Press F5 to name and save your demo to disk. Now you can see your demo again by pressing the A key and pressing ENTER at each of the three questions. You can do this over and over until you erase the clipboard or otherwise disturb the current placement of icons. Or, since your demo is now saved on disk, just press F9 and y when it's name appears in the message box. The correct icon set will be loaded and your keystrokes duplicated exactly. If your demo didn't come out to your liking, you can record another over it by giving a new one the same name or delete it at the DOS prompt. No provision was made within ANIMATE to delete demos, only create them. You can create and save as many different demos as your directory will hold. A NOTE ABOUT THE ICON FILES There are four icon files on the evaluation disk. No provision is made to add new ones from within the program. If you want to add other icon file just copy one of them to a file with a different name but with the VGA extension. ANIMATE only recognizes binary icon files with the VGA extension. Also, for the demos included on the evaluation disk to execute properly, the icon files must appear in numerical order in the directory, that is ICONS1.VGA, ICONS2.VGA, ICONS3.VGA etc. The reason for this is, when recording a demo, the program does not look for file names. it just remembers which keys you press. We hope that you enjoy ANIMATION STATION and will be kind enough to register your copy. Once again, this product is shareware and the author receives nothing for his work except the compensation from registrations. Thank you in advance for supporting the shareware concept. LEARNING ASSEMBLY LANGUAGE? If you are a student of assembly language you know how long it takes to learn and how difficult it is to find just the right information. I personally have spent hundreds of dollars and thousands of hours on it. The complete, fully commented source code for ANIMATION STATION is available for $79.00. See the order form or call (419) 389-1515 for credit card orders. At first that may sound like a lot. Just go buy two or three books and spend a couple of months discovering that they don't quite fill the bill, then see if it still sounds expensive. The source code includes disk i/o, text processing, memory allocation, keyboard input processing, VGA graphics, sound and much much more hard core high quality code, and it's all fully commented. Along with the source code you can count on FREE telephone support (as long as YOU pay for the call). The source code is delivered in ASCII format, on disk, ready to go! If you are trying to learn assembly, do yourself a favor and buy the source code to ANIMATION STATION. It's worth many times the asking price. 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