Commodore 128D - Page 122

i f
RUN the program. You have just drawn a white racing car, enclosed
in a box, in the upper-left corner of the screen. You have also drawn
a raceway with a finish line at the bottom of the screen. At this point,
the racing car is still only a stationary picture. The car isn't a sprite
yet, but you have just completed the first step in sprite
programming—creating the image.
Storing the Sprite Data with SSHAPE
The next step is to save the picture into a text string. Here's the
SSHAPE statement that does it:
45 SSHAPE A$,11,10,34,30:REM SAVE THE PICTURE IN A
STRING
The SSHAPE command stores the screen image (bit pattern) into a
string variable for later processing, according to the specified
screen coordinates.
The numbers 11,10,34, 30 are the coordinates of the picture. You
must position the coordinates in the correct place or the S.SHAPE
statement can't store your picture data correctly into the string varia
ble A$. If you position the SSHAPE statement on an empty screen
location, the data string is empty. When you later transfer it into a
sprite, you'll realize there is no data present. Make sure you position
the SSHAPE statement directly on the correct coordinate. Also, be
sure to create the picture with the dimensions 24 pixels wide by 21
pixels tall, the size of a single sprite.
The SSHAPE statement transfers the picture of the racing car into a
data string that the computer interprets as picture data. The data
LJ
U
114
USING C128 MODE—Color, Animation and Sprite Graphics Statements