COLORAND GRAPHICS
Up to now we've explored some of the sophisticated computing
capabilities of the Commodore 64. But one of its most fascinating fea-
tures is an outstanding ability to produce color and graphics.
You've seen a quick example of graphics in the "bouncing ball" and
"maze" programs. But these only touched on the power you command.
A number of new concepts will be introduced in this section to explain
graphic and color programming and show how you can create your own
games and advanced animation.
Because we've concentrated on the computing capabilities of the ma-
chine, all the displays we've generated so far were a single color (light
blue text on a dark blue background, with a light blue border).
In this chapter we'll see how to add color to programs and control all
those strange graphic symbols on the keyboard.
PRINTING COLORS
As you discovered if you tried the color alignment test in Chapter 1,
you can change text colors by simply holding the" key and one of
the color keys. This works fine in the immediate mode, but what hap-
pens if you want to incorporate color changes in your programs?
When we showed the "bouncing ball" program, you saw how
keyboard commands, like cursor movement, could be incorporated
within PRINT statements. In a like way, you can also add text color
changes to your programs.
You have a full range of 16 text colors to work with. Using the
ami
key and a number key, the following colors are available:
1234567
Black White Red Cyan Purple Green Blue
8
Yellow
If you hold down the
~ key along with the appropriate number
key, these additional eight colors can be used:
2
Orange Brown
3
Lt.
Red
4
Gray
5 6
Gray 2 Lt.
Green
7
Lt.
Blue
8
Gray 3
TYPENEW, and experiment with the following. Hold down the"
key and at the same time hit the
akey. Next, hit the IIkey without
56
To Next Page
Loading...
