Been using NextBuild for a little while, mucking around with my own editor for creating maps/sprs etc, got my scrolling tilemap working, but have hit a bit of a wall with sprites.
Ok so as far as I can gather the Next can handle 64 hardware sprites with 256 colours, or 128 hardware sprites with 16 colours (4bit).

When I use the InitSprites command I think this loads in upto 64 (or 128 for 4bit) sprites into the video memory (max is 16k). Then when I use UpdateSprite I can assign one of those sprite images (patterns in code) to a sprite ID. So I can use the same sprite image many times for my 64 onscreen sprites.

All good, except my main player is 4 sprites (32x32). It can move in 8 directions, and there are 5 animation frames. So in total 160 sprites just for the player.

So I'm running out of sprites. Now before I go mucking around reducing graphics to single sprite sizes, or using flipping/mirroring etc, then is it possible to use InitSprites, or some other command, to force load new images over the loaded ones? I was thinking of keeping the first 4 sprites just for the player and then just initialising those 4 sprites as the animation or direction changes. A quick test of using InitSprites (for the full 64 sprites) every frame shows this doesn't slow things down badly, so hopefully is possible. I don't really know ASM well enough to alter the InitSprites, but basically would be the same but with a starting point (so can init just the first 4 sprite, then the next 4 sprites (eg. for enemy)). 

Also is it possible to use 8bit graphics (256 colour) for the layer 2 tilemap, and 4bit graphics (16 colour) for the sprites?

LET s$ = "1+1"
LET s$ = CHR$(_VAL) + """" + s$ + """"
LET r = EvalBasic(s$)

How do I get the return value of VAL ?

PRINT SIN 1
Gives: 0.841461181640625 (wrong)

LET v = 1
PRINT SIN v
Gives: 0.84147098 (right)

Where is the POINT function?

f$ = "1+2"
PRINT VAL(f$)
gives 3

PRINT VAL("1+2")
gives 0

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Game up7 written in Pascalated BASIC.

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Hi,

I'm creating an application with lots of arrays and wondered if the save and load commands support the microdrive syntax, or saving to +3 Disk?

Many thanks

Peter

Poker written in Pascalated BASIC.

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