Hardcopy Sprites For Commodore 64
Thomas H. White
Make a hardcopy printout of any Commodore 64 sprite with this BASIC program for the VIC-1525, MPS-801, or MPS-802 printer. It's easily adapted to other printers as well.
Have you ever wished you could print a sprite on paper? For example, you may want to check some detail on a sprite you designed without bothering to load and run the program. With "Hardcopy Sprites," you can check such details in seconds rather than minutes, and even compile a personal library of sprite shapes for future reference.
Ordinary screen dump programs can't make sprite printouts because the data that defines sprite shapes isn't located in regular screen memory. To print out a sprite, you need a program that reads the 64-byte memory area where the sprite shape is actually stored.
Hardcopy Sprites uses this technique to print a 24 × 21 character representation of any sprite, with vertical or horizontal expansion if you wish. Large ball-shaped characters form single-color sprites, and additional characters represent multicolor sprites. Figures 1 and 2 show two examples of what is possible.
After typing and saving the program, POKE your sprite data into memory and note the address where it begins. Then simply run Hard-copy Sprites and follow the prompts. The program asks you to enter the memory address where the sprite data begins, to give the sprite a descriptive name, to choose horizontal or vertical expansion (or both), and to select single-color or multicolor mode.
Non-Commodore Printers
Hardcopy Sprites is written for Commodore printers, but is readily adapted to other printers. If your printer can't handle Commodore graphics, replace the ball-shaped Commodore graphics character (SHIFT-Q in the program listing) in lines 200, 210, 230, 340, and 360 with some other character, such as an X or a plus sign. With a little extra work, you could also incorporate Hardcopy Sprites as a subroutine within a BASIC sprite editor program.
Hardcopy Sprites
Please refer to "COMPUTE!'s Guide to Typing In Programs" before entering this listing.
10 REM ** SPRITE HARDCOPY **
:rem 30
20 INPUT"{CLR}{DOWN}SPRITE DAT
A MEMORY LOCATION";PG
:rem 207
30 INPUT"{CLR}{DOWN}EXPAND X D
IR. (Y/N)";EX$ :rem 35
40 INPUT"{7 SPACES}Y DIR. (Y/N
)";EY$ :rem 194
45 INPUT"{DOWN}SPRITE NAME";N$
:rem 243
47 INPUT"{DOWN}MULTICOLOR MODE
(Y/N)";MS :rem 82
50 OPEN1,4 :rem 40
55 PRINT#1,CHR$(15)"MEMORY LOC
ATION"PG"{2 SPACES}"N$
:rem 242
60 FORR=0TO60STEP3 :rem 132
70 FORC=0TO2:P=PEEK(PG+R+C)
:rem 146
80 FORB=7TO0STEP-1:V(B)=P/2:P=
INT(V(B)) :rem 111
90 V(B)=V(B)-INT(V(B)) :rem 202
100 IFV(B)>0THENGOSUB200 :rem 184
110 IFV(B)=0THENGOSUB250 :rem 189
120 NEXTB :rem 20
130 FORB=0TO7:L$=L$+D$(B) :rem 129
140 NEXTB:NEXTC :rem 210
150 IFEY$<>"Y"THENPRINT#1,CHR$
(15)+CHR$(16)+"28"+L$+CHR$
8) :rem 255
160 IFEY$="Y"THENFORRE=0TO1:PR
INT#1,CHR$(15)+CHRS(16)+"1
6"+L$+CHR$(8):NEXTRE
:rem 201
170 L$="":NEXTR :rem 84
180 PRINT#1:CLOSE1:END :rem 108
200 D$(B)="Q" :rem 223
210 IFM$="N"ANDEX$="Y"THEND$(B
)="QQ":rem 29
220 IFM$="Y"ANDEX$="N"THENGOSU
B300 :rem 19
230 IFM$="Y"ANDEX$="Y"THENDS(B
)="QQ":GOSUB320 :rem 121
240 RETURN :rem 118
250 D$(B)=" " :rem 19
260 IFM$="N"ANDEX$="Y"THEND$(B
)="{2 SPACES}":rem 128
270 IFM$="Y"ANDEX$="N"THENGOSU
B340 :rem 28
280 IFM$="Y"ANDEX$="Y"THEND$(B
)="{2 SPACES}":GOSUB360 :rem 224
290 RETURN :rem 123
300 IFB=6ORB=4ORB=2ORB=0THENIF
D$(B+1)=" "THEND$(B+1)="0"
:D$(B)="0":rem 128
310 RETURN :rem 116
320 IFB=6ORB=4ORB=2ORB=0THENIF
D$(B+1)="{2 SPACES}"THEND$(B+1) = "00"
:D$(B) = "00"
:rem 226
330 RETURN :rem 118
340 IFB=6ORB=4ORB=2ORB=0THENIF
D$(B+1)="Q"THEND$(B+1)="O"
:D$(B) = "O" :rem 147
350 RETURN :rem 120
360 IFB=6ORB=4ORB=2ORB=0THENIF
D$(B+1)="QQ"THEND$(B+1)="O
O":D$(B)="OO" :rem 4
370 RETURN :rem 122