Clipping, what is it...
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Clipping, what is it...
Okay, so far, I have had two people ask me what clipping is. It is a
computer term relating to the hacking off the edges of images so that it
will fit in the video memory (the viewing portion). The computer has extra
video memory (at least 64K), so clipping of images isn't really neccesary.
However, on the calculator, you only have 768 bytes of video memory to work
with. So, you don't have the luxury of being able to slap images down
anywhere and be done with it. If you go over the byte limits on the
calculator, you will crash it. Clipping keeps everything neatly inside the
video memory. This allows you to make scrolling games such as SQRXZ (as
you can tell, I like that game <g>). My routine requires the user to
define how much to clip off of each image. The reason for this is due to
the fact that there is no rule saying what size your game screen must be.
Games would get boring real fast if that were the case (like DooM remakes
<g>).
Now that you all know what clipping is, you should be more interested in
the ASH <-> OShell-82 Development Kit v1.0 FREEWARE version to come out in
a couple of weeks. This version will be the first official release of the
kit. It already contains enough stuff to keep you busy for the rest of
your life. It will also contain the sprite routine I'm working on that
supports clipping, transparency, and virtually no size restrictions on
sprites (works with images up to 96x64 pixels) and only 1 call statement
will do all of that.
Thomas J. Hruska -- thruska@tir.com
Shining Light Productions -- "Meeting the needs of fellow programmers"
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Heights/8504
http://shinelight.home.ml.org