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Sprite (computer graphics)
Encyclopedia
In computer graphics
, a sprite (also known by other names; see Synonyms below) is a two-dimensional image
or animation
that is integrated into a larger scene. Initially used to describe graphical objects handled separately of the memory bitmap
of a video display, the term has since been applied more loosely to refer to various manner of graphical overlays.
Originally, sprites were a method of integrating unrelated bitmaps so that they appeared to be part of the normal bitmap on a screen, such as creating an animated character that can be moved on a screen without altering the data defining the overall screen. Such sprites can be created by either circuitry or software. In circuitry, a sprite is a hardware construct that employs custom DMA
channels to integrate visual elements with the main screen in that it super-imposes two discrete video sources. Software can simulate this through specialized rendering methods.
As three-dimensional graphics became more prevalent, the term was used to describe a technique whereby flat images are seamlessly integrated into complicated three-dimensional scenes.
in arcade game
s from around 1974 allowed the widespread use of sprites. Taito
released some of the earliest known video games with sprites that year, including Basketball, a sports game
that represented four basketball players and two baskets as sprite images, and Speed Race, a racing video game that represented cars as sprite images, which could collide
with each other and vertically scroll
across a race track. The following year, they released Western Gun
, a run and gun multi-directional shooter that was the earliest known video game to visually represent game characters
as sprites, as well as the first to depict a gun on screen.
In the mid-1970s, Signetics
devised the first video/graphics processors capable of generating sprite graphics. The Signetics 2636 video processors were first used in the 1976 Radofin 1292 Advanced Programmable Video System
.
The Atari VCS
, released in 1977, featured a hardware sprite implementation wherein five graphical objects could be moved independently of the game playfield. The VCS's sprites, called players and missiles, were constructed from a single row of pixels that displayed on a scan line
; to produce a two-dimensional shape, the sprite's single-row bitmap was altered from by software from one scanline to the next.
The Atari 400 and 800
home computers of 1979 featured similar, but more elaborate circuitry, capable of moving eight Player/Missile objects. This more advanced version allowed a two-dimensional bitmap several pixels wide, and as tall as the screen. To simulate vertical motion, the sprite's bitmap had to be moved up and down incrementally in memory.
The Elektor TV Games Computer
was an early microcomputer capable of generating sprite graphics, which Signetics referred to as "objects".
The term "sprite", a Greek fairy, was coined by one of the definers of the Texas Instruments
9918(A) video display processor (VDP). By this time, sprites had advanced to the point where complete two-dimensional shapes could be moved around the screen horizontally and vertically with minimal software overhead.
During most of the 1980s, hardware speed was in the low, single-digit megahertz and memory
was measured in kilobytes. Beside CISC
processors, all chips are hardwired. Sprites are rare in most video hardware today.
The CPU would instruct the external chips to fetch source images and integrate them into the main screen using direct memory access
channels. Calling up external hardware, instead of using the processor alone, greatly improved graphics performance. Because the processor was not occupied by the simple task of transferring data from one place to another, software could run faster; and because the hardware provided certain innate abilities, programs were also smaller.
s so that they appear to be part of a single bitmap on a screen.
Many early graphics chips had true spriting use capabilities in which the sprite images were integrated into the screen, often with priority control with respect to the background graphics, at the time the video signal was being generated by the graphics chip. This improved performance greatly since the sprite data did not need to be copied into the video memory in order to appear on the screen, and further since this spared the programmer of the task of having to save and restore the underlying graphics, something which otherwise was needed if the programmer chose to progressively update.
The sprite engine is a hardware implementation of scanline rendering
. For each scanline the appropriate scanlines of the sprites are first copied (the number of pixels is limited by the memory bandwidth and the length of the horizontal retrace) into very fast, small, multiple (limiting the # of sprites on a line), and costly cache
s (the size of which limit the horizontal width) and as the pixel
s are sent to the
screen
, these cache
s are combined with each other and the background
. It may be larger than the screen and is usually tiled, where the tile map is cached, but the tile set is not. For every pixel, every sprite unit signals its presence onto its line on a bus, so every other unit can notice a collision with it. Some sprite engines can automatically reload their "sprite units" from a display list
. The sprite engine has synergy
with the palette
. To save registers, the height of the sprite, the location of the texture, and the zoom factors are often limited. On systems where the word size is the same as the texel there is no penalty for doing unaligned reads needed for rotation. This leads to the limitations of the known implementations:
Many third party graphics cards offered sprite capabilities. Sprite engines often scale badly, starting to flicker as the number of sprites increases above the number of sprite units, or uses more and more silicon
as the designer of the chip implements more units and bigger caches.
s of the 1980s lack any support for sprites by hardware. The animated characters, bullets, pointing cursors, etc. for videogames (mainly) were rendered exclusively with the CPU by software, as part of the screen video memory in itself. Hence the term software sprites.
Mainly, two distinct techniques were used to render the sprites by software, depending on the display hardware characteristics:
To reduce the number of requests the browser makes to the server, some web design
ers combine numerous small images or icons into a larger image called a sprite sheet. CSS
is used to select the parts of the composite image to display at different points in the page. If a page has 10 1 kB images, they can be combined into one 10 kB image, downloaded with a single HTTP request, and then positioned with CSS. Reducing the number of HTTP requests can make a Web page load much faster. In this usage, the sprite sheet format that had been developed for use in game and animation engines is being applied to static images.
More often sprite now refers to a partially transparent two dimensional animation that is mapped onto a special plane in a 3D scene. Unlike a texture map
, the sprite plane is always perpendicular to the axis emanating from the camera. The image can be scaled to simulate perspective
, rotated two dimensionally, overlapped with other objects, and be occluded
, but it can only be viewed from a single angle. This rendering
method is also referred to as billboarding.
Sprites create an effective illusion when
When the illusion works, viewers will not notice that the sprite is flat and always faces them. Often sprites are used to depict phenomena such as fire, smoke, small objects, small plants (like blades of grass), or special symbols (like "1-Up"), or object of any size where the angle of view
does not appreciably change with respect to the rectilinear projection of the object (usually from a long distance). The sprite illusion can be exposed in video games by quickly changing the position of the camera while keeping the sprite in the center of the view. Sprites are also used extensively in particle effects and commonly represented pickups in early 3D games especially.
An example of extensive usage of sprites to create the illusion is the game The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
, whose main graphical feature was the ability to display hundreds, if not thousands of animated trees on-screen at one time. Closer inspection of those trees reveals that the leaves are in fact sprites, and rotate along with the position of the user. The tree rendering package used by Oblivion
uses sprites to create the appearance of a high number of leaves. However, this fact is only revealed when the player actually examines the trees up-close, and rotates the camera.
Sprites have also occasionally been used as a special-effects tool in movies. One such example is the fire breathing Balrog
in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring; the effects designers utilized sprites to simulate fire emanating from the surface of the demon. Small bursts of fire were filmed in front of a black background and made transparent using a luma key. Many bursts were then attached to the surface of the animated Balrog model and mixed with simulated smoke and heat waves to create the illusion of a monster made from fire.
The term "sprite" is often confused with low resolution 2D graphics drawn on a computer, also known as pixel art
. However, sprite graphics (bitmap
s) can be created from any imaginable source, including prerendered CGI
, dynamic 3D graphics, vector art, and even text
. Likewise, pixel art is created for many purposes other than as a sprite, such as video game backgrounds, textures, icons, websites, display art, comics, and t-shirts.
With the advancement in computer graphics and improved power and resolution, actual pixel art sprites are becoming increasingly infrequent outside of handheld game systems and cell phones.
Billboarding is one term used to describe the use of sprites in a 3D environment. In the same way that a billboard is positioned to face drivers on a highway, the 3D sprite always faces the camera. There is both a performance advantage and an aesthetic advantage to using billboarding. Most 3D rendering engines can process "3D sprites" much faster than other types of 3D objects. So it is possible to gain an overall performance improvement by substituting sprites for some objects that might normally be modeled using texture mapped polygons. Aesthetically sprites are sometimes desirable because it can be difficult for polygons to realistically reproduce phenomena such as fire. In such situations, sprites provide a more attractive illusion.
Sprites are also made and used by various online digital artists, usually to train their ability to make more complicated images using different computer programs or just for the fun of it. "Sprite Artists" will either create their own "Custom" sprites, or use & edit pre-existing sprites (Usually made by other artists or "ripped" from a video game or other media) in order to create art, comics, or animations.
Computer graphics
Computer graphics are graphics created using computers and, more generally, the representation and manipulation of image data by a computer with help from specialized software and hardware....
, a sprite (also known by other names; see Synonyms below) is a two-dimensional image
Image
An image is an artifact, for example a two-dimensional picture, that has a similar appearance to some subject—usually a physical object or a person.-Characteristics:...
or animation
Animation
Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways...
that is integrated into a larger scene. Initially used to describe graphical objects handled separately of the memory bitmap
Bitmap
In computer graphics, a bitmap or pixmap is a type of memory organization or image file format used to store digital images. The term bitmap comes from the computer programming terminology, meaning just a map of bits, a spatially mapped array of bits. Now, along with pixmap, it commonly refers to...
of a video display, the term has since been applied more loosely to refer to various manner of graphical overlays.
Originally, sprites were a method of integrating unrelated bitmaps so that they appeared to be part of the normal bitmap on a screen, such as creating an animated character that can be moved on a screen without altering the data defining the overall screen. Such sprites can be created by either circuitry or software. In circuitry, a sprite is a hardware construct that employs custom DMA
Direct memory access
Direct memory access is a feature of modern computers that allows certain hardware subsystems within the computer to access system memory independently of the central processing unit ....
channels to integrate visual elements with the main screen in that it super-imposes two discrete video sources. Software can simulate this through specialized rendering methods.
As three-dimensional graphics became more prevalent, the term was used to describe a technique whereby flat images are seamlessly integrated into complicated three-dimensional scenes.
History
The use of read-only memoryRead-only memory
Read-only memory is a class of storage medium used in computers and other electronic devices. Data stored in ROM cannot be modified, or can be modified only slowly or with difficulty, so it is mainly used to distribute firmware .In its strictest sense, ROM refers only...
in arcade game
Arcade game
An arcade game is a coin-operated entertainment machine, usually installed in public businesses such as restaurants, bars, and amusement arcades. Most arcade games are video games, pinball machines, electro-mechanical games, redemption games, and merchandisers...
s from around 1974 allowed the widespread use of sprites. Taito
Taito
Taito may mean:*Taito Corporation, a Japanese developer of video game software and arcade hardware*Taito, Tokyo, a special ward located in Tokyo, Japan*Taito, also known as matai, paramount chiefs according to Fa'a Samoa...
released some of the earliest known video games with sprites that year, including Basketball, a sports game
Sports game
A sports game is a computer or video game that simulates the practice of traditional sports. Most sports have been recreated with a game, including team sports, athletics and extreme sports. Some games emphasize actually playing the sport , whilst others emphasize strategy and organization...
that represented four basketball players and two baskets as sprite images, and Speed Race, a racing video game that represented cars as sprite images, which could collide
Collision detection
Collision detection typically refers to the computational problem of detecting the intersection of two or more objects. While the topic is most often associated with its use in video games and other physical simulations, it also has applications in robotics...
with each other and vertically scroll
Scrolling
In computer graphics, filmmaking, television production, and other kinetic displays, scrolling is sliding text, images or video across a monitor or display. "Scrolling", as such, does not change the layout of the text or pictures, or but incrementally moves the user's view across what is...
across a race track. The following year, they released Western Gun
Gun Fight
Gun Fight, known as Western Gun in Japan and Europe, is a 1975 arcade shooter game designed by Tomohiro Nishikado, and released by Taito in Japan and Europe and by Midway Games in the United States. It was a historically significant game, and a success in the arcades. It was later ported to the...
, a run and gun multi-directional shooter that was the earliest known video game to visually represent game characters
Player character
A player character or playable character is a character in a video game or role playing game who is controlled or controllable by a player, and is typically a protagonist of the story told in the course of the game. A player character is a persona of the player who controls it. Player characters...
as sprites, as well as the first to depict a gun on screen.
In the mid-1970s, Signetics
Signetics
Signetics, once a major player in semiconductor manufacturing, made a variety of devices which included integrated circuits, bipolar and MOS, the Dolby circuit, logic, memory and analog circuits. They developed microprocessors like the 2650, the bipolar 8X300 and had licensed Motorola 68000...
devised the first video/graphics processors capable of generating sprite graphics. The Signetics 2636 video processors were first used in the 1976 Radofin 1292 Advanced Programmable Video System
1292 Advanced Programmable Video System
The 1292 Advanced Programmable Video System is a video game console released by European company Radofin in 1976. It is part of a group of software-compatible consoles which include the Interton VC-4000 and the Voltmace Database...
.
The Atari VCS
Atari 2600
The Atari 2600 is a video game console released in October 1977 by Atari, Inc. It is credited with popularizing the use of microprocessor-based hardware and cartridges containing game code, instead of having non-microprocessor dedicated hardware with all games built in...
, released in 1977, featured a hardware sprite implementation wherein five graphical objects could be moved independently of the game playfield. The VCS's sprites, called players and missiles, were constructed from a single row of pixels that displayed on a scan line
Scan line
A scan line or scanline is one line, or row, in a raster scanning pattern, such as a line of video on a cathode ray tube display of a television set or computer monitor....
; to produce a two-dimensional shape, the sprite's single-row bitmap was altered from by software from one scanline to the next.
The Atari 400 and 800
Atari 8-bit family
The Atari 8-bit family is a series of 8-bit home computers manufactured from 1979 to 1992. All are based on the MOS Technology 6502 CPU and were the first home computers designed with custom coprocessor chips...
home computers of 1979 featured similar, but more elaborate circuitry, capable of moving eight Player/Missile objects. This more advanced version allowed a two-dimensional bitmap several pixels wide, and as tall as the screen. To simulate vertical motion, the sprite's bitmap had to be moved up and down incrementally in memory.
The Elektor TV Games Computer
Elektor TV Games Computer
The Elektor TV Games Computer was a programmable computer system sold by Elektor in kit form from 1979. It used the Signetics 2650 CPU with the Signetics 2636 PVI for graphics and sound. These were the same chips as used in the Interton VC 4000 console family...
was an early microcomputer capable of generating sprite graphics, which Signetics referred to as "objects".
The term "sprite", a Greek fairy, was coined by one of the definers of the Texas Instruments
Texas Instruments
Texas Instruments Inc. , widely known as TI, is an American company based in Dallas, Texas, United States, which develops and commercializes semiconductor and computer technology...
9918(A) video display processor (VDP). By this time, sprites had advanced to the point where complete two-dimensional shapes could be moved around the screen horizontally and vertically with minimal software overhead.
During most of the 1980s, hardware speed was in the low, single-digit megahertz and memory
Computer memory
In computing, memory refers to the physical devices used to store programs or data on a temporary or permanent basis for use in a computer or other digital electronic device. The term primary memory is used for the information in physical systems which are fast In computing, memory refers to the...
was measured in kilobytes. Beside CISC
Complex instruction set computer
A complex instruction set computer , is a computer where single instructions can execute several low-level operations and/or are capable of multi-step operations or addressing modes within single instructions...
processors, all chips are hardwired. Sprites are rare in most video hardware today.
The CPU would instruct the external chips to fetch source images and integrate them into the main screen using direct memory access
Direct memory access
Direct memory access is a feature of modern computers that allows certain hardware subsystems within the computer to access system memory independently of the central processing unit ....
channels. Calling up external hardware, instead of using the processor alone, greatly improved graphics performance. Because the processor was not occupied by the simple task of transferring data from one place to another, software could run faster; and because the hardware provided certain innate abilities, programs were also smaller.
Hardware sprites
In early video gaming, sprites were a method of integrating unrelated bitmapBitmap
In computer graphics, a bitmap or pixmap is a type of memory organization or image file format used to store digital images. The term bitmap comes from the computer programming terminology, meaning just a map of bits, a spatially mapped array of bits. Now, along with pixmap, it commonly refers to...
s so that they appear to be part of a single bitmap on a screen.
Many early graphics chips had true spriting use capabilities in which the sprite images were integrated into the screen, often with priority control with respect to the background graphics, at the time the video signal was being generated by the graphics chip. This improved performance greatly since the sprite data did not need to be copied into the video memory in order to appear on the screen, and further since this spared the programmer of the task of having to save and restore the underlying graphics, something which otherwise was needed if the programmer chose to progressively update.
The sprite engine is a hardware implementation of scanline rendering
Scanline rendering
Scanline rendering is an algorithm for visible surface determination, in 3D computer graphics,that works on a row-by-row basis rather than a polygon-by-polygon or pixel-by-pixel basis...
. For each scanline the appropriate scanlines of the sprites are first copied (the number of pixels is limited by the memory bandwidth and the length of the horizontal retrace) into very fast, small, multiple (limiting the # of sprites on a line), and costly cache
Cache
In computer engineering, a cache is a component that transparently stores data so that future requests for that data can be served faster. The data that is stored within a cache might be values that have been computed earlier or duplicates of original values that are stored elsewhere...
s (the size of which limit the horizontal width) and as the pixel
Pixel
In digital imaging, a pixel, or pel, is a single point in a raster image, or the smallest addressable screen element in a display device; it is the smallest unit of picture that can be represented or controlled....
s are sent to the
Genlock
Genlock is a common technique where the video output of one source, or a specific reference signal from a signal generator, is used to synchronize other television picture sources together. The aim in video and digital audio applications is to ensure the coincidence of signals in time at a...
screen
Display device
A display device is an output device for presentation of information in visual or tactile form...
, these cache
Cache
In computer engineering, a cache is a component that transparently stores data so that future requests for that data can be served faster. The data that is stored within a cache might be values that have been computed earlier or duplicates of original values that are stored elsewhere...
s are combined with each other and the background
Computer wallpaper
Wallpaper is an image used as a background of a graphical user interface on a computer screen or mobile communications device. On a computer it is usually for the desktop, while for a mobile phone it is usually the background for the 'home' or 'idle' screen...
. It may be larger than the screen and is usually tiled, where the tile map is cached, but the tile set is not. For every pixel, every sprite unit signals its presence onto its line on a bus, so every other unit can notice a collision with it. Some sprite engines can automatically reload their "sprite units" from a display list
Display list
A display list is a series of graphics commands that define an output image. The image is created by executing the commands....
. The sprite engine has synergy
Synergy
Synergy may be defined as two or more things functioning together to produce a result not independently obtainable.The term synergy comes from the Greek word from , , meaning "working together".-Definitions and usages:...
with the palette
Palette (computing)
In computer graphics, a palette is either a given, finite set of colors for the management of digital images , or a small on-screen graphical element for choosing from a limited set of choices, not necessarily colors .Depending on the context In computer graphics, a palette is either a given,...
. To save registers, the height of the sprite, the location of the texture, and the zoom factors are often limited. On systems where the word size is the same as the texel there is no penalty for doing unaligned reads needed for rotation. This leads to the limitations of the known implementations:
| Computer, chip | Year | Sprites on screen | Sprites on line | Max texels Texel (graphics) A texel, or texture element is the fundamental unit of texture space, used in computer graphics. Textures are represented by arrays of texels, just as pictures are represented by arrays of pixels.... on line | Texture Texture mapping Texture mapping is a method for adding detail, surface texture , or color to a computer-generated graphic or 3D model. Its application to 3D graphics was pioneered by Dr Edwin Catmull in his Ph.D. thesis of 1974.-Texture mapping:... width | Texture height | Colors | Hardware Zoom | Rotation Rotation A rotation is a circular movement of an object around a center of rotation. A three-dimensional object rotates always around an imaginary line called a rotation axis. If the axis is within the body, and passes through its center of mass the body is said to rotate upon itself, or spin. A rotation... | Background | Collision detection Collision detection Collision detection typically refers to the computational problem of detecting the intersection of two or more objects. While the topic is most often associated with its use in video games and other physical simulations, it also has applications in robotics... | Transparency Transparency (graphic) Transparency is possible in a number of graphics file formats. The term transparency is used in various ways by different people, but at its simplest there is "full transparency" i.e. something that is completely invisible. Of course, only part of a graphic should be fully transparent, or there... | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Amiga Original Amiga chipset The Original Chip Set was a chipset used in the earliest Commodore Amiga computers and defined the Amiga's graphics and sound capabilities... , Denise |
1985 | display list | 8 | 16 | arbitrary | 3, 15 | list | 2 bitmap layers | color key | ||||
| Amiga (AGA), Lisa | 1992 | display list | 8 | 16, 32, 64 | arbitrary | 3, 15 | 2 bitmap layers | color key | |||||
| Amstrad Plus Amstrad CPC The Amstrad CPC is a series of 8-bit home computers produced by Amstrad between 1984 and 1990. It was designed to compete in the mid-1980s home computer market dominated by the Commodore 64 and the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, where it successfully established itself primarily in the United Kingdom,... , Asic Application-specific integrated circuit An application-specific integrated circuit is an integrated circuit customized for a particular use, rather than intended for general-purpose use. For example, a chip designed solely to run a cell phone is an ASIC... |
1990 | display list run by CPU | 16 min | 16 | 16 | 15 | bitmap layer | color key | |||||
| Atari 2600 Atari 2600 The Atari 2600 is a video game console released in October 1977 by Atari, Inc. It is credited with popularizing the use of microprocessor-based hardware and cartridges containing game code, instead of having non-microprocessor dedicated hardware with all games built in... , TIA Television Interface Adapter The Television Interface Adaptor is the custom computer chip that is the heart of the Atari 2600 game console, generating the screen display, sound effects, and reading input controllers. Its design was widely affected by an attempt to reduce the amount of RAM needed to operate the display... |
1977 | multiplied by CPU | 9 (with triplication) | 51 (with triplication) | 1, 8 | 262 | 1 | 1 bitmap layer | color key | ||||
| Atari 8-bit Atari 8-bit family The Atari 8-bit family is a series of 8-bit home computers manufactured from 1979 to 1992. All are based on the MOS Technology 6502 CPU and were the first home computers designed with custom coprocessor chips... , GTIA/ANTIC ANTIC Alphanumeric Television Interface Controller is an early video system chip used in the Atari 8-bit family of microcomputers as well as the Atari 5200 in the 1980s. The chip was patented by Atari, Inc. in 1981... |
1979 | display list | 8 | 40 | 2, 8 | 128, 256 | 1,3 | 1 tile or bitmap layer | color key | ||||
| C64 Commodore 64 The Commodore 64 is an 8-bit home computer introduced by Commodore International in January 1982.Volume production started in the spring of 1982, with machines being released on to the market in August at a price of US$595... , VIC-II MOS Technology VIC-II The VIC-II , specifically known as the MOS Technology 6567/8562/8564 , 6569/8565/8566 , is the microchip tasked with generating Y/C/composite video graphics and DRAM refresh signals in the Commodore 64 and C128 home computers.Succeeding MOS's original VIC , the VIC-II was one of the two chips... |
1982 | display list run by CPU | 8 | 96,192 | 12, 24 | 21 | 1, 3 | 1 tile or bitmap layer | color key | ||||
| Game Boy Game Boy The , is an 8-bit handheld video game device developed and manufactured by Nintendo. It was released in Japan on , in North America in , and in Europe on... |
1989 | 40 | 10 | 80 | 8 | 8, 16 | 3 | 1 tile layer | color key | ||||
| GBA | 2001 | 128 | 128 | 1210 | 8, 16, 32, 64 | 8, 16, 32, 64 | 15, 255 | Affine Affine transformation In geometry, an affine transformation or affine map or an affinity is a transformation which preserves straight lines. It is the most general class of transformations with this property... |
Affine Affine transformation In geometry, an affine transformation or affine map or an affinity is a transformation which preserves straight lines. It is the most general class of transformations with this property... |
4 layers, 2 layers + 1 affine layer, 2 affine layers | color key, blending | ||
| Gameduino | 2011 | 256 | 96 | 1536 | 16 | 16 | 255 | 1 tile layer | color key | ||||
| 2004 | 128 per screen | 128 | 1210 | 8, 16, 32, 64 | 8, 16, 32, 64 | 65,536 | Affine Affine transformation In geometry, an affine transformation or affine map or an affinity is a transformation which preserves straight lines. It is the most general class of transformations with this property... |
Affine Affine transformation In geometry, an affine transformation or affine map or an affinity is a transformation which preserves straight lines. It is the most general class of transformations with this property... |
4 layers per screen; each layer is independent | color key, blending | |||
| NES, RP2C0x | 1983 | 64 | 8 | 64 | 8 | 8,16 | 3 | 1 tile layer | color key | ||||
| Neo Geo | 1990 | 384 | 96 | 1536 | 16 | Up to 512 | 15 | color key | . | ||||
| Out Run Out Run is an arcade game released by Sega in 1986. It was designed by Yu Suzuki and Sega-AM2. The game was a critical and commercial success. It is notable for its innovative hardware , pioneering graphics and music, a choice in both soundtrack and route, and its strong theme of luxury and relaxation... , dedicated hardware |
1986 | 128 | 32 | 8 | 8 | Anisotropic | 3 tile layers | alpha | , | ||||
| PC Engine TurboGrafx-16 TurboGrafx-16, fully titled as TurboGrafx-16 Entertainment SuperSystem and known in Japan as the , is a video game console developed by Hudson Soft and NEC, released in Japan on October 30, 1987, and in North America on August 29, 1989.... , HuC6270A |
1987 | 64 | 16 | 256 | 16, 32 | 16, 32, 64 | 15 | 1 tile layer | color key | ||||
| Sega Master System Sega Game Gear Sega Game Gear The was Sega's first handheld game console. It was the third commercially available color handheld console, after the Atari Lynx and the TurboExpress.... |
1985 | 64 | 8 | 64 | 8 | 8,16 | 15 | 1 tile layer | color key | ||||
| Mega Drive | 1988 | 80 | 20 | 320 | 8,16,24,32 | 8,16,24,32 | 15 | 2 tile layers | color key | ||||
| Sharp X68000 Sharp X68000 The Sharp X68000, often referred to as the X68k, is a home computer released only in Japan by the Sharp Corporation. The first model was released in 1987, with a 10 MHz Motorola 68000 CPU, 1 MB of RAM and no hard drive; the last model was released in 1993 with a 25 MHz Motorola 68030... |
1987 | 128 | 32 | 16 | 16 | 15 | color key | ||||||
| SNES | 1990 | 128 | 34 | 272 | 8, 16, 32, 64 | 8, 16, 32, 64 | 15 | 3 tile layers or 1 affine mapped tile layer | color key, averaging | ||||
| Texas Instruments TMS9918 Texas Instruments TMS9918 thumb|VDP TMS9918Athumb|VDP TMS9918Athumb|VDP TMS9928AThe TMS9918 is a Video Display Controller manufactured by Texas Instruments.-General information:... |
1979 | 32 | 4 | 64 | 8, 16 | 8, 16 | 1 | 1 tile layer | color key | ||||
| Yamaha V9938 Yamaha V9938 The Yamaha V9938 is a Video Display Controller used in the Geneve 9640 enhanced TI-99/4A clone, as well as MSX 80s home computers .... |
1986 | 32 | 8 | 128 | 32 | 32 | 16 | 1 tile layer | color key | ||||
| Yamaha V9958 Yamaha V9958 The Yamaha V9958 is a Video Display Controller used in MSX 80s home computers. More specifically, the "TIM" upgrade to the TI-99/4A, MSX 2+ and MSX turbo R.... |
1988 | 32 | 8 | 128 | 16 | 1 tile layer | color key | ||||||
| Computer, chip | Year | Sprites on screen | Sprites on line | Max texels Texel (graphics) A texel, or texture element is the fundamental unit of texture space, used in computer graphics. Textures are represented by arrays of texels, just as pictures are represented by arrays of pixels.... on line | Texture Texture mapping Texture mapping is a method for adding detail, surface texture , or color to a computer-generated graphic or 3D model. Its application to 3D graphics was pioneered by Dr Edwin Catmull in his Ph.D. thesis of 1974.-Texture mapping:... width | Texture height | Colors | Hardware Zoom | Rotation Rotation A rotation is a circular movement of an object around a center of rotation. A three-dimensional object rotates always around an imaginary line called a rotation axis. If the axis is within the body, and passes through its center of mass the body is said to rotate upon itself, or spin. A rotation... | Background | Collision detection Collision detection Collision detection typically refers to the computational problem of detecting the intersection of two or more objects. While the topic is most often associated with its use in video games and other physical simulations, it also has applications in robotics... | Transparency Transparency (graphic) Transparency is possible in a number of graphics file formats. The term transparency is used in various ways by different people, but at its simplest there is "full transparency" i.e. something that is completely invisible. Of course, only part of a graphic should be fully transparent, or there... | Source |
Many third party graphics cards offered sprite capabilities. Sprite engines often scale badly, starting to flicker as the number of sprites increases above the number of sprite units, or uses more and more silicon
Silicon
Silicon is a chemical element with the symbol Si and atomic number 14. A tetravalent metalloid, it is less reactive than its chemical analog carbon, the nonmetal directly above it in the periodic table, but more reactive than germanium, the metalloid directly below it in the table...
as the designer of the chip implements more units and bigger caches.
Sprites by software
Many popular home computerHome computer
Home computers were a class of microcomputers entering the market in 1977, and becoming increasingly common during the 1980s. They were marketed to consumers as affordable and accessible computers that, for the first time, were intended for the use of a single nontechnical user...
s of the 1980s lack any support for sprites by hardware. The animated characters, bullets, pointing cursors, etc. for videogames (mainly) were rendered exclusively with the CPU by software, as part of the screen video memory in itself. Hence the term software sprites.
Mainly, two distinct techniques were used to render the sprites by software, depending on the display hardware characteristics:
- Binary image masks, mainly for systems with bitmapBitmapIn computer graphics, a bitmap or pixmap is a type of memory organization or image file format used to store digital images. The term bitmap comes from the computer programming terminology, meaning just a map of bits, a spatially mapped array of bits. Now, along with pixmap, it commonly refers to...
ped video frame buffers. It employs the use of an additional binary mask for every sprite displayed to create transparent areas within a sprite. - Transparent color, mainly for systems with indexed colorIndexed colorIn computing, indexed color is a technique to manage digital images' colors in a limited fashion, in order to save computer memory and file storage, while speeding up display refresh and file transfers...
displays. This method defines a particular color index (typically index '0' or index '255') with a palletted display mode as a 'transparent color' which the blitter ignores when blitting the sprite to video memory or the screen.
Sprites by CSS
Web design
Web design is the process of planning and creating a website. Text, images, digital media and interactive elements are used by web designers to produce the page seen on the web browser...
ers combine numerous small images or icons into a larger image called a sprite sheet. CSS
CSS
-Computing:*Cascading Style Sheets, a language used to describe the style of document presentations in web development*Central Structure Store in the PHIGS 3D API*Closed source software, software that is not distributed with source code...
is used to select the parts of the composite image to display at different points in the page. If a page has 10 1 kB images, they can be combined into one 10 kB image, downloaded with a single HTTP request, and then positioned with CSS. Reducing the number of HTTP requests can make a Web page load much faster. In this usage, the sprite sheet format that had been developed for use in game and animation engines is being applied to static images.
Move to 3D
Prior to the popularizing of true 3D graphics in the late 1990s, many 2D games attempted to imitate the look of three-dimensionality with a variety of sprite production methods. These included:- Rotoscoping: The filmed performances of live actors were sometimes used for creating sprites, most famously in the case of Prince of Persia which added a relative element of realism to a platform game. The method was used in a number of other fighting gameFighting gameFighting game is a video game genre where the player controls an on-screen character and engages in close combat with an opponent. These characters tend to be of equal power and fight matches consisting of several rounds, which take place in an arena. Players must master techniques such as...
s, mostly in the mid 1990s. - Claymation or the use of posable models which were used for characters that could not be portrayed by actors. Famous early examples include Goro of Mortal Kombat and various enemies from Doom. Used to a greater extent in games like Clay Fighter.
- Pre-rendered CGIComputer-generated imageryComputer-generated imagery is the application of the field of computer graphics or, more specifically, 3D computer graphics to special effects in art, video games, films, television programs, commercials, simulators and simulation generally, and printed media...
models: Introduced by Rise of the RobotsRise of the RobotsRise of the Robots is a 1994 fighting style video game developed by Mirage Studios and published by Time Warner Interactive. It was ported to numerous home console and computer formats, and was also released as an arcade game cabinet....
and made famous by Donkey Kong CountryDonkey Kong CountryDonkey Kong Country is a side-scrolling platformer video game developed by Rare, featuring the character Donkey Kong. It was released for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System in 1994. Following an intense marketing campaign, the original SNES version sold over 8 million copies worldwide, making...
, and later used to a great extent in PC real-time strategyReal-time strategyReal-time strategy is a sub-genre of strategy video game which does not progress incrementally in turns. Brett Sperry is credited with coining the term to market Dune II....
and role-playing video gameRole-playing video gameRole-playing video games are a video game genre with origins in pen-and-paper role-playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons, using much of the same terminology, settings and game mechanics. The player in RPGs controls one character, or several adventuring party members, fulfilling one or many quests...
games prior to the move to true 3D. Since computers of the day could not run complex 3D graphics, footage of pre-rendered three-dimensional character models were often used which created a (relative) illusion of 3D.
More often sprite now refers to a partially transparent two dimensional animation that is mapped onto a special plane in a 3D scene. Unlike a texture map
Texture mapping
Texture mapping is a method for adding detail, surface texture , or color to a computer-generated graphic or 3D model. Its application to 3D graphics was pioneered by Dr Edwin Catmull in his Ph.D. thesis of 1974.-Texture mapping:...
, the sprite plane is always perpendicular to the axis emanating from the camera. The image can be scaled to simulate perspective
Perspective (graphical)
Perspective in the graphic arts, such as drawing, is an approximate representation, on a flat surface , of an image as it is seen by the eye...
, rotated two dimensionally, overlapped with other objects, and be occluded
Hidden surface determination
In 3D computer graphics, hidden surface determination is the process used to determine which surfaces and parts of surfaces are not visible from a certain viewpoint...
, but it can only be viewed from a single angle. This rendering
Rendering (computer graphics)
Rendering is the process of generating an image from a model , by means of computer programs. A scene file contains objects in a strictly defined language or data structure; it would contain geometry, viewpoint, texture, lighting, and shading information as a description of the virtual scene...
method is also referred to as billboarding.
Sprites create an effective illusion when
- the image inside the sprite already depicts a three dimensional object;
- the animation is constantly changing or depicts rotation;
- the sprite exists only shortly;
- the depicted object has a similar appearance from many common viewing angles (such as something spherical);
- the perspective of the object from the viewer cannot possibly change fast enough for the viewer to discern a difference from true 3D geometry, as in the case of object a long distance away from the viewer in 3D space.
- the viewer accepts that the depicted object only has one perspective (such as small plants or leaves).
When the illusion works, viewers will not notice that the sprite is flat and always faces them. Often sprites are used to depict phenomena such as fire, smoke, small objects, small plants (like blades of grass), or special symbols (like "1-Up"), or object of any size where the angle of view
Angle of view
In photography, angle of view describes the angular extent of a given scene that is imaged by a camera. It is used interchangeably with the more general term field of view....
does not appreciably change with respect to the rectilinear projection of the object (usually from a long distance). The sprite illusion can be exposed in video games by quickly changing the position of the camera while keeping the sprite in the center of the view. Sprites are also used extensively in particle effects and commonly represented pickups in early 3D games especially.
An example of extensive usage of sprites to create the illusion is the game The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is a single-player action role-playing video game developed by Bethesda Game Studios and published by Bethesda Softworks and the Take-Two Interactive subsidiary 2K Games...
, whose main graphical feature was the ability to display hundreds, if not thousands of animated trees on-screen at one time. Closer inspection of those trees reveals that the leaves are in fact sprites, and rotate along with the position of the user. The tree rendering package used by Oblivion
SpeedTree
SpeedTree is a group of vegetation programming and modeling software products developed and sold by Interactive Data Visualization, Inc. that generates virtual foliage for animations and in real time for video games and simulations...
uses sprites to create the appearance of a high number of leaves. However, this fact is only revealed when the player actually examines the trees up-close, and rotates the camera.
Sprites have also occasionally been used as a special-effects tool in movies. One such example is the fire breathing Balrog
Balrog
Balrogs are fictional demonic beings who appear in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium. Such creatures first appeared in print in his novel The Lord of the Rings, though they figured in earlier writings that posthumously appeared in The Silmarillion and other books.Balrogs are described as...
in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring; the effects designers utilized sprites to simulate fire emanating from the surface of the demon. Small bursts of fire were filmed in front of a black background and made transparent using a luma key. Many bursts were then attached to the surface of the animated Balrog model and mixed with simulated smoke and heat waves to create the illusion of a monster made from fire.
The term "sprite" is often confused with low resolution 2D graphics drawn on a computer, also known as pixel art
Pixel art
Pixel art is a form of digital art, created through the use of raster graphics software, where images are edited on the pixel level. Graphics in most old computer and video games, graphing calculator games, and many mobile phone games are mostly pixel art.- History :The term pixel art was first...
. However, sprite graphics (bitmap
Bitmap
In computer graphics, a bitmap or pixmap is a type of memory organization or image file format used to store digital images. The term bitmap comes from the computer programming terminology, meaning just a map of bits, a spatially mapped array of bits. Now, along with pixmap, it commonly refers to...
s) can be created from any imaginable source, including prerendered CGI
Computer-generated imagery
Computer-generated imagery is the application of the field of computer graphics or, more specifically, 3D computer graphics to special effects in art, video games, films, television programs, commercials, simulators and simulation generally, and printed media...
, dynamic 3D graphics, vector art, and even text
Roguelike
The roguelike is a sub-genre of role-playing video games, characterized by randomization for replayability, permanent death, and turn-based movement. Most roguelikes feature ASCII graphics, with newer ones increasingly offering tile-based graphics. Games are typically dungeon crawls, with many...
. Likewise, pixel art is created for many purposes other than as a sprite, such as video game backgrounds, textures, icons, websites, display art, comics, and t-shirts.
With the advancement in computer graphics and improved power and resolution, actual pixel art sprites are becoming increasingly infrequent outside of handheld game systems and cell phones.
Application
Sprites are typically used for characters and other moving objects in video games. They have also been used for mouse pointers and for writing letters to the screen. For on-screen moving objects larger than one sprite's extent, sprites may sometimes be scaled and/or combined.Billboarding is one term used to describe the use of sprites in a 3D environment. In the same way that a billboard is positioned to face drivers on a highway, the 3D sprite always faces the camera. There is both a performance advantage and an aesthetic advantage to using billboarding. Most 3D rendering engines can process "3D sprites" much faster than other types of 3D objects. So it is possible to gain an overall performance improvement by substituting sprites for some objects that might normally be modeled using texture mapped polygons. Aesthetically sprites are sometimes desirable because it can be difficult for polygons to realistically reproduce phenomena such as fire. In such situations, sprites provide a more attractive illusion.
Sprites are also made and used by various online digital artists, usually to train their ability to make more complicated images using different computer programs or just for the fun of it. "Sprite Artists" will either create their own "Custom" sprites, or use & edit pre-existing sprites (Usually made by other artists or "ripped" from a video game or other media) in order to create art, comics, or animations.
Synonyms
Major video game companies rarely (if at all) use the term "sprite" in the general public. Some other alternatives that have been used are:- Player-Missile Graphics was a term used by Atari, Inc. for hardware-generated sprites in the company's early coin-op games, the Atari 2600Atari 2600The Atari 2600 is a video game console released in October 1977 by Atari, Inc. It is credited with popularizing the use of microprocessor-based hardware and cartridges containing game code, instead of having non-microprocessor dedicated hardware with all games built in...
and 5200Atari 5200The Atari 5200 SuperSystem, commonly known as the Atari 5200, is a video game console that was introduced in 1982 by Atari Inc. as a higher end complementary console for the popular Atari 2600...
consoles and the Atari 8-bit computersAtari 8-bit familyThe Atari 8-bit family is a series of 8-bit home computers manufactured from 1979 to 1992. All are based on the MOS Technology 6502 CPU and were the first home computers designed with custom coprocessor chips...
. The term reflected the usage for both characters ("players") and other objects ("missiles"). They had restricted horizontal size (8 or 2 pixels, albeit with scalability) and vertical size equal to height of the entire screen. - Movable Object Block, or MOB, was used in MOS TechnologyMOS TechnologyMOS Technology, Inc., also known as CSG , was a semiconductor design and fabrication company based in Norristown, Pennsylvania, in the United States. It is most famous for its 6502 microprocessor, and various designs for Commodore International's range of home computers.-History:MOS Technology, Inc...
's graphics chip literature (data sheets, etc.) However, CommodoreCommodore InternationalCommodore is the commonly used name for Commodore Business Machines , the U.S.-based home computer manufacturer and electronics manufacturer headquartered in West Chester, Pennsylvania, which also housed Commodore's corporate parent company, Commodore International Limited...
, the main user of MOS chips and the owner of MOS for most of the chip maker's lifetime, applied the common term "sprite", except for Amiga line of home computers, where MOB was the preferred term. - The developer manuals for the Nintendo Entertainment SystemNintendo Entertainment SystemThe Nintendo Entertainment System is an 8-bit video game console that was released by Nintendo in North America during 1985, in Europe during 1986 and Australia in 1987...
, Super Nintendo Entertainment SystemSuper Nintendo Entertainment SystemThe Super Nintendo Entertainment System is a 16-bit video game console that was released by Nintendo in North America, Europe, Australasia , and South America between 1990 and 1993. In Japan and Southeast Asia, the system is called the , or SFC for short...
, and Game BoyGame BoyThe , is an 8-bit handheld video game device developed and manufactured by Nintendo. It was released in Japan on , in North America in , and in Europe on...
referred to sprites as OBJs (short for "objects"), and the region of RAM used to store sprite attributes and coordinates was known as OAM (Object Attribute Memory). This still applies today on the Game Boy AdvanceGame Boy AdvanceThe is a 32-bit handheld video game console developed, manufactured, and marketed by Nintendo. It is the successor to the Game Boy Color. It was released in Japan on March 21, 2001; in North America on June 11, 2001; in Australia and Europe on June 22, 2001; and in the People's Republic of China...
and Nintendo DSNintendo DSThe is a portable game console produced by Nintendo, first released on November 21, 2004. A distinctive feature of the system is the presence of two separate LCD screens, the lower of which is a touchscreen, encompassed within a clamshell design, similar to the Game Boy Advance SP...
handheld systems. However, Nintendo PowerNintendo PowerNintendo Power magazine is a monthly news and strategy magazine formerly published in-house by Nintendo of America, but now run independently. As of issue #222 , Nintendo contracted publishing duties to Future US, the U.S. subsidiary of British publisher Future.The first issue published was...
referred to them as sprites in articles about the NES architecture in the magazine's third year. - BOB's, more often BLOB's or 'Blitter ObjectsBlitter objectA Bob was a graphical element first used by the Amiga computer. Bobs were hardware sprite-like objects, movable on the screen with the help of the blitter coprocessor....
', popular name for graphics objects drawn with the dedicated graphics blitter in the Amiga series of computers, which was available in addition to its true hardware sprites. - Software sprites were used to refer to subroutines that used bit blitting to accomplish the same goal on systems such as the Atari STAtari STThe Atari ST is a home/personal computer that was released by Atari Corporation in 1985 and commercially available from that summer into the early 1990s. The "ST" officially stands for "Sixteen/Thirty-two", which referred to the Motorola 68000's 16-bit external bus and 32-bit internals...
and the Apple IIApple IIThe Apple II is an 8-bit home computer, one of the first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products, designed primarily by Steve Wozniak, manufactured by Apple Computer and introduced in 1977...
whose graphics hardware had no sprite capability. - The computer programming language DarkBASICDarkBASICDarkBASIC is a commercial game creation programming language released by The Game Creators. The language is a structured form of BASIC and is similar to AMOS on the Amiga. The purpose of the language is game creation using Microsoft's DirectX from a BASIC programming language. It is faster and...
used the term Bob (for "blitter object") to refer to its software-sprite functions, before switching to the more conventionally-used "sprite" term. - 3D Sprite is a term often used to refer to sprites that are essentially texture mapped 3D facets that always have their surface normalSurface normalA surface normal, or simply normal, to a flat surface is a vector that is perpendicular to that surface. A normal to a non-flat surface at a point P on the surface is a vector perpendicular to the tangent plane to that surface at P. The word "normal" is also used as an adjective: a line normal to a...
facing into the camera. - Z-Sprite is a term often used for 3D environments that contain only sprites. The Z-parameter provides a scaling effect that creates an illusion of depth2.5D2.5D , 3/4 perspective and pseudo-3D are terms used to describe either:* 2D graphical projections and techniques which cause a series of images or scenes to fake or appear to be three-dimensional when in fact they are not, or* gameplay in an otherwise three-dimensional video game that is...
. For example in adventure games such as King's Quest VIKing's Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone TomorrowKing's Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow is the sixth installment in the King's Quest series of adventure games produced by Sierra Entertainment...
where the camera never moves, normal 2D sprites might suffice, but Z-sprites provide an extra touch. - Impostor is a term used instead of billboard if the billboard is meant to subtly replace a real 3D object.