Sprite (computer graphics)

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In computer graphics, a sprite is a two-dimensional bitmap that is integrated into a larger scene.

Originally sprites referred to independent objects that are composited together, by hardware, with other elements such as a background.^[1] This occurs as each scan line is prepared for the video output device, such as a CRT, without involvement of the main CPU and without the need for a full-screen frame buffer.^[1] Sprites can be positioned or altered by setting attributes used during the hardware composition process. Examples of systems with hardware sprites include the Atari 8-bit family, Commodore 64, Nintendo Entertainment System, Sega Genesis, and many coin-operated arcade machines of the 1980s.

Use of the term sprite has expanded to refer to any two-dimensional bitmap used as part of a graphics display, even if drawn into a frame buffer (by either software or a GPU) instead of being composited on-the-fly at display time.

The act of creating sprites is a form of pixel art. It is sometimes referred to as spriting, especially in the hobbyist community.

When multiple smaller images are combined into a single bitmap to save memory, the resulting image is called a sprite sheet or texture atlas.

History

The use of sprites originated with arcade games. The first video game to represent player characters as human player images was Taito's Basketball, which was licensed in February 1974 to Midway, releasing it as TV Basketball in North America.^[2][3]

Signetics devised the first video/graphics processors capable of generating sprite graphics for home systems. The Signetics 2636 video processors were first used in the 1976 Radofin 1292 Advanced Programmable Video System.

The Atari VCS, released in 1977, features a hardware sprite implementation where five graphical objects can be moved independently of the game playfield. The term sprite was not in use at the time. The VCS's sprites are called movable objects in the programming manual, further identified as two players, two missiles, and one ball.^[4] These each consist of a single row of pixels that are displayed on a scan line. To produce a two-dimensional shape, the sprite's single-row bitmap is altered by software from one scan line to the next.

The Atari 400 and 800 home computers of 1979 feature similar, but more elaborate, circuitry capable of moving eight single-color objects per scan line: four 8-bit wide players and four 2-bit wide missiles. Each is the full height of the display—a long, thin strip. DMA from a table in memory automatically sets the graphics pattern registers for each scan line. Hardware registers control the horizontal position of each player and missile. Vertical motion is achieved by moving the bitmap data within a player or missile's strip. The feature was called player/missile graphics by Atari.

The Namco Galaxian arcade system board, for the 1979 arcade game Galaxian, featured animated, multi-colored sprites.^[5] It pioneered a sprite system that animated pre-loaded sprites over a scrolling background, which became the basis for Nintendo's Radar Scope and Donkey Kong arcade hardware and home consoles such as the Nintendo Entertainment System.^[6] According to Steve Golson from General Computer Corporation, the term "stamp" was used instead of "sprite" at the time.^[7]

The Elektor TV Games Computer was an early microcomputer capable of generating sprite graphics, which Signetics referred to as "objects".

The term sprite was first used in the graphic sense by one of the definers of the Texas Instruments 9918(A) video display processor (VDP).^[8] The term was derived from the fact that sprites, rather than being part of the bitmap data in the framebuffer, instead "floated" around on top without affecting the data in the framebuffer below, much like a ghost or "sprite". 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.

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.

Systems with hardware sprites

These are base hardware specs and don't include additional programming techniques, such as using raster interrupts to repurpose sprites mid-frame.

Use in 3D rendering

2D images with alpha channels constrained to face the camera may be used in 3D graphics. They are common for rendering vegetation, to approximate distant objects, or for particle effects. These are sometimes called "billboards" or "Z-sprites." The technique was most heavily used in Sega game machines in the late 1990s, prior to the era of polygon rendering. If rendered on the fly to cache an approximate view of an underlying 3D model, such sprites are called impostors.^[44] Modern hardware may have a specific mode for rendering such point sprites without needing each corner to be defined, or these may be generated by vertex shaders.

Synonyms

Some hardware makers used terms other than sprite.

Player-Missile Graphics (also Player/Missile Graphics) was a term used by Atari, Inc. for hardware-generated sprites in the company's early coin-op games, the Atari 2600 and 5200 consoles, and the Atari 8-bit computers.^[45] The term reflected the usage for both characters ("players") and smaller associated objects ("missiles") that share the same color.

Movable Object Block, or MOB, was used in MOS Technology's graphics chip literature (data sheets, etc.) However, Commodore, the main user of MOS chips and the owner of MOS for most of the chip maker's lifetime, used the term sprite for the Commodore 64.

The developer manuals for the Nintendo Entertainment System, Super NES, and Game Boy refer 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 also applies on the Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS handheld systems.

See also

• 2.5D
• Layers (digital image editing)

References