Animaction

[gliptitude]

I got my hands on an Animaction cart today. Just started playing with it, testing the features.

It looks like there is a problem with the library save feature. You are supposed to be able to design your own sprites and save them to the library. I added 5 of my own sprites to the library and made a little animation with them, all fine. After I shut the Vectrex off though, I lost those new sprites in my library. They are supposed to remain there until you delete them (just the sprites, not the animation).

Anybody know how the cart works, if this can conceivably be repaired by replacing something inside of the cartridge?

[fury]

Nope! Welcome to disappointments 1983 style

[VectorX]

What, nothing can be replaced, you mean? Is that something due to the RAM going bad?

[fury]

No, you can't save ANYTHING in Animaction.

[VectorX]

Oh, was that one of those deals where they printed that in the instructions, then when the final product came out that turned out not to be true?

[fury]

I dont have the manual in front of me, but if memory (sorry, bad word to use here) serves, they "fudged" the wording just right.

[VectorX]

Heh, figures! I thought it seemed odd to imply that anything on the Vectrex could be saved after being shut off. If only...

[desfeek]

This is really all the Animaction Manual says about saving to RAM (from vectrex.nl manual database):

ADDING YOUR SPRITE TO THE LIBRARY
---------------------------------
When your sprite is completed add it to the blank library
page by aiming the Light Pen at the word 'EXIT' and
pressing Button 3.

CREATING EVEN MORE SPRITES!
---------------------------
You can create up to 20 of your own sprites and enter
them on your library page. Just aim the Light Pen at the
word, 'MAKE' to get back to the 'sketch pad' mode and
then follow the same procedure for each sprite you want
to make.

DELETING SPRITES FROM YOUR LIBRARY
----------------------------------
Should you want to delete one or more of your sprites
from the library simply go to the library page and aim
the Light Pen at the sprite you want to delete. Then
press and hold Button 3 and press Button 4.

[VectorX]

And if this told the truth today:

Apr 26, 2012 22:00:53 GMT -5 desfeek said:

ADDING YOUR SPRITE TO THE LIBRARY
---------------------------------
When your sprite is completed add it to the blank library
page by aiming the Light Pen at the word 'EXIT' and
pressing Button 3.

CREATING EVEN MORE SPRITES!
---------------------------
You can create up to 20 of your own sprites and enter
them on your library page. Just aim the Light Pen at the
word, 'MAKE' to get back to the 'sketch pad' mode and
then follow the same procedure for each sprite you want
to make.

_{Just don't ever turn your Vectrex off if you want to save your sprites, btw.}

[fury]

Yeah, even in '83, there was some assumption (or maybe just hope) that we would be able to at least save the sprites we made. I think it's more of a case of what they didn't say. They seemed to be quite vague in the manual.

Here's the most blatant false advertising of all:
image.com.com/gamespot/images/bigboxshots/1/927511_66395_front.jpg

[VectorX]

Heh, yeah! The final product didn't end up looking like that at all!

(Oh well, the arcade Tempest machine had monsters on the cabs...rats, I waned to play whatever THAT game was! Tempest still turned out to be one of my all-time favorite arcade games ever!)

[gliptitude]

yeah ok. i guess i misinterpreted the instruction manual in just the way the publishers intended. I was thinking too then, why in the world would I fill the whole available space of 20 sprites if they will all disappear later? That is a lot of work, just to PREPARE to make an animation.

... However disappointing this was though, it's not my biggest concern anymore, because now I'm discovering that there are some essential things I could do with ArtMaster that I can't do with Animaction. With ArtMaster animation being sort of an afterthought on that cartridge, versus Animaction being fully dedicated to animating, I figured Animaction would have every advantage over ArtMaster. It doesn't!!!

With Animaction everything is based on 'sprites', versus ArtMaster which is a little more raw system of dragging the vertices in your vector drawing. This means that making a spaceship that stays the same shape while it moves around on screen is impossible to do on ArtMaster and simple to do on Animaction. Ok. However, it also means that if you DO want an object to change shape it's easy to do so in ArtMaster, IMPOSSIBLE to do with the dedicated animation cart!

ArtMaster also has a really important function that is absent from Animaction, which is being able to view the current frame and the previous frame at the same time. ... ArtMaster is way better if you are trying to render a three dimensional object, or 3 dimensional movement.

I think there's some nice effects I've been able to get with ArtMaster that could not be done on Animaction. Still some things left though for me to experiment on with Animaction. I'm inclined to say that Animaction is definitely the bigger rip-off of the two. But I will say I think they layed out a good clue for how to make an interesting animation by including body parts, rather than whole figures, in the sprite library. ... Also helps explain why you might want 20 different temporary sprites, as potentially you could use that many in order to animate just one or two figures.

heh, I wonder if anybody is really interested in this?

[vectrexmad]

Always interesting to see Vectrex related info.....

There is an old PC program called V-model. This a Vector object editor allows you to edit/load/save vector objects as well as export them in a format that can be incorporated into Vectrex programming code.

I may be remembering wrongly but i I think there was an animation option too. Fury would correct as I know he used to use it.

I had a quick search on Google to see where the program lives these days and it can be found at www.playvectrex.com/designit_f.htm
and just scroll down to see v-model.

The only caveat about this program is that it would only run in DOS and if it was DOS through windows (and depending on the version of the software and hardware e.g. graphics card) it would not always run.

I must admit I never got into the program and just use graph paper instead for making my vectors but I do know that Fury was using it sucessfully.

[gamezone]

This is why the Vectrex keeps my interest. Thanks for the info gang!!

[VectorX]

^Yeah it's nice to read, since there's hardly anything on the net about these two programs as it is. Plus even with Vectrex stuff being hard to find in general in the wild, these are difficult too (especially an original Light Pen!).