SELECT CHARACTER DETAILS

1. Description of Processing in Select Character

Select Character has been created as a call-back function (om_select_character_main() function). Call-back functions can be registered with Nusystem's nuGfxFuncSet function, and registered functions will be executed on each vertical retrace. At present, primarily the following kinds of processing have been incorporated into Select Character.

(1) Deformation animation control for selectable characters

(2) Animation (key frame) control of character selected by player

(3) Character selection cursor control

(4) Drawing of Select Character BG texture data using F3DEX sprite library

NOTE: Select Character texture data are loaded from ROM by main.c .

2. Texture Data

There is one type of texture data drawn by Select Character (Select Character BG). The texture data are defined by the structure in (1) in the Data director.

(1) Texture data structure

Select Character BG . . . . sp_select_bg.c

(2) Texture data format

The texture data format drawn by Select Character uses the sprite library data format for the F3DEX microcode.

"mksprite," available with the standard N64OS is used as the data format conversion tool. "mksprite" itself, is a script program written in the UNIX C shell, and generates data (C language source files) by calling the C program rgb2c in the script.

NOTE: "mksprite" and the rgb2c tool are provided only in the SGI version N64OS.

(3) How to use the tool command

The method of using the mksprite tool command is introduced below. For details about mksprite and the sprite library, please refer to Chapter 16 "N64 Sprite Library" in the N64 Programming Manual.

mksprite name imagefile.rgb tileX tileY overlap > outfilename

name

Specify any tag name for the sprite data structure in name.

imagefile.rgb

Specify the image file to be converted in imagefile.rgb. The format of this image file must be the SGI Image format. If the file is saved in a commercial image editing tool, select SGI Image format.

tileX

In tileX, specify the X size of 1 tile when the texture data for one picture is divided into tile units.

tileY

In tileY, specify the Y size of 1 tile when the texture data for one picture is divided into tile units.

overlap

Overlap is specified when the sprite size is to be scaled. Specify 0 when the sprite size is not to be scaled. For details, refer to Chapter 16 of the N64 Programming Manual.