Sprite (computer graphics)

In computer graphics, a sprite is a two-dimensional bitmap that is integrated into a larger scene, most often in a 2D video game. Originally, the term sprite referred to fixed-sized objects composited together, by hardware, with a background.[1] Use of the term has since become more general.

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Video game graphics
Types 2.5D & 3/4 perspective First-person view Fixed 3D Full motion video based game Graphic adventure game Isometric video game graphics Side-scrolling video game Stereoscopic video game Text-based game Third-person view Tile-based video game Top-down perspective Vector game
Topics 2D computer graphics Parallax scrolling Pixel art Sprite 3D computer graphics 3D rendering Polygon Pre-rendering Skybox Animation Cel shading Digitization Rotoscoping Computer graphics Real-time graphics Game art design Graphics engine First-person shooter engine Tile engine Virtual camera system Voxel
Lists List of four-dimensional games List of FMV-based games List of FPS engines List of stereoscopic video games List of text-based computer games Category:Video game graphics
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Systems with hardware sprites include arcade video games of the 1970s and 1980s; game consoles such as the Atari VCS (1977), ColecoVision (1982), Nintendo Entertainment System (1983), and Sega Genesis (1988); and home computers such as the TI-99/4A (1979), Atari 8-bit family (1979), Commodore 64 (1982), MSX (1983), Amiga (1985), and X68000 (1987). Hardware varies in the number of sprites supported, the size and colors of each sprite, and special effects such as scaling or reporting pixel-precise overlap.

Hardware composition of sprites 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. The number of sprites which can be displayed per scan line is often lower than the total number of sprites a system supports. For example, the Texas Instruments TMS9918 chip supports 32 sprites, but only 4 can appear on the same scan line.

The CPUs in modern computers, video game consoles, and mobile devices are fast enough that bitmaps can be drawn into a frame buffer without special hardware assistance. Beyond that, GPUs can render vast numbers of scaled, rotated, antialiased, partially translucent, very high resolution images in parallel with the CPU.