page_title: Commodore 64
section_title: Character block animation
hierarchical_section_title: Commodore 64 / Hardware / Graphics / Character block animation
caption_attribution_description: English: Sprites in a C64 Game (named Spittis Search). I have made the Game, the graphics and so on.
context_page_description: The Commodore 64, also known as the C64 or the CBM 64, is an 8-bit home computer introduced in January 1982 by Commodore International. It has been listed in the Guinness World Records as the highest-selling single computer model of all time, with independent estimates placing the number sold between 10 and 17 million units. Volume production started in early 1982, marketing in August for US$595. Preceded by the Commodore VIC-20 and Commodore PET, the C64 took its name from its 64 kilobytes of RAM. With support for multicolor sprites and a custom chip for waveform generation, the C64 could create superior visuals and audio compared to systems without such custom hardware.
  The C64 dominated the low-end computer market for most of the 1980s. For a substantial period, the C64 had between 30% and 40% share of the US market and two million units sold per year, outselling IBM PC compatibles, Apple computers, and the Atari 8-bit family of computers. Sam Tramiel, a later Atari president and the son of Commodore's founder, said in a 1989 interview, "When I was at Commodore we were building 400,000 C64s a month for a couple of years."
context_section_description: The user draws a series of characters of a man walking say, two in the middle of the block, and another two walking in and out of the block.  Then the user sequences them so the character walks into the block and out again.  Drawing a series of these and the user gets a man walking across the screen.  By timing the redraw to occur when the television screen blanks out to restart drawing the screen there will be no flicker.  The C64 has registers which record when the video flyback occurs.  This is the technique used in the classic Space Invaders arcade game.  Scrolling is simply a variant of character animation where all the characters are redrawn at the same time during the flyback.  On a non-emulated C64, scrolling is glasslike and blur-free.
caption: Sprites on screen in a C64 game
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