Ms. Pac-Man : Moving sprites blink ?!?

[Henry Lee]

Moving sprites blink (on and off) when to many are close to each other.

 

Does anybody know if that is a hardware or sofware problem ?

 

I don't remember seeing that bug 20 years ago... yes i know I was a kid but I took care of my things specially my big Atari 5200.

 

Henry Lee

[Bryan]

This is the old "Player Multiplexing" trick to get more objects on the screen. The 5200 has at most 5 Sprites (Atari calls them "Players") available on any given scanline. Ms PacMan can have 4 ghosts, Ms PacMan and a bouncing fruit all on the same line. Add to that the fact that the ghosts probably have "Missiles" for eyes (dropping the number of available Players to 4) and you see why sometimes you have to draw some objects and leave others out resulting in the flickering you see. This kind of flickering is very common on the 2600 where you only have 2 objects per scanline.

 

-Bry

[Nukey Shay]

It's not a "problem"...but a limitation. Antic is only capable of displaying 4 sprites on a given scanline (or 5...if the missile objects are combined to make it).