Editing Commodore 64 (section)

====Hardware sprites====
[[File:Gesteuerter Sprite läuft nach oben (Spittis Search Game Commodore 64).jpg|thumb|alt=Screenshot of a video game|Sprites on screen in a C64 game]]

A sprite is a character which moves over an area of the screen, draws over the background, and redraws it after it moves. This differs from character block animation, where the user flips character blocks. On the C64, the VIC-II video controller handles most sprite emulation; the programmer defines the sprite and where it goes.

The C64 has two types of sprites, respecting their color-mode limitations. Hi-res sprites have one color (one background and one foreground), and multi-color sprites have three (one background and three foreground). Color modes can be split or windowed on a single screen. Sprites can be doubled in size vertically and horizontally up to four times their size, but the pixel attributes are the same – the pixels become "fatter". There are eight sprites, and all eight can be shown in each horizontal line concurrently. Sprites can move with glassy smoothness in front of, and behind, screen characters and other sprites.

The hardware sprites of a C64 can be displayed on a bitmapped (high-resolution) screen or a text-mode screen in conjunction with fast and smooth character block animation. Software-emulated sprites on systems without support for hardware sprites, such as the [[Apple II]] and [[ZX Spectrum]], required a bitmapped screen. Sprite-sprite and sprite-background collisions are detected in hardware, and the VIC-II can be programmed to trigger an interrupt accordingly.