Editing Exidy Sorcerer (section)

=== Graphics === 
Graphics on the Sorcerer were impressive, with a resolution of {{resx|512×240}}, when most machines of the era supported a maximum of {{resx|320×200}}. These lower resolutions were a side effect of the inability of the video hardware to read the screen data from RAM fast enough; given the slow speed of the machines they would end up spending all of their time driving the display. The key to building a usable system was to reduce the total amount of data, either by reducing the resolution, or by reducing the number of colors.

The Sorcerer instead chose another method entirely, which was to use definable character graphics. There were 256 characters to choose from for each screen location. The Sorcerer character set was divided into two halves: the lower half was fixed in ROM and contained the usual [[ASCII]] character set; while the upper half was defined in a dedicated region of RAM. This character RAM would be loaded with a default set of graphics from ROM at reset, but could be re-programmed and used in lieu of [[pixel]]-addressable graphics. In fact, the machine was actually drawing a {{resx|64x30}} display ({{resx|8x8}} pixel characters) which was well within the capabilities of the hardware. However, this meant that all graphics had to lie within a checkerboard pattern on the screen, and the system was generally less flexible than machines with "real" graphics. In addition, the high resolution was well beyond the capability of the average color TV, a problem they solved by not supporting color. In this respect the Sorcerer was similar to the PET and [[TRS-80]] in that it had only "graphics characters" to draw with. Given these limitations, the quality of the graphics on the Sorcerer was otherwise excellent. The programmable character RAM offered significant advantages, which included the ability to provide a form of animation by re-defining individual character bitmaps at runtime. Clever use of several characters for each graphic allowed programmers to create smooth motion on the screen, regardless of the character-cell boundaries.