What's New in Turing 4.1

1. Sprite

   The Turing Sprite module allows users to create animation without having to worry about erasing and drawing the objects on the screen. A sprite is created from a picture, and then commands by the program to move the sprite to the desired location. The program then automatically erases the sprite at the old location (restoring the background) and redraws it at the new location (placing it underneath "higher" sprites, if necessary).

   Here is an example of a program that used sprites. Each triangle is a sprite, and the height of each sprite appears on the sprite. Sprites with a height of -1 or -2 actually behind the background, which in this case is a set if green and blue bars. Note how sprites with a higher depth always appear above a sprite with a lower depth.

   Here is a second example of a sprite being used to animate a figure moving across the screen. In this case, the figure is taken from a multi-frame GIF file and the sprite module is used to make it appear to move.

   The Sprite module is fully documented here.

2. Special Effects

   Turing supports a veriety of special effects. These are obtained by drawing a picture (obtained using the Pic.New, Pic.FileNew, or the new Pic.FileNewFrames functions). When the picture is drawn, the programmer can specify the transition that should be used to display the new picture. These transitions can includes wipes, slides, a growing image, fade-ins, and so on.

   Here is an example of a program that demonstrates many of these transitions.

   The different transitions are fully documented here.

3. GIF Image support

   The Pic.FileNew command can now read GIF files (now that the patent has expired in Canada). GIF files can specify a "transparent color", and this is supported by Turing. When a GIF with a transparent color is loaded by Turing, the "transparent color" is added to the color palette (if not already present). If the picture is displayed using the picMerge mode, the "transparent color" will not be displayed. Note that the "transparent color" is a real color. If you use the picCopy mode, this color is displayed.

   Here is an example of a program displaying a GIF with a transparent color. In this case, the transparent color is dark blue.

4. Multi-frame GIF Image support

   Turing also supports multi-frame GIF images. A GIF program can contain multiple images (this is how animated GIFs work). The Pic.FileNewFrames procedure can read a multi-frame GIF into an array of integers. These can then be displayed one at a time, or all in one call using the Pic.DrawFrames procedure.

   Here is an example of a program that displays a rotating globe found in a multi-frame GIF file using these procedures.

5. Faster animation

   Turing has been improved to speed up animation when the picMerge mode is used. Speed improvements from 50% to 500% have been reported.

6. Other graphic routines

   Turing now includes the Pic.Blend function to blend two pictures together and the Pic.Blur function to take an existing picture and make it blurry.