From the The Unofficial Amstrad WWW Resource:
;;------------------------------------------------------------------------ ;; RLE compressed hardware sprites ;; ;; This example will only run on the CPC+. ;; ;; In this example: ;; ;; - An animation sequence is defined by a sequence of images (frames) ;; - The first frame is stored completely, subsequent frames are stored in a compressed ;; format, where the data represents the differences between the new frame and the ;; previous frame. (Each frame is a "delta" of the previous frame) ;; - The sequence must be played from the beginning to the end for the ;; result to be correct; otherwise there will be errors. ;; this code must not be in the range &4000-&7fff, because it must ;; run when the CPC+ hardware registers are active in this range. org &8000 nolist ;;---------------------------------------------------------------------- ;; unlock asic to gain access to asic registers di ld b,&bc ld hl,sequence ld e,17 .seq ld a,(hl) out (c),a inc hl dec e jr nz,seq ;;---------------------------------------------------------------------- ;; set initial sprite frame xor a ld (sprite_frame),a call update_sprite ld a,(sprite_frame) inc a ld (sprite_frame),a ;;---------------------------------------------------------------------- ;; update sprite ram with image data ;; ;; DE = points to CPC+ hardware sprite RAM ;; A = index of sprite frame .update_sprite ;; page in ASIC hardware registers ld bc,&7fb8 out (c),c ld a,(sprite_frame) ;; sprite frame ld l,a add hl,hl ;; x2 to get offset in table ld bc,sprite_frames ;; base of table add hl,bc ;; address of entry in table ld a,(hl) ;; get entry from table (address of sprite frame) inc hl ld h,(hl) ld l,a call rle_decode_sprite ;; page out ASIC hardware registers ld bc,&7fa0 out (c),c ret ;;---------------------------------------------------------------------- ;; decode compressed sprite pixel data into the CPC+ hardware sprite RAM ;; ;; HL = points to compressed sprite data pixel data ;; DE = points to CPC+ hardware sprite RAM ;; HL,DE,BC corrupt ;; ;; compressed sprite pixel data format: ;; ;; The data is a list of one or more "packets". ;; Each packet has a code byte with parameters dependant on the value of the code byte. ;; ;; code byte: ;; 0 = end of compressed data, no parameters ;; -ve = no parameters. negate code byte to get number of bytes to add onto current DE ;; +ve = number of bytes to copy to hardware sprite RAM, followed by the actual bytes .rle_decode_sprite .rle_next ld a,(hl) ;; get code inc hl or a ret z ;; quit if end of compressed data code jp m,rle_move ;; +ve code. Code is the number of bytes to copy to hardware sprite RAM ;; the bytes to copy follow the code. ld b,a ld c,0 ;; BC = count ldir ;; transfer jr next .rle_move neg add a,e ld e,a jr next ;;---------------------------------------------------------------------- .sprite_frame defb 0 ;; index of current frame ;; pointer to data for each sprite frame .sprite_frames defw frame0 defw frame1 defw frame2 defw frame3 ;;---------------------------------------------------------------------- ;; this is the sequence to unlock the ASIC extra features .sequence defb &ff,&00,&ff,&77,&b3,&51,&a8,&d4,&62,&39,&9c,&46,&2b,&15,&8a,&cd,&ee