Amusement devices: games – Including means for processing electronic data – Perceptible output or display
Patent
1995-01-20
1997-06-03
Harrison, Jessica
Amusement devices: games
Including means for processing electronic data
Perceptible output or display
463 31, 463 30, 395118, 395133, 345115, 345122, A63F 922
Patent
active
056348509
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
TECHNICAL FIELD
The present invention relates to an image processing device and method, and more particularly to an image processing device having a function of superimposing a foreground image and a background image.
BACKGROUND ART
Conventionally, a video game device is known such a kind of image processing device. The video game device is connected to a monitor device such as a CRT or a liquid crystal display. An image of a foreground such as a character coming on a game is superimposed with an image of a background and is displayed on the monitor device. The game is played by changing the foreground image and the background image in response to a control signal input by the player.
The foreground contains an object (character) having motion, such as a human being or an animal. The motion of the character is represented by changing its position and shape on the display. For example, the motion of a player character, which is a character directly controlled by the player, is represented so that the position and shape of the player character is changed in accordance with the control signal given by the player.
Conventionally, in order to represent the motion of the character and the like by a change of its shape, still pictures having different shapes are produced beforehand and are stored in a non-volatile memory such as a ROM. A series of motion is represented by sequentially reading the still pictures from the memory. The still pictures may be artificially produced or pictures extracted from a natural picture taken by a video camera in a time-lapse way.
The technique of representing the motion of the character by means of the still pictures can reduce the capacity of the memory to be built in the video game device, while it provides an unnatural motion of the character and the player feels insufficient reality during play of the game.
DISCLOSURE OF THE INVENTION
The present invention was made taking into consideration the above, and has an object of providing an image processing device and method capable of representing natural motion of a foreground image to be superimposed with a background image and representing a resultant image having good reality.
In order to overcome the above disadvantages, the image processing device of the present invention, in which a superimposed image is produced by combining first image data stored in a first memory (23) and second image data stored in a second memory (24), includes a third memory (13) storing data of a moving picture, and means (17, 20) for reading the data of the moving picture from the third memory and storing, as the first image data, the data of the moving picture in the first memory.
The disadvantages described above can also be overcome by a method of obtaining a superimposed image by combining first image data stored in a first memory (23) and second image data stored in a second memory (24), the method including a first step ([6], [7]) of storing data of a moving picture in a third memory (13), and a second step ([9]-[11]) of reading the data of the moving picture from the third memory and storing, as the first image data, the data of the moving picture in the first memory.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS
Other objects, features and advantages of the present invention will become apparent from the following description read in conjunction with the accompanying drawings, in which:
FIG. 1 is a block diagram of an image processing system which uses an image processing device according to an embodiment of the present invention;
FIG. 2 is a diagram of a transfer of moving picture data from a moving picture frame buffer to a sprite VRAM shown in FIG. 1;
FIG. 3 is a diagram of an example of data stored in the sprite VRAM shown in FIG. 1;
FIG. 4 is a diagram of explaining a scroll process;
FIG. 5 is a diagram of the operation of a priority circuit shown in FIG. 1;
FIG. 6 is a diagram of explaining priority bits necessary for the operation of the priority circuit;
FIG. 7 is a diagram of the operation of the image processing device shown in FIG.
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Kitahara Atsushi
Okunoki Yutaka
Harrison Jessica
Sager Mark A.
Sega Enterprises Ltd.
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