vidual relative sprites in the case of unified sprites; it is completely ignored, thus allowing the entire grouping to be scaled just by changing the scaling of the anchor[^p137-3]. ### Batching The standard **SPRITE** command normally has immediate effects to what is displayed on the screen. However, it is also possible to place *NextBASIC* into *batching mode*. In this mode, **SPRITE** command has no immediate effect, but the changes specified are remembered. When all the required changes have been made using multiple **SPRITE** commands, they can all be applied to the screen at once, giving a more synchronised look to your game and fewer screen tears. To control batching the following commands are available in the order one would use them: #### SPRITE STOP which enables batching mode and turns off the immediate sprite screen updates #### SPRITE MOVE This command sends all outstanding sprite changes to the hardware immediately (ergo displays all the animation effects and movement that was pending while in batching mode). #### SPRITE MOVE INT The same as above but waiting for the 50 Hz / 60 Hz interrupt to occur. This is useful in order to synchronise the sprite movement to the framerate (making for a smoother animation) and finally #### SPRITE MOVE INT *y* which works in the same way as **SPRITE MOVE INT**, except that changes are not sent to the hardware until after the TV scanline corresponding to sprite coordinate *y*. This avoids flicker by making sure that sprite changes do not happen on screen while the display is midway through displaying the current sprite(s). Finally #### SPRITE RUN disables batching mode and turns the immediate screen updates back on. This is also done by the SPRITE CLEAR command we saw earlier but without the destructive effects. ### Automatic sprite movement As we saw above, moving a sprite can be laborious. In order to reduce the amount of work a *NextBASIC* program needs to do to animate and move sprites, commands are provided to allow some or all of this work to be done automatically whenever a **SPRITE MOVE** command is issued. Any sprite can have automatic movement or animation applied to it, and the standard **SPRITE** command can still be used to perform any other changes when they are needed. The main command used to set up automatic sprite movement is the **SPRITE CONTINUE** command: #### SPRITE CONTINUE *s*, [*x1* [TO *x2*]] [STEP *xs*] [RUN|STOP], [*y1* [TO *y2*]] [STEP *ys*] [RUN|STOP], [*p1* [TO *p2*]],[*f*], [*r*], [*d*] Although looking somewhat daunting at first, **SPRITE CONTINUE** is quite easy to master regardless of its numerous options. As apparent by the brackets, each parameter (or sub-clause of a parameter) is optional. If not specified, the previous value will be retained. Movement in the *x-direction* is specified with: [^p137-3]: This scaling also applies to the relative x/y coordinate offsets