The second part of the book is devoted to my favorite subject—sprite programming. A sprite is a small, animated, transparent, moving object that is important to the gameplay in that it usually interacts with the player—and is the player as well. Typical sprites in a 2D side-scrolling platformer game, such as Super Mario World, include Mario, Yoshi, and the Turtles and other bad guys. But before you can dive into these advanced topics, you have to start at the beginning, and that means learning about bitmaps first. This part of the book will take you from that humble beginning on through advanced sprite programming and subjects like collision detection, and as such, this is the true core of the book. Here are the chapters you'll encounter: