Using The Complete Animator films in your own programs

This page contains information you'll need if you're trying to implement support for Complete Animator files in your own programs. We're trying to make it easy for you by providing example code and support libraries, but if this isn't enough for what you need, you can also find details of the file format.

Programming details (Windows 95 and Windows NT)

Compared to Acorn developers, Windows 95 developers have it easy. We've released a DLL which takes almost all the work out of playing Animator files. The DLL and associated .LIB file and C and C++ headers are available as a 32K zip file.

The source code to our miniature stand-alone player program is available as an 8K zip file. It's a whole Microsoft Visual C++ 2.0 project, but there's only one C++ file in it. You'll need the DLL and library to compile it.

Programming details (Acorn)

Iota's screen-saver is written entirely in BBC BASIC and is thus not a bad tutorial on how to use Animator files. Don't despair at the size of the program -- almost all of it is to do with being a screen-saver, not with playing the animations!

To play back animations you'll need the EuclidX module (which has been placed into the public domain by Ace Computing) and, if you want sound effects, our IotaSound module (which is freely distributable but may not be modified). Both of these are included in the screen-saver distribution.