Graphics Magician

rdf:langString Graphics Magician

rdf:langString The Graphics Magician, subtitled Picture Painter, is a utility for drawing bitmapped images and playing them back from user-developed programs. It was written for the Apple II by Penguin Software founder Mark Pelczarski and Jon Niedfeldt, and published by Penguin Software in 1982. It was ported to the Atari 8-bit family, Commodore 64, and IBM PC. The routines for playing back graphics and animation were written by David Lubar and Chris Jochumson. Graphics Magician doesn't store images in their final form, but records the commands used to create them using a "tiny vector graphics-like language." The software plays them back to re-create the image. Images can be layered based on when each shape is drawn. The Graphics Magician was used to generate images for some commercial graphic adventures of the 8-bit computer era, including Dragon's Keep from Sierra On-Line, Crypt of Medea from Sir-Tech, and Penguin's own The Quest. The playback routines were free to use in commercial products, but required a license from Penguin Software. The Dragon's Keep manual specifically gives credit to Graphics Magician and the authors of the graphics functions.