High-Resolution Bitmap Graphics with Commodore 64 BASIC 2.0: A Fast Screen Clearing Routine

2024-12-12

This article demonstrates efficient high-resolution bitmap graphics handling in Commodore 64 BASIC 2.0, focusing on a fast screen clearing routine. The author points out that native BASIC lacks direct bitmap manipulation commands, making conventional clearing slow. A clever solution utilizes the BASIC string storage mechanism: long strings filled with CHR$(0) overwrite the bitmap memory, achieving fast clearing. The technique is illustrated with a cosine function plotting example.

Development Bitmap Graphics