HEBitmap (Playdate)

HEBitmap (High Efficiency Bitmap) is a custom implementation of the drawBitmap function (Playdate SDK).

This implementation is up to 2x faster than the SDK drawBitmap function, but native features (flip, stencil) are not supported.

Benchmark

Bitmap info: 96x96 (masked)

Bitmap count	HEBitmap	drawBitmap	Faster
1000	22 ms	42 ms	1.9x

C Example

#include "he_api.h"

// Initialize with PlaydateAPI pointer
he_library_init(pd);

// Load HEBitmap from a Playdate image file
HEBitmap *bitmap = HEBitmap_load("catbus");

// Draw
HEBitmap_draw(bitmap, 0, 0);

// Free
HEBitmap_free(bitmap);

C Docs

C API Documentation

Simulator build

• Run cd <your_build_folder>
• Run cmake ..
• Run make

Device build

• Before building again, delete all the files in the build folder
• Run cmake -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=<path to SDK>/PlaydateSDK/C_API/buildsupport/arm.cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release ..
• Note: replace <path to SDK> with your SDK path
• Run make

Encoder

You can use the Python encoder to create heb/hebt files, supported inputs are:

• Image
• Animated GIF (saved as bitmap table)
• Folder containing a Playdate image table (name-table-1.png, name-table-2.png, ...)

Parameters

• -i --input input file or folder
• -r --raw save as raw data (no compression)

Usage

python encoder.py -i <file_or_folder>