Used by the routines at START_GAME and DYING.

Copies the eight-byte template at PLAYER_TEMPLATE over $EA90, having patched two things into it first: the room, from $EA91, and -- into the template's last byte, not its first -- the character's sprite, worked out from the menu selection the way DRAW_LIVES does it: shift $5E00 up, mask to $30, add 8.

The first byte of the template is $66, and that is the point. A game does not begin with the player standing there; it begins with them rising out of the floor, because $66 is what MATERIALISING answers to. The character's own sprite goes into +$07, which is where FINISH_MATERIALISING looks when the animation ends.

This is the answer to something that looked like a bug early on: reading the player's sprite byte a second after starting a game gives $66, not $08, and nothing responds to the controls. Nothing is wrong -- the player has not finished arriving.