Aquarius Bitmap Graphics Tool

[chjmartin2]

Has anyone bit the bullet and hooked up an aquarius to a video capture card to get the right RGB values for the pallette? I want to use the proper ones in my program rather than just using the emulator's? If not, then I'll do it and provide it to everyone.

[+MattelAquarius]

How can you tell which one is which? I am not sure if my program is using the correct character set or the incorrect one. Here is what the converter uses as the character set.

 

aqchar.bmp

 

There are a couple characters with errors that pop out to me. I noticed one of the pset characters isn't tall enough in your original pics, and in your new pics, one of the ball quarter pieces has extra pixels, which really stood out in the Aquarius logo pic. There are two of them on the left side of the first "A". There is one in the center of the second "A" (in negative).

Edited December 11, 2010 by Jay Silverheels

[+MattelAquarius]

I would love to see what it does with a screen shot from an Aquarius game, like AD&D or Utopia.

[chjmartin2]

Ok everyone, here is the latest version of the converter. No DOSBOX or Quick Basic needed, just run the program, select the file and watch the show. It will automatically output a file with an .AQ extension based on the input BMP file.

 

I think I am going to take a break for a bit and move on to another project. One thing I want to do with this in the future is to allow the user to select which characters to use and which ones to ignore - but for now, this is where I am.

 

Thanks to everyone for all of their help!

BMPAQV2.zip

[chjmartin2]

An aquarius screen cap is going to convert to exactly the same thing. It goes bit by bit to find the match. Here is a cap of Utopia I did and then went ahead and ran through the converter.

 

[+MattelAquarius]

Yes! I already tried it with an old screenshot from LOGO, I had.

 

I've been having fun with my sons, converting pics of them through the eyes of the Aquarius. LOL.

 

I know I'm not doing it exactly right, yet. I convert the pic to 320x192 in Paint, then save it as a 16 color bitmap. However, I'm not exactly sure how to limit those 16 colors to the Aquarius palette, yet.

 

Here's one simple shot.

 

 

I'm loving this, and hope you continue.

 

Thanks,

 

Jason

screenshot_0000.bmp

[+MattelAquarius]

Before:

 

 

After:

screenshot_0001.bmp

Edited December 12, 2010 by Jay Silverheels

[+MattelAquarius]

My current plan is to touch up the 16 color bitmap by converting it to Aq colors, before running the Aquariverter. My previous pic was a simple example, touching up only one color.

[+MattelAquarius]

Don't know why my colors seem to be inverting, but here we go.

 

Before:

 

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_4C1ZwEub0Po/S48g64pBVSI/AAAAAAAABTo/SgVM32OrCg4/s1600-h/ibmpc_kq3_title.png

 

After:

screenshot_0002.bmp

Edited December 12, 2010 by Jay Silverheels

[chjmartin2]

Here is the King's Quest converter to the right palette.

 

 

[chjmartin2]

I use Photoshop to downconvert the images to the right palette - I would imagine that GIMP would be able to the same thing. There is an .ACT file in the archive that has the right palette, in the right order.

[+MattelAquarius]

Thanks for the tips. I'll keep playing around until I get it right.

[barnieg]

GIMP is supposed to support the ACT palette file but I can't get it to accept it. Could you upload the unconverted kings quest image with the adjusted palette and I should be able to grab the palette from that

 

Thanks

Barnie

[chjmartin2]

GIMP is supposed to support the ACT palette file but I can't get it to accept it. Could you upload the unconverted kings quest image with the adjusted palette and I should be able to grab the palette from that

 

Thanks

Barnie

 

I will upload a BMP with the entire corrected palette (Jay's palette) tonight when I get home from work. I also think I can modify the program to accept any BMP with a resolution of 320x192 and that way it won't take so much prework to get the converter to work. Freebasic has some tools to read the bitmap easily, and then I can just read the screen memory from there. I'll have to do the color distance calcs but that is just the square root of the sum of the squares of the RGB values, so that shouldn't be too hard. If I do that, then it'd be a much cleaner converter anyway.

[+MattelAquarius]

GIMP is supposed to support the ACT palette file but I can't get it to accept it. Could you upload the unconverted kings quest image with the adjusted palette and I should be able to grab the palette from that

 

Thanks

Barnie

 

I will upload a BMP with the entire corrected palette (Jay's palette) tonight when I get home from work. I also think I can modify the program to accept any BMP with a resolution of 320x192 and that way it won't take so much prework to get the converter to work. Freebasic has some tools to read the bitmap easily, and then I can just read the screen memory from there. I'll have to do the color distance calcs but that is just the square root of the sum of the squares of the RGB values, so that shouldn't be too hard. If I do that, then it'd be a much cleaner converter anyway.

 

 

That would be great, and keeping with Aquarius' defunct slogan, "Smart enough to be simple." Or, in my case "Smart enough for a simpleton."

 

Part of the fun for me, with your converter, is getting unexpected ideas for other graphics. For example, my first KQIII photo, ended up almost converting the hero into an ostrich, which could be tweaked for other uses in a real game/program.

 

I love seeing the Aquarius approximations that come from your program. It is high on my cool list.

 

Thanks for your efforts.

 

-Jason

[+MattelAquarius]

Here is my latest effort, sticking only to B&W.

 

Before:

 

 

 

After:

[chjmartin2]

Here is my latest effort, sticking only to B&W.

 

Before:

 

 

 

After:

 

Love it...

 

Here is the proper BMP with the palette:

 

pallet.bmp

 

Here is my interpretation of your monster:

 

monster.bmp

 

And .. after conversion to Aquarius:

 

[+MattelAquarius]

Hey, that turned out nice!

 

Thanks.

[+MattelAquarius]

Before:

 

 

After:

[chjmartin2]

Before:

 

 

After:

 

Wow... funny how the stars all converted differently. Working tonight on being able to open any bitmap file of any resolution. May just go ahead and make it so any 320x192 bmp works.

[+MattelAquarius]

Before:

 

 

After:

 

Wow... funny how the stars all converted differently. Working tonight on being able to open any bitmap file of any resolution. May just go ahead and make it so any 320x192 bmp works.

 

My son asked me the same thing regarding the stars. I figured it all depends on where they fall on the bitmap. Some will match up differently within the 8x8's, which I guess forces the converter to use different characters?

 

Looking forward to the new version. It shouldn't be a problem if you only allow 320x192 bitmaps. Changing that is easy, even if just using Paint. It's the palette that's kicking my but. It will be great to take that guess work out of the equation. Thanks for continuing to plug away.

[chjmartin2]

Before:

 

 

After:

 

Wow... funny how the stars all converted differently. Working tonight on being able to open any bitmap file of any resolution. May just go ahead and make it so any 320x192 bmp works.

 

My son asked me the same thing regarding the stars. I figured it all depends on where they fall on the bitmap. Some will match up differently within the 8x8's, which I guess forces the converter to use different characters?

 

Looking forward to the new version. It shouldn't be a problem if you only allow 320x192 bitmaps. Changing that is easy, even if just using Paint. It's the palette that's kicking my but. It will be great to take that guess work out of the equation. Thanks for continuing to plug away.

 

I think I am only developing it for you - so you're welcome to request any feature you want!

[+MattelAquarius]

I think I am only developing it for you - so you're welcome to request any feature you want!

 

LOL. That is not true. Others have posted with interest, but maybe they are having difficulties converting, or are shy with their results.

 

As far as features, I was actually hoping Jaybird3rd's forthcoming screen editor would be able to import your conversions to facilitate touch up work. Your converter would give an excellent start to some custom graphics screens.

 

You already mentioned some good feature ideas, such as specific character enable/disable toggle, and auto palette selection.

 

Btw, I want to mention again, that the unexpected results from your converter, really sparks ideas for other graphics. In my flag picture, I realized some of the stars look like balloons. Some could be looking like they are going up and to the right or left, by using different combinations of ball, apostrophe's and a "reverse" apostrophe symbol that I have to look up in the character set. Fun stuff, indeed!

[jaybird3rd]

Please don't think that the rest of us aren't interested; I've just been busy with work and with getting the Aquaricart finished, but I'll definitely take some time to try the converter during the holiday break.

 

I'll certainly be adding something to the final version of the screen editor to make use of this, whether it's adding an importer for touch-up work or incorporating the functionality of the converter so you can do it all from one program. I'm also (eventually) going to add the ability to import a 320x200 bitmap, scan it for unique 8x8 character tiles, and create a custom character set so the bitmap can be exactly reproduced on-screen with SuperFont-enabled Aquarius computers. You'll be limited in the number of characters you can use (since I don't think there's a reliable way to change character sets mid-screen, although that would be nice), and the colors will still be limited to 8x8 character borders, but it should still give you many options for creating fancy screens.

 

My screen editor, by the way, will probably require a rewrite before I'll be ready to release it next year. I've been using it extensively for the Aquaricart project, and I like what it can do now, but I've found several things I'd like to change that will require some drastic revisions to the code, and it will probably be easier to do it over again from scratch. It just proves the old saying: "good software isn't made, it's re-made."

[barnieg]

I have been playing with the converter quite a bit over the last few days I hope to post some of my results and findings with palette quirks in particular later today

 

Barnie