Tezz

Dracon, Thanks a million for the translation It must have taken ages to re-type. That's really apreciated, I hope it helps others also to use mid scanline changes. I'm in your debt.. I'll hopefully post some new pics with successfull midscanline changes BTW, IE. means "for example"

Thanks for that, I have to remember all this stuff because it's been some time since I coded anything on the A8 ! .. Yes I remember that when you set the GTIA bit during Graphics 8 mode it gives Graphics 15 (Antic E), I have been checking out the raster settings in the Our Soft Screen but I can't see how they have set the mode and positioned it correctly in the scanline. Any other advice anyone.... ??

Hi Dracon/Tebe, What I meant was, in the move x,y feature there is a copy/paste where you can copy a selected slice of the screen to paste later. As it stands, this copies all the data in the section you copy from IE. the raw graphics data the pf dli data and all the PMG data. It would be great if you were able to select what was copied IE. an option to "copy all data" or "Only PMG data" or "PF DLIs" or "raw screen data" This is a handy tool to use when you need to work on the separate slices of a screen because sometimes selecting a different colour as the inverse is needed in different parts of the screen. When I work on the "slices" of the screen separately I import just that section in as a BMP with the rest of the picture blank and then put these sections together with the copy/paste. Why would I need to select PF,PMG or DLI when using copy/paste?.... Well this is why... A lot of times when I'm working on a picture I already have included detailed PMG positioning then, I find the need to move section/s of the screen. Rather than redraw the whole section pixel by pixel I move what i need with a PC paint package and import that section from the BMP as a new G2F file and use copy/paste to put it into the picture I was working on but I will then lose my PMG and DLi data and will have to redo.. I hope that makes sense this time... sorry for being unclear

Hi all, I need some help.. :/ Amongst the many pictures I'm working on at the moment, (yes I'm addicted too ) I'm working on the hi-res picture "Chimera" (GED--) Please see the WIP images below.... As you can see, I need to create a Graphics 15 "Window" to draw the planet with the other colour registers and also do one midscanline register (709) change to finish the picture. Is this possible with the available cycles?? I could do with some help with the manual raster settings. I have had not much success so far with this. I have seen Our Softs 3 mode g2f (included with the g2f download) but I don't know they acheived this in the program. I assume you can choose any register to change manually as long as this meets no more than the maximum cycles available. I know the Chimera picture isn't too great but I think this will be a valuable lesson for me and others in the forum to learn from. any advise anyone? .. or preferably a step by step

Hi all, I know it's been asked for many times, but can anyone translate the G2F documents to english? the majority of the program is straight forward to follow but particularly the EDIT RASTERS (ALT+A) section would be nice to read to be able to fully use scanline changes. I've personally concidered online Polish -> English translation sites such as http://www.poltran.com/ which gives some reasonable results although of course it's mainly just technical terminology used which it won't cover very well. I'm extremely happy to see that multiplexing of Players may be included soon for Font mode, I have several projects half finished hoping that this appears soon. that feature even with limitations above any other would make a world of difference.

Ah right OK... I would say that missing the first scanline would be a minor thing to live with, I hope Tebe makes this available in a future release... By the way, is it possible to multiplex 1,2,3 or all 4 PMs per scanline in the current GED mode.

wow! yes after reading further it is possible after all. That's really impresive, I have seen analmux's routine now. I guess this is only possible in bitmap GED mode only after reading the posts regarding the timing issues, Can all 4 PMs be repositioned in GED mode. and can the size also be altered? I wonder if it would be ever possible to multiplex PMs in graphics 12 "font mode" which provides the extra usefull "inverse" colour register? This would make so much more possible. I guess this would be the limit then in terms of what is possible.

Forgot to mention this previous post which goes into the subject.. http://www.atariage.com/forums/viewtopic.p...ultiplex+sprite also this quote on that post from Fröhn: ...

This was an idea I was concidering on an old routine I worked on a long time ago, As far as I know, the PMG vector is initialised after each scanline has hsync'ed so multiplexing on the same scanline isn't possible... That is as far as I could gather after further checking out Mapping the Atari, De Re, Compute's books etc.. But i guess much of what you guys are doing today was deemed imposible back then.. It would be great if it was possible but surley there is no more CPU time left in the interupt. I used to count the maximum CPU cycles available to plan my routines, there's some web links that escape me at the moment that go into detail about this I will read them later on today and pass it on to you all although I'm sure most of you will have greater knowledge about this already..

Hi all, Yes! I guess underlays is a more acurate description. Yes I couldn't agree more, I always wanted to create these pictures back in the machines hay-day. I bought my 800XL in 1984-85. The C64s active commercial scene and the massive demo scene really showed a machine of similar ilk being pushed whilst the A8 wasn't. I did manage to produce some artwork with DLIs back then around 89-90 with my own much simpler routines but always strugled with timing issues. I wonder why no one released an Antic E drawing tool with basic DLIs? I used to use Graphics Art Department a lot, that was nice to use but unfortunately in the chunkier mode. A freind of mine who went on the work for companies such as Ocean producing graphics for the C64 like Terminator2 produced a lot of great artwork with this. Yes no problem, I'll do that later tonight...

Hey everyone, I've attached some of my promised G2fs for you all. I've Ziped 'em up with PNGs of the G2F files for quick viewing under Windows. I hope that someone will use them for something interesting such as adding them onto the actual A8 version of the games. Arkanoid as I remember was only 32K? maybe this could be added as a single execuatable.... anyway, here's some info relating to the pictures themselves... Beyond the ice palace was a picture that I liked a lot and appeared possible. It took 4-5 hours to complete. Rambo was quite difficult to reproduce but I eventually worked out a way. I managed to include some DLI shading on the Ocean logo which I was happy with The Total Recall picture was another favorite, the difficult part of course was the spectrum of light. In fact it took a good few hours to work out the best way to match the original, enlarged PMGs were not possible because of the fine detail required. One quad sized PMG makes up the light shade on the face. The Tetris picture was a simple C64 conversion with some basic DLIs used to colour the title. The original was quite nicely drawn in only 3 shades. It's a good example of what you can achive using a limited pallette. I suppose this could easily be enhanced with more colours etc but it's a nice pic as it stands. The Airwolf2 picture was another simple conversion. It's good to start using G2F with such pics. Arkanoid was deceptive. It looks quite simple to do at first. It took a bit of forethought to eventually work out how to do this. The dark shade and the white shade are rarely together so I chose the white as the inverse and used quad sized PMGs to complete the white sections. I removed all the white from the BMP to show only background and then painted this in by hand after converting Well that's it, I've got some original G2F artwork to upload shortly, hope you all like them. I totally agree with Heaven/TQA, working on G2F is extremely relaxing. I totally enjoy working with it. Keep up the good work everyone, feel free to use the pics anywhere!! tezz_completed_g2f.zip

After using G2F for some time now, a few additional features could make the editing process much quicker. It would be nice to have a few basic drawing tools in zoom mode such as brush sizes, PF col fill and the ability to set to DLI and Sprite positions whilst in zoom mode, that would make editing much quicker than pixel by pixel (although most of the time this is the way you need to edit most sections). A good tip for anyone converting from BMPs is to force the colour that is not used with one one the other four as the inverse colour. The BMP conversion appears to choose the least used colour in the picture as the inverse. I generally split the screen into 5 colour sections and add large blocks of the most used colours in empty regions of the screen and then edit them out later. this way I can determin which of the colour registers are assigned to each particular colour within the BMP. the remaining sections/colours can then be completed with clever use of PMGs. the cut and paste is very handy to put the sections back together as this copies all the dli and sprite data in the selected region. another excellent feature... Talking of which, I wonder if it would be possible in future revisions to be able to select PF and/or PMGs when using copy and paste that would be very useful. Hope that helps someone .... or at least makes sense? I look forward to seeing some new G2Fs posted soon.

Thanks for the response Patching pics into the games was someting I was gonna ask about myself, that would be great to see! I have Koronis Rift partly done by the way.. I would love to see the Arknoid pic added on to the A8 version. I supose it would be a walk in the park for most of you guys to do this If anyone wants the G2Fs for all my pics I can post them, perhaps Tebe can include them with the download of G2F or perhaps someone can simply do something with them rather than them sitting on my hard drive.

Hi all, Thanks for the GED info Dracon, to be honest I never found the colour cells as the author termed them particularly easy to work with, I had assumed in the past that all the registers could be changed per scanline in the DLI routine i.e. PMG positions/size and the colour registers etc. although I never knew why anyone didn't attempted it, I did notice the PMGs on the International Karate backdrops and games like Henrys House was a total DLI fest... anyway, G2F is certainly more flexible in its uses than GED, not to mention the extra colour register in Graphics 12 mode rather than Antic E, but the fact that it is a nice Windows based utility makes life very much easier indead. being able to load BMPs directly into G2F is just great, it's a fantastic piece of coding I agree with Heaven/TQA that there is mainly "rip-off" picture conversions using the program so far, although it is a good way to get your head into the utility atempting to reproduce the C64 originals. There will be creativity to follow! Anyhow, I have posted some of my "rip-offs" below I have several of my own work on the go which I will post when they are completed. At long last many of my designs that I had planned on paper years ago using "split" PMGs and DLIs will see the light of day! completed_g2fs.zip

Hey Tebe, G2F is superb I've been using this great utilty since your early releases. I have a bunch of G2fs to post later tonight.. Many are C64 Conversions but there are a load of my own, some of which were originally created with GED. I have had hours of fun with this utility. It baffled me back in the eighties why nobody used PMGs and DLIs to create title screens. If only my programming skills were up to the job at the time A quick question for you all, when I load in my GEDs into G2F, the colour cells, ie. the multiple changes per scanline don't appear to be there? any ideas. Earlier posts suggest that this was implemented some revisions earlier. Will post later today...