Heaven/TQA Posted December 26, 2002 Share Posted December 26, 2002 check out http://www.s-direktnet.de/homepages/k_nadj...og/MCS-Show.atr (press 1 for Disc drive 1 and "J" for yes...) compare yourself: all colored by hand and utilises fonts... no highres modes. hve ps. i am remembering that there was a tool for such a mode... any ideas? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heaven/TQA Posted December 26, 2002 Author Share Posted December 26, 2002 damned links... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nukey Shay Posted December 26, 2002 Share Posted December 26, 2002 Sweet. Anyway, having an extra color register is certianly a boon...even though it uses a bit more memory. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sheddy Posted December 26, 2002 Share Posted December 26, 2002 V Nice! the extra color is always worth it! But, sorry, don't know anything about this format...or tools for it. Does it use DLIS to get more charsets on-screen at once, so you could do a pic of anything, as JetBoot was discussing on Flimbos Quest? (that is one impressive looking game). Heaven, notice Fox has removed his Vector site, is that because no-ones helping him like he asked, or are Taquart working on other stuff now? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nukey Shay Posted December 26, 2002 Share Posted December 26, 2002 Yeah...you would have to use a DLI after every 3rd line (40char x 3lines). That would use 8192 bytes for the charsets and 960 bytes for the display, and 32 bytes for the DL. (9184 total vs. 7882** bytes in AnticE) ** +512 bytes if you allowed the system to setup the mode for you Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sheddy Posted December 26, 2002 Share Posted December 26, 2002 Cheers Nukey, you're up a bit early today??.. (12:30 here in the UK). Thought the pics would be too complex otherwise for only 128 chars...well maybe not the eye.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nukey Shay Posted December 26, 2002 Share Posted December 26, 2002 Too complex for sure...including the Eye picture due to the color transitions. The game Dragon's Eye pulls it off using the char.reuse method, but it's not nearly as detailed. (meaning you see more background than anything else). Also, if you were after static pictures only...you could combine all P/M objects set on wide resolution+color mix priority to give you a unique color pallete on each scanline. Wish I knew of a tool for this, as it would be very painstaking to figure out by hand. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sheddy Posted December 26, 2002 Share Posted December 26, 2002 You'd get a somewhat arbitary lot of colors with the overlap on, but stretched PM's would be great for background color (still a little small though even at x4), not hugely flexible, but like you say....with the right tools... surprising more people didn't try it....(thereby prompting a huge number of replies showing us they did) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TXG/MNX Posted December 26, 2002 Share Posted December 26, 2002 check out http://www.s-direktnet.de/homepages/k_nadj...og/MCS-Show.atr (press 1 for Disc drive 1 and "J" for yes...) Soory link doesn't work at my site. Could you e-mail it to me? txg01@xs4all.nl TXG/MNX Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heaven/TQA Posted December 26, 2002 Author Share Posted December 26, 2002 TXG: try right mouse click and save it as ".ATR" file on harddisc so you can load it with emulator... direct click does not work... re: vector & fox haven't heard anything from Fox for months as we both work hard. but we both coded some GBA stuff and were in contact... nice little machine, too... re: tools... there is a tool called "LOGOS.COM" which transfers a gr.15 picture into several charsets )incl. optimising) after transfering you can save the screen, fonts and you can edit the extra 5th color... tool was used mostly for big group logos that's why it got this name... to be honest... i guess that someone on the world has got the same idea... remember "the neverending story" adventure on atari which used a similar method with overlaying PMs... hve Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TXG/MNX Posted December 26, 2002 Share Posted December 26, 2002 TXG: try right mouse click and save it as ".ATR" file on harddisc so you can load it with emulator... direct click does not work... Hmm okay found out that my browser adds .htm to it at the end ??? I downloaded it... >re: vector & fox > >haven't heard anything from Fox for months as we both work hard. but >we both coded some GBA stuff and were in contact... nice little machine, >too... Do you know about the ABBUC programming competitions. Now people can win 500 euro for a program. I think VECTOR should be winning when it's complete ofcourse. >re: tools... > >there is a tool called "LOGOS.COM" which transfers a gr.15 picture into >several charsets )incl. optimising) after transfering you can save the >screen, fonts and you can edit the extra 5th color... tool was used >mostly for big group logos that's why it got this name... Sound nice... >to be honest... i guess that someone on the world has got the same >idea... remember "the neverending story" adventure on atari which >used a similar method with overlaying PMs... Hmm no, I have lot's of software but can't remember but I believe you... TXG/MNX Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jetboot Jack Posted December 26, 2002 Share Posted December 26, 2002 Apart from the poor color choices on the warrior image - that's exactly my approach to 8bit graphics - cheaper than Hi-res Antic E and much more flexible and fun!!! As to the PMG overlays - pick yer fights - add colors where needed - therewas one US guy back in the Antic Magazine days who did some pretty nice artwork - in Antic E, but ALWAYS with extra PMG details - his stuff looked great (Steve Dong I believe)... sTeVE Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted December 26, 2002 Share Posted December 26, 2002 Hello! As you can see, I am pretty new in this forum. But, I have something to say Since my first days with the ATARI 800 XL I saw that this Machine was a great do . But I still recognized, that the programs for the small ATARI not even are using its capabilities. After some learning of Basic and "small" assembler-lessons, I tried to convert C64 pictures, that are all made with the same trick. The graphics are made using a font raster. So I tried to do this on the ATARI with DLIs and full PMG-Overlay. I converted the graphics, that the Background was no longer 712, but 709 or 708. 710 is changeable with 711 and 712 is the "filter" for the PMG. The finished "standard" I called Multi-Color Screen. If You look at the SENTINEL, there are already 8 Colors, and on the Warrior are 6 Colors used. Because they are C64 adaptions, there is more to get, if the Pictures are made for that Mode directly. ... Some of the pictures are over 12 years old... and are available in the PD-Library from the ABBUC. I hoped (and still hope), that the Pics will give some Programmers an idea for better Games...... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted December 26, 2002 Share Posted December 26, 2002 Apart from the poor color choices on the warrior image - that's exactly my approach to 8bit graphics - cheaper than Hi-res Antic E and much more flexible and fun!!! sTeVE The Warrior wasn't finished at all. Even there are no colors changed in DLIs. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heaven/TQA Posted December 27, 2002 Author Share Posted December 27, 2002 emkay... a warm welcome... (Mario??? ) I may add that emkay send me the stuff...so he is the guy who made the conversions and the MCS stuff!!! so... technical questions --> emkay hve ps. 500 euro = 500 US$ hmmm... i just had an idea... i'll ask fox and try to code my own game... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TXG/MNX Posted December 27, 2002 Share Posted December 27, 2002 emkay... a warm welcome... (Mario??? ) I may add that emkay send me the stuff...so he is the guy who made the conversions and the MCS stuff!!! so... technical questions --> emkay hve ps. 500 euro = 500 US$ hmmm... i just had an idea... i'll ask fox and try to code my own game... Yeah welcom emkay to this board... Hmm I really would love to see a fully working version of the vector game, but I haven't found a Duke N. level editor that was easy to use otherwise I already began making levels... But when you really want to program something, you could look in to the LUNIX port for Atari. It's still not fully working. LUNIX is a small multi-threading/tasking OS that works on the APPLE II/C64 and is open-source. The C64 supports tcp/ip, slip, ppp and ftp on 64Kb. It would be great when you get it to work. A lot of work already have been done for Atari. Look at http://sourceforge.net/projects/lng you can download version 0.20 here.... TXG/MNX Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heaven/TQA Posted December 27, 2002 Author Share Posted December 27, 2002 steve, i figured out flimbo's parallax... it's really easy... i forgot an old 8bit technique... flipping several charsets... all gfx is stored in 4 95% equal fonts except the background... the chars which define the background are shifted in each font by 1 pixel to the right... so you just need to scroll & switch between the different 4 fonts each time you scroll a pixel... voila... the background is scrolled in a different speed "by hardware" which means just by preshifted in the font.... puh... there must be a book describing all old techniques... font flipping is one of them... (mainly used for animations...not for parallax... ) hve Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted December 27, 2002 Share Posted December 27, 2002 These two Pics are my favorites: The Castle(Burg) is a Hand-redraw of an AMIGA Picture, that was never able to to with only 4 colors. ... Mickey ... look yourself Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TXG/MNX Posted December 27, 2002 Share Posted December 27, 2002 Nice pictures. Is it also possible to create a scrolling background with so much color? Would be nice to see in new games.. How many sprites and colors are used? And which gr. mode gr.15? TXG/MNX Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted December 27, 2002 Share Posted December 27, 2002 The Pics are allways on the same base. A relative GR.12 Mode with changed CHBASE every third line. The screen is filled with ATASCII-Chars from 0 to 119 eight times. The PMG is at its lowest resolution and uses 1K of RAM. The position of the PMG is fixed in the MCS -standard. Maybe one is doing a MCE(extended) with DLIS for colors and PM positioning. The only clue ist to make animated graphics due to the font-memory To move an object (Software-Sprite) it is to split in the linear memory, that it is on the screen in one peace. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted December 28, 2002 Share Posted December 28, 2002 I created a table that shows, how to manage the memory of the MCS. http://www.atariage.com/forums/files/2756_..._1041098858.jpg Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted December 28, 2002 Share Posted December 28, 2002 For those who wants to know.. The MCS file is built as follows: 9 Bytes for color Registers (704-712) 8192 Bytes Font-Data (reserved for bigger fonts (128 chars)and changes) 960 Bytes Screendata 1024 Bytes PMG Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dracon Posted August 21, 2003 Share Posted August 21, 2003 Hey emkay! This all sounds promising.... But I'm not any coder but graphician ... Please tell me what tools should I use to get any fullscreen picture with many colors ? So any good MCS-FAQ please! BTW. Have you checked out this stuff? http://atariarea.histeria.pl/pliki.php?sec...download&id=199 It is still being written... the author is going to add PM object do make screen more colorful.... Examine and write what you think about this editor... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted August 22, 2003 Share Posted August 22, 2003 Hey emkay! This all sounds promising.... But I'm not any coder but graphician ... Please tell me what tools should I use to get any fullscreen picture with many colors ? So any good MCS-FAQ please! In the times I created the MCS pictures, I wrote some simple tools in Basic. But they are lost... On the other way...I still hoped, any coder-group on the XL/XE will take the Idea of MCS and create Tools for it. Heck... this is more than 12 years ago... Why did no one ever connet to ABBUC to ask for the MCS background? BTW. Have you checked out this stuff? http://atariarea.histeria.pl/pliki.php?sec...download&id=199 It is still being written... the author is going to add PM object do make screen more colorful.... Examine and write what you think about this editor... The tool is basically ok... Do you think it is possible to connect the coder to help him in optimizing the tool? Because the manual is in polish (?) I have doubts, the coder and I can simply communicate in english language...?!? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dracon Posted August 22, 2003 Share Posted August 22, 2003 Emkay, you seem to be still interested in Atari 8-bit so why not try to re-code the MCS stuff ? Or at least can you prepare the one-doc-MCS-faq to easily spread it among some Polish coders I know ? Unfortunately the coder doesn't know English... But I could translate and send him your suggestions.... The documentation for GRAPH2FONT was written in Polish, indeed. So I think when some more English-speaking Atarians will want to use this, I could prepare English infofile for this, ok ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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