Bitmap Image Converter

[Captain Cozmos]

56 minutes ago, Tursi said:

You can't get any more native than the data layout that the chip itself uses.

 

You reverse engineer all these programs, surely it's not that hard for you to copy 6k from CPU memory to VDP memory?

 

I have done that but here is the issue.

The way your program outputs the data is correct but it does it like you would expect.
ALA:
0,1,2,3,4....... all the way to 768*8 individual bits.
This forces anyone that wants to use the pictures on the Colecovision in Mode 2 but where the pattern table is 0-768 so each pattern has an individual number.

Tony Cruise has one way of doing things for his editor

0-255 top

0-255 middle

0-255 bottom

all repeats of the same 256 patterns using Mode 2 and that's it.

There is no Text Mode, Mode 1 or even Multi-color.  just Mode 2.

Try using his full screen editor and draw freehand in what I think is 1024x768 on a 5k monitor

You can get around some of this by using the import IVCGM DAT file which I honestly don't know what is.

 

The end of the story is that his program is lacking for now and I thought that everyone here works together to get the best result.

Heck, there is a guy who goes by Chibiakumas on the MSX scene who made an editor but even his is different.

BTW, I use his editor almost every day and am just stating facts, not complaints.  I would not even bother with the Colecovision if I had to do all this graphical work by hand like in the 80's.
His tool is invaluable.
that's what she said......

[Tursi]

Ah, yeah, I see what you're after. But drawing a bitmap screen using just one pattern table requires that the entire screen contains just 256 patterns, not 768. So solving for this is a different issue that my tool does not do. It's not something that I need in my code. (The TI99 world calls that 'half bitmap mode').

 

That's how tools work, though. You need to use the right tool for the job. It's certainly possible to get very good results in 'half' bitmap mode, but generating the data isn't code I've written.  I tend to treat that mode more as a character mode than a mode for displaying images. For sprites and character maps I usually use Magellan: https://forums.atariage.com/topic/161356-magellan/

 

Convert9918 was created to try and as good an image conversion as I could, no compromises. So it's not really aimed at pulling off a restricted mode.

 

There are a couple of things you could code. It's not perfect, but you could post-process the generated image, try to find character matches within the image to get it down to 256 patterns. I've done that kind of hack before, but, it's not great on complex images.

 

Edited December 27, 2023 by Tursi

[Jess Ragan]

THANK YOU, Tursi, for this gift to the classic gaming community. With the help of your program and Aseprite, I managed to get my character Byron on the ColecoVision. No sprite patches were necessary, and I managed to squeeze him in there with a moderate amount of editing and a little bit of color fudging.

 

This is neat! I'm so hyped. (And yes, I'm one of those furries. Again, sorry not sorry.)

colecovision invasion.rom

[+nanochess]

8 hours ago, Jess Ragan said:

THANK YOU, Tursi, for this gift to the classic gaming community. With the help of your program and Aseprite, I managed to get my character Byron on the ColecoVision. No sprite patches were necessary, and I managed to squeeze him in there with a moderate amount of editing and a little bit of color fudging.

 

This is neat! I'm so hyped. (And yes, I'm one of those furries. Again, sorry not sorry.)

colecovision invasion.rom 13.46 kB · 1 download

Very well done! 👏

[Jess Ragan]

Obrigado!

 

Building graphics on the ColecoVision is a fascinating challenge. You can't just draw whatever you want; each tile has to be strategically arranged, like the pieces of a puzzle. Heavy outlines and shadowing can help, but sometimes you'll also have to move tiles to keep more than two colors from touching. I didn't have the benefit of patch sprites, so crosshatching was necessary for those trouble spots.

 

It's tough to keep art on the ColecoVision from looking off-puttingly angular, but satisfying when you get it right. I've complained a lot about arcade ports on the ColecoVision, but I didn't fully understand the challenges of working with this hardware. Knowing what I know now, that recent SGM conversion of Time Pilot seems almost miraculous.