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Images generated by RastaConverter


Philsan

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Thanks, I appreciate it. Of course I can never tell what people will like. Most times the ones with the most downloads are the inferior ones to me and I'm always surprised. Of course if I don't like them, they don't get posted at all, so "inferior" is relative.

 

I'm feeling lonely on this thread though...I only ever want to encourage others to post more images, by example of what can be achieved if you really try and are willing to discard 90% of what you do. It's definitely a learning process of trial and error though, it's not something that can be taught, at least not through a message board...but in real life would be different. But it seems my work is scaring others off of doing Rasta images. But when I stopped for a few months, no one did any anyway, so I figure better just me than no one...

 

Actually, I was looking through some older images just the other day, and came across some from Mario130XE, Ilmenet and others that are easily as good as many of mine...also quite a few they posted that wouldn't have been acceptable to me and I would have retried...which comes down to high standards requiring lots of patience and tossed images. One image possibly being retried over and over for maybe a week and dozens of attempts. Practice definitely helps though; like Hunsett Mill only took me a couple of attempts as I got the settings very close where they needed to be to begin with from experience..

Edited by Gunstar
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the biggest problem of better vs inferior downloading comes down to how the small snapshots presented on the forum can make one look better than the other when on real hardware at full size the reverse can be true. Not to mention ntsc vs pal etc. when you think you are going to see one thing and end up with quite another.. I wish the thread would require a copy in both and a larger presented image of each. Monitors/TV's for the Atari being of the 13,15,19, 21 on up even big screen and projectors and all that...

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the biggest problem of better vs inferior downloading comes down to how the small snapshots presented on the forum can make one look better than the other when on real hardware at full size the reverse can be true. Not to mention ntsc vs pal etc. when you think you are going to see one thing and end up with quite another.. I wish the thread would require a copy in both and a larger presented image of each. Monitors/TV's for the Atari being of the 13,15,19, 21 on up even big screen and projectors and all that...

I like the concept of what you are saying, but the reality, again, would end up much different. For starters, I don't have the equipment for screen captures and my phone camera never gets the colors right, not to mention my computer's video upgrade and the converter to VGA, etc., will all make my actual screens shots not only different from what you see, but different from what I see! (camera)

 

I'm not sure what your suggesting with the rest and screen sizes up to projectors, etc. As to posting larger images that are easier to see, that's either up to Atari Age's site software allowing it or if using some other program that will post larger images i simply don't know how. I don't even know how to take those shots some people post of the actual Rastaconverter program with it's three windows for source, destination and output. Like cropped screen grabs or something? I know how to attach .png images from Rasta, images off the net I save or from my phone camera as attachments to my posts. That's it.

 

As to the thread requiring both NTSC and PAL, as I've said many times before, it's not just a switch you can flick and have it so. It takes a completely new image restarted in the other format, twice as much or more time obviously, no promise that one can ever look as good as the other, and I stopped doing it because it was too much. I was thinking of starting another thread myself with less stipulations. and not even require any image at all since it's not what the real thing looks like on your real computer anyway. People have to download and load it up in an emulator or real hardware to even see it t he first time. I'd rather have it that way. If you can't be bothered, so be it, miss out.

 

I do now have an NTSC computer again, and once I get it set up I will start doing more NTSC images again. But I need to see them on the real hardware before I decide if it's good enough to post, and I won't be doing versions of the same image for both in most cases, it's too much and take the fun of doing it out making it work.

Edited by Gunstar
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Anything you upload to the forum could first be doubled in size via - for instance - the 'Resize' button in the free 'Paint' program which comes with Windows in the space of ten seconds or so. The forum will handle resizing thumbnail previews, etc: the important thing is that the image is large enough to appreciate when you click on the preview.

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Anything you upload to the forum could first be doubled in size via - for instance - the 'Resize' button in the free 'Paint' program which comes with Windows in the space of ten seconds or so. The forum will handle resizing thumbnail previews, etc: the important thing is that the image is large enough to appreciate when you click on the preview.

This I'm willing to do. I've never used the free 'Paint' program with Windows. There's probably a way to do it with Infranview 64 now that you mention it, but all I ever use it for is to save the .png images, resize down to 320x240 and look to see how many colors where used. I will look into it.

Edited by Gunstar
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I'm colorblind so I'm not safe to be let loose on Rasta, unless you like red grass and green people!

Dear Mr. Robot... if an upgrade to the cameras would be possible or of benefit... a team of technicians could be dispatched to repair or replace the faulty devices, connections, or supporting circuitry. okay okay, I know you are not really a robot... or are you? :)

Edited by _The Doctor__
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I don't think you should ever stop posting pictures here - even though few others may do so. We all appreciate what you have posted

 

Do you do requests? Say pictures which others have tried and failed on.

 

If you can't be bothered doing so - because of various reasons - I'll understand.

 

Harvey

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This I'm willing to do. I've never used the free 'Paint' program with Windows. There's probably a way to do it with Infranview 64 now that you mention it, but all I ever use it for is to save the .png images, resize down to 320x240 and look to see how many colors where used. I will look into it.

 

Google has released their squoosh app, https://squoosh.app, which can resize pics in the browser. Here's the windmill pic from above resized in Squoosh to 1024x765:

 

post-3959-0-85337700-1543866939_thumb.png

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Which version of RastaConverter is everybody using? Is it this version posted by Sheddy https://atariage.com/forums/topic/200118-images-generated-by-rastaconverter/page-30?do=findComment&comment=3666330 or is there a newer version somewhere?

 

Using this version I find that I get the best performance by using 4 threads per process and setting the processor affinity to 4 cores. If I go higher on the thread count the kernel time really starts to increase probably due to more inter-process communication. Anyway, I'm getting about 105,000 tries per second total with 4 processes running on my AMD Ryzen 7 1700. All of the awesome work by Gunstar has inspired me to start doing some images again.

 

post-45441-0-35562000-1543873024_thumb.png

 

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Dear Mr. Robot... if an upgrade to the cameras would be possible or of benefit... a team of technicians could be dispatched to repair or replace the faulty devices, connections, or supporting circuitry. okay okay, I know you are not really a robot... or are you? :)

Still, there are those special glasses that help many color blind to see color...

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Which version of RastaConverter is everybody using? Is it this version posted by Sheddy https://atariage.com/forums/topic/200118-images-generated-by-rastaconverter/page-30?do=findComment&comment=3666330 or is there a newer version somewhere?

 

Using this version I find that I get the best performance by using 4 threads per process and setting the processor affinity to 4 cores. If I go higher on the thread count the kernel time really starts to increase probably due to more inter-process communication. Anyway, I'm getting about 105,000 tries per second total with 4 processes running on my AMD Ryzen 7 1700. All of the awesome work by Gunstar has inspired me to start doing some images again.

 

attachicon.gifscreen.png

 

My poor old PC can only handle one at a time. It's 64-bit something or other, but like 10 years old now,,,

Of course it depends on Rastaconverter settings too, as some require much more processing which slows things down. For example SOLUTIONS, the more you set it for the slower Rastaconverter tries. I generally have mine set for around a thousand and I get an average of about 10,000 tries per second with 2 threads running in one operation. I could double that if the number of solutions was much lower. But as you can see, nothing like the speeds your talking about on your nifty AMD Ryzen.

Edited by Gunstar
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Still, there are those special glasses that help many color blind to see color...

 

Being the Robot that I am, I find I rely on looking at the RGB values and telling my brain(cpu?) what colour it is supposed to be seeing.

 

Checking Resistor values is a process of photographing the resistor and checking the RGB of each band with a color picker tool on my mac, I suppose I should just use a meter but I'm stubborn.

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First up is the title screen for an upcoming action RPG called Hazelnut Bastille from Aloft Studio. The developers said that they are going for a retro 16-bit aesthetic with the art style. How would an Atari 8-bit version look? Maybe something like this!

 

Hazelnut.xex

post-45441-0-60454000-1543971082.png

post-45441-0-73226900-1543971128.png

 

The same developer is also making a prequel called Dawnthorn that is using an art style similar to something on the NES. Here's a cutscene image and a gameplay image.

 

Dawnthorn1.xex

post-45441-0-98523500-1543972123.png

post-45441-0-00566500-1543972100.png

 

Dawnthorn2.xex

post-45441-0-58137000-1543972313.png

post-45441-0-55628800-1543972328.png

 

The last one is just a picture of a butterfly that I liked.

Butterfly.xex

post-45441-0-08778200-1543972558.png

post-45441-0-19006000-1543972543.png

 

I used an NTSC palette and height of 224 for everything. Unfortunately I'm on crutches for a while here and can't get downstairs to test these on my 800xl. Hopefully they look ok on real hardware.

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I'm a little late to the party, but on the subject of screen captures. Don't forget the simple "print screen" button on a pc keyboard. Pressing ALT and "print screen" will copy a picture of the current app to the Windows clipboard. So bring up a raster coverted pic in Altirra. Size the Altirra window to what ever you think appropriate, hit "ALT Print Screen" and you can then paste that image into any paint program and either save it with the Altirra window showing or crop just the image. Sample below:

 

post-18691-0-19286900-1544045099.png

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I'm a little late to the party, but on the subject of screen captures. Don't forget the simple "print screen" button on a pc keyboard. Pressing ALT and "print screen" will copy a picture of the current app to the Windows clipboard. So bring up a raster coverted pic in Altirra. Size the Altirra window to what ever you think appropriate, hit "ALT Print Screen" and you can then paste that image into any paint program and either save it with the Altirra window showing or crop just the image. Sample below:

 

Thanks. It may seem like something simple and obvious to most, but I hate using PC's and Windows and actually bother to learn as little as possible to do what I need to do, so I was simply ignorant by choice, without enough interest to care. But since being shown some of these ways, I'll start using them since others seem to care a lot. I only see the posted images as something to see the subject matter and wait to load and see the actual .xex image to enjoy and pass judgement...

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Here are some 16-bit games getting the Atari 8-bit treatment, and I have to say I'm impressed with what this system can do! NTSC palette used for all.

 

Konami.xex

post-45441-0-61591500-1544298010.png

 

castle1.xex

post-45441-0-84249100-1544298018.png

 

castle2.xex

post-45441-0-58430600-1544298023.png

 

turtles1.xex

post-45441-0-00295800-1544298048.png

 

chrono1.xex (I had to increase brightness to 0% in Altirra to match my actual hardware)

post-45441-0-31166600-1544298034.png

 

chrono2.xex

post-45441-0-40086500-1544298039.png

 

dkc1.xex

post-45441-0-01409700-1544298056.png

 

dkc2.xex

post-45441-0-27290700-1544298062.png

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