Graphic/Text Adventure games re-done the screens

[José Pereira]

The ones that were original Level9/Rainbird and S.A.G.A. released with graphics how hard or simple would be to re-done those uggly 4colours screens?

They are always in GR.15 Bitmap Mode 4colours only and 40Bytes wide screen and seems to be loading each screen then eachone is a single one on the disk.

Then, this way replace would not be hard, right?

If I have the new ones with exactly the same dimensions can I:

-> Build them in G2F and in ANTIC4 Char Mode intead of the usual GR.15 Bitmap Mode if all of them always have same screen building like 3charlines = 1charset?

-> And the need for each screen having different PMGs/DLIs is really a problem when they are all loading separate?

 

Would it be interesting and/or harder/quick for any of the 'coding guys' here?

[Synthpopalooza]

Not hard at all, I could easily redo these using my ICE modes ... something like Super IRG or PCIN if the graphics are cartoony, or MIN mode if they are more photorealistic. There might be some flicker, but I think it would be okay for static pictures. Do you have any sample pictures?

[José Pereira]

I was thinking in doing them by hand in G2F like all that loading screens.

I know that I'm not a must on these static pictures but sure something will come.

And this something is always better than those uggly original ones.

If you or any other say that are interested and can replace the screens I can start the remaking of one game.

What's the best or which of those games do you like it to have better and colourfull screens?

[José Pereira]

I did a quick check and it seems simple and possible in just some days to get all the screens of PAWN re-done in a similar way of the C64 version but with the A8 greater Palette. It seems the ideal one for a great start .

Just need to know if there's any programmer here interested in changing the old ones by mine... Anyone interested?

[Magic Knight]

I did a quick check and it seems simple and possible in just some days to get all the screens of PAWN re-done in a similar way of the C64 version but with the A8 greater Palette. It seems the ideal one for a great start .

 

or Jinxter perhaps

[José Pereira]

Jinxter is an heavy more abuse of lots of colours and dither.

I would only put it as the last one to re-done .

A 2nd good one to achieve it's Guild of Thieves.

[Irgendwer]

A 2nd good one to achieve it's Guild of Thieves.

 

I illustrated that once here:

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/34916-graph2fnt/page__st__450#entry941920

[José Pereira]

Started the PAWN screen conversions last Night:

(and the A8 Palette it's the "REAL THING!...")

[Magic Knight]

Love it!

[FastRobPlus]

Looks fantastic.

[+JAC!]

The PICs look great. In fact I had that idea when I first saw "Rasterconverter". The Pawn displays the images while loading data from the disk. This would not be possible with G2F images. Also implementing the soft up/downscroll will become difficult since G2F is in char mode. On the other hand a ROM/extended RAM version could simply have/load everything into memory at once.

[José Pereira]

JAC what a great sh... You just have to destroy all my fun, didn't you?

Or we can have that images while loading still in charmode with around four changes in the first scanline of each charline...

I think that the joining forces between XXL xBios, my work like the begining of that 'Remake old loading screens' and give a job to Tezz then I really don't see the problem!

 

P.s.- The only thing that I really didn't understand was HOW POSSIBLE that xBios loading screens are only possible if you done your DLIs on the so called Badlines where you were always advised not to BECAUSE you can't BECAUSE there's no available cycles and also BECAUSE...

And also BECAUSE I simply don't understand 'How' but BECAUSE I could sucessfully get the Blinky's and Draconus loadings(s) BECAUSE we had XXL then Tezz.

And just BECAUSE I have to answer if not, at least, BECAUSE then this would be one more 'Dead Thread' from me!

And BECAUSE then I would have to move to another C64 game 'Proof A8 will always look better'!

And now BECAUSE I just don't remember anything more to say and BECAUSE I don't have more 'Bad English' to use/write now...

 

On the other hand I will not post anything more BECAUSE you will simply not continue this insainity, right?

[José Pereira]

Hi! It's me again but just BECAUSE I'm so happy BECAUSE this time I sucefully post a POST without 'double, triple,...' posting.

But this just BECAUSE I waited for all Post sent!

If not then I can always say sorry BECAUSE the fault is if I'm now using my old Mobile Phone.

Greets to everyone.

[+JAC!]

Hi Josè,

i was talking about G2F pictures in general which may use tons of STA WSYNC and raster splits, which will also make it impossible for XBIOS to load it. Of course if you restrict the used features, you might get it done also, but I wouln'd go for it. Your screen looks beautiful and should be as good as it gets. And putting it all onto a cart with zero loading times and disk swapping or into extended memory by loading it all packed in one got would only make the game greater in my opinion. Do you know how many screen there are? I feel they would easily fit into 256KB (with proper packing).

 

[Locates the screen loading routine meanwhile :-) ]

Edited May 3, 2013 by JAC!

[Irgendwer]

Do you know how many screen there are? I feel they would easily fit into 256KB (with proper packing).

 

http://computer.freepage.de/cgi-bin/feets/freepage_ext/41030x030A/rewrite/magnetic/pawn-pictures.html

 

I would go for a conversion of the Amiga art. The images will support much better the abilites of the A8 and have a smaller memory footprint when respecting the same screen area. (And topping the C64 version may also be wanted... )

 

If you really make the efforts of building an updated version and José don't mind, I'm willing to rebuild/convert the bunch of Amiga images...

[José Pereira]

http://computer.free...n-pictures.html

 

I would go for a conversion of the Amiga art. The images will support much better the abilites of the A8 and have a smaller memory footprint when respecting the same screen area. (And topping the C64 version may also be wanted... )

 

If you really make the efforts of building an updated version and José don't mind, I'm willing to rebuild/convert the bunch of Amiga images...

 

Hey no problem.

If it gets into someone put them on the game. Great!

 

 

I am only a little bit ceptical if Amiga version would be a good one to use.

I am seeing all those images and they seem to 'use and abuse' of dither that I don't see they work well in A8 2:1.

(then I go back to your Corruption screen on the G2F Thread and see that 2:1 pixels dither...)

 

 

Hmm. C64 is almost instantly conversion because it's 2:1 already and the gfxs seems very clear to me.

The C64 ones have most of the times, a 4 or 5 colours base to start with.

Most of the pictures can easilly go with just 5colours like those dark forest ones and the others you just add some PMGs.

I'm not an adept of the dithering pixels in 160x, but it's my opinion.

 

 

 

 

Apart from this, what would be good is if who puts the images into the game then could make it 'universal' so that all the other same type games be possible to be remade.

(All the Magnetic/Rainbird games seems more or less the same... Maybe Corruption and others could be achieved this way)

 

Another thing is if he can use the A8 ability to display more lines on screen and:

-> A8 pictures are 19charlines / C64 are 18 and a half because of their hardware way of doing fine vertical scrolling so you can have the top screen words line

and about 9 of text at the bottom.

They just do it this size because then the game it's the same and simple to have in all versions.

One thing that pisses me on these games is that I constantly lost the phrases because only the two or three text lines and it quick and all the time are scrolling/going out.

If I go into text screen only then it's no more fun to me.

At least some two or three text line would be good.

[José Pereira]

Just tried some quick PAINT rrresizing of the Amiga version on some pictures.

Don't they have lots of colours per cell?

Aren't they harrd to get on A8 (and they are even 640x resolution so you need to reduce them two times untill 160x)

[+JAC!]

I would love to see the C64 screens. I still have the page that I ripped from a C64 mag back then because I fell in love with the GFX there.

Their aspect ratio, dithering etc. is already perfect for the 160x152 picture.

Regarding text lines: We can easily add more text lines - this is ATARI! In fact we could keep the picture "fullscreen" and still have 5 or even 6 additional (!) text lines displayed permanently.

[José Pereira]

Jac and for the DLIs and PMGs use is there a rule?

For example, those two dark forest are just 5colours ANTIC4 but the castle garden has PMGs underlays and two or three DLIs on the PFs colours.

And, about charsets, all pictures same, always [3charlines=1charset] mimic Bitmap Mode?

 

Foq us, the 'no code ones' the only way is to do them in G2F, can you then change any unecessary stuff in the code like those lots of STA wsync, right?

 

Regarding more text lines, if we are now thinking in a cart version then is there any need to scroll the pictures? Wouldn't just be only need to have the screen changed to text only if the player wants?

 

 

P.s.- If we will going to use the C64 pictures then all these games from Magnetic Scrolls have only 148scanlines, it seems because of the way they deal with the hardware vertical scrolling.

[Irgendwer]

 

Yes, a conversion from Amiga makes more work, but if we could get a new release, why not take the best available graphics as starting point? To show (again) what I mean, I just converted the palace gardens. It is not so that I have plenty time left, so if JAC doesn't want to go this way it is also allright with me...

PalaceGardens.zip

[+JAC!]

>DLIs and PMGs use is there a rule?

Not really. COLBAK should be $00 so we can keep the border stable, but I think that's not a real restriction. As long we you stay in DLI mode, there will typically be only few STA WSYNC. When using the full kernel modes like GED, the CPU would be busy all the time, making the game too slow, I think.

> I just converted the palace garden

I appreciate and understand your idea. As I mentioned I had started this before when Rasterconverter came up. I was rather disappoint with the result, but thinking about it a while I realized why. This picture esp. shows what I mean with dithering and aspect ration. On all platforms where I've see the graphics, they are dither according to the picture size and palette of that platform. If you convert/resize that again, the original painting precision get's lost and it does obviously look "converted" (you'd get disqualified in any GFX compo with that ...)

 

 

Also standard C64 multicolor is the best basis for doing "standard" G2F, as it has the pixels and the same charmap/attribute layout. => feasiblity!

And still José can put 128 flowers with different colors in the garden :-)

Edited May 3, 2013 by JAC!

[Irgendwer]

...

This picture esp. shows what I mean with dithering and aspect ration.

...

If you convert/resize that again, the original painting precision get's lost and it does obviously look "converted" (you'd get disqualified in any GFX compo with that ...)

...

Also standard C64 multicolor is the best basis for doing "standard" G2F, as it has the pixels and the same charmap/attribute layout. => feasiblity!

...

And still José can put 128 flowers with different colors in the garden :-)

...

 

Ok, so you find the C64 better than my conversion. That's ok. Just some final notes before I'm out of this:

 

- IMHO the C64 image shows much more of the 'charateristic'-chess pattern dithering than the conversion?!?

- When reducing the horizontal width by 50% (thats where the 128 pixels width is comming from - two pixel are perfectly blended into another, building a new, non-aliased color) the painting precision is halved, but still consistent. Beside that this is no compo, the C64 images are also converted(!?) and you may not imagine how much hand work was neccessary for the result. (BTW: The 32 byte screen width comes also handy while allowing more changes per line -> use of target platform feature.)

- Since you receive the conversions, I wonder why you care about the color cell matching/feasiblity.

- Nothing avoids that I could also apply 128 colors for the flowers. In fact the horizonal path already has some more different colors for the flowers. (That was a joke - wasn't it?)

 

Please don't think I'm miffed, but my taste seems to be - ehm - 'different'. Esp. comparing the 'Corruption'-image in the G2F thread, I still find that the C64 image looks childish and like somebody puked his yelly-beans on the floor - but José seems also to like it more because of the chess dither in my version.

 

I wish you the best and gladly await the new version. Keep it up!

[+JAC!]

> I still find that the C64 image looks childish and like somebody puked his jelly-beans on the floor

hehe, well in this picture that is obviously true :-)

 

>That was a joke - wasn't it?

In this regard yes, of course. I was only referring to be able to easily add some touches manually to improve the C64 screen with very small effort.

After all it's a matter of taste, so it's (in)disputable. But I have to go and find that page I ripped from a paper mag back in the days when I thought "Damn - I bought the wrong computer".. only 25 years later I might prove myself wrong :-)

 

>only 148scanlines

You mean 152, right?

Edited May 3, 2013 by JAC!

[José Pereira]

Next thing to try:

Maximum number of colours I can achieve on the flowers.

Joking?