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Mr. Do - Graphical Improvements


MrFish

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As a Kid I once bought an Atari Tape with Mr. Dig ... this was for me for years the only game in this category. In Mr. Dig it is more clear that the maps are also the level numbers so I already knew. Once we played Mr. Do in The HSC I had to get used to Mr. Do (which is absolutely more challenging than Mr. Dig) but I noticed the same playfield-layout=level.

 

Mr. Dig is pretty cool too, but I think Mr. Do has just something extra. Anyone familiar with Mr. Dig here?

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Great job MrFish ! Cant wait for a work in progress download !

 

Thanks, I kinda forgot about this one when I started working on a few other things.

 

I was planning to release something once I finished editing all the (many bitshifted) apple sprites, and maybe editing some colors for a few of the levels.

I finished all the bitshifts for the static apples and the masks that go with them before (over a month ago). I think I just needed to add the apple wobble

edits, for which I've already created the graphics.

 

 

What tool are you using to edit character-based soft-sprites ?

 

No special tools, just Omnivore and Bit Hacker. I was using Disk Explorer before Omnivore came out.

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I absolutely love the 8-bit version and these little improvements make it even better.

 

Now if someone can remake a homebrew version on the 2600 to replace the original abomination I'd be forever in their debt.

 

Do's kinda hard to pull off on a standard 2600. I imagine these days they'd enlist the help of the Harmony DPC+ to pull it off.

That's why you're seeing homebrews like "Draconian", "Mappy", and others, that a 2600 by itself could never do.

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Do's kinda hard to pull off on a standard 2600. I imagine these days they'd enlist the help of the Harmony DPC+ to pull it off.

That's why you're seeing homebrews like "Draconian", "Mappy", and others, that a 2600 by itself could never do.

Very true, I'd love to see a 7800 or NES homebrew of Mr. Do. It would probably be amazing

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As a Kid I once bought an Atari Tape with Mr. Dig ... this was for me for years the only game in this category. In Mr. Dig it is more clear that the maps are also the level numbers so I already knew. Once we played Mr. Do in The HSC I had to get used to Mr. Do (which is absolutely more challenging than Mr. Dig) but I noticed the same playfield-layout=level.

 

Mr. Dig is pretty cool too, but I think Mr. Do has just something extra. Anyone familiar with Mr. Dig here?

 

Yeah, Mr. Dig is a pretty nicely done clone, and you're right, the numbers are easier to make out there.

 

Another good Do clone on the 8-bits is "Henri".

Edited by MrFish
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..No special tools, just Omnivore and Bit Hacker. I was using Disk Explorer before Omnivore came out.

 

Please bear with me a little, I really want to get this right :) ..

Since I searched in Hackomatic/Bithacker and found only the main character and the letter monster sprites, I assume all the rest are software..

So in Omnivore I flip through bitmap display modes until I recognize something, then I note the address and go back to Hackomatic to edit ??

 

Thanks in advance.

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Why, you're using a low-res monitor, or zooming in for easier viewing?

nope it's that way on XP, and windows 7, as well as Vista... all using firefox.... all using standard laptop displays... all at maximum res allowed on each...

I am not the only one who mentions this... I think kyle observes the same..

Edited by _The Doctor__
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all using standard laptop displays... all at maximum res allowed on each...

 

The site was really designed for monitors with a minimum vertical resolution of 1024 pixels.

 

So, your typical old school monitor of 1280 x 1024, or some modern screen that does 1080p. I should probably list this information on my site

somewhere. I know the discussion came up a time or two.

 

When I first launched the site, someone mentioned they needed the menu to scroll because they used a zoomed in view (for their vision problem).

This was easy to accommodate when the site was using old-school FRAME's; but once I got rid of the frames, the situation became a little different.

Scrollbars for DIV elements don't behave the same way as with FRAME's. I didn't like the visual result of using standard scrollbars with my DIV, because it

ended up stepping on the layout; so, I dropped them at that time.

 

I'll take a look and see if I can find some sort of workaround using CSS, though; and I'll make a post in the Serious Computerist thread if/when I come

up with a solution.

 

For now, sorry, the site is mainly designed for desktop machines/monitors at the moment -- as I've mentioned before. I'll eventually make things compatible

with other display types; but for now, I suggest using a monitor with the minimum dimensions listed above.

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just make sure to make an Atari 8 bit friendly version... lynx browser or other, there is very little I can browse with my 8 bit these days :o

like a link at the top or just an 8 somewhere at the top of the page that we could click to go full retro..... sort of like that little pi symbol on certain web pages (the net)

 

lol, would be cool... silly and fun

Edited by _The Doctor__
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just make sure to make an Atari 8 bit friendly version... lynx browser or other, there is very little I can browse with my 8 bit these days :o

like a link at the top or just an 8 somewhere at the top of the page that we could click to go full retro..... sort of like that little pi symbol on certain web pages (the net)

 

lol, would be cool... silly and fun

 

Hey, I've talked about having a nice "sub-web" for the Ataris before (in discussions with FJC about browsing in the GUI);

but I'd completely forgotten about it when working on my own website.

 

So, I think it'd be a great idea. The only thing is, the downloads would have to make sense for an 8-bit. That means, no

PDF's or PC/Mac content. I might be able to put up some ReadMe's from some of the disks.

 

The site was designed with simplicity in mind from the beginning; the textual portion only constitutes a little over a meg of

data total for the whole site. Conversion should be pretty simple.

Edited by MrFish
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TIX sent me a PM asking some more questions about hacking softsprites. I'm sure others

will be interested in hearing the answers; so I'm bringing his question into the thread to

give my answer.

 

Hey MrFish,


I don't want to clutter the post with unrelated questions..

So if you can help a fellow hacker read on..

.

.
I searched all display modes in Omnivore, trying to find the enemy creatures (i'm speaking about mr Do),

but i found nothing even remotely similar..

Do you have any insides or a specific example to help me grasp the concept ?

For example you edit the apples, where did you find the damn things ?? :)

Thanks anyway !

 

Since Do's playfield is done in character mode, you have to look for everything to be in 4 x 8 chunks (Antic 4 sized characters).

 

So, when I'm scanning, I'm just looking for small chunks of data that seem to have some pattern.

 

Here's where the first incarnation (bit placement) of the apple is. After I've found it, then I can change the colors in Omnivore, to help

pick out all the other shifts of the apple.

 

post-6369-0-65542300-1548692259_thumb.png

 

post-6369-0-36101900-1548692267_thumb.png

Edited by MrFish
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The site was designed with simplicity in mind from the beginning; the textual portion only constitutes a little over a meg of

data total for the whole site. Conversion should be pretty simple.

 

I mean the HTML portion -- which essentially is text -- is only a little over a meg. The actual text that goes to the screen

is, of course, is much smaller than that (probably less than a 10th of that). So, basically, we're not talking about much data

at all.

Edited by MrFish
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TIX sent me a PM asking some more questions about hacking softsprites. I'm sure others

will be interested in hearing the answers; so I'm bringing his question into the thread to

give my answer.

 

 

Since Do's playfield is done in character mode, you have to look for everything to be in 4 x 8 chunks (Antic 4 sized characters).

 

So, when I'm scanning, I'm just looking for small chunks of data that seem to have some pattern.

 

Here's where the first incarnation (bit placement) of the apple is. After I've found it, then I can change the colors in Omnivore, to help

pick out all the other shifts of the apple.

 

Thanks, maybe its too complicated for me.. but I failed to find the apple even with your example..

I believe its a mental block :) I had the same difficulty at first, trying to understand what I was seeing in Hack-o-matic

 

So one more time: in Omnivore -> View -> Character Display -> Antic 4 and View -> Bitmap Display -> what ?

Edited by TIX
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Thanks, maybe its too complicated for me.. but I failed to find the apple even with your example..

I believe its a mental block :) I had the same difficulty at first, trying to understand what I was seeing in Hack-o-matic

 

So one more time: in Omnivore -> View -> Character Display -> Antic 4 and View -> Bitmap Display -> what ?

 

The character display doesn't matter; we're looking at the Bitmap Display, since these are the custom bitmaps for the Antic 4

characters. So, in the Bitmap Display, you want to set it to view as Antic E; this will give you the proper shaped pixels for

Antic 4 character bitmaps.

Edited by MrFish
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TIX, just keep on doing what you are doing and experiment with Omnivore etc after a while its becomes almost second nature to recognise groups of data as sprite or character data, same as coders can look at raw hex memory and spot code chunks, its all just familiarity and a bit of common sense (for code chunks it helps knowing machine language op codes as well)

 

I used to sit and cheat games on Omnimon but I'd rip screens and sprites as well back then just to play with, you just get used to the way it looks on screen without it sounding a bit Matrix like :)

 

EDIT: I see you are now reading the Matrix :)

 

See, its just getting used to the way it looks

Edited by Mclaneinc
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ok so far so good !

 

I have identified all the pieces I want to edit,

Now how can I edit them ?!?

I have not been able to found an edit option in Omnivore, so I searched by Hex Address 4b70 (for my example critter) in hackomatic.. again nothing recognizable..

Also how to you change the color in Omnivore ?

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The character display doesn't matter; we're looking at the Bitmap Display, since these are the custom bitmaps for the Antic 4

characters. So, in the Bitmap Display, you want to set it to view as Antic E; this will give you the proper shaped pixels for

Antic 4 character bitmaps.

 

 

ok so far so good !

 

I have identified all the pieces I want to edit,

Now how can I edit them ?!?

I have not been able to found an edit option in Omnivore, so I searched by Hex Address 4b70 (for my example critter) in hackomatic.. again nothing recognizable..

Also how to you change the color in Omnivore ?

 

hmmm according to omnivore's help: there is a bitmap editor included but currently is little more than an image viewer :(

So the question is, does a bitmap editor exist out there ? Or You have to dig into hex editing.... :skull:

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ok so far so good !

 

I have identified all the pieces I want to edit,

Now how can I edit them ?!?

I have not been able to found an edit option in Omnivore, so I searched by Hex Address 4b70 (for my example critter) in hackomatic.. again nothing recognizable..

Also how to you change the color in Omnivore ?

 

hmmm according to omnivore's help: there is a bitmap editor included but currently is little more than an image viewer :(

So the question is, does a bitmap editor exist out there ? Or You have to dig into hex editing.... :skull:

 

Yeah, I don't think Omnivore can edit bitmaps by directly editing pixels yet. I'll like to see this feature happen.

 

So, you have two choices. You can either edit the Hex in Omnivore or you can work with bit pairs in Hackomatic.

 

In case you don't know, multicolor bitmaps are all encoded in some bit depth. The amount of colors possible

determines the bit depth. In the mode we're talking about here, there are 4 possible colors per pixel (swapable

with one other color by using an inverse video character code). With 4 possible colors, your bit depth is 2.

The reason the bit depth is 2 is because it takes exactly 2 bits (in binary code) to represent 4 numbers.

 

The 4 binary numbers are these:

 

Binary Decimal

------ -------

00 = 0

01 = 1

10 = 2

11 = 3

 

All that means in Hackomatic is that each pair of dots/pixels (rather than just a single dot)

represents some color. So in the binary table above, wherever you see a "1" that represents a

pixels that would be "on" and wherever you see a "0" that represents a pixel that would be off.

 

If you compare how the bits are laid out in Hackomatic with the colors shown in Omnivore, you

can see which bit pairs represent which colors. After that, you can go ahead and start editing.

 

In answer to your other question: you change the colors in Omnivore in the "Colors" submenu, which is under

the "View" main menu item.

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