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Can some explain Basic mode 12 or 13?


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I'm fairly new to programming the Atari and I'm learning all about display lists and modes.  I understand how to enable BASIC's graphics mode 12 and 13, but I don't really understand what it is used for.  When I print #6,"HELLO" to the screen, I can clearly see the text letters.  And if I change the colors around, I can even get it to look the same a graphics mode 0.  It looks like certain colors appear in certain areas of each character.  But I'm not sure how I can change the colors within the character.  I imagine there's something in how the font is defined which defines the colors within each character, but I haven't found anything which describes how to do it.  Is this how it works?  And if so how do you define the colors within each character?

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24 minutes ago, tocksin said:

I'm fairly new to programming the Atari and I'm learning all about display lists and modes.  I understand how to enable BASIC's graphics mode 12 and 13, but I don't really understand what it is used for.  When I print #6,"HELLO" to the screen, I can clearly see the text letters.  And if I change the colors around, I can even get it to look the same a graphics mode 0.  It looks like certain colors appear in certain areas of each character.  But I'm not sure how I can change the colors within the character.  I imagine there's something in how the font is defined which defines the colors within each character, but I haven't found anything which describes how to do it.  Is this how it works?  And if so how do you define the colors within each character?

OS Graphics modes 12 and 13, which were added to the XL/XE OS, correspond to ANTIC modes 4 and 5.

 

These are multi-colored character modes, where each tile is 4x8, and each group of two bytes corresponds to a pixel of one of 5 colors. 5? Yes, if the high bit of the character is set, then COLPF3 is used.

 

-Thom

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13 hours ago, tocksin said:

I imagine there's something in how the font is defined which defines the colors within each character, but I haven't found anything which describes how to do it.  Is this how it works?  And if so how do you define the colors within each character?

Most preferably you'd want to use a font editing program that supports these modes to redefine a character set (or character sets).

 

Macro Edit (EdMac) is a one such program for doing so. Another one is Graph2Font. The two programs are vastly different, and provide means for a wide variety of uses. They both only support Graphics 12 (Antic 4) (and some other modes that you haven't mentioned) -- although, theoretically you could design Graphics 13 (Antic 5) character sets in them (double-pixel height being the only difference).

 

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4 minutes ago, ilmenit said:

I would recommend much simpler tool than Graph2Font, which I often use for quick prototyping:

http://matosimi.websupport.sk/atari/atari-fontmaker/

Simpler depends on what you want to do. If you want to turn some graphics into a font, you might spend half a week clicking pixels that would take you 5 minutes to convert in Graph2Font.

 

I recently did just that, for my slot game that I was updating the graphics on, which uses Graphics 12 (Antic 4) on the upper part of the screen.

 

slots-updated.thumb.png.db2f0fdf5fe1211853528ad97e070736.png

 

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1 hour ago, MrFish said:

Simpler depends on what you want to do. If you want to turn some graphics into a font, you might spend half a week clicking pixels that would take you 5 minutes to convert in Graph2Font.

 

I recently did just that, for my slot game that I was updating the graphics on, which uses Graphics 12 (Antic 4) on the upper part of the screen.

Sure, depends on the use-case, but I had in mind the general complexity of the tool for a beginner.

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8 hours ago, ilmenit said:

Sure, depends on the use-case, but I had in mind the general complexity of the tool for a beginner.

Yeah, I recommend FontMaker for basic font editing; I used it to create all the fonts for The Last Word. I use Macro Edit more often, though, when it comes to game graphics. It has Macros (joining multiple characters together in a single graphic) and can work with and save out (in multiple formats) large screen maps (up to 128 x 128). Plus it's an Atari 8-bit application, which some people may be more interested in working with (as opposed to PC applications).

 

Another font editing program I'd recommend is Envision. I never really got into using it myself, but it's a highly regarded editor. It also comes in Atari 8-bit and PC versions.

 

Envision (8-bit)

 

EnvisionPC

 

 

 

Edited by MrFish
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15 hours ago, MrFish said:

Yeah, I recommend FontMaker for basic font editing; I used it to create all the fonts for The Last Word.

I should say, all the fonts except the default 40 & 80 column ones. The 40-column default is just the standard Atari system font, and the 80-column default is one that was designed by @flashjazzcat.

 

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