Magellan

[Asmusr]

Copying 16 characters in the UI one by one using Ctrl-c, Ctrl-v should only take a few minutes. Note that if you need to move a character, just click the character, hold down Shift and click the destination.

 

[1980gamer]

On 12/19/2022 at 12:42 AM, Asmusr said:

Copying 16 characters in the UI one by one using Ctrl-c, Ctrl-v should only take a few minutes. Note that if you need to move a character, just click the character, hold down Shift and click the destination.

 

OMG, MOVE... this is great to know!  I will use this often.

 

I downloaded the latest version today. I tried to export an XB Display Merge file.  It lets me export data statements that are 32 chars wide. But the data is all spaces, not the actual screen data.

The 28 wide mode works fine.

 

 

[sometimes99er]

On 1/13/2023 at 1:25 PM, 1980gamer said:

I downloaded the latest version today. I tried to export an XB Display Merge file.  It lets me export data statements that are 32 chars wide. But the data is all spaces, not the actual screen data.

The 28 wide mode works fine.

Seems to be working as it should. The 32 chars option produces an offset of >60. 😉
Click the white on blue "Magellan" below for instructions.
Functionality added is almost 10 years old. Ha. 😄

 

Edited January 15, 2023 by sometimes99er

[1980gamer]

3 hours ago, sometimes99er said:

Seems to be working as it should. 😉

Thanks @sometimes99er

 

I was trying to "view" the data with CALL LINK("DISPLY"......  NOT VWRITE  I also did not use 128 offset.

 

[1980gamer]

While I am picking up tricks..

I noticed that you SWAP characters the same way.  I grabbed char 96 and holding shift and put it in char 99.  Char 99 became what was char 96 and 99 became what was 96.

 

Id their a way to select for chars and make a sprite?  That is, select say 96,97,98,99 and make it sprite 1?

OR the reverse, grab Sprite 1 and make it 4 chars?  I know I can copy 16 chars at a time to do this.  Cannot paste as easy INTO sprites.  I had to do 16+16+16+16 into notepad.  then past the 64 to a sprite.

 

Thank you all!

[SteveB]

Today seems to be TiCodEd advertising day ... sorry for that.

 

For sprites the TiCodEd Char Editor has some nice features, like copy & pasting definitions up to 2x2 definitions directly from and to the editor in the "Hex Definition" field at the buttom. You can also load a picture in the background as a model for your sprite. If there is no one comming up with a trick for Magellan, you may give it a try.

 

For backgrounds and maps, Megellan still rules and I have no intention to challange this.

 

 

 

For sizes 1xN or 2x2N an additional section for animations appears:

 

 

You can play the animation while editing to see the result immediately.

 

[oddemann]

On 1/14/2023 at 1:41 PM, SteveB said:

Today seems to be TiCodEd advertising day ... sorry for that.

 

For sprites the TiCodEd Char Editor has some nice features, like copy & pasting definitions up to 2x2 definitions directly from and to the editor in the "Hex Definition" field at the buttom. You can also load a picture in the background as a model for your sprite. If there is no one comming up with a trick for Magellan, you may give it a try.

 

For backgrounds and maps, Megellan still rules and I have no intention to challange this.

 

 

 

For sizes 1xN or 2x2N an additional section for animations appears:

 

 

You can play the animation while editing to see the result immediately.

 

How do you get the animation to appear...

Set it to User - Row > Column (as many as the anim is)

Edited January 15, 2023 by oddemann
Figured it out!

[SteveB]

10 minutes ago, oddemann said:

How do you get the animation to appear?

Simply by selecting a size of 1 row and n>1 columns or 2 rows and 4,8,12,16,... columns in the Size&Grouping:

 

[retrodroid]

On 11/28/2022 at 1:01 PM, Asmusr said:

RLE is currently only available for assembly data export. Anyone is welcome to contribute. 

Here's a funny story about how dumb I am.  So I finally got around to working on my "enhanced" RLE compressor, one that will support the Expanded character set (with chars 0-255 on the map). I had put this off kind of dreading having to configure the environment with the Magellan source, build, etc. and jumping back into Java after some years... as you do.  So it ends up taking me about 1 hour to configure IntelliJ with the Magellan source and having the entire thing implemented nicely. Funny how some things turn out to be way easier than you expect (that's not the dumb part, just typical human behaviour I think). 🙂

 

So after analyzing my test output and seeing how closely the reality matches the estimations I had made earlier (always nice!) I have one those sudden realizations that makes your face go grey and your heart sink.

I had been developing my game character set using Magellan's "Super Character Set" configuration. I mean, who wouldn't want 2K of character space for their map! It's a no-brainer!  Those whiny developer's from the 80's always complaining about ridiculous resource limitations, I mean, 2K just for characters! My possibilities are endless.  ...or, so I thought.  Reviewing the RLE output made me realize that some of my map's character "bytes" were quite some amount larger than 255/>FF. Barring some kind of xmas miracle in March, I'm not seeing how I can use those above 255 on the actual screen anytime soon.  😬🤔🥴😱😭

 

So yeah, I've got some serious refactoring/planning ahead of me. 

 

 

 

 

 

[Asmusr]

12 hours ago, retrodroid said:

I had been developing my game character set using Magellan's "Super Character Set" configuration.

Maybe it should be renamed to "Virtual Character Set"?

[thegeps]

13 hours ago, retrodroid said:

So after analyzing my test output   Reviewing the RLE output made me realize that some of my map's character "bytes" were quite some amount larger than 255/>FF. Barring some kind of xmas miracle in March, I'm not seeing how I can use those above 255 on the actual screen anytime soon.  

Well, depending on your gameplay you can redefine your characters on the fly. I don't know how TI99/4A works (I develop on MSX, wich share the same VDP) but I think should be possible the same I'm doing on MSX. If you have a fixed screens game (so no scrolling, just a screen change when crossing the borders or completing a level) you can switch off the svreen display, redefine the needed characters, build the scene and finally re enable the screen.

 

And even when you have scrolling you can safely redefine a good amount of character building accordingly your maps

[retrodroid]

Yes, it turns out most of my chars defined over 255 are already used for animation purposes so not a huge problem there. The biggest limiter I'm finding is of course the colour restrictions, having to dedicate 8 chars for each colour "behaviour". Anyway, this is making me get my pencil out finally to plan exactly where everything will end up, instead of just adding elements willy-nilly.  It's overcoming the limitations that make it fun, at the end of the day. 

 

Q: for @Asmusr, if I wanted to contribute this RLE back to Magellan, where should I put my Assembly Language unpack routine so folks can find it in the future. Just put something up on GitHub for it?

 

 

[Asmusr]

On 3/16/2023 at 3:00 PM, retrodroid said:

Q: for @Asmusr, if I wanted to contribute this RLE back to Magellan, where should I put my Assembly Language unpack routine so folks can find it in the future. Just put something up on GitHub for it?

You should put them in dist/examples.

[tschak909]

Hey all,

 

Is there a way that I can just get the raw character and nametable data? Having these headered files is actually a pain in the butt for using this outside of TI99 usage.

 

-Thom

[PeteE]

2 hours ago, tschak909 said:

Hey all,

 

Is there a way that I can just get the raw character and nametable data? Having these headered files is actually a pain in the butt for using this outside of TI99 usage.

 

-Thom

Hi Thom,

 

I wrote a python tool to extract data from a .mag file directly into binary and other formats I use in my projects.  You could extract the binary char patterns and nametable data like this:

python3 mag.py -c 0 256 -bin -o charpats.bin source.mag
python3 mag.py -m 1 -bin -o nametabl.bin source.mag

Hope that it useful to you.  For reference, here are the accepted arguments:

# ./mag.py <args> <filename>.mag
# -c <id> <n>  starting and count of char defs
# -C <id> <n>  starting and count of color defs (bitmap)
# -s <id> <n>  starting and count of sprites
# -m <id>      map screen (first = 1)
# -sl <id>     sprite list (first = 1)
# -comp        compress sprites using reflection/rotation/symmetry
# -dan2        compress data using DAN2
# -dan2offset  DAN2 maximum offset size in bits, 10-16, default 11
# -bin         output as binary (otherwise DATA)
# -o <filename>   output to file (otherwise stdout)

 

mag.py dan2.py

[tschak909]

14 minutes ago, PeteE said:

Hi Thom,

 

I wrote a python tool to extract data from a .mag file directly into binary and other formats I use in my projects.  You could extract the binary char patterns and nametable data like this:

python3 mag.py -c 0 256 -bin -o charpats.bin source.mag
python3 mag.py -m 1 -bin -o nametabl.bin source.mag

Hope that it useful to you.  For reference, here are the accepted arguments:

# ./mag.py <args> <filename>.mag
# -c <id> <n>  starting and count of char defs
# -C <id> <n>  starting and count of color defs (bitmap)
# -s <id> <n>  starting and count of sprites
# -m <id>      map screen (first = 1)
# -sl <id>     sprite list (first = 1)
# -comp        compress sprites using reflection/rotation/symmetry
# -dan2        compress data using DAN2
# -dan2offset  DAN2 maximum offset size in bits, 10-16, default 11
# -bin         output as binary (otherwise DATA)
# -o <filename>   output to file (otherwise stdout)

 

mag.py 8.15 kB · 0 downloads dan2.py 6.92 kB · 0 downloads

Thank you.

 

-Thom