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The Codex

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There seems to be a bit of a bug in the latest version.

 

When the screen is exported (I have only tried it in XB), there is a problem re-drawing the screen. Initially the characters are out of whack then the process halts with an error. I tried the same map using version 6 to export the text file with no problems. Not sure (because I didn't spend as long on it as I probably should have), but I suspect the map size data in version 7 might be causing the issues.

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That's a strange one, Bones. I can't seem to replicate it with my test data, can you possibly attach the map file you are using? If I have that then I should be able to trigger the same error. Thanks!

Attached are the files which seem to be causing some issues. I have "lost" my Photoshop at the moment, but when it gets re-installed I will post some screen shots of what the screen looks like just before it crashes (with a bad value in 1460 error).

File.zip

post-26079-127370595614_thumb.png

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Quite funky man, I can't replicate it with your file, but then my version is way different now from any previous release. Hopefully that bodes well and means it will work with your data. I'm preparing to release it shortly. In the meantime, if you do get the error again please post it. And of course let me know if the new version presents any problems once it comes out.

 

Here's the XB code I was able to save from your file, if you need it.

 

EDIT - Ah, wait, are you getting the error in XB? Sorry, I was thinking the error was in Magellan. Yeah, some of the XB output can contain illegal values, or simple be too large for memory and lead to line loss. Not sure how to get around that yet, working on it. :)

Edited by The Codex
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Codex, have you considered creating a version of your fantastic Magellan program to work with the high resolution bitmap mode? In other words, have a pixel editor that would display coordinates for any particular pixel, as well as show the color boundaries. This would be a life-saver for those of us who work with bitmap modes. I have considered creating something of the kind myself, but I just can't seem to find the time. I tell you it is a bear to line up things on screen pixel-wise...

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That sounds doable Walid. I assume bitmap mode means every single pixel can be set individually, without relying on redefining characters? I can manage that, plus add a grid-based selector that lets you set the foreground/background color pair for each location.

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That sounds doable Walid. I assume bitmap mode means every single pixel can be set individually, without relying on redefining characters? I can manage that, plus add a grid-based selector that lets you set the foreground/background color pair for each location.

There are the ordinary bitmap. Any pixel of the 256x192 can be set or unset. For each 8 pixels horizontally there's a byte containing the pattern/pixels. Also there's one byte containing color information. The upper 4 bits contains the foreground color, and the lower 4 bits contains the background color. So there's a horizontal color limitation. For each 8 pixels horizontally you can only have 2 colors.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MoAMjxsM4HE

 

There's also some hybrid bitmaps with one being especially popular with games. You have 256 characters each with the same constrains as above. One character has 8 bytes of patterns and 8 bytes of colors (that's 2 colors per scanline (horizontally) (foreground and background)).

 

:)

Edited by sometimes99er
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That sounds doable Walid. I assume bitmap mode means every single pixel can be set individually, without relying on redefining characters? I can manage that, plus add a grid-based selector that lets you set the foreground/background color pair for each location.

 

That's great! One should be able to see the x,y coordinates for any selected pixel, which would be a tremendous time saver. When a specific foreground/background color is selected for a particular pixel, one should be able to see immediately what other pixels are affected given that one can only assign colors to 8 pixel rows at a time.

 

Thanks a bunch for looking into this :) You're going to have one eternally grateful programmer!

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There's also some hybrid bitmaps with one being especially popular with games. You have 256 characters each with the same constrains as above. One character has 8 bytes of patterns and 8 bytes of colors (that's 2 colors per scanline (horizontally) (foreground and background)).

 

:)

 

You're talking about the half-bitmap mode. It can produce great results, except that one is still limited to 8x8 pixel manipulation. This works just fine for most programs, but I tend to be very masochistic and prefer the flexibility of bitwise manipulation :)

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New Magellan release out with a whole lotta changes. Expanded character set, color image import, position indicator, text cursor, map counter, and direct line to the Kremlin! (Okay, not the last one.) Grab it from the first post as usual.

 

Think we're getting close to an official release, there's not a whole lot left on the likely list. Let me know if you find any bugs or have new inspiration for features.

 

Walid, I started work on the bitmap editor today (code name Ortelius). Hope to have something to show you soon. The interface works pretty good, but I want to firm up the data side and also get image imports working. It can be a real pain to draw a whole bitmap from scratch with just a pixel brush. :)

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The Magellan color set output does not contain the color set #, it's just foregrounds and backgrounds. Adamantyr wrote a slick screen drawer in XB which takes direct Magellan output and creates an INTERNAL format data file and another program which opens the file and reads the data to the screen. I have made modifications to it and Howard was kind enough to customize the output. The routines are saved to wither the Beryl or Magellan threads. :)

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New Magellan release out with a whole lotta changes. Expanded character set, color image import, position indicator, text cursor, map counter, and direct line to the Kremlin! (Okay, not the last one.) Grab it from the first post as usual.

 

Think we're getting close to an official release, there's not a whole lot left on the likely list. Let me know if you find any bugs or have new inspiration for features.

 

Walid, I started work on the bitmap editor today (code name Ortelius). Hope to have something to show you soon. The interface works pretty good, but I want to firm up the data side and also get image imports working. It can be a real pain to draw a whole bitmap from scratch with just a pixel brush. :)

 

Ah yes :) Abraham Ortelius. Well chosen name indeed! I am eagerly awaiting the first glimpse of life...

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Cheers all, and I'm doing a rush fix of a couple things this morning. I'm going to repair the XB output, and also constrain the character sets on save to only those legal for the target output (so no more saving out-of-range characters and colorsets in BASIC, for one).

 

How great that you know who Ortelius is, Walid! I will indeed try to have something to show you this weekend. My main priority at the moment is converting the underlying data model to bytes in the same format as TI uses. Once that's done it will eliminate a lot of kludgy code I put in the first draft.

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The patched version is up. I have fixed and tested the XB export, plus added in better validation checking for character range exports. Also addressed a couple non-critical bugs while I was in there.

 

post-25494-12739390593_thumb.png

The XB export seems to be working great! Thanks!

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One more fix in the code. Might add another feature or two, but otherwise I think the next release will be the first official version of the prog. That will mark the stabilisation of the save format as well, so you can count on it remaining relatively stable through any future releases. If there is a must-have feature that isn't in yet, let me know and I'll try to address it before the 1.0 pushout. Thanks again all!

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Codex.... From all of us, THANK YOU!!! You have been such a great advocate in this group, and your programming efforts have strengthened our programming community in a noticable and significant way. It's been a rough couple weeks for me--- I have not been as active as I'd like... I'll now be "gellin" for years to come. =) These are great times for us. And we're lucky to have you involved with the TI-99 community.

 

BTW, you need to get your ass to the Faire so you can DEMO these excellent programs for the 99ers up there. =)

 

 

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Well if you fell into THAT lava, you wouldn't be able to type... I think you're lying. This lava is over 400 trillion degrees when it's not erupting. And when it DOES erupt, you're in for it... Multiply the heat by a factor of infinity and add 2 to it. =) In fact, all the higher level enemies in this world use fire magic, and you'll need to stock up on "glacier water" and make sure to have the shield of Wooldridge equipped, lest ye be consumed by yon demonic lava. May whatever god you serve go with you on this journey... You will need all the help you can get!!!

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Looking really nice! These are my thoughts as I poke around with it:

 

* The hex character code at the top (displays to the right of the decimal character code) should have a > in front of it an the A - F in the number should be upper case. It took me a few minutes to figure out what it was since all the characters I just happened to click on had all-digit hex values, so I was seeing: 128 and 80, 129 and 81, etc. It was confusing.

 

* On the main screen layout, it would be nice if the cursor highlight followed the mouse instead of staying highlighted on the last character you put down.

 

* On the main screen layout, it would be nice to right-click erase instead of having to go select the space character. Or have some sort of toggle when you left-click, or something. Maybe this is not a big deal for larger layouts that use more characters, but I found myself going back and forth a lot to get the space character.

 

* I found I needed to move entire blocks of characters to make room for others in a set, but I could not find any way to do that without copying each character's code. A copy, paste, move of entire characters or a range-selected group of characters in the character window would be nice.

 

Ah, I just discovered the "look at character" feature. So that's like the eye-dropper in paint programs. Very cool. If that could be made into a hot-key then it would make the going back and forth to the character window much less frequent.

 

Anyway, just thoughts. It is definitely a nice piece of work and I'm sure it will get a lot of use!

 

Matthew

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