Tiles Converter

[rocky007]

I wanted to show the little tool i coded to desgin my tiles. It's made in Flash, and i'm guessing that it could interest somebody here.

If yes, i can make some "friendly user" upgrade and put online.

 

How is it working :

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On the left the original picture in JPG. On the bottom, the decrypted image and on the right, with a green zone,

the BASIC code conversion. Everytime u press spacebar, it convert in BASIC the content of the green zone.

You can choose 2 colors to be converted. By exemple, in this screenshot, i wanted to convert the black color and the red one.

An auto increment is used to create a immediate BASIC LISTING, the black color is converted from ascii 32, and the red from ascii 82.

[GroovyBee]

Just a thought. JPG is "lossy" and has artefacts. You might want to support *.bmp, *.png or *.gif files instead.

[sometimes99er]

Okay, so you're extracting a certain area of a picture. It looks awesome. Of course I would like you to upgrade and put online.

 

 

PS. I love Flash.

[ti99iuc]

Great !

[Opry99er]

Very cool, man!!! Love to see this available for us little guys who only code in TI languages. thanks for sharing!

[rocky007]

Hi ! Here it is the very buggy early version of my tiles converter.

 

You can try it there : Preview

 

So, it's not at all optimized, bugged, but u can have a look and send me your ideas

 

I didn't made option to upload picture directly from your computer, so, actually, you have to enter the url of the picture in the first page (in the middle).

there is already a demo url, if you want to use another one, you have to configure flash to accept url from other domains (flash security)

Sorry for this...

 

You can also find my incredible low definition video there (very useless) :

 

So, some explainations.. let's try to convert the main sprite of Bruce Lee.

 

In the left corner, you can find the uploaded picture to convert. It must me already scaled for the TI.

 

The blue grid is the 32*24 char map of the TI-99. It help you to imagine the final size on TI screen.

You have a little green cursor (very small i know), this cursor give you the converted area.

You can move it simply by clicking on it, keep the button down, and move the mouse.

 

 

At this moment, you can see the left bottom windows move, doing a realtime conversion.

You have in background the original picture 12x zoomed, and on it, the 16 colors grid.

The big green area is the area that will be converted in CALL CHAR.

All colors are converted from 0 to F (hex). For information, a little area on the right show you the current color & code under the mouse.

 

Note : for best result, use only sharp GIF/PNG picture, with less colors possible.

 

 

On the Bruce lee gif, the yellow is coded by "F", and the black is coded by "1".

So, move the cursor to Bruce Lee. Actually, all colors are converted. To "clean", you can unselected the useless colors.

 

For this, use the "color mapping" area. You can select and unselected any of the 16 colors codes. In our case, Bruce Lee is only 2 colors, the yellow

and the black. You can unselect all colors, but keep the "F" and "1" colors.

 

 

Then, to convert Bruce Lee, we need 2 charset, one for the yellow, and one for the black. All colors selected in the "charset 1" will be converted by "1" (in inary, before HEX conversion for CALL CHAR).

In our case, we only need the black, so just select "F". For the charset 2, we also need only 1 color, the black, so select "1" in "charset 2" panel.

 

Moving the cursor by keyobard is very easy : use simply the cursor to move by 1 pixel, and SHIFT + cursor to move by 8 pixels.

 

 

So, locate your cursor on the beginning of Bruce Lee, and press "SPACE BAR". At this moment, the green area is converted in CALL CHAR, the black pixels in Charset 1 window,

and the yellow pixels in Charset 2 window. To convert this sprite, it need 2*3 tiles. So, move using "SHIFT + Cursor left" to select the next 8 pixels area, press again spacebar,...etc..until you converted all bruce less area.

 

Then, just copy & paste in classic 99, and your Bruce lee sprite is converted !

 

 

To do :

 

- resizing the original picture

- upload picture directly from your computer

- actually you can't change the starting number line & ascii code (bug..)

- optimizing

- windows showing you the binary conversion, with inverse/mirror function

- zoom function on the original picture

 

i hope it's nealry clear, sorry my horrible english...

[rocky007]

Just few bugs removed today...and little bit faster to use

[+retroclouds]

Nice work rocky007!

 

So if I understand correctly, you can take a screenshot, scale it for matching the TI screen resolution and then extract the pattern data. I am sure this will come in handy

[Opry99er]

Yea man--- that's a pretty wicked program you've got brewing there!!!! Love the Bruce Lee stuff too. Very very cool.

 

keep us updated, sir!!! Thanks alot buddy

[rocky007]

Nice work rocky007!

 

So if I understand correctly, you can take a screenshot, scale it for matching the TI screen resolution and then extract the pattern data. I am sure this will come in handy

 

yes it's exactly this. i'm finishing the new version, i hope it will be online next week...