Graphics conversion

[GroovyBee]

Does an application exist that will convert windows *.bmp files into DECLE statements? Its hard going hand converting . If it supports multicoloured sprites that's a bonus. If not, I'll have to knuckle down and write my own.

[intvnut]

Does an application exist that will convert windows *.bmp files into DECLE statements? Its hard going hand converting . If it supports multicoloured sprites that's a bonus. If not, I'll have to knuckle down and write my own.

 

 

I haven't written anything. I've just been doing my graphics in a text editor. (Heck, I sourced 95% of Space Patrol's graphics in VI, which means, if nothing else, I'm weird.) I do have some fancier macros that support that a little better now. I suspect that's not what you want.

 

Arnauld Chevallier may have written such a utility already, but I don't know if he's published it. You might try sending him a short email (or I could, pointing him to this topic).

 

As for multicolor, I presume you mean supporting some sort of color separation to support overlaying multiple monochrome sprites to get a multicolored effect? I've sometimes thought about writing a tool to help with that, although it gets tricky when the different constituent MOBs have different resolutions/aspect ratios, or are offset in ways that don't line up to the pixel grid.

 

Back when I was still writing tutorial material for IntelliWiki, I had done up the diagram below to show how I had constructed the Space Patrol tank out of 2 MOBs. Both were set to stretch horizontally, but they were offset so that their pixels didn't line up. One of the MOBs was set to 8x16 mode and the other to 8x8.

 

 

Too bad I never got around to writing the MOB tutorial.

 

<offtopic>

BTW, if you want to use any of my images that I had put together for any of your own tutorials, feel free. Just go to the "unused files" page on IntelliWiki. There's diagrams showing all the stretching/mirroring modes, MOB priority, the MOB's X/Y coordinate grid and how it relates to border extension and scrolling...</offtopic>

[GroovyBee]

I haven't written anything. I've just been doing my graphics in a text editor. (Heck, I sourced 95% of Space Patrol's graphics in VI, which means, if nothing else, I'm weird.) I do have some fancier macros that support that a little better now. I suspect that's not what you want.

 

On several of my 7800 games I've worked with an artist. Its much easier for me to run the artwork through my own bitmap conversion tool to generate the graphics source code for the game. It would be a rather laborious to do so by hand.

 

As for multicolor, I presume you mean supporting some sort of color separation to support overlaying multiple monochrome sprites to get a multicolored effect?

 

Yep! Thats what I mean. I think I'll put together a tool to automate the conversion process once I've finished experimenting with what I've got going so far. It'll just have basic functionality to start with.

 

BTW, if you want to use any of my images that I had put together for any of your own tutorials, feel free.

 

I'll take you up on that offer of using your materials for the tutorials. It'll make my life much easier.

[Arnauld]

Does an application exist that will convert windows *.bmp files into DECLE statements? Its hard going hand converting . If it supports multicoloured sprites that's a bonus. If not, I'll have to knuckle down and write my own.

 

Arnauld Chevallier may have written such a utility already, but I don't know if he's published it. You might try sending him a short email (or I could, pointing him to this topic).

 

Sorry to revive an old thread. I'm jumping into this discussion very late.

 

Here are little online tools that may do the trick for simple graphics conversions:

http://knox.ac.free.fr/inty_workshop

 

You can edit a single card with the 'Card editor' tab, and you can import BMP, PNG and GIF files with the 'Card extractor'. It is assumed that all cards in the provided picture are aligned on a 8x8 virtual grid. It is also assumed that no card is made of more than two distinct colors -- or an error will be issued. I recommend to use "black on something else" or "something else on black". If you don't, it is undetermined which color will be considered as the background color. By default the tool will scan the picture from left to right first, before going on with the next row of cards. You can change this behavior by checking 'scan by columns', in which case it will scan from top to bottom first, before going on with the next column of cards. There are a couple other options that should be self-explanatory.

 

Below is a (small) example of a valid input file.

 

 

9 distinct cards will be extracted with the default options.

 

As Joe mentioned, I did start to write a much more sophisticated Windows app at some point but it was never completed. I'm not much into Windows-specific development anymore, so there's little chance that this project is going to be revived someday. I may however improve the online tools. Any request or suggestion is welcome.