Images generated by RastaConverter

[+Philsan]

Nice images, especially the car.

 

For XEXs filenames, could you please use the format introduced by Atari Online and recommended in topic's first post?

 

Author's name_imagename

[Beeblebrox]

24 minutes ago, Philsan said:

Nice images, especially the car.

 

For XEXs filenames, could you please use the format introduced by Atari Online and recommended in topic's first post?

 

Author's name_imagename

Thanks.

Doh, complete forgot this time around re file name convention. (Use to prefix all my conversion filenames with Beeblebrox - dunno why  I've neglected to of late.)

Thanks for the reminder. 

[Gunstar]

Here is an image from several years ago that I made dozens of attempts at converting to my liking, both vertically and horizontally oriented. Something happened though, like an .xex of my final image was lost, IIRC. I spent so much time on this image that I even invented a short story about it that I did post, along with the horizontally oriented .png image, again, IIRC, with the possibility of revisiting it later. I will be doing that soon. However, I've decided to post one of my earlier vertically oriented attempts that I passed on posting as I felt it lacked much of the atmospheric color of the original image. But having come across it again recently, I've decided I like this low color count version more than I once did. 

 

Sometimes my perfectionism gets the better of me and I hold back conversions that I find are actually quite good with the new perspective from time passed. I keep some as a "back-up plan" if I fail to make a better conversion, but they sometimes are forgotten and I stumble across them later. But if I'm not satisfied with a conversion at the time they usually get discarded for better or worse, so I don't have a huge "stash" of unposted conversions, but there are a few that get "lost" amongst hundreds of files "stashed" that I have posted and they catch my eye while scrolling through them all.

 

The one caveat this time is that I've no idea the exact color count because with this conversion (and a few others at the time) somehow my default setting to save as a .png file somehow was changed to save as a .jpg file with me unaware of the situation until later. So the image below is a .jpg and not a one-for-one, .png vs. xex. color image.

 

 

 

Peculiar Illuminations.

 

GS_PeculiarIlluminations.xex

 

More of Bonestell's Sci-fi art and art of Isaac Asimov's Foundation series to come...

Edited April 20, 2023 by Gunstar

[+gnusto]

Trying to stick with making NTSC palettes work...here is a colorful eye.

Original has 34,736 colors:

Output is 87 colors:


It still makes me smile thinking of how much this would have completely flipped our lids in the 80s. The hardware was capable, we just didn't know it yet!

gn_eye.xex

 

InputName: colorful-eye.png
CmdLine: colorful-eye.png /pal=Palettes/Altirra_Default_NTSC_XL.pal /dither_val=.6 /init=less /s=10000 /threads=6 /distance=cie94 /dither=knoll /predistance=ciede /save=100000000
Evaluations: 26270199412 (I left it running on my server with 6 cores for a long time)
Score: 0.201025

[Beeblebrox]

47 minutes ago, gnusto said:

Trying to stick with making NTSC palettes work...here is a colorful eye.

Original has 34,736 colors:

Output is 87 colors:


It still makes me smile thinking of how much this would have completely flipped our lids in the 80s. The hardware was capable, we just didn't know it yet!

gn_eye.xex

 

InputName: colorful-eye.png
CmdLine: colorful-eye.png /pal=Palettes/Altirra_Default_NTSC_XL.pal /dither_val=.6 /init=less /s=10000 /threads=6 /distance=cie94 /dither=knoll /predistance=ciede /save=100000000
Evaluations: 26270199412 (I left it running on my server with 6 cores for a long time)
Score: 0.201025

Very nice

 

Yeah, I agree. It took the power of modern fast computational hardware and and Ilmenit's coding genius to make it viable, but ultimately it's the original 40 year old Atari 8-bit chipset doing all the work to display these amazing colours, (albeit at the expense of 99% of the 6502 CPU resources, etc). Oh to have a time machine to visit a teenage me! (Mind you he'd probably freak out coming face to face with older me heh heh! )

 

With this eye image it would be interesting to see:

 

• How it looks without any dithering (obviously I appreciate it's unlilkely you will want to re-run the conversion again to see)
• To know if you had run it through Sheddy's tool to remove any present HPOS errors?

 

Edited April 20, 2023 by Beeblebrox

[Gunstar]

2 hours ago, gnusto said:

Trying to stick with making NTSC palettes work...here is a colorful eye.

Original has 34,736 colors:

Output is 87 colors:


It still makes me smile thinking of how much this would have completely flipped our lids in the 80s. The hardware was capable, we just didn't know it yet!

gn_eye.xex

 

InputName: colorful-eye.png
CmdLine: colorful-eye.png /pal=Palettes/Altirra_Default_NTSC_XL.pal /dither_val=.6 /init=less /s=10000 /threads=6 /distance=cie94 /dither=knoll /predistance=ciede /save=100000000
Evaluations: 26270199412 (I left it running on my server with 6 cores for a long time)
Score: 0.201025

I most certainly would have flipped out over images like these! I flipped out of 80x92 (80x192 interlaced) 256 color A8 images with alternating 16 color one hue line and one color 16 hue line (grayscale generally) with very washed out looking color since there was color to only half the horizontal lines on top of a TV/monitor already displaying a 240p image on a 480i screen skipping every other scanline by default!

Of course interlaced modes made the images more solid looking with slightly enhanced color saturation at the expense of creating heavy flicker to the images. 

 

But more than showing my teenage self Rastaconverter images, I'd love to show Amiga(before HAM* mode images) owners and ST(before Spectrum 512 images) owners what Jay Miner's 8-bit Amiga jr. from 1979 can still do.

 

Could you imagine being at Winter '86 CES (Consumer Electronics Show) with 16-bit Amigas and ST's showing off their DEGAS and NEOCHROME images on their RGB monitors, with an Atari 130XE system** across the isle, for half the price showing Rastaconverter images?! If you were an artist looking to getting into digital pixel art which of the three systems would you have made a bee-line for?

 

Though, of course. Jack Tramiel would never have allowed Rasta images on the 8-bit line in site of his beloved ST line at a CES show, even if he did use them to push more 8-bits out the door when not being compared to the ST. He'd have loved comparing them to the Amiga separately from the ST line though, I'm sure. Especially after Spectrum 512 came out making the ST's look a lot better when compared to the Amiga graphics.

 

All completely fantastical though, even if the reality of these images being displayed by an 8-bit Atari is fact today, since the images require a highly advanced computer and software converter that wouldn't exist for another nearly 30 years that could create the images for display on the A8. But a time machine and some stealth is all that would be required now to at least have some .xex images ready for display and Winter CES '86 by some wacky 40-60 something year old A8 fan from 2023 to create some electrifying chaos and shocked and astounded confusion by one and all!

 

*-I hope I remembered "HAM" correctly.

**-"system" meaning disk drive and monitor just like the 16-bit computers included.

Edited April 20, 2023 by Gunstar

[tebe]

European Union to ban ChatGPT and any other AI including Rasta Converter

[a8isa1]

9 hours ago, gnusto said:

Trying to stick with making NTSC palettes work...here is a colorful eye.

Original has 34,736 colors:

Output is 87 colors:


It still makes me smile thinking of how much this would have completely flipped our lids in the 80s. The hardware was capable, we just didn't know it yet!

gn_eye.xex

 

InputName: colorful-eye.png
CmdLine: colorful-eye.png /pal=Palettes/Altirra_Default_NTSC_XL.pal /dither_val=.6 /init=less /s=10000 /threads=6 /distance=cie94 /dither=knoll /predistance=ciede /save=100000000
Evaluations: 26270199412 (I left it running on my server with 6 cores for a long time)
Score: 0.201025

This is next level!

 

Thanks for doing NTSC conversions!

[a8isa1]

14 hours ago, Gunstar said:

Here is an image from several years ago that I made dozens of attempts at converting to my liking, both vertically and horizontally oriented. Something happened though, like an .xex of my final image was lost, IIRC. I spent so much time on this image that I even invented a short story about it that I did post, along with the horizontally oriented .png image, again, IIRC, with the possibility of revisiting it later. I will be doing that soon. However, I've decided to post one of my earlier vertically oriented attempts that I passed on posting as I felt it lacked much of the atmospheric color of the original image. But having come across it again recently, I've decided I like this low color count version more than I once did. 

 

Sometimes my perfectionism gets the better of me and I hold back conversions that I find are actually quite good with the new perspective from time passed. I keep some as a "back-up plan" if I fail to make a better conversion, but they sometimes are forgotten and I stumble across them later. But if I'm not satisfied with a conversion at the time they usually get discarded for better or worse, so I don't have a huge "stash" of unposted conversions, but there are a few that get "lost" amongst hundreds of files "stashed" that I have posted and they catch my eye while scrolling through them all.

 

The one caveat this time is that I've no idea the exact color count because with this conversion (and a few others at the time) somehow my default setting to save as a .png file somehow was changed to save as a .jpg file with me unaware of the situation until later. So the image below is a .jpg and not a one-for-one, .png vs. xex. color image.

 

 

 

Peculiar Illuminations.

 

GS_PeculiarIlluminations.xex 22.12 kB · 8 downloads

 

More of Bonestell's Sci-fi art and art of Isaac Asimov's Foundation series to come...

Stunning!

[Beeblebrox]

Given all the wonderful 3D engines either released or being worked on at present for the A8 - (in particular Swiety's astounding WIP DOOM engine having been showcased in the amazing Rewind demo last year), I tried my hand at converting another DOOM title screen image. This time the classic one.

(Incidentally I'd already converted another take on a DOOM title screen a couple of years back here which turned out pretty good )

 

I really wanted to try converting this image myself. (IIRC Emkay had a similar conversion in an A8 DOOM music demo of his)

 

Anyways I ran this one a long time.

 

8 bill evaluations - 276 norm dist on YUV/YUV - 25000 solutions - Altirra PAL pallette

 

77 unique colours

 

Filename: Beeblebrox_DOOMArtSm1_32_Fixed_centered.xex

320*200 letter box image  - Fixed and centrered with Sheddy's tools

 

(image grab from Altirra with pal high artifacting enabled)

Beeblebrox_DOOMArtSm1_32_Fixed_centered.xex

Edited April 20, 2023 by Beeblebrox

[Gunstar]

39 minutes ago, Beeblebrox said:

Given all the wonderful 3D engines either released or being worked on at present for the A8 - (in particular Swiety's astounding WIP DOOM engine having been showcased in the amazing Rewind demo last year), I tried my hand at converting another DOOM title screen image. This time the classic one.

(Incidentally I'd already converted another take on a DOOM title screen a couple of years back here which turned out pretty good )

 

I really wanted to try converting this image myself. (IIRC Emkay had a similar conversion in an A8 DOOM music demo of his)

 

Anyways I ran this one a long time.

 

8 bill evaluations - 276 norm dist on YUV/YUV - 25000 solutions - Altirra PAL pallette

 

77 unique colours

 

Filename: Beeblebrox_DOOMArtSm1_32_Fixed_centered.xex

320*200 letter box image  - Fixed and centrered with Sheddy's tools

 

(image grab from Altirra with pal high artifacting enabled)

Beeblebrox_DOOMArtSm1_32_Fixed_centered.xex 18.98 kB · 2 downloads

That turned out very well! I've been playing Doom II a lot lately. But it's the Jaguar's JagDoom engine running approximately ported levels keeping within the constraints of the original JagDoom engine. There are two hacked rom versions I play via the Jaguar GameDrive or Skunkboard previously, that share the same levels the first half of the game then the levels beyond about 8-10 are split between the two rom images. This isn't due to rom memory issues, but rather not having deciphered JagDoom's compression technique for the Doom II levels. Anyway, JagDoom II still rocks!

 

I have all the original PC Doom's ported to the Dreamcast as well as other games using ID's engines. And Doom 3 on my Xbox. Needless to say, I'm still a huge Doom fan, but I'm picky about the systems I play it on. I've a 3DO too, but have never bothered to try it as it's infamously abysmal. Even if it has the music in-game that the Jag lacked (lack of music on the Jaguar version has been found to have been a "bug" in the released rom and just needed to be "turned on" in game)

 

...after decades of getting it on the chin for not having music in-game due to the DSP being used for other things for a lack in other areas. I never believed Doom couldn't run on the Jag with the midi tracks. There's plenty of evidence that most Jag games lacking in something was purely due to over-rushed development times or Atari executives denying requests for larger 4 or 6MB rom carts due to being total cheap-skates and not because the Jag didn't have the processing power to do better.

 

Sorry for the ranting tangent. Obviously I'm a Doom fan and Jaguar fan. The Jaguar was the system I first encountered Doom on, and so it's my preferred platform for the original (and Doom 2-ish)

 

I've seen some of the A8 3D engine demos and of course the first FPS game that was released (sorry, the title slips my old memory atm) but I'll check out the link to see if I've seen this A8 Doom demo/game yet. Is it that monochromatic one first shown in a demo last year sometime?

 

Anyway, that is an excellent Rasta conversion of Doom art! I love it!

[Beeblebrox]

46 minutes ago, Gunstar said:

That turned out very well! I've been playing Doom II a lot lately. But it's the Jaguar's JagDoom engine running approximately ported levels keeping within the constraints of the original JagDoom engine. There are two hacked rom versions I play via the Jaguar GameDrive or Skunkboard previously, that share the same levels the first half of the game then the levels beyond about 8-10 are split between the two rom images. This isn't due to rom memory issues, but rather not having deciphered JagDoom's compression technique for the Doom II levels. Anyway, JagDoom II still rocks!

 

I have all the original PC Doom's ported to the Dreamcast as well as other games using ID's engines. And Doom 3 on my Xbox. Needless to say, I'm still a huge Doom fan, but I'm picky about the systems I play it on. I've a 3DO too, but have never bothered to try it as it's infamously abysmal. Even if it has the music in-game that the Jag lacked (lack of music on the Jaguar version has been found to have been a "bug" in the released rom and just needed to be "turned on" in game)

 

...after decades of getting it on the chin for not having music in-game due to the DSP being used for other things for a lack in other areas. I never believed Doom couldn't run on the Jag with the midi tracks. There's plenty of evidence that most Jag games lacking in something was purely due to over-rushed development times or Atari executives denying requests for larger 4 or 6MB rom carts due to being total cheap-skates and not because the Jag didn't have the processing power to do better.

 

Sorry for the ranting tangent. Obviously I'm a Doom fan and Jaguar fan. The Jaguar was the system I first encountered Doom on, and so it's my preferred platform for the original (and Doom 2-ish)

 

I've seen some of the A8 3D engine demos and of course the first FPS game that was released (sorry, the title slips my old memory atm) but I'll check out the link to see if I've seen this A8 Doom demo/game yet. Is it that monochromatic one first shown in a demo last year sometime?

 

Anyway, that is an excellent Rasta conversion of Doom art! I love it!

thanks, I'm really pleased with it.

 

Yeah I love the Jag Doom version.  I saw on Ebay a Jag DOOM II cart a month or so ago. Did my research and then understood it was a hack with some DOOM II textures running on the DOOM engine.

 

I first encountered DOOM shareware in the 90s on the PC and loved it. Only every played DOOM on PC and Jaguar.

 

So in terms of the 3D DOOM engine Swiety has created and which is part of last Summer's Rewind demo, it is astounding. 16 luma shades, realitime lighting , textured walls. Has to be seen running on an A8 to believe it! Aside the graphics engine itself, the music is fantastic also.

 

The demo segment itself is running on 64k. (Apparently most the segments in the Rewind demos are running in 64k - it's just they decided for smooth demo transitions they'd pack it all into a 1MB demo.

 

Swiety is apparently optimising the engine and I understand there will be 2 x engines - a 64k and also a 128k version.

 

Check the segment out from the REwind demo (where it is set to play at the start of the DOOM demo segment):

 

 

I love all of it but for me the most impressive is towards the end in the open courtyard battling Imps with the sky textures and the fireballs. Amazing.

 

Edit: see this thread for more on the engine (ignore the misleading thread title - it morphed somewhere along the way):

 

To quote Solo/NG at the time (Oct 2022):

 

"Yes there going to be playable version soon from Swiety, one for 130XE (3 banks) one for 64kb xl/xe. He already has it and showed to people on the party but he wants to make it even faster (hehe) and release playable version .xex soon. "

 

***

 

Edit: the FPS game you mentioned is the excellent Final Assault by Globe and Goldie.

https://atari8.dev/final_assault/

 

***

 

Anyway I digress - back to all things Rastaconverter 

Edited April 20, 2023 by Beeblebrox
typo

[+gnusto]

19 hours ago, Beeblebrox said:

• How it looks without any dithering (obviously I appreciate it's unlilkely you will want to re-run the conversion again to see)
• To know if you had run it through Sheddy's tool to remove any present HPOS errors?

I dithered because it looked badly banded without (basically the whole image is gradients of color, so not super surprising).

 

I didn't use Sheddy's tool, excellent as it is, because there didn't seem to be much in the way of horizontal errors he helps correct, but I'll run it through and see.

[Gunstar]

10 hours ago, Beeblebrox said:

 

So in terms of the 3D DOOM engine Swiety has created and which is part of last Summer's Rewind demo, it is astounding. 16 luma shades, realitime lighting , textured walls. Has to be seen running on an A8 to believe it! Aside the graphics engine itself, the music is fantastic also.

 

The demo segment itself is running on 64k. (Apparently most the segments in the Rewind demos are running in 64k - it's just they decided for smooth demo transitions they'd pack it all into a 1MB demo.

 

Swiety is apparently optimising the engine and I understand there will be 2 x engines - a 64k and also a 128k version.

 

Check the segment out from the REwind demo (where it is set to play at the start of the DOOM demo segment):

 

 

I love all of it but for me the most impressive is towards the end in the open courtyard battling Imps with the sky textures and the fireballs. Amazing.

 

Yes, I have seen that engine (via the demo only so far) and it is very impressive. And the 16 shaded monochrome is perfectly fine with me, though I do hope that in the actual game the monochrome color used changes from level to level or room to room. Or the ability to choose the color of your monochrome world. At the least NOT the exact color used in the demo. I'd even prefer straight up gray scale only throughout. But the color used in the demo must be my least favorite of the Atari's palette. I don't know why, or even that it was my least favorite color until I saw this A8 Doom engine using it. 

 

Not that the color used offends me so much that I'd refuse to play the game. I would just have to accept it or just turn down the color on my monitor.

[Beeblebrox]

Yup, I think alternating the colour set from level to level would be great. Final Assault does it room by room very well. (Blue, green and grey rooms being my favourite).

 

Oddly whilst I agree generally with regards to the red colour, in the case of this Doom engine for me the red works very well to convey the hellish landscape. I think some green or blue and grey schemes could work very well too. The main thing is to have dark spaces and the excellent lighting and texture effects. You can really play on the lighting here with this engine I think.

 

I watched a video interview where John Romero of ID software was talking about the DOOM concept and one of the key elements they were keen to have in the game were the dark and moody spaces, flickering or failing lighting. The sense of dread of things lurking in the dark. Totally doable on this A8 engoine with 16 shades.

 

I personally would like to see a few different colour schemes used for different levels. I can imagine blue for cold places, grey for bases, red for the more hellish landscapes. Green for more organic spaces. Perhaps even yellow/gold for outside spaces to convey a sunllit level before acending into a demon infested base.

 

I can't wait to see what Swiety has done to optimise the engines as Solo/NG alluded to. Also will be interesting to see the differences between the 64k and 128k engines. 

 

Between this, Trax, L'abbaye Des morts, and Tony - it looks like the A8 scene is really being treated to more goodies in 2023. Great time to be on the scene.

Edited April 21, 2023 by Beeblebrox

[Beeblebrox]

No more DOOM conversions for now but I am up to my ol tricks again with Disenchantment conversions ...cause I love em!   

Go Tiabeanie!!!

 

67 unique colours

7 bill evals - norm dis 258 - 25000 sols  - YUV/YUV - Altirra PAL pallette - very slight dither 

 

Filename: Beeblebrox_disenchantmentAttacksm1_25_fixed_centered.xex

320*200 letter box image  - Fixed and centrered with Sheddy's tools

 

(image grab from Altirra with pal high artifacting enabled)

 

Beeblebrox_disenchantmentAttacksm1_25_fixed_centered.xex

Edited April 21, 2023 by Beeblebrox

[+gnusto]

Figured this one was appropriate the era of the 8-bit. This is again NTSC, but I have a pal version with different cropping cooking right now. Sheddy's tool could find only one HPOS issue, and it can't correct that one (must not be dramatic because it doesn't really show).

Original, 22326 colors:

 

Output, 66 colors dithered:

gnusto-80s-ntsc.xex

 

CmdLine: 80s-ntsc.png /pal=Palettes/Altirra_Default_NTSC_XL.pal /dither_val=.8 /init=less /s=10000 /threads=6 /distance=cie94 /dither=knoll /predistance=ciede /save=100000000
Evaluations: 5492322832
Score: 0.143325

[Beeblebrox]

Completely forgot I converted this one last month.

 

Underwater anime bubble girl

 

47 unique colours

Filename: Beeblebrox_bubblegirlsm1_08_fixed_centered.xex

 

Evals unknown - norm disk unknown - Altirra PAL pallette - Yuv/Yuv - 25000 solutions - light dither

320*200 letter box image  - Fixed and centrered with Sheddy's tools

 

(image grab from Altirra with pal high artifacting enabled)

Beeblebrox_bubblegirlsm1_08_fixed_centered.xex

Edited April 22, 2023 by Beeblebrox

[+Stephen]

6 hours ago, gnusto said:

Figured this one was appropriate the era of the 8-bit. This is again NTSC, but I have a pal version with different cropping cooking right now. Sheddy's tool could find only one HPOS issue, and it can't correct that one (must not be dramatic because it doesn't really show).

Original, 22326 colors:

 

Output, 66 colors dithered:

gnusto-80s-ntsc.xex 22.06 kB · 8 downloads

 

CmdLine: 80s-ntsc.png /pal=Palettes/Altirra_Default_NTSC_XL.pal /dither_val=.8 /init=less /s=10000 /threads=6 /distance=cie94 /dither=knoll /predistance=ciede /save=100000000
Evaluations: 5492322832
Score: 0.143325

That is one of the best I have seen.  I know I keep saying this over and over again, but so many awesome conversions are coming out.  I love it - it takes me back to the time I discovered this public domain catalog of Atari software.  I saved up my allowance, mailed away for some 5.25" floppies, and waited some weeks.  I got this disk from a guy named Steve Dong.  He hand pixeled them, and hand coded DLIs for extra colours.  It was stunning work at the time, I think I paid a few dollars for a disk with 5, maybe 6 pictures on it.  If I would have seen images like this back then, I don't know what I would have done.  This would have been a great challenge to the ST in 85.

[Beeblebrox]

7 hours ago, Stephen said:

That is one of the best I have seen.  I know I keep saying this over and over again, but so many awesome conversions are coming out.  I love it - it takes me back to the time I discovered this public domain catalog of Atari software.  I saved up my allowance, mailed away for some 5.25" floppies, and waited some weeks.  I got this disk from a guy named Steve Dong.  He hand pixeled them, and hand coded DLIs for extra colours.  It was stunning work at the time, I think I paid a few dollars for a disk with 5, maybe 6 pictures on it.  If I would have seen images like this back then, I don't know what I would have done.  This would have been a great challenge to the ST in 85.

check it out:

 

[Gunstar]

5 hours ago, Beeblebrox said:

check it out:

 

Yep, I had the Steve Dong image disks way back in the day and would watch the slide show for way too long, wishing for an Atari art program that let one use DLI's without knowing how to program them. At the time, I had a Koala pad and Koala paint which is a clone of Micro illustrator and it's limit of 5 colors including the background. I hated seeing all those wonderful colors in the color selection palette screen, which they obviously made use of DLI's to display all the available 128 colors onscreen at once, but never thought to allow the end user to do it too. I knew my Atari could have more colors onscreen as the palette menu's prove, but don't support for the end-user artist. Then graphic art programs did finally start showing up (or existed and I found) that let you use DLI's.

 

The first I found was Penguin Software's Graphic's Magician* (IIRC*). It was a graphics mode 7+ medium res and compatible with all Micro IIlustrator compatible graphic art apps, until you added DLI's anyway. But I could load all my Koala paint 5 color art in and make them better like Steve Dong's art.

 

Then came along Rambrandt with multiple Antic and GTIA modes to choose as well and the use of DLI's in any mode, still compatible with Micro Illustrator if not using DLI's. It also allowed the use of a touch tablet or trackball in trackball mode for more freedom of movement when drawing.

 

Then I got Diamond DOS with Diamond Paint and finally a chance to do art using a mouse, like the 16-bit computers. But no DLI option. And I also got Atari Artist with the touch tablet. I prefer using these for their input devices and icon driven window menus that the otherwise superior apps that allowed DLI's didn't have. So I used these 100% Micro Illustrator apps to do the initial drawings, with mouse or touch tablet. It was only due to the bottom of screen three letter text options menu with multiple pages of these two text line windows one had to move through and hopefully remember what all the three letters of text referred too...some obvious, others not. Icons in pop-up or flip screen windows, with all options in front of you was so much better (which is why it's been the common standard for PC's for decades now.

 

I was then able to make graphic art just like Steve Dong, no programming knowledge needed. I just wish all my DLI art wasn't lost years ago. I would and will do more I hope, but atm I just don't have the time. To many other responsibilities and projects in life taking precedence now, so I just do Rasta conversions in the meantime as I can take just a few minutes to change settings, and then start it and walk away to do the more pressing life stuff.

Edited April 23, 2023 by Gunstar

[amarok]

Pražský orloj, astronomical clock in Prague, Czechia.

60 colors, 1,824,282,705 evaluations.

This photo has been tempting me for a really long time.

I had many completely failed attempts for this conversion.

The biggest challenge is the huge number of fine details with high resolution.

I am affraid that this is the best result I can get.

 

 

amarok_orloj.xex

[Gunstar]

13 hours ago, amarok said:

Pražský orloj, astronomical clock in Prague, Czechia.

60 colors, 1,824,282,705 evaluations.

This photo has been tempting me for a really long time.

I had many completely failed attempts for this conversion.

The biggest challenge is the huge number of fine details with high resolution.

I am affraid that this is the best result I can get.

 

 

amarok_orloj.xex 22.07 kB · 8 downloads

I've attempted similar content conversions in the past, with far less success. Though I don't have an original to compare the end result too. But I'd rather not compare, unless I'm doing the conversion, as it's nice to be just the observer too, as you don't know what details might be missing or that could have been better, so ignorance is bliss.

[Gunstar]

On 4/22/2023 at 2:54 PM, gnusto said:

Figured this one was appropriate the era of the 8-bit. This is again NTSC, but I have a pal version with different cropping cooking right now. Sheddy's tool could find only one HPOS issue, and it can't correct that one (must not be dramatic because it doesn't really show).

Original, 22326 colors:

 

Output, 66 colors dithered:

gnusto-80s-ntsc.xex 22.06 kB · 14 downloads

 

CmdLine: 80s-ntsc.png /pal=Palettes/Altirra_Default_NTSC_XL.pal /dither_val=.8 /init=less /s=10000 /threads=6 /distance=cie94 /dither=knoll /predistance=ciede /save=100000000
Evaluations: 5492322832
Score: 0.143325

I'll just tell you to read the first sentence of my reply to @amarok above, gnusto, as the deference given to his conversion success applies to your conversion here too.

 

 

Edited April 24, 2023 by Gunstar

[ggn]

On 4/4/2023 at 7:26 PM, José Pereira said:

Can't run the program and you're experts so I just centered the image vertically and turned to 2:1 ratio.

Would be funny to see what you guys could come up with this one (I got it from AtariOnline sometime ago but now don't remember where):

 

Thanks.

 

Here's the release info for this by the way: https://demozoo.org/graphics/165150/