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Images generated by RastaConverter

Philsan

By Philsan
in Atari 8-Bit Computers

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GravityWorm Moonsweeper

GravityWorm

Posted
Posted
14 hours ago, Atari8man2004 said:

Someone posted there cat on facebook I just had to convert it. 

I know someone who has a 3 color cat :)
I did not look in the eyes of the cat. That cat is kinda wild :D

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Beeblebrox Quadrunner

Beeblebrox

Posted
Posted (edited)
3 hours ago, Atari8man2004 said:

Rasta is great at real small images. they convert fast and look good like this King of Hearts card.   Demo coders should use Rasta in there demos.

Atari8man_King.png

Atari8man_King.xex 21.99 kB · 3 downloads

The way rc typically works when it uses vbis, dlis and pmgs and a lot of cpu cycles is it's conversions means a lot of the systems resources are used up and so it doesn't lend itself well to demos, or games for that matter. That's not to say it can't be done as there are some small image demos using rc images with scrolling text underneath, with music.

Also we've seen that some letter box rc images have been  incorporated into games like the re imagined international karate RC and rcx this year. They look great, but the games have had to be tweaked. Synthesised sounds had to replace samples in order to achieve that I believe. 

 

What's interesting is rc allows you to disable the use of between 1 and 4 pmgs (player missile graphics), for a conversion. (Correct me if I am wrong here anyone as recalling this on the fly). So although this means images are less colourful, you do free those up for elements needed in games and demos. 

 

I've run a few conversions before this way. Mixed results but I think I might revisit it as I am interested in that trade off. Would love to see more rc in games and demos.

 

I still think having full 320x200 letterbox rc conversions in interactive fiction A8 games is a real missed opportunity. We are seeing more and more 1mb car games and the means to load and or mount them on carts like side3, AVG, ultimate, atarimax flash 8mbit carts, and of course running directly from FAT32 Sdcard, (side3). Plus we have on the fly compression. So having 50 to 100 or so letterbox rc images as part of an interactive fiction game, each loading as needed, and taking 1-2 seconds to load, is totally feasible. Text interface underneath each image.

 

I am so glad international karate was reimagined with the 20 or so excellent full colour rc letterbox images. I loved IK before, but with rc images incorporated it looks astoundingly good. 

 

@amarok @MrFish @drpeterei'd be interested to know your thoughts as you are knowledgeable/experienced in these areas. :)

Edited by Beeblebrox
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Atari8man2004 Dragonstomper

Atari8man2004

Posted
Posted
5 hours ago, Beeblebrox said:

The way rc typically works when it uses vbis, dlis and pmgs and a lot of cpu cycles is it's conversions means a lot of the systems resources are used up and so it doesn't lend itself well to demos, or games for that matter. That's not to say it can't be done as there are some small image demos using rc images with scrolling text underneath, with music.

Also we've seen that some letter box rc images have been  incorporated into games like the re imagined international karate RC and rcx this year. They look great, but the games have had to be tweaked. Synthesised sounds had to replace samples in order to achieve that I believe. 

 

What's interesting is rc allows you to disable the use of between 1 and 4 pmgs (player missile graphics), for a conversion. (Correct me if I am wrong here anyone as recalling this on the fly). So although this means images are less colourful, you do free those up for elements needed in games and demos. 

 

I've run a few conversions before this way. Mixed results but I think I might revisit it as I am interested in that trade off. Would love to see more rc in games and demos.

 

I still think having full 320x200 letterbox rc conversions in interactive fiction A8 games is a real missed opportunity. We are seeing more and more 1mb car games and the means to load and or mount them on carts like side3, AVG, ultimate, atarimax flash 8mbit carts, and of course running directly from FAT32 Sdcard, (side3). Plus we have on the fly compression. So having 50 to 100 or so letterbox rc images as part of an interactive fiction game, each loading as needed, and taking 1-2 seconds to load, is totally feasible. Text interface underneath each image.

 

I am so glad international karate was reimagined with the 20 or so excellent full colour rc letterbox images. I loved IK before, but with rc images incorporated it looks astoundingly good. 

 

@amarok @MrFish @drpeterei'd be interested to know your thoughts as you are knowledgeable/experienced in these areas. :)

I agree IK+ was taken to a who new level. Great work!

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amarok Chopper Commander

amarok

Posted
Posted
5 hours ago, Beeblebrox said:

@amarok @MrFish @drpeterei'd be interested to know your thoughts as you are knowledgeable/experienced in these areas. :)

This is a very interesting topic, which I considered some time ago as well :).

I don't feel I am an expert, but I will try to answer as much as I can.

 

It is known that during the drawing of each horizontal line of the RastaConverter image, the CPU is actually used in 100%.
This means that the higher the image, the less time for the CPU for other activities like user interaction or sound playback in a given screen frame.
Even if you abandon PMG it still takes CPU cycles to change values in the color registers on the fly.
In other words, images without PMG wouldn't "increase" CPU processing power but certainly would reduce the number of colors.

By the way, I'm not sure if the current implementation of RastaConverter allows not using PMG graphics.

 

However, I can imagine a situation where PMG would be used to draw cursors or other simple interactive items on the screen overlayed on the actual image.
It must be remembered that due to hardware limitations these would be small objects and their number would be low.
Also, in the image area with RastaConverter, there would be no way to change the PMG graphics registers, since there would be no CPU cycles to handle DLI interrupts.
This means that all the dealing with sprite multiplexing, moving their position horizontally or changing their colors on the fly between screen lines is not feasible.

 

I can imagine a game in which a certain part of the screen is static RastaConverter image and the rest is fully interactive.

Of course, this would be a compromise between the height of the image and the number of CPU cycles for game logic, sound playback or interaction.
Such a game would certainly give a lot of freshness and would increase the attractiveness of Atari 8-bit computers :).

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Beeblebrox Quadrunner

Beeblebrox

Posted
Posted (edited)
18 minutes ago, amarok said:

By the way, I'm not sure if the current implementation of RastaConverter allows not using PMG graphics.

 

It does as I've used it. :)

 

Cool, thanks for your insight. Yes static hi colour 320x200 rc image top half of screen, and a text input interface lower half would give you a great interactive fiction engine. Obviously I am talking new games here but in an alternative reality I can just imagine Zork or hhgttg text adventures with great images on the A8. :)

 

BTW I wanted to personally congratulate you again on Time Wizard and winning the abbuc comp. Really amazing concept and execution. I hope we have more games of this caliber coming for the A8 scene in months and years to come. Can't wait for Sweity's doom engines to be completed :)

Edited by Beeblebrox
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amarok Chopper Commander

amarok

Posted
Posted
1 minute ago, Beeblebrox said:

It does as I've used it. :)

You are completely right :). There is "/onoff" switch responsible for dealing with particular registers.
 

Quote

/onoff=OnOff File
  Text file that describes where to turn on and turn off usable registers. The format of each line in "OnOff file" is:


REGISTER OFF|ON FROM TO


  REGISTER is one of the following registers: COLOR0,COLOR1,COLOR2,COLBAK,COLPM0,COLPM1,COLPM2,COLPM3,HPOSP0,HPOSP1,HPOSP2,HPOSP3
  OFF turns off the usage of registers in lines, ON turns on. ON is default for all the registers in the whole picture.
  FROM is line number in picture starting from 0
  TO is line number in picture up to Picture Height-1


  Every line in "OnOff file" is processed one after another.


  Example:
  To turn off usage of player 0 and player 1 in picture of height 240 pixels use the following OnOff file:


COLPM0 OFF 0 239
HPOSP0 OFF 0 239
COLPM1 OFF 0 239
HPOSP1 OFF 0 239

 

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drpeter Dragonstomper

drpeter

Posted
Posted (edited)
18 minutes ago, Beeblebrox said:

Yes static hi colour 320x200 rc image top half of screen, and a text input interface lower half would give you a great interactive fiction engine. Obviously I am talking new games here but in an alternative reality I can just imagine Zork or hhgttg text adventures with great images on the A8.

This is very doable in theory, just needs someone to sit down with an A8 z-machine interpreter and the RC screen kernels to do the necessary coding, including a means for the game file to trigger loading of the relevant RC images at the right time.

 

Performance issues might require the image to be blanked while commands are being processed.

Edited by drpeter
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Beeblebrox Quadrunner

Beeblebrox

Posted
Posted (edited)
16 minutes ago, drpeter said:

This is very doable in theory, just needs someone to sit down with an A8 z-machine interpreter and the RC screen kernels to do the necessary coding, including a means for the game file to trigger loading of the relevant RC images at the right time.

 

Performance issues might require the image to be blanked while commands are being processed.

Thanks for your input.

It's interesting because if you recall all the interactive adventure titles on the A8, they either draw the image on real time, (questprobe HULK), or have to access say the disk, (hhgttg) after most commands are typed. So we would be used to having a delay or image blanking whilst an image loaded. Thing is on modern cart hardware the time it takes to load a 20k 320x200 rc image is next to nothing. My side3 loads a 22k 320x240 rc image in 2 seconds or less. :) Plus we have bank switching. Loads of images could be used. :)

Edited by Beeblebrox
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MrFish Quadrunner

+MrFish

Posted
Posted
3 hours ago, Beeblebrox said:

Yes static hi colour 320x200 rc image top half of screen, and a text input interface lower half would give you a great interactive fiction engine. Obviously I am talking new games here but in an alternative reality I can just imagine Zork or hhgttg text adventures with great images on the A8.

I can think of some older games that would benefit from the approach for updating. Ultima IV, for instance, could have the artwork updated using C64 (Remastered) images or images from some 16-bit versions. The artwork portions of the game are just artwork and text.

 

The other ones that come to mind are the Magnetic Scrolls games. These have mediocre artwork renditions (decent, though they are) compared to the C64 platform for instance. These could be updated using the C64 images or possible made better using the ST/Amiga images as sources. Only thing is, you'd have to lose the scrolling effect for the artwork; but some kind of simple view/hide mechanism would be sufficient.

 

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