Making an image with the TI-99

[Videogamecollector123]

So, I'm currently working on the Arduino section of a project involving the TI-99, but I wanted to see about making a splash screen for when the program is running. I found the Grapefruit utility to help me make this

screenshot by Atari1977, on Flickra\

However I had to cut off quite bit of my school's logo to make it look right, and even then it's slightly squeezed. So what I wanted to ask, is there a way to fully render my school's logo in Basic or Extend Basic, or would I have to go into assembly to make it work?

Edited October 17, 2013 by Videogamecollector123

[Stuart]

It should be possible. When I done this years ago, I took a very simple approach:

 

(1) Get a sheet of thin graph paper. Mark out an area 256 x 192 blocks, and subdivide this into 8 x 8 blocks. This represents your screen.

 

(2) Get your logo, and photocopy/resize it to fit on the 'screen' on the graph paper.

 

(3) Place logo under graph paper, and colour in the blocks on the graph paper to give the shape of the logo.

 

(4) Now look at the 8 x 8 blocks on the paper. You need to define a character for each variation you have. So you can use one character definition for all the completely empty blocks, one character definition for all the completely filled blocks, and different character definitions for the blocks where only some pixels are filled in. Depending on the complexity of the logo and the number of character definitions available, you might have to do a bit of tweaking of the design to reduce the number of different blocks needed.

 

(5) Now write your program. You need CALL CHAR to define the 8 x 8 blocks, and then some form of print statement (PRINT, DISPLAY, HCHAR, ...) to print the characters in the right places.

 

Very low tech, but it works!

Edited October 17, 2013 by Stuart

[sometimes99er]

Without Assembly support TI Basic has 128 characters and XB has 112. Your splash screen so far looks like 128 characters, though there's at least one character which could be reused quite a few times (apart from the "space" characters, there's one all yellow).

 

I guess your project is XB program on disk, and then Assembly support is certainly a possibility.

 

Tursi has a utility, Convert9918, for both taking a photo and reducing it to bitmap, and also making a standalone XB program. And you should be able to safely fire up your other main XB program from within. Discussion and examples/video here.

 

If you want to go for lower spec, like XB without Assembly, then I might be able to help you manipulating splash screen image and finding repeating characters and make it available in Magellan for further detailed manipulation. If you want to make your splash screen from ground up, you could use Magellan for making individual characters and easily putting them together to form a screen - characters can of course be reused, effectively making it possible to end up with a larger than 8 by 16 character design (as the one you posted).

 

Edited October 18, 2013 by sometimes99er