Centron 3D Official web page completed. Info + Pics

[miker]

I was a bit bored and threw all the shots into tip-animator. Here are the results:

Centron0.xex - title and "winner" pics

Centron1.xex - ingame pics (130XE required).

 

Please forgive the colors, used laoo.act palette and minimum saturation.

[rpc_games]

@ miker: Not bad but you do lose a lot of colour and your right about the palette.

Half of the greens are grey.

 

Does TIP-ANIMATOR convert jpg to Atari? I've never used TIP format before.

 

How many colours can TIP create on one scan line? Is it 16 colours? or more or less?

 

I've put all CMODE72's colours on screen in a screen shot. Check it out here and click on the

Centron 3D folder (Top left )

 

www.rpcgames.com.au

 

Pete

Edited June 28, 2014 by rpc_games

[José Pereira]

@Miker: Seeing yours I just think that if it wouldn't look good like NRV did on Project M using GR.9+GR.11 odd+even scanlines PAL blending.

It for sure would look good with the movement and scrolling but only for PAL guys and for NTSC ones probably not.

 

But I'm still waiting to see how will that CMODE72 look. I think that Pete should release a file so that people can decide because YouTube isn't a solution to realize the flicker.

Whats the problem of it? Put just the loading screen and one level its enough to see and decide.

[miker]

@Pete: TIP format represents 160 (usually) x up to 119 image using up to 256 colors. Here is the link to TIP-tools by Epi/Tristesse: https://github.com/epi/TipTools

 

And yes, TIP converter supports all the popular image formats, including PNG and JPG ones.

 

Regarding the colors in above - yes, they are washed out because of using minimal saturation (to reduce possible color-bleeding).

 

Edit: But if you have more Atari-prepared (or better: TIP-prepared) pictures, the satutation may be set higher. The above was only done by pure curiosity,

Edited June 28, 2014 by miker

[Synthpopalooza]

@ miker: Not bad but you do lose a lot of colour and your right about the palette.

Half of the greens are grey.

 

Does TIP-ANIMATOR convert jpg to Atari? I've never used TIP format before.

 

How many colours can TIP create on one scan line? Is it 16 colours? or more or less?

 

I've put all CMODE72's colours on screen in a screen shot. Check it out here and click on the

Centron 3D folder (Top left )

 

www.rpcgames.com.au

 

Pete

 

I just tried to convert the picture into my ICE mode Super 10+, which is basically the same as CMODE72 except that it is a full screen flicker of two Graphics 10 palettes in text mode, and it's a full 192 scanlines. The conversion didn't work because the JPG picture's colors are a bit washed out and I couldn't get all 8 grey levels. But I think it'd be a more accurate representation than TIP mode.

[Synthpopalooza]

OK, my own curious experiment. This is in the ICE mode Super 10+. I got the greyscale part of it to work ok, minus lum 14 which seems nonexistent in this render!

 

This is Graphics 10 in text mode, with DLI's to change the character font every 3 character lines. Color palette changes are also made on all registers except the BG (705 through 712) with the first color palette being a monchrome one. The resolution is 80x192 in this mode, but in this example the 192 resolution is not noticeble because I was converting from the original 80x48 render, the scanlines are duplicated vertically.

 

The colors in the palette are off though, because g2f didn't do an accurate job of the extraction, and decided to leave luma 14 off the monochrome render . But anyway here you go.

 

It will flicker because it's a full-frame font and color palette change, unless you are in frameblending on an emulator, or on one of those new LCD TV's.

 

 

 

centron.atr

 

Presumably the author has a better method to minimize the flicker, but at least this gives a possible idea what the game might look like, albeit not with my inaccurate color palette.

Edited June 28, 2014 by Synthpopalooza

[Synthpopalooza]

Another thought too. You can get an extra luma in CMODE and have 81 colors. The idea is ... make the monochrome colors in the first half of the render into shades of yellow/gold, that is, use color values $12 through $1F even stepped (or $22 through $2F, for PAL). Then make your ninth color on that render straight white. This gives a pseudo 9 level luma including the background.

 

If you need greys, then simply overlay a blue chroma from the color render atop the gold from the mono render. Blending colors from opposite sides of the color wheel makes greys.

 

The tradeoff is of course you can't have blue shades in your picture. But this method can be modified using green-magenta or red-cyan instead of blue-yellow as shown above, if you want blue shades. It all depends on what colors you want in your picture.

Edited June 28, 2014 by Synthpopalooza

[Synthpopalooza]

OK, did some experiments in the ICE modes Super 10+, HIP, and Super 9 ... I think this is closer to the mark.

 

Some notes: On the Super 10+ and ICE HIP renders, it appears that one of the chromas got dropped, so we have only 7 chromas and two blacks. And it also appears that not all the lumas on the monochrome half of the Super 10+ render came through either. Still, a lot closer

 

I did a Super 10+ render, an ICE HIP (128 color, 8 chroma * 16 luma), and two Super 9 renders. Super 9 is a double 9 mode with 256 duotone colors. For these, I swapped COLBAK (712) with the values 16 (gold) and 128 (blue) every VBLANK. For the reverse frames render, I reversed the swapping order, it drastically changes the colors.

 

On the ICE HIP render, you would get a greater greyscale level (16) but with the mode 10 pixel shift the picture blurs a bit more. In theory it's supposed to double your horizontal resolution to 160 pixels but it's not really apparent here.

 

These are just for curiosity's sake, but it shows that maybe other combinations for your CMODE besides double-10 will work well for games too, perhaps giving different results, and each with their own strengths and weaknesses,

 

centron super 10+.atr

 

centron - hip.atr

 

centron super 9.atr

 

centron super 9 reverse frames.atr

Edited June 29, 2014 by Synthpopalooza

[rpc_games]

@Synthpopalooza: What a great effort you are doing. Attached is the CMODE72's colour palette.

Would this help you ?

 

Pete

 

[Synthpopalooza]

Yes, that's a good help. All I really did there was to try a straight convert from the screenshot using Tebe's graph2font, into each of the GTIA modes, convert those into fontmaps, and alternate between the two each VBLANK. For some reason it dropped one of the chromas and one of the lumas from the picture.

 

With this, though, I could actually make .ICE files, go into ICE editor and polish the screens up a bit, maybe even give them 192 resolution. Just for kicks. And in the ICE HIP mode, you can at least use diagonal stepping to round off the score digits and make them look 160 pixels across. You get some artifacting but the extended resolution is visible

[Heaven/TQA]

any progress?

[snicklin]

Not long now!!!

[Mclaneinc]

Lets hope he has his coding skates on...

Edited July 4, 2014 by Mclaneinc

[tschak909]

Bullshit detector needle is buried, I can smell it now...

 

-Thom

[Marius]

Bullshit detector needle is buried, I can smell it now...

 

-Thom

 

It's probably your upper lip you smell.

[flashjazzcat]

Handbags at dawn detector is now off the scale.

[Mclaneinc]

Yes indeed...Well it is the Ladies Final today

[Shamus]

So to those who were thinking that this amazing, brand-new-to-world, flicker-free, proprietary gfx mode is done via flickering, turns out you were right. From the developers mouth:

 

Oh, playing Centron 3D on an old CRT monitor may flicker. We are using an LCD TV which double buffers the video causing no flicker at all. In fact most LCD T'V's today have double buffer video.
Alterria (Atari Emulator) has a feature called FRAME BLENDING. It works the same way as LCD T.V's.
We are not recommending playing Centron 3D using an old CRT monitor or TV. We haven't tested it on a CRT
due to not have one to test with. Those CRT screens are just to old now.

 

So there you have it. BTW, I am deliberately not linking to the forum where that appeared, as I have no desire to drive traffic to those guys. But if you're determined, you can find it.

[flashjazzcat]

CRTs are too old now? Most of mine are younger than the Ataris themselves.

Edited July 5, 2014 by flashjazzcat

[Rybags]

I feel a rude awakening might be in store... really there aren't that many people who use LCD TVs with their older computers.

Edited July 5, 2014 by Rybags

[Mclaneinc]

Yes, just been to that site and read it, what I am thinking is that the main site and the post on that forum say start ordering after its release on the 7th, but until there's a playable demo I won't be ordering jack...

[Marius]

Well… imo the only screen for atari 8bit is still a CRT. Some LCD TV's do come close, and you can get really nice results with LCD/TFT… but the real a8 experience is on a TUBE.

[flashjazzcat]

On the Commodore CRT monitor their was a little flicker but the game was totally playable.

We haven't tested it on a CRT due to not have one to test with.

[Mclaneinc]

Yup, for me its an 8833 monitor or a 1084S, although my little Sony Trinitron 14" was nice too..

 

LCD's are nice for mostly static PC displays but games unless you have spent a small fortune on the TV / Monitor still have motion blur for me....Not terrible blur but enough..

[Mclaneinc]

 

On the Commodore CRT monitor their was a little flicker but the game was totally playable.

We haven't tested it on a CRT due to not have one to test with.

 

 

 

 

 

oops...