Gradients?

[First Spear]

Speculation and imagination time, as I am fairly sure it is impossible, but...

 

What would it take to show a gradient color pattern, like the one shown on the image, on an Intellivision? I know enough about the "character based characteristics" of how the Inty generates images with cards, and the standard 2-colors-per-card limit, but am wondering if there is a way to make the STIC do something crazy to display still images.

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks.

[+DZ-Jay]

but am wondering if there is a way to make the STIC do something crazy to display still images.

 

 

Nope, sorry. The STIC is a rather simple beast.

 

Although that image looks like it could be done with only two colours per block since the transition is rather simple: you'll have to dither red to orange, then orange to yellow, then yellow to white. If it's just a static image, you can get away with adding a bit more detail by overlaying the MOBs.

 

The problem will be that the pixels will be very big, but I guess it can be a bit stylish.

 

-dZ.

[carlsson]

I had a quick attempt at scaling it down to 160x96, trying to avoid more than 2 colours per block and defining an Intellivision friendly palette so it would be possible to display in FG/BG mode, but intycolor still gives 104 errors about overspending on GRAM. Thus a lot of simplification and repetition of patterns would be in order to make it display.

 

[+DZ-Jay]

I had a quick attempt at scaling it down to 160x96, trying to avoid more than 2 colours per block and defining an Intellivision friendly palette so it would be possible to display in FG/BG mode, but intycolor still gives 104 errors about overspending on GRAM. Thus a lot of simplification and repetition of patterns would be in order to make it display.

 

cowboys.gif

 

Yeah, you'll have to come up with a dithering pattern that you can re-use (like Mark Ferrari used to do back in the 1980s). I think you could also get away with defining a cloud/gradient pattern to re-use between the left (red/orange) and the right (orange/yellow) sides. With a bit of creativity, you can make it look somewhat natural.

 

However, it is possible. It just requires some effort and a bit of artistic flair.

 

-dZ.

[carlsson]

I used the Noise -> Median filter in Photoshop, set to a range of 5. Then I adjusted a number of cards by hand to get it within 64 unique. It doesn't look like the effect First Spear was asking for, but the original image to some extent is present. Hopefully someone else will have a better method, like the dithereing patterns DZ-Jay wrote about.

 

cowboys2.zip

[+DZ-Jay]

I used the Noise -> Median filter in Photoshop, set to a range of 5. Then I adjusted a number of cards by hand to get it within 64 unique. It doesn't look like the effect First Spear was asking for, but the original image to some extent is present. Hopefully someone else will have a better method, like the dithereing patterns DZ-Jay wrote about.

 

shot0000.gif

cowboys2.zip

That's a very nice "stylized" rendition of the image, in a very "Intellivision" way (just like the original looks like a very C=64 style of dithering).

 

I think it can use some dithering for a better diffusion effect, but it already is a very usable and attractive rendering.

 

It depends on how much work you want to put into it. I'm an "perfectionist" (read: unhinged OCD freak), so for my games I can spend days and weeks tweaking an image by hand to get what I want (I'm also slow and not very good at it, so it takes me longer than it should), but others may have better things to do.

 

dZ.