ziggystar Posted June 14, 2002 Share Posted June 14, 2002 Is there no way to INCLUDE a regular or converted bitmap or something. Do I have to draw any/all pictures with little 8x8 blocks? ack, i hope there is an easier way. Has anyone made a picture viewing demo source or include. I mean for sprites and objects its no problem but I want backgrounds! C64 and Amiga are a lot easier in that department. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DanBoris Posted June 14, 2002 Share Posted June 14, 2002 Yes, it all has to do with the graphics modes your use. Antic modes 2-7 are character modes where the background is made up of individual graphic "tiles". Modes 8 and up are graphics modes and can display fully bitmapped graphics. Modes D and E are nice for a high resolution 4-color graphics, and for real high resolution there is mode F, but that is only 2 colors. You will find that a lot of games use the character modes because they take less memory, and you can update the graphics a lot faster since you don't need to do as many write to the video memory as you would with bitmapped modes. Dan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jetboot Jack Posted June 14, 2002 Share Posted June 14, 2002 Ziggystar, The 5200 (like the 800 and XL lines) is MUCH easier to produce bitmapped art on than the C64... The system has lots of graphic modes from 320X192 to the 16 color GTIA modes bitmapped modes, all are super easy to make great art for! On the 8bit side - check out all the art programs at: http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/atari/utils.html LOADS of great art utilities that will let you sue all the graphic modes and also get upto 128 colors on screen (Fun with Art, Graphics Art Department etc).. Checkout: http://www.atari8bit-software.de/index_e.htm For loads of demos that get lots of colors and great resolution!!! Most of this stuff is do-able to some degree on the 5200 too! sTeVE Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heaven/TQA Posted June 15, 2002 Share Posted June 15, 2002 there is a tool called "logoz.com" or "logos.com". i have it here on an atari cdr. with this tool it is possible to convert a antic e bitmap into several fonts including the vram so you can save that into your game. good example for that is ace of aces from accolade which use this method. i will post it when i find it later today. think about it... antic e has 7680 bytes. even if you convert it to fonts it still is less, f.e. 4 fonts used = 4096 + 960 bytes for the screen-ram. of course you have to set the DLI to change the fonts on the fly... ok. it was mainly designed for demo group logos... hve Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heaven/TQA Posted June 15, 2002 Share Posted June 15, 2002 jetboot... thanx for the sites... nice memories... go to the http://www.atari8bit-software.de/index_e.htm i found my lost children check the demos out and have a look at abbuc - title demo #44,46,47,50,51,53 are done by me... but #44 i havent remembered since i saw the screenshot with the "heaven" in there... oh my god... hve Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heaven/TQA Posted June 15, 2002 Share Posted June 15, 2002 here it is with small tutorial... i have taken the timepilot title screen as an example http://www.s-direktnet.de/homepages/k_nadj/logos.html have fun... hve Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fox Posted June 17, 2002 Share Posted June 17, 2002 Hvn: I think that the program from your tutorial is "Logos Maker". This is a very very old program. There's a newer one, by SoTe/Slight, that looks very very similar, but allows drawing and has some more options. For hires character mode (i.e. antic 2), there's my old (written 5 years ago or so) utility called "GR8 logoser" (look for GR8LOG11.COM). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heaven/TQA Posted June 17, 2002 Share Posted June 17, 2002 hmmm... where can i find them, foxy baby??? can you send it to me to heaven_tqa @ hotmail.com.... or do you have a link? cheers, karolj Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ziggystar Posted June 17, 2002 Author Share Posted June 17, 2002 well so far none of the suggestions help. I am programming a game for the 5200. I am using a PC not an atari to do it. I have gotten pretty far. I just am trying to find a easy way to make backgrounds and sprites. there is a antic4 screen designer for 5200 by calamari but it only uses 8x8 blocks and 4 colors. it also doesnt do anything for sprites. any other info? thanks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heaven/TQA Posted June 17, 2002 Share Posted June 17, 2002 everybody of us use pc to develope... download timepilot.zip from my website and boot turbobasic xl in atari800win... set h:handler (pc harddisk) to the folder where you unpacked all files of the archive... type 'LOAD "H:SPRLOAD.TUR" and type LIST to get the listing... here you can see how i converted with this turbobasic tool BMP file (160x200x4) into antic mode e... you must be sure that when f.e. using photoshop or paint shop pro that you save the picture in 160x200x4 (4 colors incl. background) hope this helps more... there are a lot of other tools around with which you can load & convert pc files into suitable format for atari but i can not remember them right now... most of them are written from demo coders to demo coders... hve Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heaven/TQA Posted June 17, 2002 Share Posted June 17, 2002 http://www.s-direktnet.de/homepages/k_nadj.../timepilot.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ziggystar Posted June 17, 2002 Author Share Posted June 17, 2002 well that helps some. does anyone know what the color limitations/resolutions are of all the 5200 modes? is Antic 4 at what, 4-5 colors? the most versatile? thanks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jetboot Jack Posted June 18, 2002 Share Posted June 18, 2002 Ziggy, I'm surprised NONE of the stuff mentioned help - since the 5200 and 800 share almost identical architecture - all the techniques work both ways (RAM permitting). All the applications I mentioned will run under emulation on Atari800win - so you can use them to create 5200 data just fine - I and others already do - I think you'll find 800 emulation and associated tools running on a PC is often an important part of 5200 development... Useful bitmapped modes: Antic F - 320X192 - 2 color Antic E - 160X192 - 4 color (Gremlins) Antic D - 160X96 - 4 color (Missile Command) Useful Character modes Antic 2 - 40X24 - 2 color Antic 4 - 40X24 - 5 color (multicolor characters) Antic 5 - 40X12 - 5 color (multicolor characters) Antic 6 - 20X24 - 5 color Antic 7 - 20X12 - 5 color I don't know if 5200's do GTIA modes if so then these are 80X192 in 16 shades (1 color), 16 colors (1 shade) and 9 colors... sTeVE Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Allan Posted June 18, 2002 Share Posted June 18, 2002 ziggystar, Get over to www.Atariarchives.org to get all your Atari 8-bit/5200 programming needs. De Re Atari is excellent as well. It will eventually be available on www.Atariarchives.org but for now can be found at http://www.dislerdesign.com/Atari/ . Allan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heaven/TQA Posted June 18, 2002 Share Posted June 18, 2002 unfortunatly nobody said that it would be easy to code on 80s consoles... and even on 5200 which is even more specific than 800xl... don't give up... maybe 1st try 800xl with turbo basic than moving directly to 5200... hve Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Cafeman Posted June 18, 2002 Share Posted June 18, 2002 If you want to use Antic 4, the tile/character set graphics mode, you need to download Calamari's antic4 utility. It works on your PC and helps you to draw pictures in 5 colors and it spits out the code bytes for you when you are done. I don't have a link, but by searching in this programming forum you'll find reference to it. Antic 4 allows 5 colors, true. That is more than any other Antic mode. Now, I don't think you can have 5 colors per character though -- instead, if you redefine the letter A, it can use the 4 register colors, and then if you add some number (128?) to it's character number, the 4th color becomes the 5th color. Thus your tiles still only use 4 colors each, but your screen can have 5 different bg colors. Adding display list interrupts is how you get more colors by changing a color register's value on a scanline at somepoint down the screen. All of this is documented both at the links above and in threads in this forum, it takes time to digest it all. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ziggystar Posted June 18, 2002 Author Share Posted June 18, 2002 After reading all of it, Antic 4 works for me! It seems the blocks take some getting used to, but they are quite useful and save a lot of memory. on the other hand, I haven't been able to find any info on bank switching for the 5200 carts. why not go all the way and make a board that will take a 27040 chip or something and get some really great stuff going since the price difference isn't too much betweeen 27256s and 27040s Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fox Posted June 21, 2002 Share Posted June 21, 2002 I haven't been able to find any info on bank switching for the 5200 carts. 32 KB should be enough for everyone. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DanBoris Posted June 21, 2002 Share Posted June 21, 2002 I haven't been able to find any info on bank switching for the 5200 carts. why not go all the way and make a board that will take a 27040 chip or something and get some really great stuff going since the price difference isn't too much betweeen 27256s and 27040s There was only ever one 5200 cart that used bankswitching, Bounty Bob Strikes Back. You could probably come up with your own bankswitching scheme quite easily, and there is plenty of space inside a 5200 cart to implement it. Dan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heaven/TQA Posted June 26, 2002 Share Posted June 26, 2002 i have updated the zip-archive with the "graph.com" utility fox mentioned. it is quite more advanced than the old "logos.com" converter... check it out... keys i have figured out ESC switch to menu, moving via cursor or joystick, start, select, option change colors, 0-3 are colors... the only what i havent figured out is how to paint and set pixels... http://www.s-direktnet.de/homepages/k_nadj/logos.html i love converting logos into char... hve Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fox Posted June 27, 2002 Share Posted June 27, 2002 the only what i havent figured out is how to paint and set pixels... Press E. There're also keys for drawing rectangles, etc. I think. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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