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Forums > C64 Pixeling > Urgently needed: proper Bordergfx-editor!

2008-11-25 08:33

DeeKay

Registered: Nov 2002
Posts: 362

Urgently needed: proper Bordergfx-editor!

The c64 scene definately needs an editor for proper border gfx! I'm fucking fed up with making my stuff on Potatoshop, counting colors manually while i pixel it and having to rely on the coder to convert it first to see what it it actually looks like on the real machine! And I probably hate doing it in Amica Paint (with totally different color restrictions!) just as much as the coder who later has to convert it to sprites!

From the feedback I got I know that people fucking love my border-GFX, and I myself enjoy it every time I see it done by others (like Duce's Catrabbit from X2008! Respect, pal! 8), and I think pretty much *every* gfxian would welcome the possiblity to extend his compopicture into the border, it's just that hardly anyone has a coder to work with that is willing/able to do this for him, and lacking the proper tool to do this with is pretty much the main problem here!

There's only two editors for border gfx I found (and no, I ain't talking about expanded-sprites-only stuff like ESCOS, I'm talking bitmap gfx, possibly Drazlace!): One allows you to extend some 4-color-gfx into the border (in 4 colors only any only sth like 10 chars high - meh!) and the other one is OSCAR from some OZ dude, done in 1988 (god, that code is SO inefficient with all the jumptables!), which I've added to CSDb.. I've spent some time working in this last December, and I can tell you that if you think our gfx-editors are unusable, you fucking ain't seen OSCAR yet! <:-) The unusability knows no bounds in this one, it's basically a new definition of the term!...

Here's what I'm thinking: Two separate editors, one for sideborder and one for upper/lower border, since the demands are rather different.

1) Sideboder editor feature list:
-should allow for loading standard bitmap gfx (also laced) in hires or multicolor (Koala, (Adv.) Art Studio, plain bitmap, Zoomatic, Drazlace, P1's Drazlace advanced for 2 screenRAMs)
-4 sprites
-Should allow setting the x-position and expansion of the sprites arbitrarily, but fixed for the whole screen. Pre-set layouts for the technically less inclined:
-2left/2right: 2 Mcol sprites side by side, 6 chars full width per border
-2left/2right: 2 Hires sprites side by side, 6 chars full width per border
-2left/2right: 1 Mcol sprite+1 expanded Hires sprite overlaid for 3 outer chars 1 color and 3 inner chars 4 colors (+$d021), 6 chars full width per border
-2left/2right: 1 Mcol sprite+1 Hires sprite overlaid, 3 chars per border
-2left/2right: 2 Hires sprites overlaid, 3 chars per border

This should cover most needs. The people requiring more sprites on one side than on the other should adjust it manually.

-Color-switching: I know that quite often coders don't want the maximum amount of color switching because they need the cycles for other stuff, but making the editor as flexible to set the number of swtichable registers per line would be way more work than it already is, so just go for something sensible, switching all colors every line (except for the badline) is doable, but probably a bit much, since the picture itself is just standard bitmap, so something like new colors every 4 lines should suffice for almost everything. And yes, I know that it has to be 1 line off from the badlines in order to have new colors every charline, that's okay! ;-)
-Would be totally awesome if the editor could read out the left/rightmost bitmap column colors upon importing the bitmap and already set those for the sprites!
-Zoom mode must also at least display one char-column of the bitmap, otherwise making it seamless would be quite taxing.
-$d021 is fixed (since there's no editor that allows for changing $d021 rasterwise anyway!)
-must support saving executables, packed would be best!

2) Upper/lower border editor feature list:
-Should allow for loading (I)FLI as well as files written by the sideborder editor. Dare I ask for (M)U(I)FLI support? ;-)
-Needs extra flexibility in X-Positioning and sprite Expansion as compared to the sideborder editor. The user should be able to change expansion/x-position thoughout the whole border area instead of the colors.
-For the technically less inclined it would be best to set x-position for every sprite and expansion globally (but different for the upper and the lower border). Those that need more can just twiddle with the respective registers! ;-)
-Would be totally awesome if the editor could read out the top/bottom bitmap charline colors upon importing the bitmap, interpolate them and already set them for the sprites!
-$d021 needs to be switchable along with X-expansion, spritecolors and positioning! This is very important!
-must support saving executables, packed would be best!

And NO, we DON'T NEED yet another fucking Windows-only PC pixeltool to achieve this, this can and should very much be done on c64 itself! >:-)

I know this is a lot of work, but rest assured I and pretty much every other gfxian out there would REALLY appreciate this! ;-) I've talked to various coders about this and it seemed to me they didn't really see the need for this, but there really is NOTHING apart from the 2 lame/unusable tools mentioned above. So if you're a gfxian, let them know how much you'd like something like this by hitting that "reply" button below! ;-D
If you tweak the X-Position and expansion a lot, I guess people wouldn't mind too much if zoom view wasn't fully accurate. I'd just appreciate being able to do it at all, and it'd still be less wrapping-my-head-around-it than doing it in Photoshop or Amicapaint, believe me! ;-D

I'd be more than happy to assist in development and beta testing if you decide to do this!

2008-11-25 08:43

chatGPZ

Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 11145

get coding!

2008-11-25 09:09

Stainless Steel

Registered: Mar 2003
Posts: 966

Get Crossbow out of retirement :-D

2008-11-25 09:19

WVL

Registered: Mar 2002
Posts: 886

?Too many possibilities/options error

2008-11-25 09:26

DeeKay

Registered: Nov 2002
Posts: 362

Quote: get coding!

Thx for your valuable contribution, I'll try to remember that next time you ask me for PSX/GBA/Gamecube-gfx! <:-)

2008-11-25 09:35

DeeKay

Registered: Nov 2002
Posts: 362

Quote: ?Too many possibilities/options error

Well, nobody said it was gonna be easy! ;-) But see it that way: This needs to be done ONCE and then coders worldwide won't be bothered by stupid gfxians to add bordergfx ever again! ;-D Plus compopics will be alot BIGGER and more beautiful! 8)))

Also: if The Great Golden Dragon was able to do this (very unusably though) in 1988 (!) already, shouldn't we be able to improve that 20 years later? ;-D

Let me just mention that the featurelist above is an ideal one and doesn't have to be implemented right away. For a start I would be *very* happy already with a sideboder editor that only supported those "presets" mentioned above and an upper/lower border editor that only allowed one fixed x-positioning and expansion for the upper and lower border. Colorswitching is a must though, although for the start every 8 lines should also suffice...
As for gfx-importing: one format for every mode should be enough, you can just use other gfx converters to convert into this format!

2008-11-25 09:44

chatGPZ

Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 11145

i really fail to see how something like timanthes wouldnt be suited (and comfortable) for this task. (yeah yeah, evil windows only, too bad. thats what you get for using a niche OS). and i very much doubt aswell that suddenly everyone would be doing border gfx too - it's not like that ever happened with any of the other fancy gfx modes either :)

2008-11-25 09:50

SIDWAVE
Account closed

Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 2238

.make the pic in timanthes in 320x256, save as bmp
.code a converter that strips the border and converts it into sprites
.code a setup

mwahahahah

2008-11-25 10:06

yago

Registered: May 2002
Posts: 332

DeeKay, your Requirements are FAR too big to be attractive for any coder.

Cant you just use a (big) sprite-editor for the border gfx?

2008-11-25 10:30

Oswald

Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 5027

i would do it like this: a very basic VICII emulator is needed which only concentrates on the graphical output, then you can assign a value to each sprite register for each rasterline + a sprite setup with the only restriction being 8 max on same line.

then the rest is up to the gfxer :) tho the user interface is a bitch alone, how to decide which sprite to plot into when they are overlayed etc.

finally the pic inside the borders could be imported as bmp from other editors..

2008-11-25 10:41

Stryyker

Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 465

What platforms are acceptable for the editor to run from?

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