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2009-07-19 23:30

DeeKay

Registered: Nov 2002
Posts: 362

This is the Thread for everything NUFLI!

The Era of NUFLI has begun - Bye Bye Interlace!

So what do you guys think? 8)

btw. Until Bitbreaker decides the converter is fit for release, you may send me your pictures and I'll put them through it. No, I won't fix the bugs for you (been doing that for over a hundred hours in the recent months! <:-), you gotta learn your way around the editor eventually if you want that extra edge of perfection - But I will offer some advice on different approaches how to combat teh blockiness or teh color lack, i even prepared some tutorials I will post here later! ;-)

Please do keep in mind that even in NUFLI, you still only have 3 colors horizontally in every char -with one fixed for 6 chars- (5 or 6 in the FLIbug, but that's for all 3 chars!). Considering that IFLI has a maximum of 6 colors in one char, it's quite surprising the pictures in the Slideshow come over so well, but apparently most people don't use IFLIs capabilities to the full extent - and then there's the horizontal PAL colorblur, which means many different colors don't actually make so much sense after all, since you can't distinguish all the colors so well anyway!

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2009-07-20 10:09

DeeKay

Registered: Nov 2002
Posts: 362

popmilo: every 2 lines - but it's offset one line from the bitmap color changes! xbow made that so you could have 4 colors in a 8x2 block, but we noticed when working on the pictures that quite often in those lines where a sprite color change occurs, you need to set one of the bitmap colors to the same color as one of the spritecolors in order to avoid ugly lines in that 8x2 block! That leaves you only with one other color in that line...
Xbow said that he can do 5 of the 6 sprites in the same line as the bitmap (only the rightmost would be 1 offset!), and we planned to experiment a little with this to see if it gives better results, so bitbreaker made a version of the converter that did sprite and bitmap-changes in the same line. Apparently it did improve according to the conversion bug percentage, but the whole project was already underway so we didn't want to change it again!
In fixing these bugs (make no mistake - the converter is good, but quite a few of these pictures, especially the more colorful IFLIs, required many many hours of postprocessing to look THIS good, e.g. Carrion's train or Valsary's Wolverine!) i did find occasions where it was useful to have 2 spritecolors in one 8x2 block, but more often i had to fix ugly lines caused by the offset sprite colorchanges (very evil in pictures with outlines!)

To come back to your original question: we actually even have 8 sprites ((M)UFLI had 7 already - 6 in the pic and one to cover the FLIbug!), 6 in the picture and 2 in the FLIbug!
And yeah, i forgot: we can switch colors for the FLIbug sprites, too, depending on how many register changes inside the picture are unused (you hardly ever change the color of all 6 sprites every time!), and that means up to 4 flibug spritecolors every second line, depending on how many colorswitches are "unused"! ;-) plus one FLIbug-Sprite-colorchange in every other line...

2009-07-20 10:30

PopMilo

Registered: Mar 2004
Posts: 145

FLI is then used every two lines ?
So 8x2 hires bitmap blocks in two colors + spritecolors ?

Hats of to Bitbreaker for making converter for this mode! :)

2009-07-20 10:34

Oswald

Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 5027

I have read the scroller, and this thread but the specs are still not clear :)

so every 2nd line fli 6+2sprites, and every two lines how many registerchanges possible?

2009-07-20 10:58

DeeKay

Registered: Nov 2002
Posts: 362

Okay, I'll sum this up as condensed as I can:

NUFLI-Picture: 1 hires bitmap, FLI every second line (=all even lines) plus 1 spritelayer of 6 expanded hires-sprites over the first 39 chars (last one is plain AFLI) under the bitmap with possible colorchanges for the sprites every 2 lines (=every odd line)
NUFLI-bug: 1 hires bitmap, 6 lines of grey alternating with 2 lines of normal AFLI, plus one Mcol-spritelayer as the bottom layer (well, technically the unset bitmap color is at the very bottom, but in those 6 lines with grey that's grey, which you also have as set pixels in hires *over* the whole thing, so it doesn't make any sense!), one hires-spritelayer over it and set bitmap pixels (that's those 6 lines grey alternating with 2 lines AFLI again!) over that (that's 4 layers instead of 3 like inside the picture). colorchanges are possible for all four sprite colors (five possible switches in total every even line, one every odd line), depending on how many register switches are free (unused) inside the picture!

Yes, nobody said it's simple - that's why we made the converter! ;-D

2009-07-20 11:48

PopMilo

Registered: Mar 2004
Posts: 145

Thanks DeeKay! That is clear enough :)

Excellent job!

2009-07-20 14:04

algorithm

Registered: May 2002
Posts: 702

Great pictures and good conversion.

Aaargh. If only I created the MUFLI converter before this was released.

The majority of the images can look just as good just feeding it through the MUCSU converter (and this is nonfli and mcol sprite underlay with no color changes) Although for the more complex color images a sliced alternative such as bitbreakers would certainly be a requirement.

2009-07-20 17:40

Wile Coyote

Registered: Mar 2004
Posts: 646

whats the 'N' stand for?
whats the 'M' stand for?

From what I know, 'M' is the same as 'N', only 'N' gets to use the 40char, thus making it an upgrade of 'M'

('U' stands for underlay, if I remember correct)

FLI
IFLI
UFLI
UIFLI

I guess, NUIFLI applies to the logo's at the end of CSS

2009-07-20 18:26

DeeKay

Registered: Nov 2002
Posts: 362

M stands for Multicolor (and xbow liked the pronounciation "moo-FLI"! 8)
N (NUFLI - "New FLI") actually came before M (see the helpscreen of the MUFLI editor, xbow found he could still switch one register, Mcol-register to be exact, thus dumping N and creating M!), but was never released. But back then it was not in the form we released it in now - there was no 40th column and no FLIbug.

Yes, "U" is for Underlay (Arriba! Arriba! Ándale! Ándale!! 8)))
Yes, the end-logo''''s are NUIFLI....

Hope that clears up the confusion...

2009-07-20 19:21

Deev

Registered: Feb 2002
Posts: 206

To me this really is the most exciting thing to happen on the C64 in a long time. I know some people like the lo-fi approach of using hires and similar, and hey, I like to experiment every now and again, but most of the time I just want to make what I have in my mind look as good as it can on screen and this should go a long way to making that happen.

I also think it's pretty amazing that so far into the C64's life, such a big leap forward has happened! I've never really had a problem with interlace, but seeing all those pics in a true C64 high resoloution mode, that is possible to create without boring myself to death, blows me away! Thanks to all involved.

2009-07-20 19:47

DeeKay

Registered: Nov 2002
Posts: 362

Thanks, Deev, that's exactly why we made all this! ;-)))
It's funny how Soundemon set a new standard for Digis on x2008, Booze did for Demos - and we did for graphics! Only that nobody knew back then because we didn't release anything! ;-D
The converter was quite advanced back then already (though this was primarily MUIFLI focussed, we did all the FLIbug stuff some time after X!)