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2024-01-26 04:50

Raistlin

Registered: Mar 2007
Posts: 680

C64GFX - Image Formats

I'm starting to think about "better" ways to categorise images on C64... and whether images just need multiple toggles/options for different things. Eg.:-

Image: Picture, Logo, Font
Type: Bitmap, CharSet, PETSCII, other?
Colour Mode (Main Screen): HiRes, MultiColor, FLI, Mixed?, Other
Interlace: 1 frame, 2 frames, more?
On-Screen Sprites: no/yes
Top/Bottom Border Sprites: no/yes
Side Border Sprites: no/yes
Rasters: no/yes
Multi-Screen: Horizontal, Vertical, Diagonal 1x1 scroll, Diagonal 2x1 scroll, Large, etc..?
Animated: no/yes
Other: .. option to write notes here

^^ there's probably even more than that.

That feels like a lot.. is it overkill? Is it useful? Is it even possible to determine all these things for (currently) ~16,000 images. For regular MC and HiRes, I can add code to my toolset to find these, along with marking which images extend outside of the regular screen area (which can be a sign of rasters, sprites, or just a bad screenshot).

Is any of this even useful..? Maybe I should only be caring about the mass-market formats and just calling the others "extended"?

2024-01-26 05:38

Mr SQL

Registered: Feb 2023
Posts: 137

Quoting Raistlin

I'm starting to think about "better" ways to categorise images on C64... and whether images just need multiple toggles/options for different things. Eg.:-

Image: Picture, Logo, Font
Type: Bitmap, CharSet, PETSCII, other?
Colour Mode (Main Screen): HiRes, MultiColor, FLI, Mixed?, Other
Interlace: 1 frame, 2 frames, more?
On-Screen Sprites: no/yes
Top/Bottom Border Sprites: no/yes
Side Border Sprites: no/yes
Rasters: no/yes
Multi-Screen: Horizontal, Vertical, Diagonal 1x1 scroll, Diagonal 2x1 scroll, Large, etc..?
Animated: no/yes
Other: .. option to write notes here

^^ there's probably even more than that.

That feels like a lot.. is it overkill? Is it useful? Is it even possible to determine all these things for (currently) ~16,000 images. For regular MC and HiRes, I can add code to my toolset to find these, along with marking which images extend outside of the regular screen area (which can be a sign of rasters, sprites, or just a bad screenshot).

Is any of this even useful..? Maybe I should only be caring about the mass-market formats and just calling the others "extended"?

Very cool to see the whole list, I think some of the more esoteric formats are even more interesting for being unusual.

I'll be releasing two formats in demos and games presently you may want to add to the list. Double resolution retina only format that only works on CRT and MBR Motion Blur Reduction format.

There's also an NTSC only format that bears mentioning:
http://RelationalFramework.com/Paper.jpg
That's a black and white image with about 10 colors from a computer art contest I competed in in the 80's, it's possible to do this mode on my early breadbox model but not with later versions of the VIC-II.

A more controversial maximum phosphor image format is/was seen in my deleted screen shot for Gate Crasher Jazz Improv. It is possible to trick out the phosphor by scrolling the colors perpendicular to the direction of screen scroll.

2024-01-27 00:28

ccr

Registered: May 2002
Posts: 26

Quote: I'm starting to think about "better" ways to categorise images on C64... and whether images just need multiple toggles/options for different things. Eg.:-

Image: Picture, Logo, Font
Type: Bitmap, CharSet, PETSCII, other?
Colour Mode (Main Screen): HiRes, MultiColor, FLI, Mixed?, Other
Interlace: 1 frame, 2 frames, more?
On-Screen Sprites: no/yes
Top/Bottom Border Sprites: no/yes
Side Border Sprites: no/yes
Rasters: no/yes
Multi-Screen: Horizontal, Vertical, Diagonal 1x1 scroll, Diagonal 2x1 scroll, Large, etc..?
Animated: no/yes
Other: .. option to write notes here

^^ there's probably even more than that.

That feels like a lot.. is it overkill? Is it useful? Is it even possible to determine all these things for (currently) ~16,000 images. For regular MC and HiRes, I can add code to my toolset to find these, along with marking which images extend outside of the regular screen area (which can be a sign of rasters, sprites, or just a bad screenshot).

Is any of this even useful..? Maybe I should only be caring about the mass-market formats and just calling the others "extended"?

I'd probably separate FLI from "colour mode", because there are both hires and MC FLI, and FLI on every 1/2/4 lines etc.

Also I think DrazLace (e.g. 1 frame multicolor 1-pixel x-scroll wiggle) style interlace versus some others that do not do the x-scroll wiggle are different sub-categories.

On the implementation side, it'd probably be best to make all these attributes "tags". And perhaps create a list of common formats that contain specific set of tags, e.g. typical paint programs that produce certain format. Of course nowadays many use some custom code etc so .. dunno.

Personally I find this kind of metadata interesting, although I can certainly understand that it can be a lot of effort to input and/or maintain.

2024-01-27 00:34

chatGPZ

Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 11386

I'd probably only make a difference between "native" formats (Koala/Hires/Charset) and tag everything else as "non standard" (or whatever). Because i really don't care about fancy formats anymore, and find regular Koalas much more impressive. YMMV :)

2024-01-27 13:41

Deev

Registered: Feb 2002
Posts: 206

I quite like the idea of such detailed info if you can write tools to work it out.

Instead of colour mode, I think it would be good to have "pixel type" for hires or multicolour. Then I like what Groepaz is saying about native versus non-standard. I feel like non-standard is perhaps enough as opposed to trying to name every brand of FLI.

2024-01-27 14:57

Joe

Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 229

Agree. Non-standard should be better than explaining all this and that. One can only listen to it to recall a novel by Thomas Bernhard. ;D
After his many pages however, maybe there will be questions on this and that, of course...

2024-01-27 18:01

Joe

Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 229

No, seriously, of course it would be dead serious (listening to Thomas Bernhards repetitions), to actually have all those very dedicated differences of split modes named. That was half of the c64-scenes criteria Afterall from late 1980: ies onwards anyway with dimitives.
Just imagine how they sound:
“rasterlinedbitmapwithoverlayedhiresspriteschangedeverysecondrasterfortheghost byteoverlay”. :D

2024-01-28 10:23

Raistlin

Registered: Mar 2007
Posts: 680

"rasterlinedbitmapwithoverlayedhiresspriteschangedeverysecondrasterfortheghost byteoverlay"

OK, i've added that one. But shortened to RLBWOHSCESRFTGBO to make it easy to remember.

What are people's thoughts on IFLI nowadays I wonder..? Did it ever really look good on C64 CRT? It seemed to be everywhere in the early 90s, all the top party graphics seemed to use it ... and nowadays there just seem to be a small handful of people using it. Those 90s GFX -really- looked like bad converts in many cases, too.. what were people thinking? Were all the proper pixel artists sleeping..?

2024-01-28 10:34

Joe

Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 229

The interlace modes actually looked quite nice on a real setup back then. Horrible on the emulator!

2024-01-28 11:48

rexbeng

Registered: Aug 2012
Posts: 37

Edit: Ah, I might have posted this in the (slightly) wrong thread. Mods, feel free to delete.

2024-01-28 16:14

chatGPZ

Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 11386

Quote:

The interlace modes actually looked quite nice on a real setup back then. Horrible on the emulator!

I don't agree with that - at all. Not as a generic statement anyway. There have been LOTS of interlace pictures that were a terrible flickering mess, and the only reason for why they rated high in compos were the slow and crappy projectors of that time, which hide that fact.

And of course - a ton were just (bad) converts. Everyone did it.

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