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Eyeth
Account closed
Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 98 |
The Art of Wiring
Hello, CSDb denizens;
I'm thinking of doing two small demos; One for the SuperCPU and one for a plain c64. I already have some ideas I'd like to try out in these demos.
I will be cross-assembling it and testing it out under winVICE and of course, on the real machine for the SuperCPU one.
Anyway, I'd appreciate any tips in wiring graphics and pictures for my nascent c64 demo efforts. I already wired a Santa piccy for my SuperCPU full-screen FLI demo and managed to muddy the conversion.
That said, I do have high standards and I want to adhere to them. So, I need to do a better job in wiring graphics/pictures to show for it.
First of all, I wonder if it's possible to use a painting program like Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro for the initial production of the picture? I heard there was a c64 palette of 16 or 256 colors for those PC programs? How do I use this palette under those programs?
Should I then save the resulting file to a .BMP, .GIF or .JPEG? What conversion program should I use? Any intermediate steps? I've already used ConGo with my Santa conversion and it didn't go over too well, so I'd like to explore/use other utilities other than ConGo.
I'm thinking of using the drazlace (interlaced Multi-Color Mode) mode for my c64 demo effort and an IFLI mode for my SuperCPU demo effort. Hopefully conversion efforts will yield good results for these two modes I'm contemplating.
Thanks,
-Todd Elliott |
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algorithm
Registered: May 2002
Posts: 705 |
I have seen your examples (eciwire) very nice. Still a bit more to do. At the moment the program loads,dithers and converts to Interlaced AFLI, but only utilises two mix colors per 8x1 pixel. Considering maybe even adding a sprite layer for each HIFLI as well as the additional 2 mix colors which can be produced each 8x1 line. (although memory would be tight) could use the left side of the screen to store sprites or the bottom)
At the moment I get good results by using a program such as adobeimageready. I select the 136 mix color to dither the image and in realtime i can adjust the brightness and contrast and see how the dither and quality would look. Usually with low contrast and brightness, it looks better (and would flicker less on a C64) this is then imported to my program (with dither turned off) which converts it to IAFLI. At the moment the dither is not working efficiently and is producing poor results in my program. Soon to be fixed |
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algorithm
Registered: May 2002
Posts: 705 |
I have seen your examples (eciwire) very nice. Still a bit more to do. At the moment the program loads,dithers and converts to Interlaced AFLI, but only utilises two mix colors per 8x1 pixel. Considering maybe even adding a sprite layer for each HIFLI as well as the additional 2 mix colors which can be produced each 8x1 line. (although memory would be tight) could use the left side of the screen to store sprites or the bottom)
At the moment I get good results by using a program such as adobeimageready. I select the 136 mix color to dither the image and in realtime i can adjust the brightness and contrast and see how the dither and quality would look. Usually with low contrast and brightness, it looks better (and would flicker less on a C64) this is then imported to my program (with dither turned off) which converts it to IAFLI. At the moment the dither is not working efficiently and is producing poor results in my program. Soon to be fixed |
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algorithm
Registered: May 2002
Posts: 705 |
Apologies for the double post. Oswald, Yes I have tried your program, its great. If you can maybe add the facility to utilise mixcolors and sierra/floyd steinberg dithering.
Ordered dither is good enough (it also compresses better), but error diffusion methods also look good.
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Oswald
Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 5086 |
algo, I think error diffusion dithering is something that looks ugly on the c64, imho you need more colors and higher reso for good results. (and the opposite, ordered dithering is something not for high reso, and lot of colors)
mix colors: this is the 2nd thing I never wanted to support, sorry :) the reasons for this: interlace is going out of fashion (ufli, mufli, etc), and secondly I am lazy to come up with an algorithm that considers both the resolution and color increase that comes from interlace. I think a really good converter should do that. |
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algorithm
Registered: May 2002
Posts: 705 |
Yeah, the UFLI and MUFLI modes are really decent, but there will always be the limit of 16 hardwired colors regardless (although colors tend to mix on the c64 due to PAL)
Ordered dithering looks more neat and arranged and yes, it is true that floyd steinberg dithering looks worse at lower resolutions.
But after many tests, (using photoshop, etc) and 16 c64 colors as the index, floyd steinberg wins over ordered dithering in 320x200 mode (especially in interlaced AFLI which utilised 136 colors)
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Jetboy
Registered: Jul 2006
Posts: 299 |
Where can one see eciwire examples? |
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chatGPZ
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 11360 |
Quote:But after many tests, (using photoshop, etc) and 16 c64 colors as the index, floyd steinberg wins over ordered dithering in 320x200 mode (especially in interlaced AFLI which utilised 136 colors)
thats only the case though if you completely ignore the horrible flicker... if you limit yourself to use only colors with same luma for interlace (so they almost dont flicker at all) you have a lot less colors, and ordered dither wins again. |
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algorithm
Registered: May 2002
Posts: 705 |
using the method of picking colors via luma, wouldnt that make the final mix colors less accurate (but with less flicker)? I was thinking of utilising x/y interlace with darker colors to minimize the flicker instead |
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Graham
Account closed
Registered: Dec 2002
Posts: 990 |
Quote: Quote:But after many tests, (using photoshop, etc) and 16 c64 colors as the index, floyd steinberg wins over ordered dithering in 320x200 mode (especially in interlaced AFLI which utilised 136 colors)
thats only the case though if you completely ignore the horrible flicker... if you limit yourself to use only colors with same luma for interlace (so they almost dont flicker at all) you have a lot less colors, and ordered dither wins again.
If you choose colors of the same luma, you don't need dithering at all. |
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chatGPZ
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 11360 |
Quote:If you choose colors of the same luma, you don't need dithering at all.
hu? one has little to do with the other no? generating "new" colors by interlacing, and using said "colors" in some ordered dithering pattern to have even more "colors" can be threatened completely independend. |
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