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2025-02-19 12:10

Neon Vincent

Registered: Nov 2003
Posts: 14

Please help with Pixcen (and identify some MC graphics)

First I came across Tapecart:
TapeCart

That led to the Tapecart Slideshow:
TapeCart Slideshow

But of course that can't be seen without the Tapecart hardware. I wrote to a helpful person at Priorart and asked if the 251 bitmaps are available as a collection that doesn't require the hardware, since I'll never have a Tapecart and, I'm guessing, 99% of us here never will either. He offered me this link to a Youtube video of the entire show:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mE1T4nidrdI

OK... there are some terrific pics there! But I asked him about getting them as C64 files, Koalas and so forth. He then sent me this link to all 251 thumbnails...

https://www.astro.physik.uni-potsdam.de/~mwendt/2016/tc/

and said I could convert them. Fantastic! I figured I'd just import each one into Pixcen and convert them to something the C64 can actually see. The problem is that Pixcen won't import them correctly. At least two colors, and sometimes several colors, get merged. Most often, yellow and light green get combined as yellow. Brown and red get combined as brown. Medium gray, light grey and white? Often, all three get combined as white. Pixcen just can't separate the colors and there's an enormous loss of detail.

It looks to me like the screenshots were "enhanced" in Photoshop so they'd look better on the web - I'd guess brightness, contrast, and saturation - but naturally I could be wrong. All I know is that the thumbnails on that website simply will not import into Pixcen correctly. Here's an example:

http://www.pixnstuff.com/nv/csdb/potsdam/

See what I mean about loss of detail? The sky is all brown, lacking the dithering with red. I tried for many hours to get this to go right. Before importing into Pixcen, I've tried adjusting saturation and contrast in dozens of different combinations, and tried every single Mode/Pallette option in Pixcen. I tried with a dozen different images. I've tried fifty or more ways, all to no avail: two or more colors always become one.

I wrote about all of this to my helpful new acquaintance but he has not responded. I think I may have asked too much of his time and worn out my welcome. If so, and you're reading this, I apologize.

So what am I asking of the group? Well..

I've spent the last two days (I'm retired, and I mean 16 hour days) going through the CSDB and looking at every single multicolor graphic that ranks 8 or higher, since that's what enthusi said (in the Tapecart Slideshow link above) was the criterion for selecting the images, and I've positively identified and downloaded 162 of the 251 images!

But that means... I have not identified the remaining 89. Here's where I would appreciate some help.

The person I mentioned earlier also sent me this link to a text list:
https://files.scene.org/view/parties/2024/zoo24/results.txt

But it's not helpful. They're not sorted in a way I can use. When I selected one at random, "Killer Piller", I searched for it here with no meaningful results.

I wrote about all of this to my helpful new acquaintance but he has not responded. I think I may have asked too much of his time and worn out my welcome. If so, and you're reading this, I apologize.

Can you tell I'm on a quest? I'm determined to get all of them as usable C64 files, make Koalas of them, and post them as a neat and tidy collection... unless someone has already done that? If so, and I've just wasted half an hour typing all this, please send me a link! I've searched for all relevant terms and have found nothing useful.

So. I have 89 thumbnails remaining from the potsdam.de website and would like help identifying them, or better yet, for a few kind souls to send me source files or links to the ones they recognize. If you want to help, please send me PM and I'll send you a download link to a zip of them.

Also: Is there an alternative to Pixcen that I should try?

Thanks for your time reading all this.

/NV

2025-02-19 12:28

Joe

Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 236

Tapecart Slideshow? The images already exist as separate entries, so there’s no need to convert anything. Just look up the graphic designer mentioned in this YouTube file
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mE1T4nidrdI

and check the files of each separately here on CSDb. It will take some time, but it’s worth the archaeology!
Faster way? Check stuff on https://c64gfx.com/

I guess PixCen can get errors on the colors, unless it's one of the clean palettes saved in, and it can be tricks with rasters and sprites which doesn't convert, why not try something like MS Paint (or similar). I think you can find several ways to study the artwork in detail someway or other.

Checking the best voted GFX at the moment? It's in one of the tabs here on CSDb:
https://csdb.dk/toplist.php?type=release&subtype=%289%29&submit..

2025-02-19 13:18

chatGPZ

Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 11510

Those pictures are all straight screenshots from VICE. And they are all plain Multicolor/Koala too AFAIK, so pixcen should be able to import them no problem - in theory.

The problem in practise is that the palette does probably not match. I'd try png2prg 1.8 to convert them back to koala, because it tries a dozen or so palettes and will use the one that produces no errors

2025-02-19 16:00

Neon Vincent

Registered: Nov 2003
Posts: 14

Thanks for trying to help, you guys, but I realize my mistake. I had my head so deep in this mess, for days, that I went *way* overboard in my original post. TMI. TL,DR. Nobody's fault but mine.

I should have simply asked for help identifying the images, without the enormous preamble. All I need is for a few helpful folks to look at the thumbnails and see if they recognize any. I'll ask about that now, in a new thread.

Cheers.

/NV

2025-02-19 16:24

iAN CooG

Registered: May 2002
Posts: 3235

I added to the files a picturelist.csv obtained from the picturelist.pdf, which adds the CSDb urls to the original releases so at least one can check those for the pics.

2025-02-19 16:55

Neon Vincent

Registered: Nov 2003
Posts: 14

Where can the csv & pdf be found?

2025-02-19 17:46

iAN CooG

Registered: May 2002
Posts: 3235

In the entry TapeCart Slideshow , look at the downloads: https://csdb.dk/getinternalfile.php/266247/picturelist.csv

2025-02-19 18:08

Neon Vincent

Registered: Nov 2003
Posts: 14

That'll do it, Ian! Thanks!

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