[RyanThunder]

Hey Logicow. I saw a video of your game, Fritz Blitz, on YouTube and I just gotta ask.

How did you get your graphics to look so good? Did you really draw all that with the keyboard? Is there something I'm missing?

[LogiCow]

The backgrounds are BMPs.
The ship graphics are BMPs.
If you modify any of those BMPs, the changes apply in the game.

The menus have been converted from BMPs during the DoZ.



Those BMPs have been drawn by my sister, with a graphic tablet, on Photoshop.

[Dr Lancer-X]

Belongs in Robotic Talk *punt*

[RyanThunder]

How were you able to apply those BMPs in-game? Did you convert them somehow?

[Dr Lancer-X]

He just wrote a BMP loader in robotic.

[RyanThunder]

You can load BMPs in robotic?!

So THAT'S how all you guys are able to make all these cool looking movies and stuff!

How do I get started?

EDIT: Also, which DoZ was Fritz Blitz in, and what game number was it?

This post has been edited by RyanThunder: 27 September 2007 - 04:10 AM

[Dr Lancer-X]

With the BMP file format.

http://local.wasp.uw...ataformats/bmp/

Enjoy!

(also, I wouldn't do a movie this way =p)

[LogiCow]

34239 and it's the one before summer 2007, so winter 2006.

[RyanThunder]

Alright, I understand what the BMP format is all about, but how do I actually load one and use it in my MZX game?

This post has been edited by RyanThunder: 27 September 2007 - 05:08 AM

[asiekierka]

Write robotic code to read it.
You have fread.
You have put.
You have counters.
What more?

[Dr Lancer-X]

I wrote a small code snippet a little bit ago in some other thread that read in a 16-colour BMP and output a palette and MZM. That should show how to read the format, at least. I'll repost it here for convenience.

set "$INPUT" "test.bmp"
set "$OUTPUTMZM" "test.mzm"
set "$OUTPUTPAL" "test.pal"

set "commands" "(-1>>1)"

set "&$INPUT&" "fread_open"
set "$header" "fread10"
set "bmpoffset" "('fread_counter'+('fread_counter'<<16))"
set "paloffset" "('fread_counter'+('fread_counter'<<16)+14)"
set "fread_pos" "paloffset"
set "&$OUTPUTPAL&" "fwrite_open"
loop start
set "$quad" "fread4"
set "fwrite" "('$quad.2'/4)"
set "fwrite" "('$quad.1'/4)"
set "fwrite" "('$quad.0'/4)"
loop 15
set "&$OUTPUTMZM&" "fwrite_open"
set "$mzmheader" "MZM2"
set "$mzmheader" "fwrite4"
set "fwrite_counter" 80
set "fwrite_counter" 25
set "fwrite_pos" 16
set "fread_pos" "bmpoffset"
set "$scr" "fread2000"
set "" "fread_open"
loop start
set "x" "('loopcount'%40)"
set "y" "(24-('loopcount'/40))"
set "fwrite" 5
set "fwrite" 223
set "fwrite" "('$scr.('y'*80+'x')'/16*16+('$scr.('y'*80+'x'+40)'/16))"
inc "fwrite_pos" 3
set "fwrite" 5
set "fwrite" 223
set "fwrite" "('$scr.('y'*80+'x')'%16*16+('$scr.('y'*80+'x'+40)'%16))"
inc "fwrite_pos" 3
loop 999
set "" "fwrite_open"

[Galladin]

Shit, now I'm not sure whether to marry LogiCow and his MadBrain or Lancer-X and the shark who was about to eat him.

[LogiCow]

Galladin, on Sep 27 2007, 06:45 AM, said:

Shit, now I'm not sure whether to marry LogiCow and his MadBrain or Lancer-X and the shark who was about to eat him.

what


In any case I would object to such an arrangement.

[Dr Lancer-X]

LogiCow, on Sep 27 2007, 08:55 PM, said:

In any case I would object to such an arrangement.

is it the incest, the polygamy or the homosexuality?

[KKairos]

Don't forget the implied bestiality! (The shark.)

[Dr Lancer-X]

KKairos, on Sep 28 2007, 02:47 AM, said:

Don't forget the implied bestiality! (The shark.)

there's no bestiality, it just eats you. and not like that, either :/

[Quantum P.]

Now, what I'd like to know is how you pre-process photographic images, like in Lancer's last DOZ entry, or how that fading trick is done in Irreplaceable Memory (entry from same DOZ as Fritz Blitz).

[Dr Lancer-X]

I did Irreplacable Memory too!

The thing about Irreplacable Memory was that it did everything mid-game, so the code is there. As input it took in greyscale RAWs. There's a couple of lookup tables used to determine the nicest char/col combination to represent that image. I just had a bunch of different palettes for it, to simulate other colours. For the fading, it was basically naive alpha processing to fade from one colour 'index' to the other (which is why it was slow in some parts).

Moonlight Blue, though, had the conversion done outside of MZX. Essentially, I had a pre-created charset (which only used a few chars since I needed the rest for moonspeak). Essentially, I resized the image to 80x50, quantised it in a bunch of different ways to get a dozen or so different 16-col palettes, went through the image for each palette to determine how to most accurately represent it in MZX (I actually did some error diffusion to distribute the error here, rather than pure nearest-representation). Then I went with the palette that resulted in the most 'accurate' image. The software in question was written in C and quite heavily optimised so as to reduce delays.

When I realised later I also needed 7-col versions, those were produced from the 16-col versions (which is why they are unfortunately noticably less accurate). Ayane's 'sprite' was rendered to 7 colours from the start, however, so it looks better for the reduced palette.

[CJA]

RyanThunder, here's how I'd begin:

Download IrfanView and get the plugins (so you can make a RAW). Get mtPaint (so you can have the control over palettes that Paint lacks).

Draw/load something 80x25 with 16 colors in it. Make sure it's set to Indexed and not RGB. Save it as BMP or PNG. Load it with IrfanView. Use its save dialog to save it as a RAW file. RAW is just data from the get-go, no headers, so it's great.

In MZX, you have to read from the file and put each byte, one at a time, on the screen 80 times in a row and do all that 25 times for every row. Bytes will correspond directly to MZX colors if it's a 16 color image.

It'll look horrible, but that's because the palette is MZX's now, but that's the starting point.

[Pyro1588]

in my humble opinion, it's just as easy to construct your own format (i.e. a palette followed by a raw image) as it is to use bmps.

http://honors.tntech.../~aames/mbm.zip
here's an old experiment i did with converting 80x50 images to half-char mzx graphics with a 16-color palette. in all honesty, photoshop did most of the work. the file format is as idiotically simple as it seems.

http://honors.tntech...~aames/smzx.zip
and here's an smzx version that does the same. in all honesty, because of the way smzx palettes are laid out, the image doesn't gain too much from it. but still, you can see a bit of a difference on the pictures. it'll compare them for you, btw. i also included two extra files, "f22" and "raptor". press d to load them.

[Dr Lancer-X]

Just as easy? No, it's much easier.

[LogiCow]

The robotic is easier, sure.

But when you're working with your sister and want to make lots of on the fly adjustments to the pictures, the BMP format is better, because no time is spent converting anything, and any bitmap size works.

[Dr Lancer-X]

Yeah, TBH the PPM-style formats are easier, but they don't have a mode for paletted images so bmp still ends up being nicer to use.

[RyanThunder]

Lancer-X, on Sep 27 2007, 01:29 AM, said:

I wrote a small code snippet a little bit ago in some other thread that read in a 16-colour BMP and output a palette and MZM. That should show how to read the format, at least. I'll repost it here for convenience.

set "$INPUT" "test.bmp"
set "$OUTPUTMZM" "test.mzm"
set "$OUTPUTPAL" "test.pal"

set "commands" "(-1>>1)"

set "&$INPUT&" "fread_open"
set "$header" "fread10"
set "bmpoffset" "('fread_counter'+('fread_counter'<<16))"
set "paloffset" "('fread_counter'+('fread_counter'<<16)+14)"
set "fread_pos" "paloffset"
set "&$OUTPUTPAL&" "fwrite_open"
loop start
set "$quad" "fread4"
set "fwrite" "('$quad.2'/4)"
set "fwrite" "('$quad.1'/4)"
set "fwrite" "('$quad.0'/4)"
loop 15
set "&$OUTPUTMZM&" "fwrite_open"
set "$mzmheader" "MZM2"
set "$mzmheader" "fwrite4"
set "fwrite_counter" 80
set "fwrite_counter" 25
set "fwrite_pos" 16
set "fread_pos" "bmpoffset"
set "$scr" "fread2000"
set "" "fread_open"
loop start
set "x" "('loopcount'%40)"
set "y" "(24-('loopcount'/40))"
set "fwrite" 5
set "fwrite" 223
set "fwrite" "('$scr.('y'*80+'x')'/16*16+('$scr.('y'*80+'x'+40)'/16))"
inc "fwrite_pos" 3
set "fwrite" 5
set "fwrite" 223
set "fwrite" "('$scr.('y'*80+'x')'%16*16+('$scr.('y'*80+'x'+40)'%16))"
inc "fwrite_pos" 3
loop 999
set "" "fwrite_open"

Are you sure it's this cumbersome to do this?

I can't just do something like "load bitmap" and "place at x y"?

By the way LogiCow do you also go by "MadBrain"?

This post has been edited by RyanThunder: 29 September 2007 - 10:34 PM

[Dr Lancer-X]

MadBrain is logi's brother.

Also, what do you mean 'cumbersome'? If you want advanced functionality, you can't be afraid of writing a teeny bit of Robotic.

[Pyro1588]

ryan: it's really not that complex. and besides, if it works like it looks like it does, then you really shouldn't need to understand it. just load it up and let it spit out an mzm for you.
and if you're in need of a system to place images loaded from files on-screen, then i'd seriously suggest writing a simple converter for normal bitmaps. if you have photoshop (or something similar) you can always export as 24-bit RAWs or paletted RAWs and go from there.

[Exophase]

RyanThunder, on Sep 29 2007, 05:33 PM, said:

Are you sure it's this cumbersome to do this?

I can't just do something like "load bitmap" and "place at x y"?

By the way LogiCow do you also go by "MadBrain"?

Most of that code is for writing the palette and MZM, not loading the BMP, and Robotic can actually output MZMs directly too (although you'd need to construct it somewhere first, which I guess is why Lancer-X didn't do this)