[LogiCow]

It is still vapourware at this stage

but anyways.

This is why you need to use SMZX mode 3 in your upcomming game.

[asgromo]

Point taken, sir. SMZX 3 shall be used...

Seriously, pure woah. That's amazing. Sure, vapourware is a suitable title, but at least it has neato graphics.

[Dr_Dos]

that's like nesish. Rocking.

[Koji]

Urm... what are the specs for smzx3?

I so want to use this in chronostodian! ^^ I only decided not to use smzx2 because because of the halved horizontal res.

This post has been edited by Koji: 14 August 2004 - 02:41 PM

[zombieguy]

Absolute coolness. :)

More people should try using smzx...

This post has been edited by ZoMbIeGuY: 14 August 2004 - 02:54 PM

[LogiCow]

[Micah]

As soon as I figure out mode 3 I might consider using it.

That looks really pretty though.

[LogiCow]

sword.

Attached image(s)

• 

[Micah]

Thats really awesome.

[KKairos]

Goodness man, those are AWESOME. Whenever 2.80 stabilizes...actually, before then...I'm seriously watching this journal..

But..if you're using 2.80 at this point should anything prevent usage of SMZX mode 3?

[LogiCow]

SMZX mode 3 is new to 2.80.

So nothing prevents me from using it!

Also just so you know that guy swinging the sword... 30 characters.
Don't expect 30 enemies in a screen.

[zombieguy]

absolute coolness x2 or something. That looks really good Logi.

[KKairos]

30 frames? Wow. Is that for just one direction, or for right and left combined? Either way ti's...very interesting.

[duvel]

that is amazing.

By the way, what's the difference between mode 3 and the other 2?

[LogiCow]

KKairos it's for any sword slash frame.

Basically I'll just build the char set every cycle from partial char sets.

Edit: And it's not 30 frames it's 30 characters from the 256 characters charset.
My walk animation only has 3 frames, not 30

This post has been edited by LogiCow: 15 August 2004 - 03:24 AM

[Frobozz]

At this point I have only one question to ask. WHY ARE YOU USING MEGAZEUX?!

This post has been edited by Frobozz: 15 August 2004 - 06:01 AM

[apage43]

For those who have any doubt as to if this is actually possible:

Taken from MZX.
If you want it on your OWN mzx:
This ZIP File contains a MZM, PAL, CHR, and MZX file.
Load the game, you see the player and one robot. Press P, then hit X.
It loads the MZM, PAL, and CHR that I made with a png2smzx converter I made in PHP yesterday. It's horribly unoptimized. That generates a 67 color palette when it could probably do the same with a 16 color palette.
Source Code.
Koji: and smzx 3 still has halved horizontal res. Logi halves his vertical res to make up for it.

This post has been edited by apage43: 15 August 2004 - 04:02 PM

[Micah]

Um...I still don't get mode 3. Back to expirimenting.

Quote

Also just so you know that guy swinging the sword

But I thought the player was a girl? But I was just judging by the
long hair, and the skirt.

[apage43]

Nope. Guy.
Japanese Samurai type guy.

[Zenith Nadir]

he still reminds me of little my from moomin

i looked on google image search but i couldn't find any good pictures of her though (most of what i found was "my maid" hentai) so instead here is a picture of the moomins

little my is the one on the right

[Koji]

apage43, on Aug 15 2004, 04:26 PM, said:

Koji: and smzx 3 still has halved horizontal res. Logi halves his vertical res to make up for it.

Well now that I have a size reference (The cursor) I can see that...

Why can't we make it NOT half the res since the mode ISN'T really a graphical mode anymore than it is just a different interpretation of the data?

We could also just make the chars drawn thinner. 160x25 chars to a screen? you'd probably also want dual charsets with that mode, which also shouldn't be a huge problem now...

Of course, I know NOTHING about how the graphics are handeled right now as I haven't looked at the source, or if it was created with these kinds of developments in mind... so It COULD be out of the question...

Hey we should also add ZOOM/ROTO protocols to MZX, and make it 3d!

[commodorejohn]

I was gonna say that she's cute except it's a he. Maybe it could just be a girl samurai? Or is there some samurai rule against that? If so, have any feminist activist groups been notified? =P

[apage43]

Koji, on Aug 15 2004, 12:40 PM, said:

apage43, on Aug 15 2004, 04:26 PM, said:

Koji: and smzx 3 still has halved horizontal res. Logi halves his vertical res to make up for it.

Why can't we make it NOT half the res since the mode ISN'T really a graphical mode anymore than it is just a different interpretation of the data?

I think something of the sort is planned for mzx 3.0, currently smzx uses 2 chars per 'colored pixel', 4 different colors, 2 bytes, that's why the resolution is halved. In order to change it to full res exo would have to probably make a different space in memory for a 'smzx' charset,which would be activated in. uh. smzx modes 4+? in which a character is 28 bytes instead of 14 bytes( 2 bytes per line(8 pixels/bits) as opposed to the old 1 byte per line)

[Koji]

Or just go all out and make the smzx 4 charset an 8bit bmp. heh

Mode 3's color configuration iirc is in a offset pointer style, iirc, where the color assigned to a character is the offset in the 256 color palette to the 4 colors it uses,

EDIT: IOW if you have a char that is color cB7 then the colors used for that character are cB7 (00) cB8 (10) cB9 (01) and cC0 (11), which helps alot in setting up unique palletes (64 totally unique ones) but in using this method, you might waste space on the palette with lots of repeated colors. But hell it's still easier to use than the original smzx modes, which could be removed since no one will use them in light of this easier to use mode!

This post has been edited by Koji: 15 August 2004 - 08:30 PM

[apage43]

You got it! That's exactly what SMZX mode 3 is. I'm currently optimizing my converter to not generate a 'palette' for each char like it did (It currently takes up at LEAST one spot in the palette for each character in the finished image).
What it does is, checks to see if any existing 'color sets' contain the colors it needs, if so, it remembers that that char uses that color set and writes the char to the set according to the order of the colors in the 'color set', then it generates the palette file by just dumping the colorsets in order. I then have to calculate teh length of each colorset and where the end of the last one was and store the offset for each colorset, and write the offsets to the MZM in the right place.

I havent finished yet but I hope it works

This post has been edited by apage43: 15 August 2004 - 09:03 PM

[commodorejohn]

THAT'S what SMZX mode 3 is? Good lord, that opens up so many opportunities!

[apage43]

Okay, I've got a good optimization algorithm, it seems to work, BUT.
It doesn't.
Nonworking PHP Code
I'm almost SURE I've narrowed the problem down the part that writes the charset.
I'm certain the palette and MZM writing are fine.
Any uber php coders (If there are any) Take a look at it.
A LOT of debug output
You can sorta tell how the palette optimization works by looking at the debug output.
It now makes a 16 color palette instead of a 67 color one.
Also is the image I'm testing it with.

[Exophase]

apage43, on Aug 15 2004, 07:42 PM, said:

Okay, I've got a good optimization algorithm, it seems to work, BUT.
It doesn't.
Nonworking PHP Code
I'm almost SURE I've narrowed the problem down the part that writes the charset.
I'm certain the palette and MZM writing are fine.
Any uber php coders (If there are any) Take a look at it.
A LOT of debug output
You can sorta tell how the palette optimization works by looking at the debug output.
It now makes a 16 color palette instead of a 67 color one.
Also is the image I'm testing it with.

I'm not even going to try to debug that code; it's hideous.

Here's a tip - if you ever want people to help you with your code, be kind and try to format it in some sane manner. This code is more poorly formated than MZX's was and that's no small feat.

Also, the color coding is blinding. Too many bright colors.

- Exo

[apage43]

Okay, I used a different highlighter, and ran it through a beautifier Any help now?

[apage43]

lalalaw00000t
Png2SMZX optimized is teh w0rking.
This code (Yes it's still called highlight-nonworking.php, I'm too lazy to change it) generated a 20 char partial charset, 16 color palette file, and MZM file that when loaded into mzx in smzx mode 3 were samwalk.png! WAHOO.
http://www.afreehost...estuffs/sam.txt
And the debug output is still fun to look at.

This post has been edited by apage43: 16 August 2004 - 02:58 AM