Posts filed under 'retro'
Juho Kuorikosken Suuret seikkailupelit: Tietokonepelien klassikot on eräänlainen jatko Sinivalkoiselle pelikirjalle, vaikka tällä kerralla ei pitäydytäkään Suomen kamaralla. Sen sijaan Kuorikoski käy läpi seikkailupelien historiaa alkaen tekstiseikkailuista ja päätyen tämän päivän visuaalisesti komeisiin “vuorovaikutteisiin elokuviin”. Pelkkien pelien lisäksi lähdemateriaalissa on runsaasti haastatteluja, joissa pääsevät ääneen aikansa tunnetuimmat suunnittelijat ja koodarit, kuten Al Lowe ja Ron Gilbert.
Suuri osa sivuista on luonnollisestikin omistettu Sierran ja LucasArtsin tunnetuimmille klassikkosarjoille King’s Questista Monkey Islandiin. En itse tunne seikkailupelejä sen syvällisemmin, joten valikoima vaikuttaa varsin kattavalta (noh, Shenmueta jäin kaipaamaan). Kuorikosken keskeinen narratiivi on se, kuinka seikkailupelit kehittyivät näkyväksi ja kaupallisesti menestyneeksi genreksi 80-luvun lopussa ja kuinka ne katosivat 90-luvun lopulla valokeilasta moniksi vuosiksi. Lopputulema on kuitenkin optimistinen, sillä hiljattain lajityyppi on kokenut jälleen uuden tulemisen.
Kirja on helppoa luettavaa ja toimii sekä hyvänä ajanvietteenä että yleisjohdatuksena aiheeseen. Kuorikoski tuntee aiheen kattavasti, mutta mikään tiedekirja Suuret seikkailupelit ei sittenkään ole – kirjoittaja ei peittele omia mieltymyksiään ja suosikkiteokset saavat osakseen ylisanoja. Eräs kirjasta selkeästi esiin nouseva seikka on se, kuinka seikkailupelit ovat olleet alusta saakka sarjoja: menestyneitä konsepteja on lypsetty vuosien varrella moneen kertaan jatko-osien ja uusioversioiden muodossa (juuri tästähän nykyistä peliteollisuutta kritisoidaan, mutta jatko-osatehtailu on kirjan perusteella paljon vanhempi ilmiö).
November 28th, 2016
Jimmy Maherin The Future Was Here – The Commodore Amiga vuodelta 2012 on toinen lukemani Platform Studies -sarjan kirja. Atari VCS -kirjan tapaan teoksessa avataan laitteiston erilaisia ominaispiirteitä tapausesimerkein eikä esim. kullekin piirille omistetun luvun kautta. Lähestymistavan hyviä puolia ovat ainakin mekaanisuuden välttäminen sekä ohjelmien ja laitteiston välisen suhteen korostaminen. Ilmeisenä haittana tästä seuraa tietysti se, että missään ei ole kootusti tietoa yksittäisen piirin ominaisuuksista. Platform Studies -kirjoja voisi kenties luonnehtia populaaritieteeksi: ne eivät ole yhtä tiukan akateemisia kuin vaikkapa väitöskirjat, mutta toisaalta ne poikkeavat myös hiljattain yleistyneistä ns. kahvipöytäkirjoista, jotka herättelevät värikkäillä kuvillaan lukijoissa nostalgiaa.
Kirja painottuu erityisesti Amigan varhaisvuosiin, jolloin plattis oli kilpailijoihinsa nähden huomattavan innovatiivinen monessakin suhteessa. Commodoren myöhemmistä seikkailuista, kuten AGA-Amigoista tai CD32:sta ei sanota juuri mitään, ja kolmansien osapuolien tekemistä turboista ym. laajennuksista vieläkin vähemmän. Bisneksensä tyrinyt Commodore saa kuulla tuttuun tapaan kunniansa, kun taas alkuperäisten suunnittelijoiden osaamista hehkutetaan toistamiseen. Hieman tuoreempana näkökulmana Maher nostaa Amigan suljetun ja vaikeasti laajennettavan laitteiston yhdeksi tappion merkittävimmistä syistä.
Tarkemmin käsiteltäviä aiheita yleishistorian lisäksi ovat Boing-demo, Deluxe Paint, Juggler-demo, NewTek, AmigaOS/AREXX, kräkkeri- ja demoskene, Cinemaware ja Psygnosis. Boing ja Psygnosiksen ammuskelupeli Menace puretaan atomeiksi ja samalla havainnollistetaan laitteiston erikoisominaisuuksien kekseliästä hyödyntämistä niissä. Lukijalta vaaditaan jonkun verran teknistä ymmärrystä, vaikka esim. bittitasot on selitetty kansantajuisesti. Itselleni tekninen puoli oli jo aika pitkälti tuttua muutenkin, mutta ohjelmien ja firmojen taustoista löytyi paljon uutta mielenkiintoista tietoa.
November 9th, 2016
Pitkällisen lueskelun jälkeen sain loppuun Grant D. Taylorin kirjan When The Machine Made Art: The Troubled History of Computer Art, joka on tietämäni mukaan ainutlaatuisen laaja katsaus tietokonetaiteen historiaan. Käsittely on kronologista ja ulottuu ensimmäisistä tietokoneella tehdyistä kuvista suunnilleen vuosituhannen vaihteeseen saakka. Jo itse termi “tietokonetaide” viittaa historiaan – nykyäänhän puhutaan pikemminkin vaikka digitaalisesta tai (uus)mediataiteesta.
Läpitunkeva teema, joka näkyy jo kirjan nimessäkin, on tietokonetaiteen kohtaama vastustus. Jäin itse miettimään, että onko julkinen keskustelu todella ollut noin vihamielistä, mutta näkemystä on ainakin perusteltu monin esimerkein. Kritiikkiä on satanut sekä aiheellisesti että aiheetta monesta suunnasta: tietokonetaidetta on eri aikoina syytetty niin kaupallisuudesta, temaattisesta köyhyydestä kuin tekniikkakeskeisyydestäkin. Taylor tarjoaa syyksi yhtäältä sitä, että taidemaailma ei pitänyt tontilleen tunkevista tiedemiehistä, ja toisaalta tietotekniikkaa kohtaan tunnettuja yleisempiä epäluuloja.
Kenties suurin käänne tietokonetaiteen historiassa vaikuttaa olleen se, kun (suhteellisen) helppokäyttöiset valmisohjelmat tulivat taiteilijoiden saataville 80- ja 90-luvun kuluessa: musiikin ja grafiikan luominen ei enää vaatinut välttämättä syvällistä teknistä osaamista. Tämäkään suuntaus ei kaikkia miellyttänyt, vaan vanhan polven tekijät kritisoivat moista kyvyttömyyttä. Sittemmin kenttä monimuotoistui ja yhdistyi muihin taidemuotoihin niin pitkälti, ettei ole enää mielekästä puhua pelkästään tietokonetaiteesta, kun tietokone toimii keskeisenä työkaluna niin valokuva- kuin videotaiteilijoillekin.
Kirjasta löytyi joitakin eväitä myös demoskenen analysointiin. Olen jo pitkään pohtinut, onko demoskene pikemminkin moderni (tekijyys on keskeistä, töitä arvioidaan tiukoin kriteerein) vai postmoderni (kollaasit ja tyylillinen lainailu). Muun digitaalisen taiteen tapaan voitaneen sanoa, etteivät demot ole puhtaasti kumpaakaan, vaan niissä on piirteitä molemmista suuntauksista. Esimerkiksi 90-luvulla yleistynyt kerroksittainen “fotarimainen” valokuvien ja efektien yhdistely kytkeytyy laajempiin mediataiteen ilmiöihin sekä työkaluihin, ja kertoo osaltaan siitä, kuinka demoskene on kiinni ajassaan.
October 6th, 2016
I’ve been using various guesstimates throughout the years for the PAL MSX screen and pixel aspect ratios, but now there’s finally something credible instead (in contrast, NTSC machines have ~square pixels). According to this discussion thread, the pixels are as wide as 7:5 or, in other words, they are 1.4 times as wide as they are high. That’s pretty flat! I got almost same figures on my own Philips 1084S using a ruler, so they’re very likely correct. Other calculations:
- The pixel area of a 256×192 image is 5.6:3 — almost the same as a modern 16:9 screen
- That is a multiplier of 1.8666… for the image height to calculate the width
- In terms of square pixels 358×192 is very close, or with double pixels 717×384 even better
Viewing a borderless SCREEN 2 image fullscreen on a 16:9 screen gives a pretty good quick estimate of how it will look like. Two things to note are of course that people’s CRT displays are not perfectly calibrated, and that emulators do not use a correct ratio by default. In general horizontal stretching looks worse than vertical, which might be one reason emulators are a bit conservative with their aspect ratios; for example openMSX definitely produces a narrow image – even setting horizontal_stretch to its minimum value of 256 doesn’t make the image flat enough. Furthermore, Japanese Konami warez would appear unnaturally squeezed, even though that’s exactly how they were seen in Europe back in the day.
Square pixels vs. a corrected image:
edit: just as notes here some other numbers. Out of a 313 line full progressive PAL frame about 61.3% is spent on actual pixel lines, while the remaining 121 lines (38.7%) are for the border (113 lines) and vertical sync (8 lines). Dividing 3.58 MHz by 50 yields 71600 clocks per frame, but as a progressive frame is longer (49.92 Hz), the actual clocks are closer to 71700 per frame or 229 per scanline.
As shown by the IO demo, the exact cycles are not stable across machines, which makes it tricky to do splitting effects on an MSX1. IO uses a timing of 228 cycles/line or 71364 per frame, so those are probably the correct numbers on at least some machines.
edit2: Haven’t confirmed yet whether the MSX outputs 312 or 313 lines per frame, so the figures above are just estimates (there are some other possible error sources too). What is known is that the vertical blanking interrupt (VBI) takes place immediately after the last pixel line, not outside the screen. In addition, ideal Z80 cycles are not correct on real machines, as there are additional T-states introduced by memory access.
August 1st, 2016
During the last few days I’ve spent hours and hours trying to understand how Oric (Oric-1 and Atmos) hires graphics work. Compared to most 8-bit home computers of the 1980s the mode is notably different with its “serial attribute” based layout. If you know how teletext works, you’ll easily notice certain similarities. You can find multiple elaborate explanations of Oric graphics online, but I’ll try and distill their essence into a few minimalistic rules:
- There are 240 by 200 pixels described by 8000 bytes located at A000h (followed by three hard-wired lines of text which we will omit). One row is 40 bytes.
- There are eight colors to choose from: black, red, green, yellow, blue, magenta, cyan and white ie. a typical 3-bit BGR colorspace from 0 to 7.
- For each byte – describing six not eight pixels – you can do one of the following:
- Change the ink color. Six pixels of paper color will be displayed in this 6×1 block. Byte contents: 0..7.
- Change the paper color. Six pixels of the new paper color will be displayed. Byte contents: 16..23.
- Display pixels using the current ink (1) and paper color (0). Byte contents: 40h + bitmap in the lower-order bits.
- If bit 7 is on, the block will be displayed in inverted colors. Note that the inversion does not affect the result of ink/paper change operations, only the outlook of the 6×1 block. The inversion logic is a bitwise not:
- black – white, 000 – 111
- red – cyan, 001 – 110
- green – magenta, 010 – 101
- yellow – blue, 011 – 100
- Every new row starts with white ink and black paper.
In addition there’s stuff like 50/60 Hz, blinking and text mode setting, but we’ll skip them too. At first the ruleset seems quite simple, but once you actually start thinking of how to do graphics with it, things don’t look that easy anymore. Let’s warm up with a little close-up of a real Oric piccy (“Yessagician” by Dbug):
This is the left edge of the screen and the gray lines denote 6 pixel block borders. How would you choose the operations for displaying the pixels – in particular the area I’ve outlined with a red rectangle?
Solutions: the completely black lines we could show as pixels as the line starts with white ink and black paper, but there’s many other possible solutions too. Every black 6×1 block might actually contain an ink change or perhaps setting the paper to black again. Or setting the paper to white and turning the inverse bit on. The 6×1 blue blocks we could create by simply changing the paper to blue, after which the next identical block could contain an optional ink change.
As to the marked area, however, we need to do something else. Changing the paper to blue on the left leaves us with white/blue which will not do for the next block as there are pixels to be displayed. The only possible solution is to turn paper yellow and invert the colors for both of the blocks. An inverted white/yellow pair provides the needed black/blue for the bitmap.
The first two questions I tried to solve were “Is this picture a legal Oric hires image?” and “How to display a legal image using the possible operations?” There’s more to converting a random image to the Oric, but these two problems have to be understood in order to get anywhere. A first bruteforce solution which didn’t even check all the possible combinations took several minutes to solve just one row of a simple image on a recent i5 computer, so clearly something else had to be done.
For each 6×1 block containing one or two colors there can be multiple solutions. Two-color blocks are the easy case: there’s the bitmap and the colors inherited from the left, possibly inverted. One-color blocks are a different ballgame altogether, since they can contain paper changes, invisible ink changes or they might even be a bitmap. All of this with or without inversion, of course. Another difference is that a two-color block needs to get proper colors from the left, whereas a single-color one can be displayed anytime with a paper change.
The following image tries to convey a conceptual model of how it works:
Each column in the graph represents a 6×1 block and its multiple possible solutions. Some could call this a directed acyclic graph. The first block can be displayed in four different ways, the next only in two and so on – in reality the numbers are a lot higher with singe-color blocks. The arrows denote possible movement from left to right: each way of displaying a given block here limits the options for the next block. For example a block which leaves ink/paper as white/black does not provide for its neighbor in need of red color.
Instead of a recursive approach starting from the left and trying out all the possible solutions it is enough to simply loop through the columns, create the links, optionally dropping the dead-ends (solutions leading nowhere on the right or with no supply from the left) and duplicates (same in/out combinations). If there is a path that runs all the way from the left edge to the right, we can conclude that this particular row is legal. More than one path is possible, but that doesn’t really matter. Walking back from right to left we can collect one legit representation for the row, thus solving the two “research questions”.
When it comes to dealing with images that do not comply or converting a random jpeg, I don’t have much to say yet. Different approaches will lead to better or worse approximations – as of now I simply turn offending two-color blocks to single-color ones, but much more could be done. Further reading and examples here:
edit: some first thoughs on dealing with non-conforming images. The first thing I’d try is make a graph with approximate solutions, make the errors the weights of the vertices and use a shortest path algorithm such as Dijkstra’s to find the nearest possible approximation.
edit2: here’s a bit more visual representation of the bits as a bonus.
May 26th, 2016
A project I’ve been working on for the last few weeks is now out: Pixel Polizei is a helper tool for the retro artist. The purpose is to let the “graphician” draw using whatever software they happen to like, check/force color clashes and finally save the outcome in native formats that can be viewed using emulators or the real deal. So far there is support for these machines and screen modes:
- Amstrad CPC modes 0 and 1 with or without overscan
- C-64 hires and multicolor
- MSX screen 2
- Oric hires
- Plus/4 hires and multicolor
- ZX Spectrum
More formats and platforms will appear when I find the time and motivation again. As usual, the tool should work on Lin/Mac/Win as long as Java 7 or newer is installed. Open source, too.
May 17th, 2016
After more than two years of improving and honing my own project, and checking the competition I got the urge to share some of my thoughts on what makes or breaks a PETSCII editor. A lot of this stuff is actually pretty self-evident in the end, but it has taken hours and hours to figure it out. Bear with me 🙂
Not pixels
When comparing a PETSCII editor to a generic paint program there are plenty of similarities, but also notable differences. Instead of tens of thousands of individual pixels we’re dealing with a relatively low-resolution grid consisting of predefined symbols. On the one hand it is easier to deal with text, since tools such as lines, ellipses and curves are rather useless, but on the other hand there is a constant need to effectively choose and alternate between the available symbols, which requires different kind of thinking altogether. In other words, adopting tried and tested methods from paint programs alone will not lead to optimal outcome.
Among the most powerful features of PETSCII (the editor) are smart rotation and flipping of a selected area which take into account the form of the character. I take no credit for these, as it was Tero who came up with the idea in the first place and wrote the remapping tables. Not every character can be rotated or flipped, but even so you’ll save a lot of time when working with symmetric forms. See the following image for an example of how “smart” flipping works as opposed to simply moving the characters:
Typing vs. drawing
In essence there are two main methods to get characters on the screen. The traditional way, typing, was initially the only possible option and is still heavily present in modern-day editors (for example AAE). A mouse is something of a rarity on C-64s and graphical symbols can be conveniently found on the keys, so on a real machine typing makes all sense – but a lot less so on your PC or Mac which has a different keyboard to begin with.
I’ve included a half-assed typing mode in PETSCII, mostly for the sake of actually writing text, even though all the symbols can be typed too if it’s really necessary. In any case, drawing with a mouse was the preferred metaphor right from the beginning. There are pros and cons to both, but using a mouse definitely makes it quicker to sketch forms in the spirit of direct manipulation. A little but important detail is to show the character before it is actually placed: otherwise you end up constantly undoing the operation.
Character selection
When drawing, a great deal of time is spent on selecting the next character. The first thing to do was to reorganize the otherwise messy character set to group related symbols together (thanks go to Tero again). Jambonbill went even further and repeated the same characters multiple times to create visually continuous groups.
A well-organized character selector is a good start, but much more can be done to facilitate an efficient workflow. For example in PETSCII the aforementioned rotate and flip operations work with individual characters as well: press a single key and get the next corner for a window or a box. In the same lines I came up with “smart sets”, predefined sets that you can walk through with a keypress. Another little bit that arose from a real need was to let the user quickly shift stick characters (used for various lines) right/left/up/down.
As a piece of PETSCII art is drawn, you typically start accumulating useful characters and their combinations in the image itself. Instead of always going for the selector – which in Playscii even occludes part of the canvas – it makes sense to quickly pick a character from the surroundings.
Grid
You can get away without a grid if the images are comparably small, but all in all a well-working grid can be of great benefit when selecting regions and aligning symbols with each other. After at least three complete rewrites of the drawing code I’ve eventually come up with the following findings:
- Don’t make the grid intrusive (thick, contrasty etc.)
- No single color works for the grid alone. Instead, darken light colors and lighten dark colors to keep it harmonious.
- It’s useful to have a quick on/off toggle
Below a few real-life examples of how the grid looks like in different editors.
File formats
The file formats supported by an editor tend to reveal its intended use. Some editors are clearly geared toward actual machines, stick to their limitations and facilitate easy exporting to formats like .prg, which can be run on real hardware. At the other end of the spectrum you might get only PNG files or GIF animations out for easy distribution on the web.
I’ve been balancing between the two extremes myself: initially the idea was to support software development and participate in demoscene competitions. However, it soon became evident that many people needed and wanted to distribute their works online for easy viewing, so I had to give in and add a PNG exporter. Supporting multiple exporters for multiple machines obviously means plenty of error-prone extra work.
Automatically converting existing images to PETSCII is a different discussion altogether. Having said that, many users would welcome such a feature for, say, converting their self-portrait into retro character art. In addition, an artist can benefit from a reference image, as some of them prefer sketching on paper first before firing up the actual editor.
Animation and other fancy features
Creating proper support for animation is probably as big a task as all the others combined. As of now there are animation features in multiple editors, but none of them really go beyond simple copy/paste and playback of the frames. Think of a proper video or animation editor to realize how many possible features there could be.
Undo and redo aren’t exactly “fancy” features from a user perspective, but it takes some effort to include them in your editor. It’s definitely a good idea to implement them early on, as adding them as an afterthought might prove painful – speaking from experience 🙂 There are more and less sophisticated ways to go about undo, but as we’re dealing with quite little data it’s not all that bad to just save the buffers between operations for undoing or repeating the steps. Another welcome safety network comes in the form of automated backups.
There are a couple of editors that support layers, approximately in the lines of your familiar photo editing software. I can definitely see some uses for them, for example for separating the background from foreground figures. Then again, to fully support layers requires considerable effort, and they aren’t quite as useful as in photo editing, as you can’t really have things like translucency or color manipulation.
Accessibility
While some users are after a genuine user experience – tapping away on a real C-64 – most seem to welcome the ease of cross-development. Supporting the three main desktop platforms (plus their different flavors) is tedious at best, and thus some of the editors run on Windows only. Being a Mac/Linux user myself this was, of course, out of the question, but luckily Processing lets you export multiplatform applications with little extra effort. On the downside, Java is required on the target machine, which will turn off some possible users (and rightfully so).
As I see it, the best bet these days would be to develop for the web. In spite of the possible troubles with browser compatibility, web applications tend to be multiplatform by nature. In addition, you don’t need to go through the trouble of installing anything on the local computer. If I were to start from scratch, I’d probably take this route. As of now there are two online editors already, even if neither of them is quite complete yet (see my previous post).
Another angle to accessibility follows from the fact that people use laptops and tablets with a crammed keyboard. Therefore, relying on numpad or function keys beyond F10 is obviously out. Likewise, touch pads (esp. Apple ones) might not have more than one or two mouse buttons available, which requires some thought. Even more so for touch screens, which again introduce a new set of challenges.
Documentation
I can wholeheartedly relate to programmers that want to spend their free time on interesting coding problems instead of writing documentation. Even if it’s not exactly fun, there is a need for at least some product support: be it a manual, online help or a website. A few nice example works done with the editor definitely don’t hurt, as they show what’s possible and spark user interest.
Conclusion
Cross-development tools for PETSCII are a surprisingly new phenomenon. As far as I know, they’ve been around for not much more than five years, after which things have really started picking up speed. The threshold of starting to do character art has probably never been lower, and new authors are popping up every now and then.
All in all, the challenge of programming a PETSCII editor is twofold: there’s the tech and then there are the users. It’s not hard to put together basic minimum functionality, but going beyond that has turned out so laborious that most projects have been abandoned shortly after their initial release. PETSCII too would require quite an overhaul by now to accommodate any new major features – feature requests are, of course, neverending.
Implementing new modes, tools and so on is one thing, but thinking about the workflow and making the features useful is another. If you’re not much of an artist yourself, it’s at least good to have one in the loop: user feedback or even going so far as to observe someone’s work over their shoulder provide valuable insight and motivation. Ok ok, that was the design teacher in me speaking 🙂
April 6th, 2016
I’ve been rather actively involved with PETSCII art for the last couple of years, coding, drawing and even conducting a bit of research. As PETSCII is kinda fashionable now, and many people would like to experiment with it, here’s a little overview of the available editors and their pros and cons. The list aims to be complete, so if there’s anything missing, let me know. Let’s start with native tools and then move on to cross-development.
It’s a fine line, but I’ve decidedly excluded various text editors that could be used for character graphics as well.
Digital Paint 4.0 (C-64, link)
Probably ok for its time – can’t quite pinpoint when exactly it was released. In addition to the original version coded by Aaron Hightower there are various hacks by sceners who added missing features. In addition to typing, you can paint filled boxes and edit colors.
TBoard-Painter 1.1 Pro (C-64, link)
Another oldie, this time by Tao/Triad. The most notable extra feature is the 1/4 char pseudographics drawing mode. The image can be larger than the screen size, which together with the name suggests it was meant for BBS graphics. As a nice little touch the x/y location display uses hex numbers 🙂
Tyronpaint 2.1 (C-64, link)
Not much new to say about this: you can type text, change the color or draw blocky 1/4 dots. The images can be higher than 25 lines. Created by Lynchbit/Alpha Flight in 1996, this improved version is from 2006.
Kaleidoscope 4.0 (C-64, link)
Very simple, but at the same time easily comprehensible editor by BroBryce64 all the way from 1989. Not many features there, but you can type chars and change colors. A curious extra is the “rainbow mode” which cycles the colors after each character.
PETSCII Paint 0.5 (C-64, link)
A rudimentary tool by 0xDB from 2011. The basics do work: you can select characters, change colors and save the outcome, but even simple things tend to be on the tedious side.
Petscii Editor 4.6 (C-64, link)
FieserWolf’s editor is undoubtedly the most popular one when it comes to programs running on real hardware. As the version number suggests, there have been plenty of iterations and the workflow has been improved a lot since the initial releases. Once you get used to the UI, there’s useful functionality such as copy/paste, recoloring and multiple pages available. Several notable works have been produced with this editor.
Online PETSCII Editor (online, link)
A web-based solution by Krissz from 2013. I like the idea that you can draw on a normal browser without installing any software or digging the old warhorse from the closet, but this particular project seems to have been abandoned. You can both draw and type, and the character selector is well though out. On the other hand, there is little functionality to support advanced editing.
PET Shop Pro (online, link)
As of now there’s very little documentation on this editor by Jambonbill, as it is still work in progress and not officially released. Nevertheless, quite a promising online tool which lets you even do animations. Originally based on Krissz’s editor (see above), but was mostly rewritten after that. The character selector is well designed, you can edit images of various sizes plus export them to different formats, and even script the editor. There are still some bugs around, which will hopefully be ironed out at some point.
CBM .prg Studio (Windows, link)
Arthur Jordison’s CBM .prg Studio is a complete development environment that lets you create software for the Commodore 8-bits. One of its parts is the screen editor, which is actually quite usable for artistic endeavours too. Largely served as the source of inspiration for the editor below.
APE (Windows, link)
APE (Another Petscii Editor) by MrXaliasH from 2013 is Windows-only, but does run fine under Wine as well. The basic functionality (drawing, color selection, copy/paste and even undo) is there, but it seems the project was quickly dropped after its initial release.
C64 AAE (Windows, link)
C64 ASCII Art Editor by RADSoft hails from Poland. Windows-only, but runs somewhat ok under Wine except the color editor. Apparently the development ceased in 2012, but in spite of that there are some unique features – most notably layers, which were a firstie in the scene. The animation features are also among the most advanced. Drawing happens by writing, but unfortunately the key mapping doesn’t suit all keyboards. Furthermore, keyboard shortcuts require quite heavy juggling with various ctrl/shift/alt combinations.
EDSCII and Playscii (multiplatform, link)
EDSCII by JP “Vectorpoem” LeBreton was one of the first editors I tried in 2013. Later on its development halted and Vectorpoem created a new tool called Playscii. Both versions focus on PETSCII-like retro graphics instead of sticking to the exact capabilities of the C-64. Still under development, Playscii already features plenty of functionality such as different character sets, layers, animation frames and smooth zoom, plus of course the standard editing tools. There is also something called “game mode”, which I didn’t quite understand at first sight, though.
PETSCII (multiplatform, link)
Do not expect me to be very objective with this 🙂 The project, initially coined by me and Dr. TerrorZ, started in 2013 and has received occasional updates ever since. In addition to the standard stuff there’s rudimentary support for animation and other machines than just the C-64 (VIC-20, PET and Plus/4). One recognized problem is that because of Processing, the program runs on Java, which spells trouble these days. The GUI is undeniably “no-nonsense” with most functions hidden behind single-key shortcuts.
In conclusion, there’s already quite a variety of tools available these days, and some are surely still missing from the list – not everyone has made their software public in the first place. At one end of the spectrum there are hardcore editors running on genuine hardware, and at the other retro art oriented tools aimed at recreating the old look with less regard for authenticity (at times called fakescii). Pick your poison!
edit: More additions, thanks to Goto80 for the tips!
edit2: More details on Pet Shop Pro received from Jambonbill himself.
March 22nd, 2016
Muiden vastaavien kuvakirjojen ohessa tuli hankittua myös Bitmap Booksin Commodore Amiga: A Visual Commpendium (2015). Ei kovinkaan yllättäen pääpaino on Amigan legendaarisimmissa peleissä – ja samalla niiden legendaarisuuden pönkittämisessä, sillä valitut lainaukset ovat usein ylitsevuotavan kiittäviä. Kuvakaappausten lisäksi mukana on jokunen sivu demoista ja pelintekijöiden haastatteluja.
Kaikkiaan kirja täyttää hyvin tarkoituksensa: pelejä on paljon ja ne edustavat useita eri lajityyppejä. Ruutukaappaukset eivät toki tee täyttä oikeutta grafiikoille, kun palikkaiset pikselit ja hahmojen kovat reunaviivat tunkevat silmille aivan eri tavalla kuin kuvaputkelta. Hieman hämmentää sekin, että monista peleistä on käytetty intro- ja promokuvia ym. eikä itse pelinäkymiä. Positiivisesti yllättivät puolestaan useammasta näkymästä kokoon harsitut kuvat, joissa näkyy kokonainen kenttä.
Mikään tiedekirja tämä ei – taaskaan – ole, mutta eipä se ole tarkoituskaan. Amiga-nostalgikolle on kasattu antaumuksella paksu pinkka luettavaa, jonka äärellä viihtyy pitkään. Bonuksena tuli vastaan täysin uusiakin tuttavuuksia, joita pitänee ruveta seuraavaksi metsästämään jostakin abandonware-sivuilta.
March 20th, 2016
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