Do you have a specific question? it is a bit complicated yes, CharPad C16 actually uses a simplified version of the real machine's bitmap colouring system, you can click the "warning triangle" in the Project window for some more details about that.
I didn't know how to use the exported .asm, but I already did, say you could have given it a more descriptive name instead of the L1 and L2 attribute, which is the color and luminance bytes.
Plus an example program to put the image together would be nice.
And what is the
COLR_CM_BASE
COLR_SM_BASE ?
(And on export, when I export the colors, I can't find any brightness values there.)
But I have a few comments.
1. In bitmap mode, it would be nice to have a proper graphical
(in one file, up to $1800-3FFF only).
Maybe that's what binary export does, I haven't figured that out yet.
Which I really need:
2. be able to import another image into an opened project. Let's say I put together an image for the opening screen and I want to put a specially made 2x2 caption on it, that's not possible at the moment.
3. if I'm not designing a tile, but drawing a whole screen, there could be some editing method for that, because currently I can only edit characters individually, I can't draw on the map itself, for example, freehand.
I'd just like to inform you that this tool has been invaluable in helping me port Stunt Car Racer to the Plus/4, so thanks for creating it!
After using the tool for a while, here are some of the pain points I ran into:
I really could have used global keys for various cursor actions: moving around in the character set/map view, changing current chroma/luma etc. without having to click in the respective window. Being able to keep the mouse in the character editor and drive everything else from the keyboard would make life much easier.
Global color replace (i.e. specific source to destination colour), also limited to selected chars, would have saved quite a bit of manual work too.
Ability to offset bitmap horizontally when importing (to find better fits for the character boundaries). Maybe even having an automatic "minimum error" mode that just cycles through all 32/64 possibilities for sub-char positions could be interesting.
I found that the luma values were somewhat off. Luma levels 0 to 3 shouldn't brighten so quickly, because there's supposed to be a bigger jump between 3 and 4. Especially 2 and 3 look overly bright compared to both emulated and real machines. In the help you wrote that you're using the Yape palette, but this doesn't look like it to me. I'd look into taking the Multipaint palette into use, or even the one used by Vice (all three programs seem to be in close agreement about the luma levels).
For the C16 and Plus/4 it would make sense to have an importer for the Multi Botticcelli format, since it seems to be the standard used by the community.
Note that I was basically using it as a bitmap editor to translate the original C64 graphics (and partly the Amiga one as well), and it's possible that I should have used Multipaint instead for some of that work. However, CharPad has a much better importer, and it also has much better export options, so I think it was the better choice overall.
This is all food for thought, not really feature requests, since it all depends on the direction you want to take with the editor. The only clear issue from the above is the mismatch in luma levels from all the other tools, I think you should review that more carefully.
Compliments are rarer than you might imagine and yes tools like this don't just fall out of the sky as some would like to believe.
These things have taken years of effort and perseverance through every real-life trial imaginable (well, ok, many of them).
So I have saved your full post and will take a good close look at all the points you raised in due course, I had doubts about the palette myself some months back but felt like nobody was buying/using it anyway.
So, best of luck with Stunt Car Racer, a classic, I think I only played it on Amiga, that's got to be a tough coding job on the 8-bits, I will defo keep an eye out for it.
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Hello!
I need help about Bitmap mode Multi color.
I want to import that in KickAssembler, but not understand the data concept.
By the way, the program works great, it's a huge help for me, coz' I am not a graphics expert.
Hi there, ok I will try to help if I can.
Do you have a specific question? it is a bit complicated yes, CharPad C16 actually uses a simplified version of the real machine's bitmap colouring system, you can click the "warning triangle" in the Project window for some more details about that.
Hello.I found out what was the problem.
I didn't know how to use the exported .asm, but I already did, say you could have given it a more descriptive name instead of the L1 and L2 attribute, which is the color and luminance bytes.
Plus an example program to put the image together would be nice.
And what is the
COLR_CM_BASE
COLR_SM_BASE ?
(And on export, when I export the colors, I can't find any brightness values there.)
But I have a few comments.
1. In bitmap mode, it would be nice to have a proper graphical
(in one file, up to $1800-3FFF only).
Maybe that's what binary export does, I haven't figured that out yet.
Which I really need:
2. be able to import another image into an opened project. Let's say I put together an image for the opening screen and I want to put a specially made 2x2 caption on it, that's not possible at the moment.
3. if I'm not designing a tile, but drawing a whole screen, there could be some editing method for that, because currently I can only edit characters individually, I can't draw on the map itself, for example, freehand.
I'd just like to inform you that this tool has been invaluable in helping me port Stunt Car Racer to the Plus/4, so thanks for creating it!
After using the tool for a while, here are some of the pain points I ran into:
Note that I was basically using it as a bitmap editor to translate the original C64 graphics (and partly the Amiga one as well), and it's possible that I should have used Multipaint instead for some of that work. However, CharPad has a much better importer, and it also has much better export options, so I think it was the better choice overall.
This is all food for thought, not really feature requests, since it all depends on the direction you want to take with the editor. The only clear issue from the above is the mismatch in luma levels from all the other tools, I think you should review that more carefully.
Thanks again for the excellent tool!
Thank you for your appreciation of our work!
Compliments are rarer than you might imagine and yes tools like this don't just fall out of the sky as some would like to believe.
These things have taken years of effort and perseverance through every real-life trial imaginable (well, ok, many of them).
So I have saved your full post and will take a good close look at all the points you raised in due course, I had doubts about the palette myself some months back but felt like nobody was buying/using it anyway.
So, best of luck with Stunt Car Racer, a classic, I think I only played it on Amiga, that's got to be a tough coding job on the 8-bits, I will defo keep an eye out for it.
Cheers!
I'm not sure if I'm ever going to use this tool but you rock and that's why I want to support you.
Well, maybe the Plus/4 *IS* worth a look ;)
Aww thanks mate that's super nice of you to say so :)
+Thank you so much for your support, respect!
Yeah the C16 & Plus/4 may lack sprites and the SID but they're still nice systems in several other ways.