... and yet another demo!

[bbock]

Hi folks,

Here's my pure-assembler, no-sound, low-resolution demo. Well - I like it. Tell me what you think.

Bernd

[iturbez]

Good job!
I like it!

[Andy Rea]

nice, i like the graphics, did you draw them yourself ?

me like

Andy

[RWAP]

Really good job - the graphics are good and smooth scrolling

[bbock]

Thank you very much for the flowers

@Andy: I assume you are asking for the images, not the graphics effects. I did not draw them, but instead I took some images, converted them with a graphics program (in fact I used three of them), and then I used my amazing self-made Java tool to convert the pixels to assembler instructions.

Bernd

[Andy Rea]

ah ah, i see, those tools you mention could be useful for other... Myself included,

[bbock]

Hi Andy,

well, yes, of course. But at the time being the tools are not finished or very rough-edged (so to say) - quick and dirty, you know. The Java program for example contains hardcoded paths and filenames, and it does not (yet) come with a GUI. If you are eager to see the tools in their current pre-alpha status, I can send them to you via PM or e-mail. Or you wait a bit until I've taken the time to finish and release them. There's no documentation yet either; I should at least write a readme...

Bernd

[Andy Rea]

I think its probably best to wait for the finished thing,

Regards Andy

[bbock]

Ok, I built a GUI for the Java tool, so it should be fairly easy to use it to create assembler data for low-resolution pictures for the zeddy. This is the process:

1. Get some nice files from somewhere. Good sources are line art or two-colour pictures.
2. Use your favourite graphics program to resize the pictures. Use a maximum of x=64 and y=48 by keeping the aspect ratio, if you want to display the whole picture at once without scrolling.
3. Reduce the colours to black and white. GIMP has a threshold filter, for example.
4. Double-click on ZX81GraphicsReader.jar to start the converter.
5. Use the "Add..." button to add the source files you want to convert (the resized, b/w pics).
6. If you accidentally added some wrong files to the list, you can get rid of them by clicking them while holding the Ctrl key, then click "Remove"
7. Select the target file with the - bummer - "Select..." button. You are going to get a text file, so you may want to name it something like "mypics.txt", "mypics.asm", or "mypics.inc".
8. Click the "Convert" button, and you'll get your file containing the data of all pictures as DB assembler statements, each number representing a ZX81 block graphics code.

Currently the tool support black and white only - no grey. Let's see if I can add that...

The board doesn't allow the extension .jar, so I merely renamed it to .zip (as a JAR is nothing but a ZIP following certain conventions), so you must rename the ZX81GraphicsReader.zip to ZX81GraphicsReader.jar.

ZX81GraphicsReader.zip

Rename .zip to .jar

(21.25 KiB) Downloaded 229 times

Have fun!

Bernd

P.S.: If double clicking the JAR file doesn't work, you can try this:
java -jar "ZX81GraphicsReader.jar"
The JAR has been tested on a Java 7 JRE.

[yerzmyey]

Hi folks,
Here's my pure-assembler, no-sound, low-resolution demo. Well - I like it. Tell me what you think.
Bernd

Excellent.
Y

PS: You could have written to me, for music.