INPUT magazine

[mentalthink]

Jeje a coco computer, this was a modification of Sinclair Spectrum or it's a completly different Computer?¿, I like to see working too.
I'm not sure if for COCO you have new developments in Hard, for Spectrum it's awesome the new soft and Hard appears...

Ahh!!! I forget to put in the forum , I know a lof of people perhaps have an Amiga in house... If you are interested in Ebay you can buy a simple Floppy device, this works with an USB key, you can replace your old floppy for this, and you can have all the games and App in this Floppy-USB.

I think here are the instructions in English... I read in Spanish forum ins't coplex, you only have to Flash the Firmware of the Floppy and connect to your amiga.

http://cortexamigafloppydrive.wordpress.com/

Works 100%, in the Spanish Retro forum a few people have got working yet.

[Ian Price]

I loved adventure games BITD - played through loads (and got stuck in plenty more too!), so that screenie looks great to me

The Coco (or TI?) wasn't available in the UK as far as I'm aware; listening to others talk about it it seems like we missed out - seems to be a well loved machine.

[matchy]

One of my friends had a speccy whilst I had a coco and at least that had more colors.

The coco alternative in the UK is the dragon, which has many more games I have yet to try.

[Ian Price]

My wife had a Dragon BITD - she loved a game called "Cuthbert Goes Walkabout"

[spacefractal]

Im had a Amiga 500 and a Amiga Cd32 (wth SX-1 box), which im still have (but have no clue its still works throught). Yes, there was some game compatible, but those got fixed later with WHD-Load and such harddrive installers. Im do thinks Commodore did created too many similar specs, which cause Commodore to crash. The sound was example newer updated. Howover its a good machine anyway and liked its very much (yes im did have C64 too eailer of course, which was that machine im did to hear very much computer music, due its excellent sid chip).

Also Greedy Mouse was based on Mouse Runner, im created in AMOS for many years ago for Amiga, which is again based on the BBC game, XOR. Its was the Amiga version of XOR that inspirated my originally since then.

Im do remember the Input Magazines in Denmark was called "Run", and did have the fun to code them in :-D.

[erico]

Yeah. A phone, ipod, mp3, whatever to play lots of converted .wav from .cas and .rom files.

I'd like to see your coco work. There are a few small programs that I would like to keep working on. For example, here is a tool in GLB for automatically creating adventure screen location to suit four color coco.

Hehe really funky the sound solution!

Unfortunantly, I have no coco work around anymore. My transition from coco II to amiga was a bit killer and I left behind my tapes 
I was too young and dumb not to keep them. At the time I saw no reason since I could not emulate the coco on the amiga at the time.
Now on my amiga days to PC, I kept most of my games and codes and also an image of my hd and my original processor and kickstart

Back on the coco, there I didn´t much finished a game. The most notable work I did I recall perfectly and are not too hard to recode again:

There was a karate game done in CHR set. Pretty unfinished.
An alien II game in CHR ASCII set, just the last scene, pretty lame game.
A death start tunnel game in CHR running from up do down using the print scroll. This was the most finished game, sporting 3 stages.
The avocado game I´m remaking, this was graphical but I blew the memory really quick.
A ninja jiraya game in graphics too, blew memory after 4 or 5 hero´s sprite.
Many tron lightcycle games in graphics with a few twists and infamous circular explosions.
A platformer defend/construct the castle against ravage dogs in CHR.

And a bunch more, some really bad coded since the loop concept escaped me on the very beguinning of my code ´career´.

I could remake them on an emulator, but I prefer to take the more notable attempts into GLB.

Downloaded you tool, will check it out later, looks really cool from the screen shots!

[erico]

Gave a quick go on the app, exe wise.

Really good mapping and visualizing stuff.
Made me wonder about the ability to look NSEW on each room, which would take us to the daggorath approach.
I recall "Escape 2012" and "Major Istar" were already able to fake half that.
Would it be best a single image approach to a room or a multiple one? I wonder.

I devised a low gfx  punt into something similar to "Hired Guns" as it depicts 3d in upper and low level greatly other then the 2d fit.

By far, what you have is really great!
One awesome thing, is that I can use an emulator to draw in COCO MAX with my wacom tablet, and I can use another program for a possible layer overlay.
We have to extend the capabilities of coco uh?

PS:. Your GFX going in app on the lower right is a bit strange going.

edit: On the structure designed, are you into developing an adventure?

edit2: I made single screens adventure games in paper books just couse I could not code enough back then, can you believe it? 
Some even required me as a ´dungeon master´ to understand the players parser

[matchy]

Thanks for having a look at the app. I really started with just wanting to convert graphics but got sick of converting existing images withing the constraints.

The idea is like Dungeons Of Daggorath except the backgrounds are pre-drawn. In effect, the screens on the lower right are mode 3 128x96 4 colour, but could be used for other systems palettes, and are intended to be saved on to a floppy. My first adventure games had every scene drawn in code but I figure now that the advantage is more disk space to store backgrounds and sprites. An ideal scenario is a 255 level layout like Atari Pitfall where the scenes are based on a seed.

[MrPlow]

Just got my Speccy Emulator ZXDS working on my DS Lite... class! A Pocket Spectrum!

[erico]

...I really started with just wanting to convert graphics but got sick of converting existing images withing the constraints...

Yep, a really horrible point, how can it be there is no converter? Worst of all, coco II would actually display differently everywhere it was presented worldwide. Maybe some 5 sets? Could it be achieved a one set into a macro photoshop? Or maybe a converter like Gernot did for c64 images in GLB?
They would be graphical only not the coco format, and then what to do to get it into the coco?

Why the heck did we choose the most alien bizzare computer to start with? other 8bit users have no idead of what a real man color clash is all about  

I still believe the best way to coco pictures is to mix an emulator with a some up to date tech, like in the appended picture.
And if a person has to pixel art into the likes of coco max II, then we are in for a F**k as that is a herculian task
At least we can save the image in a native format...

[matchy]

For PAL, high res coco games has no red and blue.

PMODE4 = 256x192, 4 colour, artifact black, white, red/orange, blue (NTSC)

PMODE3 = 128x96, 4 colours green, red, blue, yellow or white, orange, cyan, lime

As there is a limit to the colours so a pattern is required to increase shading like you have with the cocomax examples. This is something that I have tried although I wasn't intending an image converter. I found that converting with photoshop can work with experimenting with dithering and palette changes but then the resolution is a challenge. The Simpson characters convert well though.

[erico]

so you mean as for pmode 3 this.... (I never liked it much, more color, but weird ones)
At least more control.

but doing it on photoshop, how can you get it into a coco format later?
As for dithering, there is a pixel art thread I posted that can be adapted to it.

[matchy]

In photoshop I resize and image, then convert it to 4 indexed colours. There the I create a some palettes for each screen mode. What is needed is dithering palette rather than color. Perhaps we should work on a converter then? 

[erico]

What?? be a man and use DDA! (external joke)
Did you take a look on that pixel art thread?
This link is the thing:
http://danfessler.com/blog/hd-index-painting-in-photoshop

Also, resolution should not be a limit. ...but a dádiva!

[erico]

I have been thinking about how to convert images...

PMODE3 at least has no artifact, but its colors all correspond to the same grey and shade can only be consider if you take the blue for dark and yellow for light for example.
Still, it is hard to place the red and green (together) but in a 3 colors approach it may work out or maybe red or green stands for an outline/specular.

There could be a couple approaches this way:
1- transform original image (OI) pallete to fit the weird coco one and then reduce image.
2- transform OI into shades of BW and assign color and degradee as fit.

Hard stuff, it feels easier to trace the image from scratch (or a layer).