Multipaint VIC 20 support

[aeb]

Latest version of Dr. Terrorz's Multipaint (Windows/Linux/Mac) now includes VIC 20 Hires and VIC 20 Multicolor modes!

http://multipaint.kameli.net

Introduction:

"Multipaint 2023 (Version 18.2.2023) - With Multipaint, you can draw pictures with the color limitations of some typical 8-bit and 16-bit computer platforms. The screen formats supported are Commodore 64 high resolution, Commodore 64 multicolor, Commodore Plus/4 Hires, Commodore Plus/4 multicolor, Commodore Vic-20 Hires, Commodore Vic-20 multicolor, ZX Spectrum, ZX ULAplus, MSX 1, Amstrad CPC mode 0/1 (and 0 with Overscan), Sinclair QL, Commodore Amiga and Atari ST low resolution."

The supported VIC 20 modes are based on Picasso screen size:

"VIC-20 hires - VIC-20 mode with 176 x 176 pixel area. The color resolution is 22 x 11. You can choose a border color and a global background color. The pen color can be one of the first 8 colors, whereas the background can be any of 1-16.

VIC-20 multicolor - VIC-20 mode with 88 x 176 pixel area. The color resolution is 22 x 11. You can choose a border color which acts as one the global background colors. In addition, you can choose a global background and another auxiliary global color. This means there are three global colors. The pen color can be one of the first 8 colors, whereas the back and aux colors can be any of 1-16."

PRG export:

"VIC-20 export note: There are different exports for unexpanded VICs and with expansion. With unexpanded VIC exports, you need to provide a 10 LOAD "image",8,1 loader or use PuCrunch."

[DarwinNE]

Great news! Thank you for the information!

[majikeyric]

Yes! Thanks for that!

[hawk]

Is anyone able to identify this Vic20 screen editor?
Thanks.

[groepaz]

It's not exactly VIC20 (only): http://multipaint.kameli.net

[hawk]

Thanks.

[akator]

Thanks, this Multipaint looks good. I never would have known about it without this thread.

[Mike]

Is anyone able to identify this Vic20 screen editor?

As groepaz already has pointed out, this screenshot is from Multipaint.

Unfortunately, Aleksi Eeben did not do the graphicians on the VIC-20 a favour when suggesting to the maker of Multipaint that it should adapt the 176x176 (hires) pixel screen dimensions of his own native paint program, Picasso.

176x176 requires the user to put the accompanying "text screen" either at $0000 to $0200, neither of which is exactly OS friendly. This precludes the use of these pictures outside stills, slideshows or demos. The resolution of 160x192 pixels would have been a much better choice for general use.

Second, just being able to edit either a full hires or a full multicolour image poses a restriction on the user that is not present on real hardware. The video chip allows free choice of either hires or multicolour on a per tile basis.

If anything, Multipaint urgently needs to be improved to also load, edit and save pictures in MG format.


P.S. the screenshot is a picture from the "Gnork!" demo (released on Revision 2018) - when importing it to Multipaint, heaven6502 obviously needed to add 2 empty character columns to the left and right and crop the picture at the bottom, owing to the mismatch of screen dimensions


(mod: thread "Unknown Vic20 Screen Editor" merged into already existing thread "Multipaint VIC 20 support")

[aeb]

Good points there Mike, and I fully agree about the limitations and the OS friendliness issues. Please send Dr. Terrorz a spec of MG format and an executable viewer (email at bottom of page http://multipaint.kameli.net)! You can tell him I totally recommend adding MG support as well (and there's no foreseeable need for adding endless number of VIC modes after MG, he might be afraid of that...)

- Modification from 176x176 -> 160x192 is probably trivial, you could even achieve this by modifying the freely editable export scripts in Multipaint
- Having mixed hires&multi characters in picture as in MG may be more tricky, as I don't know if any of the graphic modes in Multipaint currently support this (I didn't peek in the code, but this could be a design limitation in the editor, due to its multi-format nature)
- I presented Picasso size to Dr. T as the first VIC mode to add, since it's closer to the standard screen size of VIC 20 (only removing 8 pix at bottom, instead of changing both width and height)

The mode could be added as another VIC 20 option, for example as "VIC 20 Minipaint" or "VIC 20 MG", or as a new mode under Extras (- if incomplete, for example if mixed hires&multi support is not feasible to add). MINIPAINT and MINIGRAFIK extension are a neat package!

(I think Gnork was 160x176, they had used the last row for code or something )

Is anyone able to identify this Vic20 screen editor?

As groepaz already has pointed out, this screenshot is from Multipaint.

Unfortunately, Aleksi Eeben did not do the graphicians on the VIC-20 a favour when suggesting to the maker of Multipaint that it should adapt the 176x176 (hires) pixel screen dimensions of his own native paint program, Picasso.

176x176 requires the user to put the accompanying "text screen" either at $0000 to $0200, neither of which is exactly OS friendly. This precludes the use of these pictures outside stills, slideshows or demos. The resolution of 160x192 pixels would have been a much better choice for general use.

Second, just being able to edit either a full hires or a full multicolour image poses a restriction on the user that is not present on real hardware. The video chip allows free choice of either hires or multicolour on a per tile basis.

If anything, Multipaint urgently needs to be improved to also load, edit and save pictures in MG format.


P.S. the screenshot is a picture from the "Gnork!" demo (released on Revision 2018) - when importing it to Multipaint, heaven6502 obviously needed to add 2 empty character columns to the left and right and crop the picture at the bottom, owing to the mismatch of screen dimensions


(mod: thread "Unknown Vic20 Screen Editor" merged into already existing thread "Multipaint VIC 20 support")

[Mike]

Hi, Aleksi,

Please send Dr. Terrorz a spec of MG format [...] (email at bottom of page [...])

thank you for the hint, I've sent a corresponding e-mail asking for the inclusion of the MG file format.

[...] an executable viewer [...]

One of the niceties of these files is they already come with a built-in viewer.

Nevertheless, I pointed Tero also to a displayer/validator I crafted for groepaz to aid the inclusion of the MG format in VICE, for screen exports. The source contains the static blocks at beginning and end (BASIC stub and display routine).

...

(I think Gnork was 160x176, they had used the last row for code or something )

Indeed in the demo the picture only has 176 pixel rows. One possible reason is, heaven6502 maybe thought it was still 'necessary' to hold 506 bytes for the screen buffer even though only 220 bytes were necessary. For MG, the "text screen" with 240 bytes and the graphics bitmap with 3840 bytes nearly exactly fill the range $1000..$1FFF with just 16 bytes spare.

Greetings,

Michael

[Mike]

Having mixed hires&multi characters in picture as in MG may be more tricky, as I don't know if any of the graphic modes in Multipaint currently support this (I didn't peek in the code, but this could be a design limitation in the editor, due to its multi-format nature)

I had a short exchange with Tero and he told me this mixing of hires and multicolour is an issue and not easily implemented in Multipaint.

For me that means that prospective interested people (me included) who would like to see support for MG picture files in Multipaint - need to be patient.

[aeb]

Perhaps an incomplete, multicolor-only MG mode would be still easy to add - and very useful for VIC 20 people... Multipaint saves also to some native formats, so it could have an option to save MG picture file. You could then do some hires edits/additions in Minipaint on VIC

Having mixed hires&multi characters in picture as in MG may be more tricky, as I don't know if any of the graphic modes in Multipaint currently support this (I didn't peek in the code, but this could be a design limitation in the editor, due to its multi-format nature)

I had a short exchange with Tero and he told me this mixing of hires and multicolour is an issue and not easily implemented in Multipaint.

For me that means that prospective interested people (me included) who would like to see support for MG picture files in Multipaint - need to be patient.

[Mike]

Perhaps an incomplete, multicolor-only MG mode would be still easy to add - and very useful for VIC 20 people... Multipaint saves also to some native formats, so it could have an option to save MG picture file. You could then do some hires edits/additions in Minipaint on VIC.

Put the other way round, how would Multipaint be supposed to behave when a user wants to load a MG picture file that has not strictly set all 240 MC enable bits to 1, like this one (download)?



(As a side note, this picture actually went the way from hires line art to being partly colourized with multicolour tiles, leaving other tiles in hires where possible, even accepting attribute clash at some places where it's not too obvious)

[groepaz]

Mmmh wouldn't something like charpad be more suited for the job? It already has all the needed features, i think