Vic 20 Screen and Character designer

beamrider · Post by **beamrider** » Thu Oct 16, 2014 8:25 am

I'd like to share my latest endeavor a little HTML5 app I’ve been working on...

Online version
zip download

Please download the zip if you’re going to use it after the inital look.

I needed to learn/improve my HTML5/Javascript knowledge and this was the by-product. It’s still a WIP but I find it to be good enough for my needs.

Basically it’s a combined screen and character editor that can be used to design graphics for the Vic-20. It is intended mainly as a development tool for games etc, but I actually find it quite enjoyable for doodling!

Any feedback or exports depicting your creativity gratefully received in this thread. If I get more interest I may do some enhancements.

Below is a file you can import and may recogonise.. (paste contents into the text box and click 'Load Text')

Sample file for import

Points to note

** Refreshing the browser window or navigating away will loose all your work** so save using the export facility (see instructions) to your local disk regularly if it’s important.

FEATURES
========

- SideBySide design of characters and screen layouts
- Character designer with many features rotate/invert/shift etc
- Batch mode operations on multiple characters with copy/smart paste to shuffle them around preserving screen design integrity
- Full undo/redo (on screen designer)
- FULL multi-color support
- Typewriter mode
- Bitmap editor with import function
- MINIPAINT import/export
- Char and screen data shown as text for copy/paste (and save to files) to your source code in hex/decima/binary
- Settings (Various pallettes, keymaps etc)

Enjoy.

btw.. I just knocked up the Popeye screen - doesn't mean I'm working on the game

Misfit · Post by **Misfit** » Thu Oct 16, 2014 9:47 am

Great app!

Is it possible to add support for 8x16 characters? And change screen size?

beamrider · Post by **beamrider** » Thu Oct 16, 2014 9:50 am

Thanks

sure - will do. Changing screen size was already on my todo list.

srowe · Post by **srowe** » Thu Oct 16, 2014 1:13 pm

This is great but I'm having a few problems with it in Firefox 24.8 on Linux.

Changing the colours doesn't seem to do anything, everything stays blue/cyan. In fact changing the current character colour updates both BG and CHAR simultaneously.

The instructions are resizable but there's no scrollbar.

beamrider · Post by **beamrider** » Thu Oct 16, 2014 1:41 pm

srowe wrote:This is great but I'm having a few problems with it in Firefox 24.8 on Linux.

Changing the colours doesn't seem to do anything, everything stays blue/cyan. In fact changing the current character colour updates both BG and CHAR simultaneously.

The instructions are resizable but there's no scrollbar.

..sorry, as mentioned I've only tried it in Chrome so far. Will try firefox when I have chance.

Mike · Post by **Mike** » Thu Oct 16, 2014 8:50 pm

Judging from the display of the multi-coloured '@' character, it looks as if your app displays the bit combination %10 as auxiliary colour and %11 as foreground/character colour.

This is an error: for multi-coloured characters, VIC-I interprets the bit combination %10 as foreground and %11 as auxiliary colour.

beamrider · Post by **beamrider** » Fri Oct 17, 2014 1:01 am

Try now mc transpose should be fixed.

rhurst · Post by **rhurst** » Fri Oct 17, 2014 4:23 am

Slick-looking, will have to try this out.

orion70 · Post by **orion70** » Fri Oct 17, 2014 5:07 am

Too bad you're not really working on a port of Popeye

Witzo · Post by **Witzo** » Fri Oct 17, 2014 12:35 pm

Downloaded!

Post by **Jeff-20** » Fri Oct 17, 2014 3:46 pm

Yes! I would love to try any browser based development tools. I'm warming up to the idea of cross development, but I hate windows. Haha. Excited to try this.

For additions: how about importing graphic files like the C64 online "Slixed" editor?

P.S. - make Popeye, please.

Sent from my iPhone 6 Beta using Tapatalk

beamrider · Post by **beamrider** » Fri Oct 17, 2014 5:43 pm

Misfit wrote:Great app!

Is it possible to add support for 8x16 characters? And change screen size?

Ok folks. I've uploaded a new version that supports the above features. Please give it a try.

A word of caution, changing the screen geometry mid flow will result in loss of work!

Please clear out your cache before reporting any issues. You can do this in chrome by pressing F12, right clicking on the refresh button and selecting "Empty Cache and Hard reload"

Will have a look at cross-browser support next..

Misfit · Post by **Misfit** » Fri Oct 17, 2014 11:08 pm

Hah, funny

I'm programming a new game and I use CSM (Commodore Sprite Maker). I use my own converter which exports sprite data.
Now I imported sprite data to your application and it worked! Amazing..

beamrider · Post by **beamrider** » Sat Oct 18, 2014 3:33 am

...now I'm intrigued what your game could be - difficult to tell from those sprites.

Nice to know there's another quality game in the pipeline anyway..

beamrider · Post by **beamrider** » Sat Oct 18, 2014 7:38 am

srowe wrote:This is great but I'm having a few problems with it in Firefox 24.8 on Linux.

Changing the colours doesn't seem to do anything, everything stays blue/cyan. In fact changing the current character colour updates both BG and CHAR simultaneously.

The instructions are resizable but there's no scrollbar.

Ok, I've made some changes and uploaded a new version (0.3)

It now seems to work [apart from a few minor niggles] in Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer (11).

Please give it another try.

Denial