Sprite Helpers

[Quigibo]

I'm planning to eventually write an all purpose sprite editor for 8x8 and 16x16 sprites supporting monochrome, 3 color, and 4 color grayscale on-calc.  It will be written in Axe itself, but I need to wait on it because I have to add reading and writing to the Ans variable so that the sprites can be imported and exported.

If anyone has any other good tools, particularly for the computer since I imagine many sprites will be drawn there instead of on-calc, please post them here.  I am currently looking for a good program that can output z80 hex code for a 4 color gray bitmap, but I can't seem to find anything.  I'm about to write one in C++ if I don't see anything soon, but I really don't have the time for that right now.

[meishe91]

Um...well I think someone posted a link to a good computer one when I asked about Hex Sprites. I'll find that real fast.

So ya, when I made a topic about asking for help with Hex Sprites and tr1p1ea suggested Graphics Studio v1.2 (a.k.a. CalcGS) but I'm not sure if it does hex as an output option.

Also, good luck with the programming

[DJ Omnimaga]

that would rule, that and the ans support. So basically there will be an editor for the calc and one for the comp?

[graphmastur]

Isn't ans supported now?

[DJ Omnimaga]

Yeah it was added the week after my post. Keep in mind if the Ans value is something else than 0-65535, it will give an error, though.

[Happybobjr]

Quigibo this is truely amazing
if i weren't straight, i would be gay for you

[graphmastur]

You could have it spit out the pics for the back-buffer and the buffer as text, and then have the person manually copy the text.  Unless you can put it in an unarchived open program, in which case, that would be easer.  Just have the program, after run, store the strings in str1 and str2.  Would that work?

[Quigibo]

Also, no one has mentioned it since this topic is outdated, but there is also our dear friend's program here.  You can draw the sprites in Paint or something and then convert it to a calc picture file and use this program to convert the sprites.

[graphmastur]

I could not get that program to work.

[DJ Omnimaga]

Yeah that program is nice. Now if someone could port it to Mac for our dear mac users (which seems to increase in number lately)

[FinaleTI]

The program worked for me... up until I tried to send the created program to my real calculator, which is odd cause it opened just fine in Wabbitemu.

[DJ Omnimaga]

Mhmm weird it works for me. Keep in mind you must absolutely select tiles by clicking the picture before exporting, though. Also do not merge them together because a bug in the program causes the last two HEX chars to miss from the program when saved

[graphmastur]

No, It wouldn't open at all.  Of course, that could be my computer, though.

[DJ Omnimaga]

Oh that's worse

I know it works under the 64 bit version of Windows 7. Could anyone else that got it to work post their Windows version?

[Runer112]

I've actually been working on an Axe sprite editing program myself. As of now, it supports:

• 8x8 and 16x16
• Multiple realtime zoom views
• Realtime hex display
• Hex input
• Flipping horizontally/vertically
• Rotating
• Opening and saving as many sprites as memory allows
• Help screen (with nice scrolling!) Had to scrap this to save 850 bytes, program was getting too large

The real trick will be fitting in features like grayscale with my program already over 7 KB.