Author Topic: What does x-level grayscale look like?  (Read 3611 times)

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Offline thepenguin77

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What does x-level grayscale look like?
« on: November 28, 2011, 05:54:19 pm »
This is a question people ask a lot, will x-level grayscale look good? or will it flicker? Well, now you can decide for yourself. I spent all day not doing my thanksgiving break homework and instead working on this program. It displays all levels of grayscale from 1-8 so you can see what looks good and what doesn't.

Controls:
  • Left / right - swap levels
  • / / * - adjust lcd frequency
  • + / - - adjust contrast
  • 2nd - report lcd frequency
  • Clear - quit


Send this to your real calculator and tell me what you think. This can serve as your model for what is possible because I believe I did this the best that I could.

Also, if you need some grayscale routines, I'm including the source. Just be warned the 7-level one is a piece of crap.

Edit:
   j/k on the messed up, it was good from the start
« Last Edit: November 28, 2011, 05:58:18 pm by thepenguin77 »
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Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: What does x-level grayscale look like?
« Reply #1 on: November 28, 2011, 07:19:02 pm »
I remember messing with 5 level grayscale in xLIB before, but Nitacku's ditherer was not out yet and making sprites was a major PITA, since most softwares only allowed 4 level conversion. It didn't flicker incredibly bad, but it was 15 MHz only, due to the nature of TI-BASIC.

I never saw any 5 level grayscale game on calcs, though. The issue with 4 level grayscale and higher is that on the regular 83+ the contrast is so weird that we barely see one of the shades of gray.

Offline TIfanx1999

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Re: What does x-level grayscale look like?
« Reply #2 on: November 29, 2011, 03:24:53 am »
Anything higher than 6 levels (in the screen shot) appears to get a bit rough. Is this program 15 Mhz models only?

Offline thepenguin77

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Re: What does x-level grayscale look like?
« Reply #3 on: November 29, 2011, 02:50:46 pm »
Well, the screenshot isn't a good example because I had wabbitemu set for 12 shades of gray. So when you try to distribute that over 8, 7, or 5 colors, you run into problems.

And yes, it's only for 15MHz models because I used the crystal timers to make the grayscale perfect.
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Offline Builderboy

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Re: What does x-level grayscale look like?
« Reply #4 on: November 29, 2011, 05:12:01 pm »
You should write a program that can display an arbitrary amount of shades :D

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Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: What does x-level grayscale look like?
« Reply #5 on: November 29, 2011, 06:35:45 pm »
Btw 5 level grayscale in BASIC with xLIB is insanely huge, because each interlaced sprite frame has to be pre-rendered then stored into 8xi files separately, and it takes 4 pictures for one sprite sheet.  The same is true about other grayscale levels but the size difference with ASM is much more signifiant than at 4 level.