[Coco] Ideas for Sock's HiColor Code

[Joel Ewy]

Thanks go to John K. again for releasing the source for HiColor.

Here are some of the ideas I have in relation to it:

1.  Re-comment the code and make it assemble on Mamou assembler, where
source code size shouldn't be such an issue.
2.  Begin to modularize, at least at the source level
3.  Split out the file format specific stuff from the image processing /
dithering routines and the display code (at least conceptually)
4.  Add a routine to load a real high-color file format.  (I want my
6000 colors!)  Targa 16-bit uncompressed is ludicrously easy to
implement, just to see if it will work.  This would also allow it to
work with my pix2tga or vef2tga utils.
5.  Generate good pseudocode of the image processing / dithering
routines and turn that into a C version that can be run on a faster PC
and be used in conjunction with NetPBM utilities.  Optionally include
the display routine binaries.  Then a Perl script (or something similar)
can be used to take whole directories of .jpg images, scale them
appropriately for the CoCo's screen, and turn them into self-loading
HiColor files, using any of Sockmaster's display modes.  It would be
cool to have a CoCo 3 with a hard drive full of HiColor images just
running through a slideshow, one after another.
6.  Make a nice skeleton or template for programming with the HiColor
display routines.  I'd like to see an adventure game with HiColor
graphics.  Add other game goodies, like a command parser, etc.
7.  See if any of these HiColor display modes could be implemented in
GRFDRV in NitrOS-9...  That would make programming much easier (unless
you're trying to do action games.)

Just some thoughts.

JCE