[Coco] Sockmaster HiColor and Rascan IMG file format

[John Kowalski]

At 11:40 PM 06/01/2007 -0600, JCE wrote:
>I've had a lot of fun playing with Sockmaster's HiColor program, using
>BMP files I've scaled down and converted from JPEGs using NETPBM.  But
>the program can ostensibly display significantly more than 256 colors. 
>I'd like to see if I can tell the difference between a 12-bit source
>image and an 8-bit source image.  Problem is I don't have any good .IMG
>files to test it out with.  Ideally, I'd like to be able to convert
>JPEGs into 4096 color .IMG files myself.

I don't know of any converters and it's been a while since I looked into
HiColor, but I seem to recall the "4096" color IMG files may not actually
stictly be 4096 colors.  The three (R, G and B) pages of the IMG data may
have been encoded as 640x200 4-shade dithered images - the dithering being
used to increase the visible shades.  Mathematically it may have only worked
out to be the equivalent of 512 colors.?  I may be wrong, that's just my
recollection.


>Of course, it would also be cool if HiColor could read in some other
>file formats.  Hey Sock, any chance you'd let the source code out of the
>bag?  :)
>
>JCE


You know..  I may as well just post it up on my web page.  It would be cool
if the code got upgraded/enhanced, or used in other projects - like HiColor
title pages for new games or something!
I'm going to look into finding where I put it and put it on the web in the
next day or two.  It might not be the prettiest code to look at, or even
easy to follow..

                                         John Kowalski (Sock Master)
                                         http://www.axess.com/twilight/sock/