[Coco] Ideas for Sock's HiColor Code

[L. Curtis Boyle]

On Thu, 25 Jan 2007 09:58:03 -0600, Joel Ewy <jcewy at swbell.net> wrote:

> 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
>
Another good reason to make GRFDRV 16K...

-- 
L. Curtis Boyle