Importing pictures on Oric

The Oric video chip is not an easy beast to master, so any trick or method that allows to achieve nice visual results is welcome. Don't hesitate to comment (nicely) other people tricks and pictures :)
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Egg Shen
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Importing pictures on Oric

Post by Egg Shen »

I know there are programs, one at least, that can convert complex or high colored images (in BMP format if I remember correctly) to Oric Hires. But what I'm looking for, is a way to import drawings made for Oric.

I use Brilliance, an Amiga drawing soft, to draw pics using the 8 colors out of 8 colors palette mode so that I have exactly the same Oric color palette (organized like Oric : 0 being Black, 1 being Red, 2 being Green, etc.) and even the screen resolution is set to 240 x 224 (using the custom mode screen resolution) but I draw in the 240 x 200 zone, of course, leaving the 3 lines of text. So I have exactly the Oric Hires mode.

When set correctly to match the Oric Hires, I (try to :wink:) draw some pictures respecting the 6 pixels cells. Now how could I do to convert those drawings in such a way that it could be easily displayable on an Oric (emulator) ?
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Dbug
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Post by Dbug »

You can use PictConv for that.
http://www.defence-force.org/computing/ ... 3/pictconv

What you need is that:

Code: Select all

pictconv -f1 -d0 source_picture destination_picture


As an input, you just need to draw a 240x200 picture, with the right colors at the right place, and if there is a way to generate the picture (on a scanline basis) by puting the right combination of PAPER or INK attribute, and by playing with video inverse flag, it will work :)

If something is wrong in the picture, pictconv will output a diagnostic message saying that something is wrong at a particular position (I advise you to run it from a CONVERT.BAT file with a PAUSE instruction at the end so you get a chance to see the messages :)

If for some reason PictConv refuse to convert your picture, please send it to me at dbug@defence-force.org
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Egg Shen
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Post by Egg Shen »

Thank you for your advices !

So I made some conversion tests with Pictconv.
The first tests where OK. Well, I have begun in a simple way. It consisted to convert three 6x8 pixels cel squares (cel 20 : RED square, cel 21 : GREEN square, cel 22 : BLUE square), it just worked fine !

But, when I tried to convert my drawing, Pictconv displayed in the shell windows an error message : "Line 0 max:40", "Line 1 max:40", "Line 2 max:40" and so on until the last, being "Line 194 max:40".
I checked my drawing in the painting soft, and everything seems to be ok, I don't understand why it does not work... :?:

What does mean this kind of error code ?
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Dbug
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Post by Dbug »

These error messages may mean different things.
Could you please send me the picture, it will be easier that way.
Perhaps it's a bug in pictconv.

(Basicaly it means that the conversion algorithm has been recursing on the 40th level (40 columns screen) without finding any valid combination)
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Egg Shen
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Post by Egg Shen »

Dbug wrote:These error messages may mean different things.
Could you please send me the picture, it will be easier that way.
Perhaps it's a bug in pictconv.

(Basicaly it means that the conversion algorithm has been recursing on the 40th level (40 columns screen) without finding any valid combination)
OK, I have sent you the picture.
I cross my fingers. :?

Thank you !
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