RetroEdit.

I've not been doing much past few days/weeks. With the flu over Christmas and now a cold I've not really been in the mood. However, I've decided to make an effort and have started back on RetroEdit.

I've finished the refactoring of it an am now happy with its layout and internal code construction. Basically, the old control I was writing delt with retro graphics in an abstracted way, and so you had to do some work to use it, now however the control deals directly with the raw format which means all you need to do is copy actual retro graphics data into the control and your all set.

So with this done, I've started to plow ahead with some features. Actual editing is obviously first, and I can now draw pixels with the mouse in both hires and multi colour modes. This is also true for C64 and spectrum editing. I've also put in sprite rotate left and right, and am about to do up/down.

Once I've done this I'll add colour picking. Currently I have 2 default colours and you can't change them - this obviously has to change to be of any use, and as its a biggie, I'll do that next.

I'm sure I listed these before, but it must have been ages ago so here it is again; the feature list I want in for version 1.

Paint with colour 1 (left mouse)

Paint with colour 2 (right mouse)

+/- to change frames

rotate frame (up,down,left,right)

rotate line

rotate column

Colour selection,

Colour Changing,

Copy frame

Insert frame

delete frame

Colour Swap

Copy

Paste (+background)

Brush paste (like a sprite)

Mirror (+around selection only)

Flip (+around selection only)

Save project

Save data (native format)

Load Project

Load data (native format)

If theres anything else that you think is a must have, then let me know. I've no idea how long this will take me, but the sooner the better. Currently it lets you edit Plus4, C64 and Spectrum sprites although I still have to put real support for the C64 sprites.

Powering up.....

Because I was ill over Christmas, it's actually been a while since I did any real work at home. So I thought I'd make an effort to get over this and actually DO something!

To this end I've resumed the refactoring of RetroEdit and decided to get editing actually working and usable. So now that I think I've actually finished the refactor I was wanting, I've started to write the editing features. I've currently got hires sprites being editing, so I'm about to try MultiColour Mode ones. I'll then do some basic features like scrolling the whole thing around the window, flip etc. then move onto colour editing.

I need to get the selected machine's palette drawn so I can pick colours and then I need to tackle saving. I'll need a PROJECT save, and a binary save. I'll also need to allow plugins so that folk like Russell can save formats he wants to deal with; although he may well end up doing his own editor, but others might need it so...

With a bit of luck, most of these shouldn't take very long, and I can take the core of the sprite editing and move it to the character editing tab. The core concept of this is a special RetroBitmap control. This allows you to deal with retro graphics directly without having to write huge chunks of code over and over - its also a standard control so others could use it in their own projects if they wanted to.

Back to normal?

Well, not quite.... I've just gotten my new cable modem installed which has boosted my speed to an increadible 50mb/s!! I've also just discovered that my trusty Linksys router can't keep up, so I'll have to retire it and get a faster one, other wise I'm stuck to around half speed - damn.

So, I need to put my room back in order (theres upturned desks and what-not) then I can setup the plus4 again and start to get back to work. I've been thinking about my electronics again, and I really want to get back to doing some more - before I forget it all, and this lead me to thinking about doing a better download system. You see, as it stands I need a parallel cable/port and thats limiting - particually since I have to switch my machine off/on to enable the driver and plug in the C64 or Plus4. So I was thinking about a USB cable. Theres a few USB to serial cables, and if I did that (along with a PIC or something at the other end), I could pretend its normal parallel cable on the Plus4 side, but do serial on the PC side. This would also mean it was suddenly hot plugable, and allow me to plugin multiple machines at once; not to mention being able to download without rebooting.

So, I may start to look at that kind of thing this year too.

DO.EXE

So... one of the big issues I had with upgrading to Vista64 is that a lot of my ( really, REALLY ) old tools stopped working. Now most I can actually do without, but theres one that I've actually been running under DOSBOX to keep. DO.EXE is a simple programmers calculator that I wrote back in the Shadow of the Beast days and does proper programmer calculations. That is it deals with HEX and BINARY as you'd expect, but also does AND, OR, XOR, NOT, Shifts and all the rest of it. In fact, I use it a lot just to convert numbers from BINARY to HEX since C/C++/C# doesn't take binary (its a crime I tells ya!). The old program was written in Turbo Pascal 7 and was very 16bit, and while I had the source there was no way I was gonna "update it".

Well, every since I started my debugger in C#, I had a brand new evaluator doing exactly the same thing, but in a processor (and machine!) nutral langauge! So I've finally pull out my logic prob, and blasted its little binary brains all over the back wall and updated it. Now, I know theres a million similar little programs out there, but I like the command line one, and I like that it takes the same format as C/C++/C# and even Java, and since I've always got a command line open, its ideal. CALC (and others like it) have just never cut it for me.

Anyway... I thought I'd be nice and release this into the wild and let others play with it. Its not hugely tested (so feel free to let me know any issues) but its an invaluable tool. Even simple things like getting bit patterns into HEX is a simple case of just typing it in.

Anyway...enough drivel...You can get it HERE. Shove it into your path somewhere then just type "do" on the command line for options. If theres any doubt in an expression, use brackets. I've not listed any expression order because it's different from all other compilers and that forces you to use brackets more to make sure the answers right. If theres anything else you think folk would like added, feel free to suggest it.

I hope some of you get some use out of it. It's the single most used tool I've ever written - period!


http://www.javalemmings.com/blog/do.zip

Flu season...

Happy New Year - and all that jazz

I've not been doing much over the festive season, I've been stuck with the flu and feeling terrible. In the times I have been feeling up to it, I've actually been playing the the Hydra system I bought LAST year. I really do want to get back into doing electronics again, but to do so I need an easier way to make boards - or try and order some up and see how that goes. Etching them just didn't work fo me, so I'd rather try and more automatic way.

I've also been toying with the idea of a userport to USB connector for a more compatable downloader. Theres lots of USB to serial ports, and it wouldn't take much to change that into a pretend parallel connection for the Plus4 (and C64 etc.). So that would be nice. Also using the user port means I can keep the cartridge port free for more interesting things.

RetroEdit cleanup

For the lack of any better ideas, I've been cleaning up retro edit into a more consistant state and I've now got the control editing the data in a native format. This means theres no real conversion required when lifting the data out an saving it off - or indeed loading data into it.

I still need to go through the application itself as I've changed my mind on several things. For example while its perfectly valid to allow you to edit HiRes and MultiColour more sprites together I'm not going to allow it. This means you dont have to run through a hundred sprites and switch them all to Hires or MCM, and in reality this would hardly ever happen anyway.

I can now draw a sprite okay so what I really need to do is add colour palette selection to let me pick which colour I want to paint with. Once I've done that I can add the features that make editing fun.

I'll need to extend the editing control to allow for character and bitmap mode because I want to use the same control to do all editing. That said, I'm still not sure what I'll be spending my time on over the Christmas break, but for now I'll carry on with this...

RetroEdit

I was looking through the source of retro edit and wondering what I'd do to change it, and came to the conclusion that actually, its not as bad as I thought. The only major change I want to do is how the data is stored internally. You see when I started this I decided to store the data in a basic INT[] array, where each 0 or 1 was actually a BIT, and I would then process the data for editing and drawing. However, this is a bit yucky, and I now think it would be better to just store the data in a more native format. Thats not to say I'll store it in boxes, or colums etc. but as a simple X by Y row of bytes. This makes plug-ins to save the data in a custom format easy.

So I think I might have a little play and see if I can reorginise things so they are more to my liking, and this will (I hope) then allow me to use the custom control to actually do real graphics work.

The way I've gone about this is to have a custom control that deals with retro graphics. So you load it up with the data (in a simple rowxcolum format, and you can then select colours and plot pixels. The idea is that once its released (if ever!) then you could use the control yourself outside of retro edit to do other things. I have no idea if this would ever happen, but it might.

So I've decided to give it a few days and see how I get on. If I feel like Im getting somewhere, I'll carry on - if not, I'll bin it.

SID tunes.

I discovered today that one of our musicians has discovered the SID chip. He got hold of a new synth that uses SID emulation (due to lack of SID chips) and has been making music with them. I find this amazing really, that folk are rediscovering older tech like SID chips and putting them to work making really. It's also funny when others comment that it’s all old hat and a waste of time that new comers find so much enjoyment in them that they buy dedicated units to play with. Stuart (Ross) said that while the SID is pretty harsh in its basic form, he loves the way the filters work and the sounds you can get with them - which is of course why oldies like me still love to listen to old SID tunes. While the sound is somewhat unique, at the heart of our favourites is a good tune and because of that, more musicians are re-discovering the wonders of the likes of SID/Synth style music. Great stuff.

Change of direction.

So with Christmas comming up it's almost time for my anual direction change. I was hoping that my ATmega devkit would arrive in time, but its looking less likely as time goes on - pooh. Oh well. I've pretty much completed what I wanted to do with Minus4j, although I'd like an option to pick a file fom the ZIP to switch to or load, but until Plus4world allows real access to ZIP files, this isn't that important. I'll probably wrap up what I've got into another release and leave it there for now, although I've yet to look at the sid filters but that may also be defered until later.

As to what project I'll do at Christmas time, well I'm not sure. I'd love to get back into electronics a little, but theres also my debugger and getting it running on a C64 and emulator. I'm also starting to think I need to restart RetroEdit. When I started it I hadn't done much C#, and over the years I've learnt how to do things properly. This means I could make a real stab at a proper system but as i've seen with the debugger, this means some serious effort. That said, I'd love a very simple interface so that I could draw tiles/graphics for myself.

I also really need to get a basic MAP editor togther even if its a very simple interface so that we can make levels for Xeo3. The old one works but is a little crude in paces - it would be nice to fix that.

So I have a few things I'd like to play with, I guess time will tell if I actually GET to...

Java, java everywhere and not a drop to drink.

So it turns out the ZIP file issue I was having is a bug, and SUN have now filed it. This is good as it means I'm not going mad! Someone from Sun got in touch and I was able to send them the offending file, so with any luck no one else will have to pull their hair out in frustration.

It's also good to know that it is indeed simple to read ZIPs, and I have been making steady progress now. I now have the ZIP being downloaded, and the first D64 being loaded and run. I really need to orginise the file processing better as it - well sucks. Its hacked in really badly and is sorely in need of a re-orginisation so that the normal rules about loading D64s and PRGs then apply to the contents of the ZIP. That said, I feel like I'm getting sucked further and further into emulator development again, and thats not something I want to do again (or at least, not right now).

This means I'll be hacking together a simple version and then I may update it later to allow better support and the zipping of everything.

I have also started using collections inside java (more to see what they're like than any real need), and while similar to C#, they just aren't as nice. C# has lots of little features like array access to them and handy functions like sorting all built in, where as its a little cruder in Java. Still, at least they're there...