darkhog
What's a PC Engine?
Posts: 2
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Post by darkhog on May 23, 2018 11:47:09 GMT
How can I get started making TG16 homebrew? I have general gamedev experience (Allegro, SDL, Unity), but no homebrew one. Are there any noob-friendly tutorials available that would take me from 0 to making a simple game (let's say a Pong clone)?
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Post by Galahad on May 23, 2018 12:13:54 GMT
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darkhog
What's a PC Engine?
Posts: 2
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Post by darkhog on May 23, 2018 16:20:58 GMT
Thanks! Now that I look at it, I've tried doing some googling again and that site you linked needs to invest in some SEO, it was very low (I think page 2/3 low even) on Google.
//edit: Tried to look, but not sure about formats used for graphics (pcx). I mean, works fine when I compile examples, but when I try to open graphics in ProMotion, I get an error that the image is not valid.
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Post by Arkhan on May 23, 2018 18:23:10 GMT
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Post by Galahad on May 23, 2018 19:18:18 GMT
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Post by gredler on May 23, 2018 19:31:59 GMT
ProMotion works great, and I highly recommend anyone with some modern development art workflows to check it out. ProMotion has a lot of features that people gravitate towards PhotoShop for, but handles colors and palettes exponentially easier (and better IMO.)
That being said, yes the obeybrew.com/tutorials.html .PCX files will not load into ProMotion without converting the image somehow in another application, unfortunately. I hate it, but I've yet to find a great all in one package so my current loadout is ProMotion, PhotoShop, and Gimp 2.
I usually make my art in ProMotion or Photoshop, then do any cleanup in the palette and file format in Gimp 2, but I am trying to get a 100% ProMotion workflow, as iteration would be MUCH quicker. I've discussed this in chat with a few people but worst case scenario I may make a tool that is 100% for re-arranging and assigning palettes in a PCX to cut Gimp 2 out of my life; even if it's a Gimp 2 script that runs Gimp in the background to perform the process, I just hate the Gimp 2 default interface and haven't ever taken the time to modify it.
I believe Rover setup the tutorial, and so he would have more insight on how the .PCX files were generated for the tutorials, but if you open the bonk.pcx in gimp and convert the color mode to rgb then back to indexed, save as, it will open in ProMotion fine.
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Post by Galahad on May 23, 2018 22:45:21 GMT
If you're use to promotion then use Gimp like Gredler says.
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Post by Arkhan on May 24, 2018 4:45:35 GMT
I thought ProMotion supported PCX files?
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Post by gredler on May 24, 2018 9:24:07 GMT
I thought ProMotion supported PCX files? It exports PCX, and you can load some PCX files into it, but not all PCX files have the same data structure or something, and however the pcx files for the obeybrew tuts were authored do not load into ProMotion. I wish I knew more about the file format and wtf is going on with them, it seems like every application outputs them differently; promotion's seem to be consistent with gimp as far as output but opening them can be a bit finicky. Photoshop and gimp open the obey brew pcx files fine, but if you try to open them in promotion it spits errors
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darkhog is too lazy to login
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Post by darkhog is too lazy to login on May 24, 2018 13:45:40 GMT
But the other way around would work fine - HuC will read files made with Promotion, right? ProMotion has a TG16 template so it'd work good, hopefuly with regards to palettes. And if I'd be making a TG16 graphics, I'd probably arrange the palette PM gives you into 16 color slices next to each other, then make gradients then use these gradients for specific sprites to have palettes arranged nicely.
I just wish that dev of HuC (if he or she is still around) would modernize it so it can read palette data from pal files ProMotion can generate (among other things such as updating C a bit so we can void define_functions(int as_we_usually_do){} instead of some_weird(convoluted_way) int convoluted_way; {})
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Post by gredler on May 25, 2018 8:49:58 GMT
Yeah I've had some success with sprites exporting directly from ProMotion to HuC, but the tilemap export process on my last attempt was so hairy I ended up using Photoshop and Gimp to get it into game. The current level I am working on I am hoping to go ProMotion to HuC with no middleware, but the palette handeling on tilemaps still somewhat confuses me in the transition from ProMotion to HuC. I know ProMotion has some really good palette limiting functionality for exporting the art, but I've had trouble exporting a ~512 color tilemap where each tile is limited to 15 colors, and the .pcx file lut only has the in use 15 colors + uniform color between all .pcx files.
I agree that more functionality is never a bad thing but it's not necessary to use a .pal vs a .pcx to define a palette in huc. Loading a .pal, or equivalent lut file format would be nice I suppose, but currently you can get the same functionality by exporting a 16x16 pcx with pixels for each o the colors you have in your .pal, then you can load that in HuC as the palette file. I've done this to do palette swaps on art I drew using a different palette.
I am glad to hear that the syntax looks strange to another person. I am a beginner at best when it comes to coding - C# and Python are much more my speed - so sometimes when I and try to read other's code it looks like greek, and I have a hard time with writing my own. Trial and errorrrrrr(emphasis on error) is the only way I've made anything so far beyond the obey brew tuts LOL
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darkhog is too lazy AGAIN
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Post by darkhog is too lazy AGAIN on May 26, 2018 1:36:33 GMT
Post a howto when you get direct conversion from ProMotion to HuC working. Another thing is that PM palette's is max 256 colors so you'll need to have two pcx files for palette, one for sprites and other for BG. And yes, the syntax is obtuse, it's apparently *VERY* early dialect of C. I don't know why they even choose it instead of a newer one. I don't even need // style comments, give me better function definition. Not even C compilers for the NES which is far less powerful use this dialect and for a good reason. Too bad HuC isn't in development... Oh wait, improved version is on github, all we need are the binaries. It even has proper syntax, figure that out!
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Post by theoldman on May 26, 2018 3:10:02 GMT
Re: Huc
No, it's not. It's Small-C, which is a c-like language intended for teaching how to build compilers.
Because HuC is a modified version of a tudent written compiler. See sbove. Honestly, the original was a student class project.
Good luck.
(Please note: I'm not knocking the 'new' Huc. I've never used it. I never needed to. But it does do things differently. )
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touko
Punkic Cyborg
Posts: 106
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Post by touko on May 26, 2018 9:27:44 GMT
I don't agree, because Huc import your palette from a .pcx file, with a step of 32 for converting colors, and it's not good, the good one is with a step of 36 . This why i do not use Huc anymore for importing graphic datas,my datas are included as binary files and converted with external tools .
Using directly a .pcx is good for starters because is the easiest way.I think the best graphic tool for PCE is grafx2 because you can work directly with a 9 bit palette,like that : grafx2.exe /rgb 9
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Post by elmer on May 30, 2018 1:52:20 GMT
Re: Huc No, it's not. It's Small-C, which is a c-like language intended for teaching how to build compilers. Because HuC is a modified version of a student written compiler. See above. Honestly, the original was a student class project. ? ?? The thing that most people complain about in the original HuC is the antiquated function-declaration syntax. That syntax was taken from the original Kernighan and Ritchie book "The C Programming Language", which described the syntax for the original AT&T Bell Labs compiler. It's not a Small-C thing ... it was the official way that functions were declared until the ANSI-C standard was adopted in 1989, and Kernighan and Ritchie came out the Second Edition version of "The C Programming Language" book. Ron Cain, the original author of Small-C (way back in 1980), based his syntax on the original book. AFAIK it wasn't a student class project. Perhaps you're thinking of James Hendrix's updates and his 1983 book about Small C ... or one of the many, many other updates/forks of the original code. Ron Cain was working at the Stanford Research Institute at the time he wrote it, and he wanted to create a compiler for a subset of the C language in order to program his 8080-based microcomputer. You can read it in his own words ... www.svipx.com/pcc/PCCminipages/zc9b6ec9e.htmlYou'll probably want to use my fork of Uli's updates, since it's got all of Artemio's updates (that Uli finally committed a few days ago), plus some other important bug fixes. I've posted some links in a new thread ...
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