Allright, here's one for the MSX graphicians amongst us. When drawing GFX for MSX, which software do you use? Do they need further improvement, are there any lacking features? Are they user friendly enough? Are you waiting for a project like 5tile, Polka or an improved AGE to come along? Or do you simply use a standard package such as Paint Shop Pro?

The goal of this thread is to find out whether or not new gfx tools are needed, or what improvements graphicians are expecting in this area. The better these utilities get, the easier the life of MSX developers get, the more likely we are going to see more, new and better MSX software. So: bring it in!

(hmmm... this text looks kind of familiar...)

T&E Graphic/Dot Designer (.GE5)... is there anything else really?

I mainly use Polka. But that sure needs an update. Other tools are Photoshop and windows paint and a scanner for handdrawn images. For conversion I use the colecovision tools from cvpaint.

What need (and will make myself) is a simple sc2 editor that will read cvpaint files and alows me to draw with or without the colorclash function and the option of a third layer (sprite). This tool will be ideal for title and cutscene gfx.

If you ask me: I'm already satisfied by the current state of tools like polka and cvpaint. But it could be improved. But it is not hindering my gfx activities.

MSX plugins for the GIMP?

MS Paint. It's just PERFECT for me. There are many tools for converting the BMPs to SC2.

I would like to see a paint program for PC which had the posibility to save the picture in SC2 format and compress it with Bitbuster ... I would't waste so much time as I do now.

GIMP with some tweaks and command line tools to process the results. The only one MSX GIMP plugin I know seems pretty useless to me, it's the SC2 saving plugin . I would love to see more plugins for MSX...

Hmm... I had expected more reactions in this thread. In the MRC userbase, no less than 358 people said they can make GFX for MSX. (for the curious, there's 491 coders, 330 musicians and 289 hardware dudes out there). Even taking in to account that a lot of people don't have a lot of time to develop for MSX (see our current poll) the activity of graphicians on MSX is relatively low.

I wonder if the creation of new (or improvement of existing) tools can increase their activity. If so: what are the killer features graphicians are waiting for?

I dunno, but one thing is being able to create graphics and anothing thing is being apt for the Konami payroll. I can throw a few pixels together, but I can't draw any game gfx. I'm sure the same is true for some coders. Some people might be able to program in BASIC or even code a few lines of ASM, but making a whole game in assembly might be a tad too much for them. There's degrees of skill in everything...

"I pity the fool who says he can draw but really can't!"

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I wonder if the creation of new (or improvement of existing) tools can increase their activity. If so: what are the killer features graphicians are waiting for?

I'm waiting for an app that will give me unlimited inspiration.

"I'm sure I can find a gfx-artist in these hills"

"I think I see one below!"

Quote:

I wonder if the creation of new (or improvement of existing) tools can increase their activity. If so: what are the killer features graphicians are waiting for?

I actually like(d) GraphSaurus a lot. A port of that to PC (Linux please!) would definitely help...

"Mooh!"

I'd say that a solid Photoshop plugin to make conversions to MSX (SC 2 and/or SC 4) would be really handy, with different options: plain colours, dithering, etc. Anyone?

@Pitpan: Such a plugin would be cool! I only use Photoshop for my 8bit gfx and can imagine about a lot of functions which would make things more easy.

it's something I'll add to Polka2 (for which I hopefully get some time after this whole MSXDev craze is over, MSXDev is such a time-waste regarding my originally planned ideas ). I already have color-reduction/matching working, so I will be loading typical images, including features like 'add dither', per colorcomponent perhaps. Also with different (useful) ditherpatterns.

As I said in another thread, I just use PSP7 (yes, I know it's outdated, but it was the last version with good interface AFAIK - and I know my way around it pretty well to spend time learning a different tool to do almost everything it does), and then I convert the BMP files to the output format I want (I already draw everything how I want them to appear, so adjusts are usually minimum by the converters)