The idea is the library gives you the ability to embed graphics into a paintbox. So in reality a paintbox is just a screen. You then just plot stuff in there and redisplay it. I dont know if you've already seen the RefreshArea command but it allows you to redraw smaller parts of paintboxes.
That means if your Chuckie egg character moves, you just repaint the stuff that he was overlaid on... and then just repaint him in the new position... and then RefreshArea on the rectangle in which the change happened
Its going to be cool
The idea is the library gives you the ability to embed graphics into a paintbox. So in reality a paintbox is just a screen. You then just plot stuff in there and redisplay it. I dont know if you've already seen the RefreshArea command but it allows you to redraw smaller parts of paintboxes.
That means if your Chuckie egg character moves, you just repaint the stuff that he was overlaid on... and then just repaint him in the new position... and then RefreshArea on the rectangle in which the change happened
Its going to be cool
Ok! This sounds good! Is this the same how Pacman was created ? I like the idea to paint data. Is it also possible to copy paint data from one paintbox to other one ? (Say you have all graphics on 1 paint box and the other one is the real level ?
It is also nice that you can load paintdata from disk to the paintbox (and maybe save it)
I think the paintbox is really needed to make more applications for symbos. Because you can do a lot with it!
Hey just to promote a intro video about using symstudio that I've uploaded onto youtube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqEjBHgdL_A&feature=youtu.be
I plan to do a handful of videos of tutorials showing what we can now do with symstudio, and perhaps a tutorial on writing a full and useful app.
Actually I believe that pacman was created using 1 large picturebox for the game screen, and each ghost and the pacman is actually a seperate little picturebox. This is really the only way of doing this at the moment, but obvious isnt as flexible as a single screen solution. thats where the new library comes in
The new method basically uses sheets and sheet tiles as backgrounds. And all the graphics are actually copied between these sheets and tiles. Weird as it may seem pictureboxes are actually just pointers in that they point at a sheet or tile, and dont have its own memory.
Therefore you can create an empty sheet (a 1 tile sheet) that is the size of the main screen. You can then have a sheet with 64 - 8x8 pixel tiles on it. Then you just copy those 8x8 tiles onto the larger sheet as many times as you want. In terms of chucky egg. You would have a blank 8x8. A platform 8x8 and 1 ladder 8x8. You then copy one of those 3 tiles onto the main sheet as many times as you need.
Cool tutorial on video you created!! nice to see the CPC emulator also
I can say that you improved symstudio a lot
hopefully more MSX people get enthusiastic like me
Haha thanks. It is strange how rubbish you sound on video. Im all uhhhmmms and ahhhhhs, plus in my head I sound really manly like James Earl Jones, but in reality I sound like Micheal Jackson sitting on the toilet.
Yeah I just want to show how easy writing for symbos is now. Obviously getting people to code what is a new language isnt going to be easy, but perhaps videos will help
hahaha .. Micheal on the toilet
.. This is not what I heard
.. I have no complains about the video
it makes me more enthusiastic !!
About chuckie, it's a good idea to create the graphics this way ! But how can you copy a sheet to the main sheet ?
hahaha .. Micheal on the toilet
.. This is not what I heard
.. I have no complains about the video
it makes me more enthusiastic !!
About chuckie, it's a good idea to create the graphics this way ! But how can you copy a sheet to the main sheet ?
Let me put it this way. A sheet is a container of Tiles. A sheet can contain 1 large Tile, or 128 small ones. Either way when you point a picturebox at an image its pointed at a Tile. So you can in effect copy between Tiles. Meaning you can copy an 8x8 tile containing a character representing part of a ladder to a much bigger tile which is the size of the screen. Therefore if you print 8x8 platform tile 20 times in a horizontal row on the large screen tile you have a floor etc etc.
Forget sheets. Forget picboxes. Its about Tiles. A sheet just contain 1 or 100 tiles, and a picbox just points to a tile on a sheet
OK.. understand
So I think I have a new project to start... No idea how far I can come! .. but we will see:
First the graphics
Is there transparent color I can use in sheets ?
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Thats the idea. Tiles tiles tiles. Obviously you do have the problem that the graphics library isnt done yet. Oh and you need a giant single tile for the screen, but thats just a black square. The only problem being that it can't be larger than 16000bytes in 16 color I think? I will check with Prodatron. How big is the play area for Chuckie egg in pixels?
Oh and any colour can be designated as transparent at time of copy. So you can upgrade Chuckie to 15 colour and transparent
This is what I've been told by Prodatron the library will do anyway
