Editors for Vic Screens and User Defined Characters

[SparkyNZ]

Hi Everyone. I had a play with CBMPrgStudio yesterday and I think its a pretty awesome tool. The only thing its missing for me is the ability to draw pictures by modifying character pixels and instantaneously seeing the change on a screen (or arranged array of characters). I could indeed knock up a program to do it myself but is there anything like what I'm after already available?

I'd be after a load of data for the character set and perhaps (but not required) a load of data for the screen characters used.

For example, lets assume I want to draw a tree using the characters A thru L. I would arrange the characters on the screen as follows..

ABCD
EF
EF
IJKL

Then I would change the pixels in the characters A-L so that the letters look like a tree. I would start editing the 'A' character's pixels and expect to see the tree changing at the top left position in real time.

Is there anything out there that can do this? (On a PC).

Cheers
Sparky

[Mike]

A tile based screen designer should also:

- feature free choice between hires and multicolour characters,
- acknowledge a global setting of 8x8 and 8x16 characters,
- save along the colour RAM, background/border, and aux. colour,
- allow for flexible screen dimensions (1..26 columns, 1..32 rows),
- being able to export as *.bin files for charset, screen, colour, or
- emit PRINT statements for BASIC programmers.

For bitmapped graphics, you could always try MINIPAINT.

[SparkyNZ]

A tile based screen designer should also:
...

That would be great.. but does such a Windows app exist? I'm still trying to write a music tracker so I can't see me having any time to write one.

[Mike]

For the C64, I recently found SlixEd, which runs in a web browser: http://c64.blog2t.net/slixed/ (Adobe Flash plugin required). It is still under development, here's a thread in csdb discussing it. There's also Tommy Gun, a multi-platform game editor, which has a VIC-20 screen designer built-in. Never tried it out, though.

As native applications on the VIC-20, there are BrickShop by PWP and ScreenEdit by adric22. With VICE, you can use both on the PC as well. However both implement only a subset of the feature list I gave above.

[SparkyNZ]

There's also Tommy Gun, a multi-platform game editor, which has a VIC-20 screen designer built-in. Never tried it out, though.

Wow.. the TommyGun website has got me excited already. I'll definitely be checking this out after work. Its says its supports Vic multicolor and hires modes but whether or not I find it usable or supports the list of features you mentioned is something else. Thanks heaps for that.

I don't think I could handle programming native on the Vic/C64 anymore (or even the Amiga) but the thought of cross platform development is really exciting. Nothing better than to have your favourite tools deliver on your past favourite platforms.. if that makes sense.

[Mike]

I don't think I could handle programming native on the Vic/C64 anymore (or even the Amiga) but the thought of cross platform development is really exciting. Nothing better than to have your favourite tools deliver on your past favourite platforms... if that makes sense.

Denial has an entire section about Emulation and Cross Development, where VICE, MESS, DASM, ca65, cc65, transfer between VIC-20 <-> VICE <-> Cross-Dev. Env. are discussed. Of course, coding in an editor on the PC gives a huge advantage over the small 22x23 window of the VIC-20. Often enough you won't see more than 6..7 BASIC lines on screen, too few to keep track of the whole program.

One should also have or acquire the skills to write small filter batch programs. That helps a lot, when data from one program needs to be processed to be usable by another program - where both programs might be situated on the VIC-20/VICE and/or PC. I use C for that. That way one does not need to throw in the towel just because certain data does not have the right format now.

Graphicians often design their works on the real iron, because they then can judge the result by eye - which is not 100% possible in emulation. The PAL emulation of the C64 in VICE is quite mature by now, but the VIC-20 has some extra quirks there. Not to mention the fact, that even the palette is slightly different over the whole model range. That is one of the reasons I hosted MINIPAINT on the VIC-20.

The real hardware is limited though: if you really want to display the character set by itself, and also the screen and possibly some menus you need to compromise. Either you scroll the screen and/or character set, or flip between two screens. The latter method wouldn't allow you to change one character and also see the screen changing in concordance. That inevitably leads to a PC-hosted solution, which can use the bigger screen estate to display all character set/screen/menus at once.

As long as people still check it runs and looks (and sounds) good on the real hardware, I'm fine with that.

[SparkyNZ]

As long as people still check it runs and looks (and sounds) good on the real hardware, I'm fine with that.

Yeah my first computer was a Vic20 when I was 10. I couldn't afford games so I learned to program the Vic in Basic and tried to do some 6502 stuff by writing 6502 on paper and then hand assembling it.. What a mission. Life got easier with the C64 when I had a real assembler and a HUGE 40x25 character screen!

Unfortunately I don't have a real Vic (or CRT display of any kind anymore) so unless I can find a cheapie one floating around that still works, I'll never be able to make the real comparisons. I can still remember the red pixels looking like twisted strands of wool on my monitor.. Perhaps I'll find one here in NZ, but with this country being so small in populus, second hand stuff is usually sold at extausion prices.

Thanks for that link -I'll be sure to check it out. But sure, writing small util apps in C is never a problem. I live and breath C/C++ daily.

[SparkyNZ]

There's also Tommy Gun, a multi-platform game editor, which has a VIC-20 screen designer built-in. Never tried it out, though.

Yeah I think TommyGun has been abandoned and has a way to go before it a suitable system for Vic development. Its a shame as its pretty nice looking with some good ideas. Its funny, I find a lot of tools try to do so many things and yet sometimes they just don't do the little things that you want them to. Perhaps I'll have a go at knocking up an editor such as what we've been discussing, but it won't be any time soon.