Vic 20 Screen and Character designer

[Mike]

To quote from the manual:

... surely you didn't expect me to RTFM?

The issue with the standard autostart behaviour of VICE was annoying enough for me to document the supposed-to-use variant of loading MG picture files in the manual, yes. Please check the date of these posts!

BTW, I just tried the export function, but the button 'Save as MiniPaint...' does not result in any effect. Neither is the previously loaded file updated (judged from the time stamp).

Two other things: First, the spelling of the program name is either all-caps, or MP as shortcut. Not MiniPaint, nor Minipaint (already inconsistently used by you). A minor issue, though.

Second, the bitmap actually uses the characters 16..255, not 0..239. By starting the characters at 16, both 'text screen' and character base can be located at $1000. With the characters starting at 0, you'd have to locate the screen elsewhere, at $1E00 for example. That would still allow for the same resolution, but $1E00 .. $1EEF overlaps with the characters 224..238, requiring us to use the split ranges 0..223 and 239..254 (or 240..255) ... which we wouldn't want.

[beamrider]

BTW, I just tried the export function, but the button 'Save as MiniPaint...' does not result in any effect. Neither is the previously loaded file updated (judged from the time stamp).

Have you refreshed the cache? It is working for me from the online website hence the Hello MiniPaint screen-shot.

[edit: Ok, it only seems to be saving in Chrome. I'll take a look at Firefox and IE....]

Edit2:Now working in Firefox and Chrome(on Windows at least)...

Two other things: First, the spelling of the program name is either all-caps, or MP as shortcut. Not MiniPaint, nor Minipaint (already inconsistently used by you). A minor issue, though.

OK

Second, the bitmap actually uses the characters 16..255, not 0..239. By starting the characters at 16, both 'text screen' and character base can be located at $1000. With the characters starting at 0, you'd have to locate the screen elsewhere, at $1E00 for example. That would still allow for the same resolution, but $1E00 .. $1EEF overlaps with the characters 224..238, requiring us to use the split ranges 0..223 and 239..254 (or 240..255) ... which we wouldn't want.

Ok, I'll take a look at this. The sample prg that you provided seemed to load/save and then back to Vice ok.

A new version 0.41 has been uploaded that addresses the two issues.

A new version 0.42 has been uploaded that addresses the "Save" on Firefox issue.

[don't forget to clear the cache again Ctrl+F5 ]

[beamrider]

Just discovered a useful feature:

If you want to change screen size and retain content, the copy buffer survives changes to screen geometry, so you can copy the entire screen (or part of it) adjust the size and paste it back.

[johncl]

Very nice application! Perfect for prototyping and making a complete charset for games/apps!

Just one feature I missed is that it would be cool e.g in select mode (or a new "keyboard mode") to be able to use keyboard to write chars as its a bit of hassle now to write text into the screen. For each char you input it should advance "cursor" to the right and perhaps enter would bring it down to the next line (cursor keys to move about would also be nice). It would have been cool if the keyboard input it supported was the default keymapping used in Vice too so you can use SHIFT and CTRL too to access almost all chars.

[darkatx]

I also like the fact with the 5 screen option - I can achieve a manual form of animation with a few keystrokes.

[beamrider]

Very nice application! Perfect for prototyping and making a complete charset for games/apps!

Just one feature I missed is that it would be cool e.g in select mode (or a new "keyboard mode") to be able to use keyboard to write chars as its a bit of hassle now to write text into the screen. For each char you input it should advance "cursor" to the right and perhaps enter would bring it down to the next line (cursor keys to move about would also be nice). It would have been cool if the keyboard input it supported was the default keymapping used in Vice too so you can use SHIFT and CTRL too to access almost all chars.

Yes, I had this in mind. I've been working on this tonight and I now have it working in Chrome, with just some browser compatibility issues to sort out. Watch this space...

[Misfit]

beware, If you add support for keyboard editing, your app is too awesome.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DWB7CBdvXU

Pure keyboard interface is oldschool (and best) way to create VIC-20 graphics.

[johncl]

Great news! That will make it very useable - atm I use a Vic20 emulator and the built in "screen editor" to prototype screen layouts and such but it has all these nasty things you have to watch out like whole screen shifting down when you type something in the last column.

[beamrider]

Please find uploaded verion 0.43 with basic keyboard editing:-

- Line wrap when typing
- Cursor Navigation
- Shift + Cursor keys (inflate/deflate selection area)
- Enter <newline>
- Backspace key (chrome)
- Delete Key
- Ctrl+A - select entire screen (chrome)

Key Mapping:

Key mapping can be set on the settings tab in the Keyboard Map area. I suggest copy/pasting to a proper editor. The format is Keycode:CBM character,[Keycode:CBM character],, The settings are saved between browser sessions but if you change them I would make a backup elsewhere.
I have added entries for the UK keyboard (the US one is similar) with both upper and lower case targeting upper case characters. If no entry is found for a particular code, then nothing will be output to the screen.

[edit:] forgot to mention keycodes, can be seen as you type, by opening a console window (Ctrl+Shift+i) in Chrome.

[Caveats]

I seem to have opened up a whole can of worms with respect to the different way browsers handle key strokes. Best results are in Chrome where everything should work. Firefox does not seem to allow prevention of default behaviour for Ctrl key shortcuts, so these will not work on that browser. I haven't really had chance to try IE yet should anyone be using that browser.
There maybe some feint cell lines left when typing or moving the cursor around. These won't affect anything and are because I have elected to redraw only parts of the screen for performance reasons (and haven't got it quite right yet). A simple click in select mode will tidy up the display.

If the browser has a previous page in memory then backspace will navigate to it (I can't prevent it). This can be prevented by opening the browser directly to the editor so that no previous page is available. This is the behaviour when downloading and running locally.

In case of any issues the previous version can be found at
http://87.81.155.196/vic20sdd42/Vic20SDD.htm

I will update the documentation in due course.

Have fun!

Adrian

[johncl]

Great thanks for this update! Its working fine!

Found one niggling bug (in Chrome) - if you click the keyboard mapping textfield (nice if you could make this a bit bigger) - when you type in it, it also puts chars in the screen area.

Also, I wonder how hard it is to get the screen view to be more pixel accurate/aligned (perhaps 2x scale), it looks a bit fuzzy now so there is some aliasing going on there now.

But thanks for adding the text input feature. Makes it very easy now to whip up prototypes!

[beamrider]

Ok, I'll take a look at that. Suggest for the moment you get the mappings correct, save them, start a new session and avoid clicking that area.

I'm probably going to draw a line under this now (apart from bug-fixes like the above), as it does far more than what I need personally and I've spent a fair amount of time on it already.

[beamrider]

I also like the fact with the 5 screen option - I can achieve a manual form of animation with a few keystrokes.

Are you clicking the screen selector control and then using Ctrl+up/down arrow to switch between screens?

[darkatx]

Yeah I am - just wanted to see how it would run.

[beamrider]

Ok, I've uploaded what I think should be the last verion (0.44) which includes:-

- ROM bank selection (originals change in table)
- Mixed case keyboard map (allows mixed case typing in the screen editor)
- Resizable keyboard mapping tab

- doesn't type characters in main screen after editing keyboard map - (bug fix)

To use mixed case:-

- Choose Bank 1
- Click "Revert All characters to ROM"
- In settings tab, click "Mixed Case" button.

Using the selectable ROM bank it's easy to create a custom mix of chars based on the VIC ROM sets as required.


As usual Ctrl+F5 to refresh.

[johncl]

Great! Thanks for the update!

Just a word of warning for users of this editor - pressing backspace can sometimes perform a back navigation on the browser and basically you loose everything then (unless you do as I do now, save frequent backups).

PS: Only one feature request for the keyboard input. Holding shift while typing could set bit 7 of the char - to get reverse chars! That would be cool, and it would also solve an issue that many will get into, when you put a charset at $1c00 (to get 64-128 user defined chars and 128 ROM chars) keyboard entry would need to be in the inverted ones where bit7 is set as that is where the ROM chars are then.