Comments on: New Apple II song, Jpegs to HGR screens http://www.mozomedia.com/apple2/2009/08/new-apple-ii-song-jpegs-to-hgr-screens/ Exploring games, music and programming on the 8-bit Apple II computers. Wed, 16 Dec 2009 18:26:04 -0500 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 By: JJ Sonick http://www.mozomedia.com/apple2/2009/08/new-apple-ii-song-jpegs-to-hgr-screens/comment-page-1/#comment-540 JJ Sonick Mon, 14 Sep 2009 22:46:59 +0000 http://www.mozomedia.com/apple2/?p=161#comment-540 Woah - just a follow-up, I've tried some other more colorful pics and they were much less successful haha. Making the original jpg black and white (indexed color - 2 color) before converting to HGR seems to give decent results though. So: similar to HGR color palette or strict B&W seem best. I'll post more on this later... Woah – just a follow-up, I’ve tried some other more colorful pics and they were much less successful haha. Making the original jpg black and white (indexed color – 2 color) before converting to HGR seems to give decent results though. So: similar to HGR color palette or strict B&W seem best. I’ll post more on this later…

]]> By: JJ Sonick http://www.mozomedia.com/apple2/2009/08/new-apple-ii-song-jpegs-to-hgr-screens/comment-page-1/#comment-538 JJ Sonick Fri, 04 Sep 2009 04:14:41 +0000 http://www.mozomedia.com/apple2/?p=161#comment-538 Thanks, Jeff! It is just a standard HGR screen on a stock composite monitor, but like I said, the photo makes it look a somewhat better than reality. The Apple II HGR screen can actually display some nice images, it's just a *lot* of work if you're not cheating something like a jpg-to-HGR utility. That's because if you're programming, you have to deal with the bizarre way the screen is arranged in memory just to get your image to appear and then you have to deal with the obnoxious ways the colors can bleed over if they are next to eachother (again, a consequence of the way the screen is represented in memory). Even if you're using one of the nice mouse- or tablet-driven drawing programs that came out back then, the color issue can be quite annoying. But there are examples from back in the day of nice HGR screens, like from Beyond Castle Wolfenstein - http://img259.imageshack.us/img259/593/bwolfso0.jpg Windwalker - http://www.retrocpu.com/apple-ii/images/games/w/windwalker.png Rescue Raiders notice how carefully the colors are kept separated by black except for the ground) - http://www.retrocpu.com/apple-ii/images/games/r/rescue_raiders.png Aztec - http://www.retrocpu.com/apple-ii/images/games/a/aztec.png Also I think the spaceship's color scheme ended up playing nice with the HGR screen's 6 colors - more colorful pics will probably fair much poorer - I'll find out soon! Thanks, Jeff! It is just a standard HGR screen on a stock composite monitor, but like I said, the photo makes it look a somewhat better than reality. The Apple II HGR screen can actually display some nice images, it’s just a *lot* of work if you’re not cheating something like a jpg-to-HGR utility. That’s because if you’re programming, you have to deal with the bizarre way the screen is arranged in memory just to get your image to appear and then you have to deal with the obnoxious ways the colors can bleed over if they are next to eachother (again, a consequence of the way the screen is represented in memory). Even if you’re using one of the nice mouse- or tablet-driven drawing programs that came out back then, the color issue can be quite annoying. But there are examples from back in the day of nice HGR screens, like from Beyond Castle Wolfenstein -
http://img259.imageshack.us/img259/593/bwolfso0.jpg
Windwalker –
http://www.retrocpu.com/apple-ii/images/games/w/windwalker.png
Rescue Raiders notice how carefully the colors are kept separated by black except for the ground) -
http://www.retrocpu.com/apple-ii/images/games/r/rescue_raiders.png
Aztec -
http://www.retrocpu.com/apple-ii/images/games/a/aztec.png

Also I think the spaceship’s color scheme ended up playing nice with the HGR screen’s 6 colors – more colorful pics will probably fair much poorer – I’ll find out soon!

]]> By: jeff http://www.mozomedia.com/apple2/2009/08/new-apple-ii-song-jpegs-to-hgr-screens/comment-page-1/#comment-537 jeff Wed, 02 Sep 2009 13:28:57 +0000 http://www.mozomedia.com/apple2/?p=161#comment-537 This is so very cool. Good to see another post here. Love the music, especially. Thanks for hooking that up. Also, what kind of HGR screen is in the picture? Is that the standard //e hi-res on a composite monitor? Or is it enhanced somehow with duoble-hires or a special RGB display? Or what? Because I can't believe a stock //e could reproduce that spaceship thingy so well. This is so very cool. Good to see another post here. Love the music, especially. Thanks for hooking that up.

Also, what kind of HGR screen is in the picture? Is that the standard //e hi-res on a composite monitor? Or is it enhanced somehow with duoble-hires or a special RGB display? Or what? Because I can’t believe a stock //e could reproduce that spaceship thingy so well.

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