New AGI 256 Colour View Support & 256 Colour View Editor!

[Brian Provinciano]

I finished this hack last weekend, but wanted to finish the view editor before it's release  

AGI256 2.0 gives you the ability to program AGI with a 256 colour views and pictures and greatly improve the quality of games and programs you make with the Adventure Game Interpreter.

Heh, not that I actually expect people to use this, but it was a lot of fun to do. It took time and skills, but the reward is great for me

The 256 colour views are pretty much the same format as AGI, except that they do not support mirroring. The mirroring/transparency byte is exclusively for the transparent colour now. Also, the cel data is not run length encoded, just raw data. It still supports the 0x00 for a new line. Distinguishing the two different views is easy. Normal AGI views start with '\x01\x01', while my new format starts with '\x0F\xF0'. My 256 colour view editor can fully load both 16 colour and 256 colour views so you can convert them to 256 colours.

Get them at my Ultimate AGI & SCI site!

[robingravel]

COOL! Brian.

If you could to put the mouse hack on your agi 256 color hack, I will improve Naturette 2.

Robin Gravel

Note to Brian.

In agi utilities page,  PCX > 256 c pic does not work.
I downloaded show pic 256 color unstead.
Please, fix the link.

[Brian Provinciano]

I'll probably get around to adding mouse support to it.

Since some of the unknown AGI commands have been discovered to be mouse ones for non-PC intepreters, such as show.mouse, hide.mouse, etc.,  I'm actually thinking of making AGI Mouse 2.0, which will implement all the Amiga/Apple IIgs mouse functions.

To make 256 colour pictures, you can use the AGI256 View Editor. It's a lot easier than the other programs.

[robingravel]

Thanks Brian.

It's maybe too late to add 256 colour in Naturette 2 by now but I could use it in Serguei's destiny 2.

So where I can find pcx > 256 colour pic program?
On your site, the link seen not to work.

It's show pic 256 color unstead.

Robin Gravel

[Chris Cromer]

There is a 256 color pic converter built into the 256 color view editor... sort of like an all in one program.

[robingravel]

Thanks Chris.

I'll look for it.

Robin Gravel

[robingravel]

Finally. I found it.

I got "bitmap image is not valid" when editing my view 16 colours.

Robin Gravel

[bokkers]

Has anyone worked with the view editor yet. I'm trying to convert 256 pictures but I can't get get the converted pics to work in the game. If anyone has experience with this, I would be glad if you give me a clue.
I have the unknown170(); in the logic script, but no effect  

[bokkers]

I've found out agout that 256-colour-thing. Now I wonder: Does anyone use it? Are there any 256-colour games in development?

[Kon-Tiki]

I tried using it in the beginning of Little Pirate, but couldn't find out how to work with it. It seemed as if it was just a demo with 256c backgrounds.

-Kon-Tiki-

[bokkers]

The editor is a very neat thing. I'm able to make 256-colour pics and views and use them in games now. But I ran across a strange bug in the program making working with it a little nasty. When I load views the prog almost always messes up the background colour and also seems to delete cels at random. It's still possible to work with it, but it would be more comfortable without this bug.
Did anyone else run across it and has maybe discovered a reason or a way to work around this?

[bokkers]

Hmm, seems as if there aren't too many people using the editor. Look what it can do.

[robingravel]

The drawback with this hacked interpreter, you'll need two pictures to make a room. One picture is used for 256 colours background and a picture 16 colours is used for priorities.

The screenshots look awesome since Dashiki.

Robin Gravel

[Joey]

yah wasnt there a game dashiki or something, and one version had 256 colors. how could they do that?

[bokkers]

yah wasnt there a game dashiki or something, and one version had 256 colors. how could they do that?

Yep, Dashiki was in 256 colours. The only version I came across unfortunately only had two rooms. But they looked incredibly good.
It's actually quite easy to make an AGI game in 256 colours. Just get the hacked 256 colour interpreter from Brian's website at http://agisci.cjb.net. There you'll also find Viewedit, the program you need for the picture and view resources. Because these you can no longer edit in AGI-Studio and Picedit. It's not a problem however, because with Viewedit you simply convert BMPs to AGI-Pictures.