BMP to Vector converter utility

[robbo007]

Hi guys,
In my never ending search to try and reduce the size of a picture when using the "Import BMP to PIC" option in SciCompaion. I reached out to Erik who created a similar utility for the AGS engine back in 2000.

He has now created SCIVEC, which is a nice little utility that converts a bmp file into a SCI Companion compatible "patch" picture file. This can then be imported using the IMPORT menu. The initial results are good and the picture size is about 15% smaller than than if importing via SciCompanion directly. He is planing to tinker a little more with the code to get reduce the size even more.

This is great if you draw your pictures in an external drawing program like Aseprite and then want to run your games on real hardware where space is very limited. Or to go even one step further and release your game on floppy disks

Here is the link to the utility: https://github.com/erkkah/scivec

Regards,

[Kawa]

First impression giving it the starting room from SQ3: impressive!

I can see it actually attempts to detect outlines, that's a good way to beat Companion's scanline system. It can't seem to tell outlines from dithered fills if I look at the dark segments of the big red object, but I'm impressed it can handle dithers at all. Sprays are probably a sticking point.

Numbers
Original: 7,506 bytes
Companion: 29,871 bytes, 398% of original.
SCIVec: 24,000 bytes, 319% of original, 80% of Companion.

[robbo007]

Erik mentioned he can tinker a little more to get even more reduction in file size. Fingers crossed. Did you see anything that could be bettered? So I can let him know.
Thanks,

[Kawa]

Just the part where dither fills next to solid lines that share a color cause it to draw dashed lines, like the red thing in SQ3's starting room.

[MusicallyInspired]

Oh neat!

[lskovlun]

I've just had a look at the code, and this is great for anyone who wants to write code that works with SCI pics. The ScummVM code is too enmeshed with other code to use for this purpose.