Re: Apple Game Server: Blowing off cobwebs

[BLuRry <brendan.robert@gmail.com>]

On Tuesday, January 8, 2013 11:32:59 PM UTC-6, Kevin wrote:
> I assume you will be prompt with providing tidy source code (lol!) as I would still like to squeeze this into to my virtual serial host

All the sources have been checked in to the sourceforge SVN so you can do what you want with the code.  Though I haven't released a new build yet, I can confirm that it is stable so far -- even much more so that what was there previously.  I need to swap out the //c on my desk with the //gs in the closet and do some more testing.  Then I'll know if it's working right for all possible configurations.

Also, I've taken 100 screenshots and have all the games A-F covered (well, most of them except for the ones written in Basic or disk-based)  The next major release of Apple Game Server will be a little richer.  The new image dithering routine seems to be doing an ok job, but it needs to be beefed up some time later.

Now that I have my head wrapped around Floyd-Steinberg dithering, I know how to adapt my HGR conversion to use error-dithering and hi/lo palette selection.  It would require rewriting the error diffusion to take two paths for each group of seven pixels, one for the low (green/purple) and one for the high (orange/blue).  Whichever path yields the least error wins, and so on.  I think if I do this before releasing it will make things a lot cleaner looking.

OK, so now for some good news.  The dithering works well, especially for DHGR.  Because of this, it is very straightforward to make a small tool that loads an image and then saves a dithered copy in whatever apple format you choose.  I've already done this in a crude way for years, but putting together a bare-bones UI should be pretty easy too.  For the time being I might just "borrow" the Jace rendering engine to make a conversion preview.  

I have something more interesting I need to finish for Bill Martens, though I'm not going to specify what just yet.  And I have a couple of projects for my real job that require immediate attention.  So there is no finished version of anything yet, but it's not for lack of personal interest or ability. ;-)

-B