Posted By
MMS
on 2017-11-04
09:02:09
 |  Re: Happy HallOweeN 2017 !
So, Luca, as always, you are right.
It is not the so-called "real ECM" mode, that built on the charset in the memory, and only the first 64characters can be used.
When you check the first 64 characters (and even inverted are not allowed), it becomes evident, that it is good to write and highlight text (or make animated highlighting like done in some message writing programs, Legend Writer, the PRG Magazines, I think Lone News too)
But from these "normal" letters is is hard to make something really artful. Yes, it may be recognizeable, but will never offer the aesthetics of a HIRES picture.
I show how it would look like with pure ECM (sure, can be optimized, just to get the idea):
Testing the PETSCII tool recently I recognized, how much potential it has with those special PET characters.
Unfortunately they are not positioned in the first 64 position, not a single one.
So what I made, that collected the most useful and "artful" 64 chars from the total 128, and during use I skipped those ones useless for this graphics, and swapped them to the more useful ones. This one was made with CBM Program Studio chardset editor, then I saved it.
I loaded the charset to Krissz's PETCSII online editor (as it allows it), and started the darft first layer.
As I mentioned, at the next stage I created 5 new shapes for the better dithering (4 diagonal and one full), this is not the part of the original Commodore charset, and dropped few from 64 I did not require here.
So as it requires the modification of the charset, so it is not "pure ECM" any more.
So in this way more or less simulated the Graphical PETSCII elements in the ECM mode, so I can say it is a GPECM mode or SGPECM 
|
