| Posted By
MMS
on 2017-11-01
22:02:25
 |  Happy HallOweeN 2017 !
Hi Folks!
Just want to wish you this year a Happy and Creepy Halloween !
To make it more memorizeable, I made you a brand new PETSCII, hopefully you like it!
Enjoy! 
PS: (soon it will be uploaded)
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Posted By
Charlemagne
on 2017-11-02
05:45:43
| Re: Happy HallOweeN 2017 !
WoW! This is cool and you are a true talent!
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Posted By
Csabo
on 2017-11-02
08:16:16
| Re: Happy HallOweeN 2017 !
It's great, I love it! Nice colors and composition. Keep at it
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Posted By
MMS
on 2017-11-02
11:19:07
| Re: Happy HallOweeN 2017 !
Thanks guys for the feedback!
Actually I already see some areas for improvements, and my daughter highlighted few more at the morning, but I was a little too sleepy to manage it (eg. the knife handle and blade could be more realistic; it is not so easy to relie the zombie hand; the O in the Halloween could be orange to improve the fun factor; the candle shape and shading). And certainly a creepy SID tune would be great. 
And this is our real pumpkin carved yesterday, designed by my dauther, Laura
( Before start I checked if there is any similar pumpkin PETSCII released beforehand on C64, but there were only some nice Demos, MC and FLI GFXs.
So maybe it is first the Pumpkin PETSCII on Commodore 8 bit? It is not easy to be the first one, when there is a huge C64 scene )
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Posted By
George
on 2017-11-02
19:53:17
 | Re: Happy HallOweeN 2017 !
Great Petscii, looks like the original, Mr. Petsciinator!
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Posted By
MMS
on 2017-11-03
06:24:00
| Re: Happy HallOweeN 2017 !
Who needs HIRES when you have PETSCII? 
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Posted By
Mad
on 2017-11-04
08:48:46
| Re: Happy HallOweeN 2017 !
Cool PETSCII.
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Posted By
George
on 2017-11-03
12:51:01
| Re: Happy HallOweeN 2017 !
Who needs Miulticolor, FLI and dithering anymore?.
Call MMS for photorealistic Petscii!
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Posted By
MMS
on 2017-11-03
21:40:40
| Re: Happy HallOweeN 2017 !
I will try to surprise you.
I had a long time idea to do something with the extended background color character mode, as it may have huge benefits on the shading.
Till today no PRG supports this Plus/4 mode.
As you now, only the first 64 chars can be used, but you have 4 different background color (bloody linking bit... limits the colors or the charset a lot)
So I decided to test the mode on C64. I do not know, how many people tried it before for creating a picture.
Today I made my first extended background charset (only first 64 char allowed) and made my very first extended background "PETSCII"
I tried to be as close to the original PETCSII as possible, but made two fine new dithering style, the fine pattern and the fine cross dithering pattern (from all directions).
Here we are (first draft before going to finilaze the details), below the original from Darksiders.
You can imagine the possibilities with a Plus/4 palette...
Still fits to Halloween, right?
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Posted By
Luca
on 2017-11-04
02:59:38
 | Re: Happy HallOweeN 2017 !
What do you mean with "till today no program supports ECM"? I guess you would mean "no drawing tool supports straight ECM painting", am I right?
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Posted By
MMS
on 2017-11-04
05:07:18
| Re: Happy HallOweeN 2017 !
Yes, Luca, you are rigth!
But you can imagine, how complex anything to be created with this mode
(even if the emulators can show ECM, without editor it would be a huge challenge to produce anything recognizable).
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Posted By
Luca
on 2017-11-04
05:13:38
| Re: Happy HallOweeN 2017 !
Yes, it looks quite a difficult graphic mode indeed to be used, in particular I see you're not simply using ECM, but, even more difficult, PETSCII ECM; so, you also have to choose the best 64 chars block fitting into your own style...
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Posted By
MMS
on 2017-11-04
05:46:32
| Re: Happy HallOweeN 2017 !
Actually, this mode has huge benefits VS HIRES.
If you develop a game, with such GFX you can save a lot of memory, disc space and loading time.
Due to the 64 char limitation, only this amount of charset need to be saved. (512bytes)
The display and the color memory are 1024+1024 bytes.
So, similar to PETSCII (when you need 2K to get a full screen colorful picture, but there are some limitations) here you need only 2.5K space, and the end result is very similar to a HIRES picture (10K).
And as the 64 char need to be loaded anyhow, you can create the one fits to your requirements.
Still, the best will be with Greyscale pictures...
Certainly, it will need a Plus/4 editor, till that time only a theory
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Posted By
Luca
on 2017-11-04
07:00:16
| Re: Happy HallOweeN 2017 !
Mmmm... :-/ Probably I used the wrong words to explain what I would mean...my fault, trying again.
You surely are aware of the fact that ECM has been extensively used along the years, no surprise at all. The real deal in what you're facing now is the actual picking up of the first 64 characters of the PETSCII standard set (and not 64 redifined chars with any graphics in ECM), to be used in a whole picture. Now, what I see from the picture you've posted above, is a selection of another slice of 64 chars taken from the original PETSCII set (I mean: not the 1st 64 chars block as the ECM does), copied into the first 64 chars block in order to be used. It could have been any 64 chars set made of any kind of graphics, but you've chosen that one.
We can say you are "simulating" PETSCII in a classic ECM environment, am I right? Just playing in understand what I've seen
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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
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