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A cool util for high res xcom conversion


sansjoy

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NKF: yes and no.. it's alittle more complicated that that but it's how it works.. I have looked over some of the sorce code and it's quite complicated.. and extreamly fast for what it does.

 

It makes the images look more like they were originaly created in the higher res.. that way the original graphics can be used in a new game engine, at a higher res.

 

-Blade FireLight

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One thing to add is that this is an image enlarger, it does not take an existing image and smooth it over, it takes an existing image and makes a larger image without all the jaggies normally associated with the enlarging process. I have no idea what im programming, but it compiles and hopefully it will work when the porting process is complete
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Or, in other words, it enlarges an index image, it masks off the transparency pixels so that they don't get affected(probably converting them to magenta for truecolour images), and then does its magic, which looks a bit like some sort of selective gaussian blur. Not necessarily in that order.

 

Don't mind me. I'm just being a nosy bugger. Is all. :)

 

- NKF

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NKF... well that is what DiaShiva is doing with the sorce code.. but the original just enlarges standard non transparent files and elimiates the jaggies.. the image I posted was a MapEdit.net image export. with a black background..

 

-Blade FireLight

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  • 2 weeks later...

It may be more an 'IF' then a when.

 

the problem is that when you enlarge sprites and try to reprocess the graphics you get a matt effect arround the edges.. giving them dark lines that make the resulting composit look horible.

 

so their are tecnical obsticals to over come...

 

It may never work. we dont know...

 

-Blade FireLight

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  • 3 weeks later...

What we need is a way to get this to capture graphics as they are produced, then reproduce them on the screen... like a VM, or maybe even a TSR...

 

I once thought of writting up a script that worked the same way... never thought it would actually WORK... impressive!

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That's the whole point. I didn't. https://www.angelfire.com/games3/jeffy90/images/smilies/wink.gif

 

Actually, thinking back, I realised that in order to pull it off, I'd need to extend the pallette. I wanted to improve the UFO graphics, but they were 256 colors, and at the moment I can only write gif files... which only support 256 colors. https://www.angelfire.com/games3/jeffy90/images/smilies/sad.gif

 

Thus, I couldn't add extra colors, and the resulting image might well look the same as the original, but double resolution, which is pointless.

 

I know that bitmap files are far, far simpler then gif files - just a raw dump of pixels, either of a palette or a bunch of three byte RGB values, as opposed to the compression tables used by gifs - but I don't have any adequete explanation of the bitmap header. And I haven't been bothered to go out and look for one. I do have a discriptive document, but whoever wrote it was a fool, and didn't say how many bytes were to be allocated for each value, or even what each header value DID. https://www.angelfire.com/games3/jeffy90/images/smilies/angry.gif

 

So instead of writing a BMP encoder as was my original plan, I taught myself LZW and wrote a GIF one. https://www.angelfire.com/games3/jeffy90/images/smilies/bomberhappy.gif

 

Incedently, bitmap files support internal compression. It's very simple, one byte says a number, and then the next color listed is repeated that many times. This would take chunks out of white space files (two bytes for 256 pixels, as opposed to 256 bytes for 256 pixels), but I don't think it's ever used. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of programs didn't support it, even if it is supposed to be in the standard. I don't know if it works with 24 bit images though, which are the most common bitmap type.

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