   Image Tools (Skip this and
download?)(updates?) (demo?) (other demo?) Special headliner, truecolor is now supported. Written by Dreamless Dancer Specail Info concerning some results you might encounter. [Click] |
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| This is a compilation of various programs I created in
making patch images, originally, each section of this program was a
separate program, with the advantage of being able to just drag and drop
the file onto the program, and the program does it's thing. The down side
was that each program only did one thing, and while it did it very well,
if I wanted it to do something else, I ended up writing another program!
The other problem is that the current graphics manipulating package I'm
using produces BIG program, the actual code for the program, if it didn't
have to call any of the graphics routines, would only be maybe 48k, but
the graphics package added almost 450k to each program. That’s a lot of
code for a set of tools, while nifty, would make a download of over 4megs!
Something had to be done.
Image Tools is the result of taking all those miscellaneous programs and putting a 'front end' on it so that all the possible combinations of the various other programs can be selected. This way, each of the various rapid routines I use on a regular basis was still accessable, yet the total program is only about 650k. For a bit of geekiness, this program is NOT a DOS program, it will not run in DOS, it needs to run in Windows. Installation is easy, just put it somewhere you can get to, it requires no additional programs or parts. The program is Drag and Drop in usage, dragging a bitmap file onto it starts the program and brings up the main menu. Currently, it supports 8bit and truecolor bitmaps, and will save them with the furcadia pallette in them. The program will mangle what's called 16bit images for there's a weird color organixation in them which I'm working on decoding. Also, there still exists something call a 4bit image, though I haven't seen any of them to work with either. Working on that. As well as looking into supporting other image formats as well, will have to wait for the Windows version for that to happen. Now to explain a bit of the program so you understand what you will be looking at when you drop an image on it. The program loads the image, gets the size so you can reference it, and prints a menu:
To explain some of the settings and how I cam about in determining the various defaults. Slice cuts an image up into 32 pixel wide chunks produces the proper widths for making multipart objects. Wall uses a 36 pixel wide image because for the most part, I've found that creating walls of that width works best. However because you may have your own ideas, I provide for a User selectable width. All these modes only allow the setting of the width, the height will be the full height of the image + the selected width divided by 2. The difference between skew and swivel lies in the manner it produces the output. Skew slices every two, so does Swivel, except Swivel starts with a slice of 1, then does 2 till it runs out of image to slice, if the User selected width selected size is odd, then that will have 2, otherwise it will have one. Chop does no skewing of image, the program makes square chunks. Wobject produces a extra set of images for making wobjects, it's double the selected width, with the 'right' facing wall pasted in the left side. Then you can add the 'left' faces of your choice into the wobject images and work from there. Shade produces two extra images for each side of the chop, one a shade lighter, the other a shade darker. Rather than taking a stab at total error correction in the shader, I mask out by furc color sections, and shade within those sections, and if a color shift tosses the pixel outside that band, it gets set to either total red or total orange. Then there's Floor. Floor does three different things, depending on Skew / Swivel / Chop, and for one of the modes, the output will be odd because of what the objective I was looking for in making floors dictated the code. To make perfect floors, (ha), I give the following recommendations for them: Skew / Slice 32 which takes the image in 32x32 bites, makes them 62x32, then slices progressive 2 pixel high chunks over to stagger the image. It then shifts the left side upwards and the right side downwards to fit all the pixels within the visible floor space in a tile. Swivel / Rotate 44 wich does a rotation of the image to a 62x62 internal image, then does a selective slicing of the image to render the final result, hence, not all pixels in the source end in the product. However, for those who taken a peek at my floors patch, I think you can consider the result rather worthwhile. It will also chop, with no skewing or swiveling, but beware, it can make a LOT of images cluttering up your directory in a hurry. You can also experiment with the User settings in Floor, and as you play with the program you will note that the predefined selectors do not automatically come into play, you can Skew a 44, and Swivel a 32, but the resulting tiles, err, well, will not be 'exact' in pixel alignment. Working on that. A bit more tech explaination about the floor maker. Also, the Wobject and Shader modes are disabled when you select Floor, heck, you can end up with more than you realize on a nice sized image. If you really need to do shading of a floor, you can use the User entry to set the size to the size (width) of your image, Chop and Shade, and produce three tiles, original, and one darker version and one lighter version.
Of course, pressing ENTER will run the program, and then it does return you to this menu so you can adjust your source image and use CTRL+R to reload it. ESC quits. A word about the program, it DOES NOT confirm about overwriting files, that IS deliberate, many times I find myself making itty bitty adjustments in the source image, and rerunning the slicer until I'm happy with the results. And another word of warning about the program. It produces successive images based on the Code, and the pixel number on which it starts each image, so changing from 32-36 will produce a new set of images, and the 'prefix' code will be different for each. However, if you're in the Chop and or User settings, this will result in MORE images for each setting change. So if you decide you DON'T want the previous output, delete it to avoid cluttering up your workspace. Will work on the graphical preview dialogs and perhaps a simple editor interface to make your life easier. Have fun. download |
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Strip Slice X, Strip Slice Y, & Both - This does a skip slicing of the
image to make it narrower or shorter, kinda hard to explain, so here's a
picture for reference. As you see, it starts off on the odd row, and picks
every other row until the middle of the image, where it skips an
additional row, then does the rest of the image cutting from the even
rows. Or columns. See