[Staff][Dev] 8-level Grayscale Routines

[tr1p1ea]

As some people on irc will know ive revisited an extremely ancient project of mine, some 8-level grayscale routines! I saw calc84maniac achieve some very impressive results with his experiments and i just couldnt stop thinking about ways to improve my old work in the field. Good news is that im a much better coder now and the revisit has seen me get the routines to the exact same speed as the 4-level ones, thats right, *exactly the same speed* (both faster than fastcopy so waste instructions are needed).

Here are some premilinary screens:



New Wabbit screenies:



Screenies are a lot less quality (the rolling is more apparent) than on an actual calc, but still, you get the idea . Note that since its 8-level, under the right light you will most likely notice rolling with generic routines no matter what *shrug*.

Ive made a scrolling tilemapper, but havent done a sprite routine yet .

[kv83]

Oh my god... 8-level? Damn, you're truly the GS-master.

Soooo... anything in mind for using them

[benryves]

Wow, very impressive indeed!

[chickendude]

That looks really nice! I wouldn't have noticed the rolling in the tilemaps at all if it weren't for the first picture, which made me look for it in the others. Is there anywhere online where calc84maniac has showcased their experiments in 8-level greyscale?

EDIT: Also, i've never used IRC much, but everyone apparently is on it a lot. Are there any rooms i should follow? I have seen a lot of logs pop up in google searches, and often there are a lot of interesting things being discussed.

[tr1p1ea]

The rolling isnt really too noticeable on calc, its surely something that you can put up with in a game. Plus wabbit only takes 7-level grayscale screenshots. I might be able to reduce the rolling by changing up the mask rotation. Basically the lighter the shade of gray, the more you can see it.

calc84maniac mainly shows some stuff on irc, but now he is staff at Omnimaga i think. The main IRC channels are #TCPA on Efnet, and #United-TI or #Omnimaga on Dragon-Fire. I think you can get to dragonfire from the UTI webchat interface .

So far im just messing around, no real plans for the routines. Still have to do that sprite routine, but it should be pretty straightforward.

Ive attached a test program if anyone wants to check it out. Still working on getting the timing right across calc models. And yes kv83 i thought of you and included an 83 example tho ive never tested it! Id love some feedback to see if its good/bad on your respective calcs! (Run with Ion/MOS).

[chickendude]

I wish i could say for certain, but I haven't got a GraphLink cable that works with my laptop (i finally found my old black link, but i don't have any serial ports!). I tested it out on PindurTI and, after turning the contrast up a bit, the 83 version looked just as good as the 83+ (PindurTI doesn't seem to like my 83+SE's ROM). Both look pretty similar to the screenshots you posted Sorry i can't test on the actual hardware. And thanks for the IRC info.

[benryves]

Works a treat, here! (Regular 83+).

[Art_of_camelot]

I checked it out on my 83+ SE under CrunchyOS (my shell of choice) and it looks good. For comparison sake the scanlines in the 8 level still pic appear to move faster than they do in the Desolate game (using durks grayscale routine). I have to say it definitley seems like it could be useable in a game, I'd like to see a demo of a charcter walking around a screen. I was also wondering how many layers are required to do 8 levels, are you using 4? I just checked it out on my TI 83+(not an SE) and it looks alot better on the older 83+! The pixels seem to be closer to grays (the tones are a bit different on the SE, they look less true to gray) and it actually sees to display much more clearly (The scan lines are slower and much less noticable). It also seems that less contrats is required on the TI-83+ model in order for it to display clearly. I had to turn the contrast dark enough on the TI-83+ SE that the home screen itself darkend to a light gray in order to get the same appearance as on the TI-83+ non-SE on which the home screen was slightly darker than it's netural color. I hope this feed back is useful.

[Spencer]

Looks good, but I was hoping for the tilemap. It's worth noting that on the Wabbitemu beta you can tweak the screen settings to make it look perfect. Just add two to the shades in the display options. I'll eventually have those settings carry over to GIFs.

PindurTI doesn't seem to like my 83+SE's ROM

I believe PTI only supports 82, 83, and 83+

[CoBB]

I believe PTI only supports 82, 83, and 83+

Yes, but the SE ROMs can also detect regular 83+ hardware and run on it (as far as I can remember). At least PTI works with ROMs from 1.15 to 1.18.

The grey levels are definitely nice to see. I also experimented with 8-level greyscale back in the old (pre-PTI) days, but I never got around to drawing anything else than eight stripes. That’s laziness for you.

[tr1p1ea]

Thanks guys for testing it . Art_of_camelot, you use 3 layers to achieve 8-lvl ( 2^3 = 8 ). Also the SE's have a different LCD controller than the older calcs (t6k04 vs t6ao4(a) iirc) which should explain the difference. Ill release a tilemap demo once i write the sprite routine to see how it fairs ... might have to drop the qual a tiny bit for speed tho .

[cjgone]

That looks beast.

[the_unknown_one]

You mean it looks like ?

Well, I do agree that it looks incredible. Patrick, when will you stop proving that you are a coding master? Just kidding, never stop!

[Art_of_camelot]

@ The_unknown_one: Nicely done.
@Tr1p1ea: Cool, I can't wait to see how the tilemap fares.

[Liazon]

that's insane!!! is it app compatible or does it need to run from RAM? any release any time soon?