C64 Yourself: Browser-based image converter to C64 color palette | Hacker News Reader

C64 Yourself: Browser-based image converter to C64 color palette

c64.superdefault.com

103 pointserickhill24 comments

Have you considered adding the ability to use dithering on this site? I made a similar tool a while back (to convert an image to an arbitrary color palette), and one of the main things I learned was how powerful dithering can be.

For example, here are two images I created using my old tool to convert an image to the C64 color palette. Unlike the website, my tool isn't currently capable of doing the double-wide horizontal pixels, but it still illustrates the effect I think:

Without dithering: http://imgur.com/nQL0y6i With dithering: http://imgur.com/jfwUgnC

If you're interested, Wikipedia has a great example (with code) of the Floyd-Steinberg dithering algorithm, for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floyd%E2%80%93Steinberg_dither..., which I imagine wouldn't be too hard to integrate into your site.

What a great idea! I would love to see a "save AS disk" option that would let you download a D64 disk image containing the rendered graphics in some appropriate format like KoalaPainter or Amica Paint.

There are some good cross-dev C64 graphics editors out there on the PC - I think most of them will let you import pictures, convert them, then save as PRG (etc) executables you can run on a real C64.

PC:

- Timanthes: http://csdb.dk/release/?id=75871

- MultiPaint: http://csdb.dk/release/?id=156376

- ProjectOne: http://csdb.dk/release/?id=86776

- PixCen: http://csdb.dk/release/?id=149752

OSX:

- http://csdb.dk/release/?id=156376

There is also Retrospecs, an iOS app, that can simulate many retro computing looks. It's a lot of fun.

http://8bitartwork.co.uk

Would love to try this but limiting the upload to drag and drop makes it hard for me. Not everyone uses Windows or Mac you know. Is there any way to upload stuff to these without having graphical file manager?

welcome to the app-ification of the web...

Not the problem here. A file input control would do the same job and be usable on mobile devices; this isn't "web apps lol", it's a straightforward UI design error.

It can even be solved without any extra UI elements - just have clicking the drag & drop element act as a regular file input.

Firefox let me drag a recent image from my download menu. I agree that this is rather poor UX though.

As a ZX Spectrum user I was always jealous of the C64 colour palette. It had a single colour per pixel vs the ZX Spectrum's 1 colour per 8x8 pixel.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX_Spectrum_graphic_modes

last I checked, you had 2 possible colors due to attribute cells.

The c64's bitmap mode could either be 320x200 with color allocated in an 8x8 grid, much like the Speccy, or 160*200 with three selectable colors per 3x8 block, plus one background color shared across the whole screen.

It did, however, also have sprites, which could float over or under the main screen.

(If you're willing to dedicate pretty much all of the CPU time to flipping stuff around while the video chip is rendering the screen, you can have finer-grained color selections on the c64, but that's mostly the domain of demos.)

here is the same concept, but i use vegetables instead of the c64 color palette http://veganizer.veganblatt.com/ never bother to publish or promote it somewhere, should work on mobile, creates huge images.

it's MIT, most of the magic happens here https://github.com/franzenzenhofer/veganizer2/blob/master/js...

haha. nice

Not having an alternative method using a file selection dialog is extremely annoying on some platforms.

does this include the ones made by color switching?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13935590

Unfortunately, no. But thanks for sharing that, that's really cool!

Cool! I've got an urge to go out and take some photos, run them through this and create a retro adventure game.

Do you think it would be possible to do the image conversion in Javascript so it does not need to be uploaded to the server?

The "C64ication" (if that's what you mean by conversion) actually happens purely in JavaScript - if I understand the source correctly, the image is only _resized_ on the server.. but the whole shebang can be done client-side.

Yep. Would be awesome if the author(s) released this as a MIT licensed JS lib. Would love to use and credit it myself! :-)

Does it limit character cell (8x8) to 2 (or 4?) colors?

Needs upload button (viewing on tablet)

That name is so, so good.

ok dis hard

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