[Coco] Is there a way to import JPGs or BMPs to a CoCo picture file format that can be used in a program, game etc?

[Roger Taylor]

At 01:11 AM 1/15/2010, you wrote:
>I know there are viewers but are there applications that preferably 
>can run on a PC and convert JPG,BMP etc files to a Coco picture file 
>say a CoCo 3 picture file that one could then use in a program, game 
>etc? If so please let me know where I can obtain or preferably 
>download it from thanks...


Yes, in a way.  The VCC CoCo emulator is a Windows program.  Use it 
to run my Projector-3 program for the 6309 CoCo 3.  Just set VCC to 
6309 and 512k.  Using P-3, you can use Robert Gault's BMP viewer 
(it's a P-3 codec file) and then convert the loaded image into many 
formats, including CoCoMax 3.

The source code to Projector-3 has been available for years and comes 
as a Rainbow IDE project as well.  Just load the project and click GO 
and it will rebuild the software disk (virtual disk).  Once you get 
the hang of that, you can make us proud by adding new encoding 
routines to the numerous codec files loaded by the program.

Now that I'm on this subject, someone could easily add a new graphics 
mode to the array.sys file (array.asm)... and the mode I'd like to 
see is this new CMP artifact mode claiming to show ~256 colors.

Robert Gault can confirm that adding a new format to P-3 is easier 
than it sounds, yet many years have gone by with almost no 
contributions by the public.  The reason it's easier than writing a 
complete viewer is that P-3's shell and array driver handles almost 
all of the routines you'd need to deal with file management, color 
processing, dithering, and graphics modes.  You basically just need 
to turn a stream of colors into file bytes, or a stream of file bytes 
into a stream of colors, and let P-3 do the rest.


-- 
~ Roger Taylor