@Mason

Ok, here we go: (sorry for the size)



The original images are 48x48, as they appear as the last scaled version. The last image is from AISS, and originally 60x60.
To me, they appear almost perfect at any scale, especially if you consider the very "problematic" scaling factors of 48:47 or something.
You are also much more critical when you have the chance to compare one of the sclaed versions with its neighbours. After you watch one of them isolated, without comparism, they look pretty decend.

I understand that you cannot use the same image for every purpose, but I think scaling with the above algorithm is reasonalbe enough to allow the user to select the size in a certain range, same as the user sets the font size.
Fonts are also not "dictated" as 16pt or something.
Some have large screens, some small, some sit very close, others further, some have good eyes, some bad, some use an app that needs to squeeze a lot on the screen etc.

I found when implementing NTUI GUI Toolkit, that scaled images give a much more harmonic overall appearence when going along with font sizes.
As soon as screen with very different DPI come out, this will also become an issue.

After some experiments I think 256x256 is not needed, but e.g. 64x64 or 96x96 would be nice.
See it as the raw data, were the user can create its real size, same as the vector deinitions in TT Fonts.

Some configurability would also be nice, e.g. to set a style how the different states of an image should behave.

In case of icons, I think about the idea to use a tool that e.g. scanns your workbench drive, and replaces the folder icons with a template and then stamp the applications icon that is found inside the folder on it, in a smaller scale. This is more or less the same you do manually, but this tim can be saved I think.

About the File Manager from above:
This is no application. This is just a GUI mock-up to test NTUI.
See here what I mean. If they would both share the same images sizes of 21x21, the smaller one would look really blown up.
21x21 looks good on the first image. But what if I want a 32px font? The problem is, that you can always downscale, but upscaling looks really ugly.

@Mason

I really want to suggest you once more to re-think over the AISS concept.
To me, your work appears to be too precious to be doomed to stay forever 21x21 (or similar low res)

I want to make following suggestion that could really improve AISS and make it future proof:

1) Draw the images at higher resolution. I suggest 256x256 or 128x128. That provides enough flexibelity for

- high-density screens (e.g. same physical size but double resolution)
- user customizable sizes of the images (e.g. the images should be oriented at the used font)
- add post-processing effects like glow (and leave 1 pixel more border, so the border of the glow is not out-of-bitmap)
- use the images in different situations at different sizes (Icons, Toolbar images large/small, Listviews, Menus, Emblems etc.)

2) Think of a way how to merge this with Icons. Technically, it is all the same.

What I can offer is to write the tools to determine sizes, effects etc, during installation time, or even install the large images and make a prefs program that re-renders the images.

The posibilities are only limited by imagination.
E.g. in case of icons, it would be easily possible to auto-create drawer by taking the application icons and stamp it onto a blank folder icon. You could then easily excange the folder icon, without a lot of work.
You could have toolbar images with or without glow.
You could select a greyish effetc, e.g. half-transparent, embross, greyed, low-constat etc.

Downscaling of images can be really high quality.
If you are willing to do so,I would like to try an example,
e,g, you draw 1 application Icon and one drawer, and I create different variantions and sizes from it, so everybody, including you can judge the result.

@AmigaBlitter

Including OS4 Libraries should be possible, as long as they have an 68K interface. I dont know if this is the case for ALL OS4 libraries by design, or if this requires a so call "glue file" or something.
Technically, you could write your own PPC calling routines, but writing a glue file would be more useful.

There will probably never be a native OS4 Version. Too much work, too few users, too small benefit, as it already does a nice job under OS4.

@AlfaR0me0

Yes. And it is still maintained by various people (including me), and has rarely seen such busy times like right now.
Unfortunately, due to a server crash some time ago, there is no distribution for download.
Usually you can get it here:

http://amiblitz.amiforce.de

Reminds me to prepare a new distribution.

The latest snapshot can be found at sourceforge (but remember to restore the executalbe flags, i wonder how other developer deal with this problem with SVN).

@AlfaR0me0

Yes, it works on all Platforms except AROS (due to no 68k support).
Only thing that might get problematic is the debugger, since unlike MOS, OS4 has some important instructions missing. (AFAIU). I dont know if this has been fixed yet.

From v3.5 on, the compiler can be used stand alone via CLI, so it should be possible to use it within CubicIDE or with any other texteditor/IDE. However, PED should be fine too.

P.S:
Amiblitz3 executables run under all above platforms (if you stick to the rules). The compiled code is just as fast as C, especially on modern HW (JIT friendly code). If needed, 68K, PPC or x86 inline Assembler can be used if even more optimization is needed for speed critical sections.
The runtime library (the "Inlcudes") support "mordern" things like 24bit GFX, AHI, many file formats (incl. png, jpeg, bmp, iff, wav, aiff, mp3 read/write), TCP/IP, etc. etc.
On the other hand, due to the those features, it is not really what you epect if you talk about a BASIC language.

@AmiDog

Yes, but I remember there was a Deluxe Edition that ran in 1:1 Pixel mode on my Cybervision 64 3D, however quite slow. Must be very fast on WinUAE nowadays...

@jahc

All Monitors i have seen in shops have square Pixels (if used in native Resolution) => 1920x1080 Monitor is physically less high than a 1920x1200 Mionitor.

If this was your question.

@jahc

1920x1200 is much better to work on. Dont know if that amkes problems on Amigas, I use WinUAE and it works fine.

@padrino

I implemented a new GUI toolkit that uses image scaling on-the-fly. A simple library seemed not to be necessary as people didnt wanted/needed it.

@Ken

The large Icons look cool.

with tthe right scaling alogrithm, they would be usable for different resolutions.



However, the 256x256 ones have too tiny details compared to their size, its hard to get them work on smaller scale.

@Cammy

Maybe you should add VOW, if you list "top secret games" already...
Note: There is no public homepage, only for developors. Maybe I should make one?


The Voyage of the Wanderer

Description: Action RPG/Adventure
Gameplay: You walk around in an incredably huge all-on-one-map world, seen from 30? ISO perspective. Follow the main plot, but meanwhile you fight monsters, collect items, complete side-quests and improve your character(s).
Chipset: 24bit RTG/AHI
OS: OS3.1+
Game Type: hum? - dunno.
Help Needed: classic pencil&paper drawing artist, colorizer, 3D modeller/animator, musician, story teller
Contact: Email us at: support AT hd-rec DOT de

@broadblues

I added a secutiry check to PED. If the font widths are not the same, it will use the softstyle version of the normal font. That should be a reasonable workaround.

@All

Let me explain.

The "unusual" stuff that PED does is to mix Bold, Italic and Normal Fonts in the same FIXFONT textdisplay, while assuming that all characters have the same width.

For Softstyle, this is true for all fonts. PED used Softstyle in previous versions. (Softstyle = load ONE font, and do the different style by bitmap-manipulation, e.g. by blitting two times the font by 1 pixel shifted for simulating bold).

Recently, I added the feature that PED opens the font directly with the styles set, means opening THREE Fonts, one for normal, one for bold and one for italic. This allows the Font engine to render different Bitmaps from different Outlines => smoother and more realistic results. However, it seems like that in that case, not all Fonts Versions share the same pixel-Width.
I guess many programs get into trouble if that happens, it is just rarely used.

I dont think that Bernd hacked anything in AfA Font rendering, you can set the Kerning manually in the True-Type Manager program. I only guess that the rendering engine decides for a different pixelwidth in the normal version, that all.
OS4 is the one who doesn't behave consistantly, depending if AA is switched on or off. Does that make sense? nah!

So to avoid this problem on OS4:

- switch "bold tokens" off in IDE Preferences

or

- choose a font that has the same width in all versions, shouldn't be too hard.

Fixing this in PED is kind of problematic. Any suggestions are welcome how to handle such a problem.

@broadblues

Vera Sans Mono looks on AfA OS with Anti-Aliasing ok:

OS4: _______________________ Afa OS:


/*
... obsolete text deleted ...
*/

P.S.: Ok, I found the reason.
The "normal" and "italic" version of Vera Sans Mono are 1 pixel more narrow on OS4 than the "bold" version.
On AfA OS, all versions have the width of the bold version.
The Texteditor PED estimates the possitions according the width of the "normal" version.

Conclusion: This is hard to fix (how to fix this at all?)
Solution: use another font that has the same width on all versions.

@kas1e

The gfx is mostly done by myself. The house scribbles are from a drawing artist.
There is no demo yet. This is just a scenery I set up in Amiblitz3's MapEdit. The editor will be included in future releases and provides an easy interface to use the Maps in your game. (e.g can render any area and layer of the map into any given RastPort).
It can be used for simple maps, but also for quite complex maps, including displacement maps for pseudo 3D. But it is not finished yet, that's why no real release.

@unimon

The problem it that PED assumes the NORMAL, BOLD and ITALIC Version of a fix-font to be the same width.
Actually, this is required to make sense in a programming language Editor, since you want all characters exactly in a 2D Matrix.

I can recommend Lucida Console from Windoze, it is really good for programming, because it has quite large letters compared to it total height and is rendered quite clear.

Yours (kind of Courrier?): ________ Lucida Console (14pix):

@broadblues

Last whole character or last pixel column? (as it is in italic fonts)

@broadblues

No, i just saw that this is the Stack set in Amiblitz3 Icon. That used to be 500,000 to be on the safe side. Someone must have lowered this. I will increase it in the next release. However, those 40K are enough on Classic, but might not be engough on OS4 or MOS.

@Snuffy

So it seems it works correctly on EUAE, just slow, but I guess that holds for all software.

The bouncing ball demos however can be tweaked to be much faster (using selective refresh), but the way it is implemented is to satisfy GFX cards running at their real speed. It runns fine on e.g. 68060 with Cybervision 64 3D. The demos are not suppoosed to run under lower specs. For lower specs => use BlitzBasic2 instructions.


Quote:
hm... would need further investigation.


Quote:
Doing a PANIC kill is not the right thing to do. Amiblitz3 asks you this if you try to edit something in PED while the program is still running. This is because the program could be stuck in a deadlock and you even can't save your work. But during regular usage, this should be no option, only if you are in PANIC!

I corrected the other thing in sourcecode.
(it's damn hard to keep all the 1000th of files up to date!)

> It seems different source programs have different results.
Well, that's what different source programs are supposed to do...

Actually I see only one bug, the Grim Reaper on some progs.

When asking for the libs, I wanted to see the libs in LIBS:, because they are preferred over the local ones .
Copying them accross to LIBS: might help.

It is correct that the simple demo give a reaper hit, while the 100Hz demo runns smoothly without any trouble?
That would give us a hint what might be wrong, since the two progs are almost identical.

@Snuffy

What kind of file name errors?

It is supposed to run under OS4, only the Debugger is currently broken. If it makes problems, please report.

You say you can start the IDE, but once it is open and you click the mouse somewere it freezes?
Sounds like a stormwizzard problem. Double check the libraries in Libs/ with the ones you have in Libs: