McView - The fast-food of gfx-display programs.. :) Sorry... This doc is just a quick intro and usage manual for those who were interested enough to dl this archive. I've seen a few "multi-color" viewers appearing lately. While the approach of 2x2 blocks is new, the idea of trying to get more apparent colors than physically possible, is not. I wrote a few little programs along this line a couple of years back... A friend of mine showed me how hew had taken a HAM picture and converted it to Cyan and Red, using PixMate (anyone remember this program?). He'd place on in the spare buffer, and the other in the main. Then, using the f key, he'd flip between the two, and "magically" more colors would appear. We played around with this for a few weeks. Eventually, I came up with the idea of "mixing" the colors to try and eliminate the flickering. I also wrote several programs, in AMOS and assembler, to try and process the pics. The highest color pictures we could find at the time were HAM pics (who cares? we could already view these), and 256 color GIFs. Using a conversion program that came with the SHAM package, I wrote a conversion program to read the .tmp files. It used 2 EHB screens, and allowed the user to manipulate the palette to try and come up with the best possible palette. The results were AMAZING (at the time). I started writing an AMOS paint program, and later, started work on an assembler program. Needless to say, I lost interest. Soon after, I got my a1200...and the programs were forgotten. I may still have a copy of the archive somewhere, but I don't have time to hunt it down. Anyways, the AMOS code sucked, and the interpreter version I have doesn't work on my 1200 without major hassle. Both assembler versions would probably also fail, as they used illegal copper code that would also probably fail on my 1200. Anyways, I could now easily duplicate any of the work in E, and much faster, nowadays. I did pass a few copies out to a few people shortly after I got Internet access. Oh well. McView is similar to "Z-Mix" in some ways. But it approaches the idea of using one screen instead of two. McView will also double the vertical resolution, as this is possible on the AGA chips. Back to what this archive is all about. McView is a simple viewer program. It requires superview.library, and the JPEG object. It also requires you to set the jpeg.controlpad to read COLORDEPTH=24. If you want, set the ENVARC: also, to advoid setting this everytime you reboot. If you don't set COLORDEPTH=24, then you will basically get 8 bit, quantized data...and you can already display THAT! :) The template will probably change quite frequently, so do a "mcview ?" to get an idea of what is available. mcview assumes you are using a VGA type monitor, but will also work on a TV screen with the appropriate flags. Each "style" has an interlaced version. The interlaced versions usually offer much better quality, at the cost of slight to high flicker, and 2x the CHIP memory. Detailed below are the various "mixing" techniques: Normal (default) This is a HAM-8 mode. Lines alternate between green and red/blue/purple components. A simple red/blue edge detector is used. Green simply changes for each pixel. Pros: Very good horizontal resolution. 6 bit RGB levels. Cons: Half the vertical resolution. Visible horizontal stripes. Normal-Interlace Simliar to above, but the vertical resolution is doubled. Pros: Very good color quality. Excellent horiz and vert resolution. Cons: Very BAD flickering! Multi-color This is what is appearing alot. The colors are arranged like this: RG Bx x=black dot Pros: none Cons: Reduced resolution. Reduced brightness/contrast. Low color levels. Multi-color-Interlace Simliar to above. Pros: Fairly good resolution. Cons: Flickering. Reduced brightness/contrast. Skewedcolorv2 Arranged like this: RGBRGBRGB GBRGBRGBR BRGBRGBRG Pros: Good color. Cons: Reduced brightness/contrast. Visible diagonal lines. Rainbow effects around abrupt color changes. Skewedcolorv2-Interlaced Pros: Very good color. Cons: Reduced brightness/contrast. Rainbow effects around abrupt color changes. 2Color Uses shades of green and purple, arranged as such: GPGPGP PGPGPG GPGPGP Pros: Good resolution. Cons: Very low color levels. (31 g, 20 r, 11 b.) Reduced brightness/contrast. 2Color-Interlaced Pros: Excellent resolution! Cons: Very low color levels. (31 g, 20 r, 11 b.) Reduced brightness/contrast. HamPri HAM mode. Changes R,G, then B. (Triplets). Pros: Excellent brightness/contrast. Cons: Rainbow fringing. HamPri-Interlace Pros: Excellent brightness/contrast. Cons: Slight rainbow fringing. HamMix 2 different ham rendering methods are used, alternating on lines. Pros: none Cons: Awful fringing (bad HAM rendering methods.) HamMix-Interlace Pros: Fair quality. Cons: Fringing. yRes HAM? Gres Rres Bres Xqual Yqual ColorQual contrast Normal x1 y 64 64 64 good! bad good! good! Normal-I x2 y 64 64 64 good! good good! good! MulCol x1 n 128 64 64 poor poor fair bad! MulCol-I x2 n 128 64 64 poor fair good poor Skew x1 n 128 64 64 poor poor good poor Skew-I x2 n 128 64 64 poor fair good good 2color x1 n 32 20 11 good fair poor fair 2color-I x2 n 32 20 11 good good poor good HamPri x1 y 64 64 64 fair good good! good! HamPri-I x2 y 64 64 64 good good! good! good! HamMix x1 y 64 64 64 bad good good! good! HamMix-I x2 y 64 64 64 fair good! good! good! The results land in as HamPri, interlaced, as being my favorite. Normal, interlaced, comes in close, especially with pictures without lots of bright colors. Normal, Interlaced, has the best resolution/color-depth combo of them all. But it doesn't work well with whites at all! Not even with a high-phosphor monitor! HamPri works well as a HAM mode. There is minimal computing overhead. And there is almost NO fringing when objects are drawn over top (windows). Each color is restored at the maximum 3 pixels. And, the base colors are left UNTOUCHED. And it *Still* obtains very good quality! This might work well in a GAME... hint, hint! ;) Have fun. And if you come up with another idea of "mixing" colors, PLEASE let me know! Chad Randall crandall@msen.com November, 13, 1995.