APPLE II ART & GRAPHICS FORUM CONFERENCE LOG November 13, 1992 10:00 P.M. Topic: DreamGrafix Forum Leader: W. Scott Gentry (AFL Scott) Edited by: Ted O'Hara (AFC Ted) Copyright (c) 1992 America Online, Inc. and Excellent Software, Inc. All Rights Reserved ================================================================== AFL Scott DreamGrafix -- The Only 16, 256, and 3200 color Paint Program for the Apple IIGS. With us tonight is Steve Chiang, coauthor of this true work of programming art! AFL Scott Steve, how are you doing? DWS Steve Great thanks... AFL Scott Steve, what drove you and your cohorts to write DreamGrafix? DWS Steve I dunno, insanity? :) AFA Andy I dunno either but I'm sure glad you guys did :D DWS Steve Actually, it all started because a friend of ours Shawn was intrigued with 3200s, and he convinced Jason to write a little 3200 color editor,so he could make a 3200 color picture. From that picture, came a little demo known as DG.Demo.1 with the batdance music and the little spinning world... we got a lot of response, so we decided to make it a full blown program. AFL Scott I remember the spinning world demo and the promise of a multipalette game... How is that coming? DWS Steve Well, could I interest you in a different game, which has multiple palettes? DWS Steve :) AFL Scott LOL! Sure! DWS Steve The game mentioned in that demo is on hold... :) AFL Scott How did you all come up with the user interface of DreamGrafix? I mean, the tool palette is very different from other paint programs. DWS Steve Well, after using programs like Deluxe Paint II and Paintworks Gold, we realized that moving around tool palettes (in PWG) or having a toolbar on the side of the screen was annoying, because it was always in the way... and with multiple palettes, the toolbar could always stay the same colors... So that told us the tool bar had to be horizontal, and we could support 256 and 3200's without changing the colors on the tool bar... our next goal was to allow the user to view as much of the screen as possible. AFL Scott Did Dino Bagdadi have anything to with the design of the tool palette? AFL Scott (BTW, I'm posting this log on comp.sys.apple2.) DWS Steve ack... :) AFA Andy Steve :) DWS Steve Sort of, Shawn did the original tool bar design, which we modified to meet the above criteria. With DG.Demo1, Dino called Jason, and kept calling him, as you probably know, Dino is very enthusiastic, so he had all sorts of ideas AFC DaveS :) DWS Steve for interfaces and buttons. His brother and he drew a bunch of different buttons and command bars, a lot of which we didn't use. If you see DG.Demo2 the buttons in that demo are Dino buttons. However, the basic command barlayout was designed by Shawn and modified by Jason and I... Sometime in the future, after the name changed to DreamGrafix, perhaps we were inspired by some of the hitech graphics around (FTA,et all) I sat down with Yong Su (a friend of mine) and changed the coloring and the basic button layouts... Yong Su did a lot of the final buttons. AFC DaveS Yong Su designed the DreamGrafix icons too, right? AFL Scott Well, the reason I ask is that Dino was really pushing DG early on and then suddenly jumped to Emerald Visions. No biggie. DWS Steve Originally we were going to publish DG through LRO... AFC DaveS "Have buttons, will travel", I guess :) DWS Steve Dino had told us about Larry, and we got in touch with him, but that didn't work out... AFL Scott Before we open it for questions, I just want to remind everyone to visit the DreamWorld Software area in AGR and APR here on America Online. AFL Scott Let's open it up for questions... no protocol. AFL Scott Well, I've got a question... AFL Scott Have you released developer information, yet, Steve? AFC Tosh My thoughts too......any new extras on their way? DWS Steve Not yet... I guess we haven't had a chance to just sit down and do it. I've also been interested in getting another computer to do my DTP on, so it can appear in both text and paper form... However, I have been writing down info, which will eventually appear in the developer kit. AFC DaveS Will you be attending the west coast Apple Expo, Steve? AFL Scott Let's hope it's not another fruity computer! :) DWS Steve New extras? Any suggestions? A big wish has been importing GIFs, that's something that we're still considering. There are some in the works, which we just have to sit down and finish. AFC DaveS How about a DPaint personality module? :) AFL Scott One more question from me... Once TurboRez is released, are you planning on supporting it? AFC Tosh LOL AFC Ted I'd like to see multiple palettes 640 mode, and mixed 320 and 640 mode. DWS Steve We will probably be attending the West Coast Show... I just want to make sure it'll still be an Apple II show and not a big Mac convention... :) AFC DaveS Has DreamGrafix response remained as enthusiastic as when you first released v 1.0? DWS Steve If/when the TurboRez is released, we are very interested in supporting it...as a true 256 color mode would be MUCH superior to 3200 color mode. DWS Steve Imagine the games that could be written in that mode... it makes things like Street Fighter 2 a possibility (graphically speaking of course) AFL Scott Earlier Ted asked a question about mixed mode (640 and 320 mode) graphics... Last I heard that was going to be a nice thing to look at, but that Apple wasn't going to support it in future printer drivers...Steve, do you know if that's still the case? DWS Steve Mixed modes is on the list... I've been talking to Dave (Seah) a lot and we've been trying to put together a list of things that need to be done, I've also been incorporating user comments (from the registration sheets)... DWS Steve Printer drivers.... hopefully, 3200 color printing will make it into the Apple drivers... right now, trying to print a 3200 will crash the Apple drivers... so that gives it higher priority on the Apple Queue of things to do... otherwise, I've been in contact with Bill Heineman and hopefully future Harmonie drivers will support 256/3200 color printing... AFC Ted What kind of things are you hearing from users? AFC DaveS Cool :) DWS Steve Users have been asking for things like Gradients, Masking, importing GIFs, DreamVision, a draw program, etc... oh, and larger than the screen support. AFL Scott Steve, you know, I get about five questions a week in E-mail about DreamGrafix... people ask me if I think it's a good program. I just want you to know that I tell them it's a fantastic program and has some of the best support in the business. Sometimes, I get the feeling that because DreamWorld isn't Broderbund or RWP that they think less of a program. I try to set them straight... Do you ever get that feeling? AFC DaveS Steve, perhaps you could write an encapsulated postscript export module. The EPSF format is pretty simple. DWS Steve That's something that hurts smaller developers. Hopefully, with DreamGrafix and our next program, we'll show them that DWS has some of the best software out there... that's been our goal from the start, to release good software. AFL Marty I was wondering what features you were planning for future versions. DWS Steve The advantage we have is, we are GS users, so DreamGrafix takes advantage of the GS's features. AFL Marty I'd really like to see a way to export in other formats (like TIFF). DWS Steve We'll probably start a minor update when we get the Kurta tablet; as you may know, the Kurta isn't working in Absolute mode, so when we take care of that the Color Editor is up for an overhaul, more keyboard equates, the Palette editor may be revamped as well. DWS Steve We would be willing to work on an export module, I'm not sure what people are interested in though. AFL Scott I think Marty might be onto something with his suggestion for importing TIFF's. High end Mac Paint programs support importing of that file type -- it's not an easy format to support, but they support it. I suppose, though that DreamGrafix would have to be able to do larger than screen works, though... right, Steve? AFL Marty I must admit that I have a selfish motivation for requesting TIFF... AFC DaveS Those are the best kind of motivations, Marty :) AFL Marty I have a 256 color logo that I'd like to send to a print shop for duplication. SuperConvert doesn't handle that many colors. AFL Marty No.. not importing ... EXPORTING AFL Scott Oh... Saving... Nevermind. :) DWS Steve I see... I guess I was kind of hoping Prism would come out soon, and then I could direct them in that direction... :) AFL Marty But since you mentioned it... if you know how to export in TIFF then you have to know how to import. :) DWS Steve GIFsave will save 256 color Apple graphics... DWS Steve Well, exporting is easier, because there isn't any quantizing involved. AFL Scott Marty, that's not necessarily true... TIFF has many formats and you only have to pick one to save in. AFC DaveS Well, actually there are so many variants of TIFF that exporting is way easier than importing. AFC DaveS What Scott said :) AFL Scott And importing requires palette selection, dithering, etc. AFL Marty Is GIF something a print shop would be able to handle? AFL Marty (I was obviously being a smartass, Scott) DWS Steve I'm not sure. It would seem reasonable, but maybe not. AFL Scott <--- SLAP DWS Steve Your not talking about the program, right. :) AFC DaveS They should be able to import GIF with their high-end programs. DWS Steve An external idea... might be something that converts a picture to a scan line fill mode picture. Then you could use those generated pictures in a Paintworks animation. AFL Scott (Dunno, Marty... The printers I've dealt with all wanted camera ready art and charged through the ying to do conversions and layout.) AFL Marty Thanks Dave AFC DaveS Yah...the more work the printer has to do leads to an exponential increase in cost. DWS Steve That could result in pretty fast animations (fps wise)... this wouldn't work with digitized pics though. But it would speed up things like Retro Rokit... :) AFL Marty This logo is beautiful. It's worth paying through the ying to use it. AFC DaveS :) DWS Steve Although, you would lose 1 color. AFC DaveS Wouldn't you have to chuck a color out of each scanline? AFC DaveS Oh :) DWS Steve but you could use Dispose Color... :) DWS Steve Now that Dave knows how to use it... AFC DaveS The power of Dispose Color :) AFC Tosh I could live with only 15 colors per line. :) AFC JohnC LOL Don! DWS Steve :) AFC Ted What does Dispose Color do? DWS Steve Dispose color allows you to select a color, and DG will remap that color to the closest color, or to a color of your choice. AFC DaveS You can do cool gradient text fonts with it. AFC Tosh Its a great way to free up colors or space to bring in new ones. DWS Steve Scan line fill mode works like this.... if you have a horizontal line in red color 3, in memory it would appear as hex 333333333333, in fill mode, it would be defined as 300000000000 ... the 0's would automatically be treated as color 3. The savings would be the animation would have to move a lot less data. DWS Steve The FTA uses it very nicely in Modulae... AFC Ted I remember seeing Jason Harpers FillMaze, too. AFC DaveS Why are the edges goofed up in the FTA animation? DWS Steve Yup, and Polygonia too... AFC DaveS And Tunnels of Armageddon, too. DWS Steve I'm not sure... I haven't looked at the FTA stuff as closely as others.. :) DWS Steve Any other questions? AFC DaveS Any unique perspective viewpoints on the GS market? DWS Steve Yeah, I'm still trying to figure it out... AFC DaveS What kind of market is it these days? Are there still nuggets of opportunity? DWS Steve There is potential out there, I think the problem is reaching the market... AFC DaveS Do you keep records on how people are moved to buy DreamGrafix? DWS Steve I'm optimistic, and I hope everything works out well... AFA Andy I know I show everyone DG every chance I get. DWS Steve Reasons? Not really... AFC DaveS I get to demo DG to the local A2 user group myself. DWS Steve Thanks, I appreciate it... AFC DaveS I mean where people hear about DreamGrafix. AFL Marty The fact that it's the only program of its kind should help. :) AFC DaveS Heh :) DWS Steve Yes, it does. AFC DaveS How has the response to DreamVoir been? DWS Steve DreamVoir response has been pretty good considering... a lot of people like it because it's a nice way to show off graphics, with sound. DWS Steve Any additions for the wish list out there? AFC DaveS There really aren't any all-in-one alternatives, I reckon :) AFC Ted Masks and a better spray paint :) DWS Steve That's already on the list... :) AFC Tosh Masks is a biggie in my book too. :) AFA Andy All the ones I would like are on the list :) DWS Steve :) AFC DaveS Mouse speed support AFC Ted Full page...I really don't care about wider than a screen, but I like longer pages DWS Steve Yeah, that's a big request too. AFC DaveS Do you know if schools are using DreamGrafix? DWS Steve Some are.. we get School Purchase orders pretty regularly... AFC DaveS It would be interesting to get some feedback from the schools. AFC DaveS See how they are using it in their program. DWS Steve I think KinderGrafix will be big in the education market.. AFL Scott Steve, how hard would it be to do a "dripping spray paint" tool. AFC Tosh Dripping? Like Random? AFC Ted Dripping spray paint? DWS Steve Hmm, easy with an algorithm... :) For KG or for DG? AFC Tosh Splattering? AFC DaveS Like when you put too much paint on the wall and it drips downward? DWS Steve so a dot appears and you get a little dribble... :) AFL Scott (You know, one where if you hold the button down long enough, the paint starts to run in the direction of gravity?) DWS Steve like leaky pen in KidPix... AFC Tosh :) Gravity in a Paint Program... DWS Steve heh... :) AFA Andy :) AFC DaveS You'd need a "Gravity Direction..." dialog :) DWS Steve It could be done, I'm not sure what kind of effect you mean, but it can be easy or tough.. :) AFL Scott It might work... AFC DaveS You could simulate it easily with DPaint :) DWS Steve Oh no, more DPII talk... :) AFC Ted Or Platinum :) DWS Steve Dave's been telling me about Deluxe Paint, so I've been looking at it again... AFC DaveS hehe :) AFC Tosh Careful..... DWS Steve and it has some neat features, so some of them will be incorporated... JackP How much memory is needed for DG to run? DWS Steve heh.. :) DWS Steve about 1.25 megs of memory under system 5.04 and about 1.5 megs under System 6.0... JackP Is that like a minimum or is it better to have more RAM? DWS Steve that's a minimum... with more memory you can have the spare page active... as well as large brushes, etc... Big fonts generated with Pointless, etc. AFC Ted More RAM is always better :) DWS Steve Definitely true, and at least ram is cheap nowadays. JackP Well, I'm thinking about getting it for my daughter the artist, so I'm here to get sold on it... is a hard drive needed? AFC DaveS Cool! DWS Steve nope... DWS Steve DreamGrafix was set up to run on 1 disk drive... you only have to swap disks twice, and DG never asks for it again. JackP What does it have over Platinum Paint besides the 3200-color capability? AFC Tosh 256! DWS Steve 256 color mode, external commands, a different selection of tools... AFC Ted 256 color editing, AFC Tosh The ability to save in EVERY GS format. AFA Andy I bought DG right after release, Jack. I have never been sorry for that :) AFC Ted configurable tool buttons JackP External commands? Whuzzat? AFC DaveS It's expandable. AFC Ted A way of adding extra capabilities to the program JackP Capabilities such as...? DWS Steve It allows you to add functionality to the program, by d/l'ing files from AOL. AFC DaveS Grayscale conversion is one. DWS Steve Print Shop Graphics import, a command to determine the area selected, a color to grayscale command, and things like that. DWS Steve DG will also allow you to print 256 color pictures. AFC DaveS Do you currently have Platinum Paint, Jack? DWS Steve which is 240 more than the others.. :) JackP How well do the 256 colors come out on an Imagewriter II? And yes, we have PP DWS Steve I was surprised at the IW2 output. It's not as bad as I thought it would be. Hopefully, Apple will support printing 3200 color pictures in their drivers, which look pretty good. JackP Where in the world do all these menus go? Nicely surprised, I hope? AFC DaveS DreamGrafix would be an excellent complementary program to Platinum Paint. AFC Ted Jack, a lot of DG's tools are accessed via tool buttons at the bottom of the screen DWS Steve the DG interface is much more colorful too... :) AFC Ted You can actually move the buttons around, and arrange them to suit your taste DWS Steve You can d/l'ed an executable demo from our Company Support Area in AGR. JackP How about these 3200-color pix? How can you draw a line at a time? AFC Ted Jack, you don't. DWS Steve there are things like closest color and force color to help automatically determine the colors to draw in. The dispose color allows you to"free" colors for adding your own text or logos. AFC DaveS If you want to draw a line at a time, you can use FatBits and do it. Otherwise, you can edit in full screen 3200 color mode. AFC Ted The program tries to keep track of your colors and picks a color from each palette closest to the one you want. JackP Does it do gradient fills? AFC Ted That, it doesn't do. AFC DaveS Not automatically. DWS Steve How old is your daughter? JackP Seven. But she's an obsessive artist and wants to learn as much as she can about creating art on our ][GS. She loves PP, and is really impressed with working with more than 16 colors. DWS Steve Well, DG opens up the possibility of drawing nicer pictures, using the 256 and/or 3200 color mode. AFC DaveS You can always draw with Platinum Paint, then load those pictures into DreamGrafix to add more colors. DWS Steve A simple example might be a picture of a house... with other program you would only be able to use 16 color for the whole picture. DWS Steve That's a good point, all of her previous art could still be used in DG and colors could be added to it. AFC DaveS DreamGrafix has excellent color palette assignment in 256 color mode. The CRT Will DG have any support of the TurboRez card in the future? AFC Ted More colors means the ability to use subtler gradations of tone and color. AFC DaveS It takes a little more work in 3200 color mode, but it's still quite flexible. JackP Of course her father may want to spend a few hours a day "helping"... DWS Steve As soon as RezTek gets us a board, we will begin working on support for it. AFC DaveS Heh :) JackP I never thought of that- she would really enjoy porting some of her old pix into DG and changing them. DWS Steve It's something we're very interested in supporting. DWS Steve But back to that example, you could use 16 or 32 colors for the sky alone, a different set of colors for the house, and even more colors for the ground. DWS Steve The limitation of the more than 16 color mode is the sets of color have to be defined in a horizontal section of the screen, so you can have 16 sections w/ 16 different color in each section. 3200 color pictures go one step further, by giving you 16 colors per line DWS Steve It's a paint program that is as complicated as you want to make it. It's very easy to use in the 16 color or 640 modes, and as you become comfortable you can start using the 256 or 3200 color modes, which are a little harder to use, but the results are worth it. DWS Steve If you haven't seen a 3200 color picture, you should d/l'ed some. They look great. JackP Sounds like she'd have a ball exploring it. Why do I get this sinking feeling that if I buy DreamGrafix I'll have to buy another ][GS so I can get access to one? :/ DWS Steve heh.. :) The CRT DWS Steve, will DG count the number of colors in a picture and report this? JackP Well, I'm sold. Guess I'll call QC and then eat cheap the next few weeks... DWS Steve No, but it would be an easy external command to write. DWS Steve Super Convert will do it... The CRT I use SuperConvert quite a bit, and that's why I asked. JackP What's the latest version # of DreamGrafix? DWS Steve Hmm, I'll write that down... it's a fairly easy thing to do. DWS Steve 1.06, QC has the most recent version. AFC Ted (Which, by the way, is the topic of next week's AGR chat... SuperConvert, that is:)) DWS Steve as would TMS. DWS Steve or even LRO. DWS Steve Hmm, what do you use the color counter for? The CRT I use the color counter to determine how best to convert a GIF to SHR DWS Steve Ahh, I see... I guess I've never thought of it that way, I guess that would help. AFC Ted Steve, I'll admit I used the color counter [in SuperConvert] when I was doing the whale pic... when I discovered I was using only 15 colors, I decided to use more for the sky :) DWS Steve heh.. :) JackP Excellent. We'll see who's cheapest. Hey, thanks for the help! The CRT I also could use it if, SC supported it better, to save GIFs with more than 16 colors. DWS Steve GIFSave will do that... it's in the libraries...and it's FAST... The CRT 3200 -> GIF converter? DWS Steve maybe I'll write a GIF save command... DWS Steve no 256 -> GIF... DWS Steve if I wrote an external, it would support 16,256,3200 ->GIF The CRT If you do, try to make it 89a or 87a selective format. Although you can't go wrong with 87a. DWS Steve okay... I'll have to give it some thought... DWS Steve The problem is there are too many things to do and not enough time... AFC Ted Steve :) The CRT I do think a color count function is something that many will use and will be easier for you to add. DWS Steve Yeah, I'll keep that in mind... DWS Steve # of colors is definitely a macho thing... :) DWS Steve "I drew a picture with 200 colors" DWS Steve :) AFC DaveS :) The CRT Hmmm, Yea kinda like my picture has more colors than your picture! LOL! DWS Steve Yup.. :) AFC Ted :) AFC DaveS It's nice to have the flexibility, alright. DWS Steve I forget which picture we found that had the most colors used... AFC DaveS I tend to use around 50-60 colors at most. DWS Steve You've used that many? In which picture? AFC DaveS Yep...soniqTracker screens. DWS Steve oh, really? That many? AFC DaveS yup AFC DaveS GIFsave counts them DWS Steve the thing with the color counter, it has to be true colors... as in colors used AFC Ted as opposed to colors in the palette, but not used? DWS Steve Yup... :) DWS Steve that's probably what Dave did... :) The CRT Yea, that's tricker. AFC Ted In order to be properly macho? :) DWS Steve Although, SuperConvert does true color counting.. I think... DWS Steve Yeah that Dave ... The CRT Yes, but it is slow. DWS Steve Yeah DG's would be fast... I'll write it down as something to do... AFC DaveS Nope..there are actually 50 separate colors in one of the screens. DWS Steve I'm kidding... :) AFC DaveS I think the soniqTracker splash screen uses around 40. DWS Steve for the dancing lights?: :) AFC DaveS I'm just being properly macho :) AFC DaveS No...used on the screen. The CRT How about Video Overlay Card support? Any plans there, Steve? DWS Steve I'm still kidding.. :) AFC DaveS A lot of them are in the gradient sky...more are in the reflection. DWS Steve Yes, as soon as we get a VOC to test it with.... AFC DaveS I have the dancing lights turned off :) The CRT LOL! DWS Steve 3200 color pictures on a video screen would be cool... :) The CRT DWS Steve, why don't you come over to my house around X Mas I should have a VOC by then., DWS Steve heh. we're working on it... :)