The Sinclair QL Forum

I thought it best to move this to a different dumping ground

stevepoole wrote:<>

The settings I needed to get the correct alpha-blend transitions : SCALE 400, -100, 0 (instead of 400, -150, 0 ).

With aspect=.86 for normal circles, (QPC2 initialised at 512*256, full screen).

I think youd be better off to do the poke I mentioned. Then you could also try different display sizes without having to correct the 'aspect' variable etc.

If you have a HD monitor the poke would go like this: As you can see, at full screen HD (SCR_XLIM / SCR_YLIM) / (1920 / 1080) = 1. But if the same monitor is used on, say a Q68, the result is 0.75.

But thats your call..

<> 'Tis a real beauty...

If youre talking about the manadalas, I agree. So nice in fact that I thought itd be nice to save one or two. It was raining this morning, so I messed around some more and came up with the attached update! (See end of post) Instructions:

Set a default directory, <dir> in one of the first lines. This is
where the PICs go.
Set the number of saves you want in the next line. Saves are labelled
<dir>mandala0..n_pic. Once n is reached, the oldest mandala is
overwritten.

When the mandala is done, pressing ENTER within the timeout (see top
right corner of display) will cause the image to be saved to <dir>. A
confirming beep should be heard on success (or the program will die
ignominiously if, eg, the disk is full.)

Pressing SPACE before the timeout tells the program to do more, while
ESC terminates the program.

(In fact you can save a mandala at any stage of its development
(except during a fade-out) by pressing <ENTER>.)

The routine that saves the mandala uses the same metrics as the Fade
square, so if you want the saved mandala centred in the square you
need to make sure it is of the right size and in the right position.
That is the point of the Test bit at line 112 (in the current
version):

Set IF 0 THEN to IF 1 THEN to do a test of the relative positioning
(and the roundness of the circle!) Fiddle the variables (aspect, and
SCALE parameters (or do the mentioned POKE!)) until satisfied. Then
re-instate the IF 0 THEN on line 112 to run the program.

Remember: The program must be EXecuted, not RUN: ------------------------

Obviously, PIC sizes are large! Converting them to JPEGs causes the
images to look washed out and compression isnt that great either.
Better use some non-lossy compression. You can use my QuickView (QV)
to view the images and then re-save them as PAC files. This reduces
the size to around 20% without loss of vibrancy. But they can only be
viewed in our little world.

The code is in a real mess now, so it could do with a thorough clean-
up, but I thought it might be considered presumptuous of me to just
hijack your program..

--- Thanks again to TMD for the spirograph ! ---

Yea to that! (whoever he is)

Hi Per,
Yes, your mandala24s.zip works very well on a high-end system.

But my mandala_bas.zip works well on older QPC2 (and SGC, although much slower on the latter... ). This is not really for 128ko QLs though, as too slow on them !

So you have the choice of systems.......And here are a few screen-shots of that program to whet your appetite :
Steve.

Hi again Per,

Just been looking at your program running on my W10 QPC2 in high colour mode. The nuances of hues are very bright and sharp. Yet your screen-shots are not...

My screen captures were done on a french W8.1 QPC2, using the 'windows' + 'imp.syst' key combination to save them. Then I reduced them to jpg using PAINT.

W10 does not have this latter feature unfortunately, but maybe screen captures to clipboard could be a possibility ?

If I mention this, it is because your screen-shots do not do justice to your program's graphics colours, nor to the stunning variety of configurations produced...

Here is a fairly poor smartphone image of your program, where the colours are still washed out below, but somewhat better above, but still not right !

Steve.

stevepoole wrote:Hi again Per,

Just been looking at your program running on my W10 QPC2 in high colour mode. The nuances of hues are very bright and sharp. Yet your screen-shots are not... <>

Did you try clicking on the image in my post? Once you do that you might also see a small + sign if you hover over it with the mouse. In that case click again. Voila! You should see the mandala in its full glory!

I uploaded them as a PNG files, as JPEG compression doesnt do GD2 high resolution mandalas justice.

As mentioned in my previous post, I added a save function to my hack of your program. This cuts out the mandala from your screen and saves it as a Qdos/SMSQ PIC file which can, of course be viewed in the same detail as it was generated inside QPC2/SMSQmulator/Q68. I didnt try that with mode 8, but it should work.. Unfortunately there are not many toolkits or programs for the "QL" to convert PIC files to "foreign" formats, such as JPEGs, PNGs, BMPs, or GIFs. But there are some.

However, I admit that I cheated here: The screenshots I uploaded are taken with the Windows screen dump facility. (Yes! even W10 has that! It depends on your computer or keyboard, but often you can find it at F11 combined with some extra function key; like Fn + F11. Check your keyboard and look for any markings like PrtSc (or the equivalent in French).) After doing the screen capture, I pasted the buffer into Windows Paint, Cropped the image to the the mandala, and Saved As PNG.

stevepoole wrote: My screen captures were done on a french W8.1 QPC2, using the 'windows' + 'imp.syst' key combination to save them. Then I reduced them to jpg using PAINT.

W10 does not have this latter feature unfortunately, but maybe screen captures to clipboard could be a possibility ?

If I mention this, it is because your screen-shots do not do justice to your program's graphics colours, nor to the stunning variety of configurations produced...

Here is a fairly poor smartphone image of your program, where the colours are still washed out below, but somewhat better above, but still not right !