file_id.diz
title: rear window
author: diver/4d
compo: oldschool graphics
source: this pixel image is based upon the istockphoto #18443697
format: multicolour 8x4 + full border
hardware: zx spectrum 128k/+2/+2a/+2b/+3
pentagon / pentevo / scorpion zs256 / profi
remarks: the image looks best when the full border is shown.
please do not truncate the border!
viewer: introspec
linear notes: hi, this is introspec, who is always obsessing over every
possible influence he possibly has had while working on the
viewer for this fantastic image. ok, here it goes.
first, i'm very excited to work with the pixel artist of diver's
calibre. it is one thing to write a code and see it work and
completely another to see it contribute to something greater.
second, this viewer would not exist without creative input from
many people on forums tslabs.info, worldofspectrum.org/forums/,
zx-pk.ru and on irc channel #z80@forestnet. the ideas and
suggestions by Barmaley_m, Black_Cat, breeze, Einar Saukas,
Faster, null_device, psb, psndcj, Robus and Vadim are all very
much appreciated. contributions by aowen and noleg were
instrumental in making this whole thing work.
third, i would like to particularly thank people who beta-tested
components and early versions of this viewer on their hardware:
DDp, ellvis, goodboy, HackerVBI, mcleod_ideafix, Sergey78 and
TS-Labs.
last, but not least, i'd like to thank the authors of many
great emulators, without which this project would simply not be
possible: fuse ver.1.0.0.1 by Philip Kendall and others, SpecEmu
ver.3.1 by The Woodster, Spectaculator ver.8.0 by Jonathan
Needle, UnrealSpeccy ver.0.38.0 by SMT (and especially its
version for CMOS CPUs custom-built for this project by
TS-Labs!), ZXMAK2 ver.2.7.5.6 beta by Alexander Makeev and
ZXSpin ver.0.7 by Paul Dunn.
the code of the viewer is largely original, except from the
tact alignment routine inspired by the Alone Coder's routine
given in the supplement to ZX-Guide #3. few platform tests
are based on the article by Paul Falcon & Yuri Kovalevsky in
Spectrofon #22 (1997). i also use an arbitrary delay routine
written by Jan Bobrowski for his program "minfo".
i'm still working on adding support for more platforms, which
means that the current version of the code is still imperfect.
some configurations were not tested on real hardware. there
surely are few bugs in there too, some i know about, some yet
to be uncovered. once the viewer is more-or-less finalised, its
source code will be released.
if you are an artist, who currenly works on zx spectrum, or who
is interested to explore drawing in extended zx spectrum modes,
we are planning to provide conversion tools and instructions,
to help you implement your vision in software.
we still need to improve the viewer, to design the file formats
for border and border+multicolour images and to add support for
other compatible computers and clones. if anyone is interested
in contributing and, especially, in doing few tests on your
hardware, please get in touch: zxintrospec@gmail.com.
hi, this is diver on the keys!
first of all, what can i say... all these border and multicolor
graphics were impossible without massive coder skills of
introspec. so respect, dude!
second, of course big thanks to everyone who helped to test and
to improve the viewer routines. we are always looking to support
more zx spectrum hardware.
i hope that introspec will release his tools to the public so
that everyone will get an oppotrunity to draw their own border
graphics.
my personal thanks goes to Takashi Iida, author of Edge Touch,
graphics editor for iOS - my basic drawing tool nowadays,
to Irfan Skiljan, author of Irfan View, the graphics processing
tool which i'm using for past 10-15 years and of course thanks to
Leszek Daniel Chmielewski for his BMP2SCR.
greets to everyone at the Sundown 2013 demoparty!
