ASCIIPaint

[Darien]

Hey guys,

I thought some of you might be interested in playing around with this:

ASCIIPaint

It's a program specifically designed for making ASCII art.  Here's some examples:



By Xion



by Zaratustra



by mthw


I thought you guys could do some neat stuff with it 

[Jakten]

Yup, I'm definitely going to be spending a lot of time messing with this. Reminds me of messing with the editor for ZZT back in the day only 100 times easier. Is there a way to make the blocks rectangles instead of squares?

Thanks for this!

[Darien]

As far as I know that's the only font that's supported at the moment.  Melly said he was planning to add more, and he asked people to suggest other font/palettes to add to the program, so if you had a particular one in mind I would head over to that thread and let him know.

[Helm]

How do you save/load a picture? got it




Just scratching the surface, here. Nice tool. I don't know how to put symbols on top of the dither patterns yet, is there a way? Using layers, I guess?

[Darien]

No, I don't think so, because every dither pattern is a character and as far as I know it only allows one character per 'tile'.  Don't know if Melly plans to add support for layers.

That pic looks good though!

[Helm]

no that's fine, it's better pure as it is. I guess my problem was more with the default palette that made me resort to so many dither mixtures than anything. With more palettes, solids will be more possible and therefore where there's solids there can by seamless symbols.

[Cow]

I just made this:

[Melly]

Hey guys, thanks for the interest.

I know it's not very streamlined right now. But I'm not sure when exactly I'll be able to update it, as I got plenty of stuff to be doing and I'm bad enough at working consistently as it is.

But please, do provide feedback. You never know.

Also, no, you can't mix two characters in the same tile. I want to maintain it like a real text console. But I am planning to allow the player to set up his own 16 color palettes

Oh, and delicious pictures. Helm and Cow those look fantastic.

[Helm]

all it'd need for me is to get the shortcuts all in the same fingerspace (as ptoing said), alternate palettes and undo depth, really. I love the program, otherwise. Thank you for making it

[Helm]

[Cow]

I felt kind of bad only using the solid/dither tiles and not taking advantage of the plethora of others, but there's a strange kind of inconsistency (the resolution-mixing kind) between the two if you use the dither patterns for mixing in places and still use the symbols for shape...

[Helm]

I like it because the pixels are HUGE but still the actual pixel is *tiny* and ordered. What I posted above looks like regular pixel art, but it actually behaves differently. Banding's not as an important issue as in real pixel art, and though good pixel clusters are still a must, I find myself shading more just so there's texture to large areas. Super-close colors have a point at this size too.

I'm only scratching the surface, however.

[EvilEye]

Impressive work but isn't this like leaving your computer and wacom tablet, picking up a couple of stones, going to some cave and carving on the wall?

[ptoing]

EvilEye: The same thing could be said about pixelart. It is pretty archaic nowadays.

[Helm]

Impressive work but isn't this like leaving your computer and wacom tablet, picking up a couple of stones, going to some cave and carving on the wall?

some UI niggles aside, this is pretty much the same workflow of low res pixelling, so I don't see what you mean.

[ptoing]

Quick fat Yus Bird just to try it out. Not bad apart from the clunky interface.

[Clovvach]

OMG this reminds me so much of ZZT! I loved that game. Also: Nice art everyone!

Helm: Based on experiences with these types of games/programs, I'd say no. There isn't. Sorry. 

[Lee N]

Just scratching the surface, here. Nice tool. I don't know how to put symbols on top of the dither patterns yet, is there a way? Using layers, I guess?

You can't, it's a limitation in ascii/ansi. The dither patterns are separate characters and only one character can occupy a space at a time, and since there's no transparent background colour layers won't help you in this matter - only the character in the top layer will be visible.

edit: I love the tool btw, keep up the good work.

[Helm]

Thanks for the info, it's kinda been conveyed to me many times so far.


Looking forward for at least some hotkey updates in the future.

[alkaline]

ach, some dither pattern flickers on my new laptop screen. is there a free tool out there to fix this up? great program, btw.

[ptoing]

In most cases this can not be fixed, esp not on a laptop screen. Usually you need calibration hardware to do this or highend screens which have built in calibration hardware. Thusly, your screen is a bit rubbish I'm afraid