After finally getting my 84+C last night, I decided to try and display a (small) splash screen. Here's the first working version. Currently it's an uncompressed 16-bit BGR image. The image is 82x42 pixels, thus 6888 bytes.

http://youtu.be/8vDO5Zvj6Ik

The next step I plan to take is compressing the image and then having the program decompress and display it.

Ooh I like it! The best thing would definitively be compression, especially for people who will use 320x240 title screens.

Thanks guys. Yeah the next step is I want to implement some compression, so we'll see how that goes.

This program isn't really intended to be particularly useful, it's more just me learning how to use the 84+C lcd. But I'm releasing the source with each version in case anyone wants to see how it works

I think the best would be to use 256 colors (or 255+transparency) or even less, then use RLE compression or something.

Can we expect an Alien Breed, Banchor or Centipede port in the future?

Yeah I was thinking about 8-bit color images today, which I'll try over the next few days, as well as some other cool ideas.

I do have a lot of ideas for different games I'd like to make on the 84+C, but I won't promise anything until I see what I'm capable of actually doing with it first lol. I'm thinking my first game will be something new that I haven't made before though

awesome! What did you use to convert the image?

Thanks tr1p! I wrote a small C# Windows console utility, it's included in the zip file (on Cemetech, and ticalc.org once it's processed)

EDIT:
Tonight I've made some updates, so that it can now load images that are stored in 8-bit format, with a color index table. As long as your original 16-bit image used 1KB+ of space, then 8-bit with the color index table is more memory efficient, and still loads nice and fast. Of course, the only downside is that the colors aren't quite as smooth

I'll post another video showing this update tomorrow, and then start working on a compressed 8-bit image version

Here's where it's currently at. This is a 180x171 image, compressed in 8-bit colour. The program uncompresses it and converts back to 16-bit BGR on the fly.

An uncompressed 180x171 16-bit image would take up 61560 bytes, but the image data used in this program takes up only 6828 bytes, plus 512 bytes for the colour index table used to convert from 8-bit to 16-bit. Of course, the compression is fairly good on this image, as there aren't a lot of different colours being used..

I should note that I'm very new to working with 8-bit / 16-bit colour conversions, etc. so I wouldn't be surprised if this could be done better. I'll release the updated code in the next day or so once I've cleaned it up and tested it some more.

Apologies for my iPhone/hand reflection on the calculator when the screen goes dark

It would be nice if image compression could be integrated into DCS8 or some standalone lib for BASIC programmers as well. How fast is it for full screen (or at least 160x240) animations?

I'm sure some kind of library will get coded up eventually. I have some ideas for it, but I don't have a lot of experience in creating ASM tools for BASIC programs. I'd love to give it a try (and maybe I will!), but no doubt someone else could do a better job.

I haven't done any animation testing yet, although tr1p1ea did a scrolling background test running in 160x240 mode, and it looked quite fast!

That is pretty quick for a fullscale image Nice job!

Quote

    - Brandon Wilson for the LCD driver info on WikiTI, and for ti84pcse.inc

Actually, Brandon Wilson provided almost none of that information. If you check the history, you will see that I did 98% of the LCD driver write-up. The RAM, B_CALL, and flag equates of ti84pcse.inc were discovered by Benjamin Moody (Flop) and the new token equates were given by Christopher Martin (KermM). I wrote up the list of symbolic names for ports and collected the data into a unified include file, and I just posted a minor update to the file. The MicrOS post I made a while ago contains a complete text-mode driver for the color screen, and shows both writing (PutC) and reading (ReadChar). I may also soon post code for turning the LCD on and off and for controlling the backlight.

Sorry DrDnar, I hadn't realised this. I'll correct the readme when I upload the updated version And thank you!