ART 4 Windows

[FourthStone]

ART 4 Windows has been in on and off development over the past year or so and now has a home on Github.

It is being developed in BBC Basic 4 Windows and is compiled into a Windows exe. BBC Basic was chosen as it is easy to understand how everything is programmed, plus I really love BBC basic!

The original inspiration for ART 4 Windows came from a simple BBC basic program jointly programmed by various people on this site, see the full development history here: viewtopic.php?t=12297

Currently the program supports mode 2 (160x256 8 colour) with a dithered palette and various drawing tools, effects, undo, with saving and loading in bmp format. The project is still in early days so there is a lot of room for improvements and feature development.

Pixelblip has created some amazing art with the various ART versions in this thread:
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=13294&start=90


If interested please download, play, modify, create art and suggest improvements:
https://github.com/marsFS/ART-4-Windows

[SimonSideburns]

Hi

I've tried this program on my laptop and it works well. I've attempted to install BBC BASIC for Android and am trying to run Art 4 Windows on it but it crashes out with an error on line 0:

File or path not found at line 0

I'm going to have a good look at the program to see if I can find anything obvious but I just wanted to let you know I'm taking a look in case you or any other users of the program are interested. Maybe they can look at it too?

[Richard Russell]

File or path not found at line 0

It appears to be looking for a file TOOLSTRIP.BMP which isn't in the Zip?

Incidentally I can't even run the original version on my PC, because my laptop screen is only 720 pixels high (after Windows' automatic DPI scaling) and the program attempts to create a window 768 pixels high! Changing the 768 to 720 works but I don't know to what extent that might compromise the screen layout.

Richard.

[FourthStone]

File or path not found at line 0

It appears to be looking for a file TOOLSTRIP.BMP which isn't in the Zip?

I've re-added TOOLSTRIP.BMP to the repository, I'd taken it out previously as the file is compiled within the EXE but if you're trying to run the BAS file directly then the BMP needs to be in the same folder.

Incidentally I can't even run the original version on my PC, because my laptop screen is only 720 pixels high (after Windows' automatic DPI scaling) and the program attempts to create a window 768 pixels high! Changing the 768 to 720 works but I don't know to what extent that might compromise the screen layout.Richard.

The screen layout was chopped and changed to suit a particular tablet device, there is not much wiggle room for rearranging the layout without redesigning the palette and tools so the BB4W version is what it is for now, happy to continue development if people will find a use for it so please feel free to offer suggestions or help with making it better.

I've shifted development over to Purebasic, source and exes also available on the same GIT, for what I am trying to develop I needed an easier way to get more performance and Purebasic was the best option for me at this time. I'm currently adding features when I can the most recent being support for flashing colours to use for animations.

The mode 2 screens created by Pixelblip on this forum using the ART program are beautiful, keep an eye out for his regular submissions

[Richard Russell]

I've shifted development over to Purebasic

Can you target Android and iOS with that? The post to which I replied was asking about porting your BBC BASIC program to Android (which I think should be pretty straightforward - with the exception of saving to PNG - now you've made the missing bitmap available). If you have no objection I may do it myself as an exercise.

Richard.

[FourthStone]

Can you target Android and iOS with that? The post to which I replied was asking about porting your BBC BASIC program to Android (which I think should be pretty straightforward - with the exception of saving to PNG - now you've made the missing bitmap available). If you have no objection I may do it myself as an exercise.
Richard.

Happy for you to make it work for iOS and Android, would be happy to integrate any changes you make with my source so others could use it.

Please let me know if you want further details about how or why it is programmed the way it is or to discuss changes you feel would improve use and performance.

[Richard Russell]

Happy for you to make it work for iOS and Android, would be happy to integrate any changes you make with my source so others could use it.

I had assumed that the main necessary change would be to disable the 'save as PNG' capability, since that's not easy to do in a cross-platform way, but looking more closely at your code it would appear that (notwithstanding the presence of a PROCsavepng procedure) you have already disabled that option. In fact there's quite a lot of 'REMmed out' code in the program, giving the impression of a Work In Progress; what's the status of that code? Could it be deleted prior to any modifications for compatibility with Android etc. being made?

Richard.

[FourthStone]

You are correct Richard, the program has always been a work in progress as we've tried different techniques and added or removed features.

There is only one call to PROCsavepng and it is REM'd out so it could be safely removed from the program entirely, I must of still been testing and decided to leave it out at that stage but can't remember why without digging through the conversations I was having with the person testing it.

There are a few other PROC's lying around and code to deal with button creation as that was the way I originally was handling tools, I never took out the PROC's or logic as I thought it might get used again. Also some different code for UNDO and FILL routines that was tried different ways and just REM'd out in case we decided to revert it back at some stage.

[pixelblip]

It would be great to see ART on Android. Art in your pocket at any time.......and phones are just the right size.

[SimonSideburns]

It would be great to see ART on Android. Art in your pocket at any time.......and phones are just the right size.

Yes, that was the idea I had. Much better than having to change my phone to one that runs Windows.

Glad to see Richard taking a look at it. He's going to be a whole lot quicker than I am.

Great stuff, and I look forward to being able to draw BBC MODE 2 screens on my phone while out and about.