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Raresh's VGA Painter

License: WTFPL Travis Build Status Download

This is nothing but a simple and barebones application (which I've quickly written in WinForms because I don't know any other application framework which allows me to get a project up and going like this) which lets me make graphics for games and applications running in the famous MCGA/VGA 256-color mode (aka Mode 13h).

It uses it's own format, which you read about in the SaveImage_Click function in MainForm.cs. It has a header (TGRV), followed by two 16-bit integers (ushort) for width and height, finally the raw binary data.

You can use it for drawing true to platform limits artwork and export it into a PNG (but why would you do that when you have Photoshop, Paint.net and GIMP?)

It's not as feature complete as I'd like, but below is a wishlist of quality features I'd like to add.

Features

  • Import and export to and from PNG, JPEG and other common image formats;
  • A simple to understand file format for loading images onto older systems;
  • Limited, but customisable 256-color palette;
  • Generic any-palette importer and a faster optimised HSV calculator for the VGA palette

Wishlist

  • Refactoring (de-spaghetti-ing the code)
  • Image importer plugin support
  • More tools (flood fill is in, but rectangles and lines are not)