Playscii: new editor for ENDOOM lumps

[JPL]

ENDOOM art seems to be somewhat beloved despite ZDoom's Windows-only support for it, so recently as I was adding an Importer/Exporter system to my ASCII art editor Playscii I decided to use ENDOOM as a test case, and because the format is fairly simple it worked well. So! You can now use Playscii to import, edit, and export ENDOOMs. I know PabloDraw is already a pretty good option for these but maybe hex editing the file to make it usable by Doom scares you? Or maybe you'll like Playscii's idiosyncratic little user interface.

To be clear, Playscii is an existing non-Doom project of mine. It's an ASCII art, animation, and game creation tool. It's open source and PWYW-free on itch.io. Easiest way to try it out is to download it there via the itch.io app and hit launch.

playscii_endoom1.jpg

You can import an existing ENDOOM lump with "Import" from the File menu. Playscii supports all kinds of character sets and color palettes but ENDOOMs will be imported with the DOS character set and EGA palette, as expected.

You can then use Playscii's paint tools to make whatever you want - see Playscii's art mode docs. The screenshot above shows the custom ENDOOM from WadSmoosh, with a version of the Doom logo converted from a bitmap - that's a nifty thing Playscii does.
Keep in mind one limitation of the ENDOOM format is that you can't use any of the brighter EGA colors as character backgrounds, even though Playscii will happily let you do so it won't show up correctly in-game.

When you're done editing, select "Export" from the File menu, choose the ENDOOM exporter, and you'll have a lump file written in the Playscii documents folder, ready for adding to a wad.

playscii_endoom2.jpg

The one ENDOOM feature it doesn't currently support is the blinking text. I could probably add support for this pretty easily, maybe by reading any non-blank characters on a second layer (Playscii supports photoshop-style layers btw). If people are dying for this feature I could add it, I just know not all source ports support it.

If you find a bug, you can report it here.

[Gez]

Nice!

Hmm...

To pan the view, use shift and the arrow keys or W/A/S/D (for up/left/down/right respectively)

Can the keys be rebound? I much prefer ESDF. My problem with WASD is that it's as comfortable on an AZERTY keyboard as ZQSD is on a QWERTY keyboard.

[JPL]

To pan the view, use shift and the arrow keys or W/A/S/D (for up/left/down/right respectively)

Can the keys be rebound? I much prefer ESDF. My problem with WASD is that it's as comfortable on an AZERTY keyboard as ZQSD is on a QWERTY keyboard.

You can rebind keys in the binds.cfg file, see this bit from the docs on where that file is on your OS:
http://vectorpoem.com/playscii/howto_main.html#config

[Tormentor667]

This is interesting... out of curiosity, can you import bitmaps and Playscii converts them to ASCII as close as possible?

[Jaxxoon R]

Yeah, actually. It's a little awkward getting the resolution right so the image isn't off center, though. I'm also a bit confused by how the colors never look quite right once you export it. Either way it's a handy program to have if you're ever in the process of making a vanilla/boom mapset. I'd definitely drop a few bucks the developer's way once I have money to spend

[Gez]

I'm also a bit confused by how the colors never look quite right once you export it.

Might be the CRT effect.

[Jaxxoon R]

No, not that. I turn that off. When I export the converted art as an ENDOOM it will look differently from what it looks like in the program. It has something to do with the color background/foreground shenanigans.

[Rachael]

There are only 16 colors available total. 8 of those are reserved for the blinking bit for background colors, so only 8 total colors are even available for the backgrounds.

Right from the outset here you are working with an extremely limited set. There's no possible way the colors will not look a little weird.

I think the exact colors can be changed by changing some of ZDoom's VGA emulation data (I know one exists for the font, but not sure about the colors) - but here's a list of colors that were available for mode 0x03h (which was the default for DOS) without directly modifying the VGA's EGA/DAC registers:

---

Color 0 - #000000 - █ Black
Color 1 - #0000aa - █ Blue
Color 2 - #00aa00 - █ Green
Color 3 - #00aaaa - █ Cyan
Color 4 - #aa0000 - █ Red
Color 5 - #aa00aa - █ Magenta
Color 6 - #aa5500 - █ Brown
Color 7 - #aaaaaa - █ Lt Gray
Color 8 - #555555 - █ Dk Gray
Color 9 - #5555ff - █ Lt Blue
Color 10 - #55ff55 - █ Lt Green
Color 11 - #55ffff - █ Lt Cyan
Color 12 - #ff5555 - █ Lt Red
Color 13 - #ff55ff - █ Lt Magenta
Color 14 - #ffff55 - █ Yellow
Color 15 - #ffffff - █ White

[JPL]

Sorry, should have been clearer in what I wrote above. Using the numbers in the color chart Rachael posted, background colors can only be colors 0 through 7, ie the first 8 colors you see in the color palette swatch in Playscii.

[Gez]

Note that all this is explained on the [wiki]ANSI[/wiki] page of the wiki, with a pretty table and a handy chart.