I Don't Have What I Need

I was minding my own business, taking code that scans images and outputs ASCII characters and converting it to code that scans images and outputs arrays of Color objects. This would allow me to recreate the image in Java code... Don't ask.

I copied the image to ASCII scanner code verbatim. And boom. Fail. Although it has no problem getting color values and picking the character to represent that pixel, doing the same thing and creating a Color in the right spot in an array utterly fails. Every color I create is black. I spent two nights trying different tweaks, filtering the image, setting its color mode, and more. Still get an array of black pixels.

Then, after giving up and doing something else (While the bruises on my forehead heal), I decided to just use the images themselves, like any other NORMAL human being would. It was fun showing off how neat my ASCII solution was, it resulted in really good looking arcade style images. But it just isnt practical for a game that will have a growing library of object images etc.

So I just need to be very careful in managing how many images I'll be loading/showing at any given moment.

I Have What I Need

I was minding my own business, eating my Cream of Wheat, watching One Lone Coder when it hit me. I have been sitting on the answer for months. All the pain and torment for nothing. I can't believe I hadn't noticed.

Some time ago I wrote a class that converts an ASCII art file into an array used to draw pixels. I did this because The Swarm game seemed to have a hard time with using images as opposed to just drawing everything. The ASCII solution was to make this task easier. And I have been able to do some graphics stuff that still amazes me. The converted ASCII looks so good. But it is extremely cumbersome. Adding simple graphics takes far longer than it should.

I grabbed a code snippet that made the ASCII solution a bit easier, it allows me to convert images to ASCII, but in a way geared toward my purposes. Even with this helper I still have to go through and define what each ASCII character means colorwise. That means I'm sitting there attempting to map ASCII characters to pixels within the original image.

But wait! I'm converting images to ASCII. Why!? I have everything I need to convert images into an array of information that I can use to draw its pixels in Java. I can cut out the middle man. So the image file is read once, after that I can just use the array. No need to kill myself trying to map and define ASCII character meanings etc. I can just point my code to an image and let it load once, use later.

I have some coding to do!

Game or Story

I'm taking a break from the arcade style game I'm making to return to game authoring for my intfiction engine. I've restarted the NetSplit cyberpunk game. This time around I want to get more creative with it. Last time it felt too mundane. I would spend weeks defining run of the mill apartment complexes etc. Now I want everything to have a cyberpunk twist to it or secrets hidden throughout. There are touches of Tomorrowland inspired retro future scenes, but these are in the middle of a modern simulated Net world.

I am building it more like a game than a book so the descriptions are short and the story is somewhat sparse. I'm describing things very much like narrating someone playing an FPS. It will have an emphasis on exploration and problem solving more than fighting opponents. The 'more game than story' style isn't anything new, what I've played of Zork is like that. But I wonder what most of those in the niche crowd of IF fans prefer.

Choose your own adventure, or text-based Duke Nukem?