Graffiti Board Worth?

[XDelusion]

So what are Graffiti boards selling for now a days?

Also, what are some good arguments that would convince me to keep it? I.E. how does it stand against the likes of Adobe Photo Shop and what have you?

I am a DOOM editor, can I benefit from this board, like can it retain quality that Photo Shop, Gimp, and the like can't or what?

Thankx!

[Piru]

how does it stand against the likes of Adobe Photo Shop and what have you?

I am a DOOM editor, can I benefit from this board, like can it retain quality that Photo Shop, Gimp, and the like can't or what?

Why are you comparing image processing / paint programs against piece of hardware?

[XDelusion]

Oh God! The forums critic/cynic has discovered me!!!

Because I don't know much about this piece of hardware, let alone the technical workings behind it, so as a result I need the advice of someone who perhaps knows more...

[countzero]

it's not rtg capable so it's not a very useful board, or worth much. I'ld say let it go for 20-30$. And latest Indivisions can replicate its functionality I hear ...

[XDelusion]

I've been looking at those Indivision boards and have been very tempted to grab one, presuming my Graffiti would not serve me better for my purpose which is related to editing classic 8-Bit DOOM Sprites and Textures (damn the Amiga and clones sorely need a DOOM editor).

I found this page:

http://www.softhut.com/apollo.html

Which near the end states:

"Adds 256 color (from a pallette of 262,144) CHUNKY modes to all models of the Amiga. With OCS/ECS chipset the maximum resolution is 384x576 pixels and with the AGA chipset it is 768x576 pixels. Because of the chunky nature of the Graffiti, it is easier to create and port texture-mapped games (like DOOM)"

I'm sorry, been out of the loop on Amiga technical terms for a while, but what is CHUNKY, and how can that provide with an angle in DOOM image editing that a program on your run of the mill PC, or any other Amiga paint program with graphics card like the Indivision one can't?

[Cammy]

With the Graffiti you can play DOOM and it should be faster than it is through AGA, and a few other DOOM-style games support the board as well, including Trapped and maybe Nemac 4. Also I'm pretty sure you can use it with ShapeShifter or Fusion, the Mac emulators, so you can have a 256 colour 640x480 display with MacOS7 or MacOS8, and you could probably run an older verson of Photoshop with that, and it would be faster than running it on the same hardware without the Graffiti.

To be this useful you need to use it with an AGA Amiga, which can already run DOOM and Amiga-native image editing software well enough.

[XDelusion]

The idea isn't to play DOOM so much as it is to edit sprites, textures, and flats.

 Sadly, I don't believe any 68k Amiga (minus emulation or one powered by vapor such as the Coldfire) has the juice to power the DOOM engine my project is for. That being PrBOOM, which OS 4 does have a port of, therefore I do believe it would also work with MorphOS.

Anyhow, this Chunky business, what's it all about. Can someone explain Chunky to me in layman's terms?

 I noticed the Indivision board also supports this, so I'm sure it can do what ever the Graffiti does without having to bother with an old Commodore monitor. Is this correct?

[countzero]

unfortunately it's not very possible to explain in layman's terms. check here for a detailed answer.

http://stason.org/TULARC/pc/amiga/faq/3-1-What-are-chunky-and-planar-displays.html

amiga's native display modes are arranged in planar mode, which is difficult to work on for 3d applications. chunky modes give more flexibility in that sense.

[skurk]

Anyhow, this Chunky business, what's it all about. Can someone explain Chunky to me in layman's terms?

Amiga graphics is usually arranged in bitplanes, where one bitplane is a fullscreen representation of the screen where only a certain bit of the colour values are visible.  By combining bitplanes, you can get different colours.  For example, to show a pixel with the colour value for palette entry 13 ($dff19a) you need one pixel in bitplanes 1, 3 and 4.

Chunky graphics can be a single array of bytes, where you poke the palette id you want to be displayed, for example chunky[(y*w)+x]=13;

Chunky graphics is generally easier to play with, especially when it comes to 3D graphics.  Some even use chunky-to-planars (C2P) which uses the CPU and the blitter to convert chunky graphics to bitplanes, because -- despite being resource hungry -- it is still faster than doing the 3D graphics in planar directly.

[XDelusion]

O.K. Thankx!

Now in regards to quality. Would the end result any better or worse using this or a standard Amiga paint program to edit 256 color 8-bit images, as opposed to a paint suit on a PC?

[Crumb]

O.K. Thankx!

Now in regards to quality. Would the end result any better or worse using this or a standard Amiga paint program to edit 256 color 8-bit images, as opposed to a paint suit on a PC?

If you just want to edit 8bit gfx use PPaint, DPaint or Brilliance.

[Piru]

Now in regards to quality. Would the end result any better or worse using this or a standard Amiga paint program to edit 256 color 8-bit images, as opposed to a paint suit on a PC?

Graffiti is worse, no doubt about it.

Any PC since 1995 or so beats the crap out of amiga, Graffiti or without.

[Pyromania]

@Piru

Unless it's the quad 256 gate array, peta processing, quantum computer the A5000.

[utri007]

I would be interester to know, how much faster amigadoom is with graffiti?

[XDelusion]

Thankx Piru, that's what I was wondering.

I've been using Paint Shop Pro for the majority of the DOOM work thus far, though that's because of a GzDOOM project which makes use of high resolutions images, and I need the transparency.

As for the PrBOOM project, it is very hard sometimes to work with the images, especially when resizing sprites and what have you since everything is low-res 8-bit.

 I was always curios if there was a certain Amiga application that was capable of handling image files in a way that PC's or Macs never quite got the handle on, or in this case, a piece of Amiga hardware.