Re: [hatari-devel] Screenshots in NEO format

[Nicolas Pomarède <npomarede@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Le 18/01/2024 à 09:22, Thomas Huth a écrit :
> On 18/01/2024 00.35, Eero Tamminen wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > On 17.1.2024 3.02, Brad Smith wrote:
> > > The NEO format seemed to have a header that specifies dimensions of the
> > > picture, resolution (low/medium/high), and a 16-colour palette, 
> > > followed by
> > > a 32k dump of screen data. The original NEOChrome program itself only 
> > > works
> > > with 320x200x4bpp images, however.
> > >
> > > So, the question becomes what to do with the other screen modes 
> > > available
> > > for STE/TT/Falcon. My thought was rather than dumping nothing, or 
> > > something
> > > incomplete, just include the missing information in a benign way.
>
> Dumping something that cannot be read by any known application (AFAIK) 
> does not make much sense, does it? So I agree with Nicolas here to omit 
> the code.

Hi

that's my point ; the request was from a atari-forum user who built a 
custom compilation system with emulated HD where games can be run from a 
menu on the emulated (or original) machines.

As he needed a way to take screenshot for all the included games he 
asked for saving directly in .neo format for ST/STE resolution

I think there's no real need to save in .neo format when the size/number 
of colors is not compatible with ST/STF resolution, the resulting image 
needs to be loadable with neochrome or neochrome master.

> So far only NEO has been requested, so please let's not complicate 
> things until there is a real need for it!

once neo files are saved, it's easy to have uncrompressed PI1/2/3 files, 
but it's sure it's not really needed at the moment

> > > If the concept of using the format in an extended way is not 
> > > acceptable, I
> > > would at least suggest returning an error from ScreenSnapShot_SaveNEO 
> > > for
> > > the GenConv case, so we aren't generating a file containing 
> > > uninitialized
> > > data, and at least giving a warning through stderr.
>
> Agreed, there should be an error message in the log if a user tries to 
> save a NEO file in a non-compliant screen mode.

that's what I'm planing to add, but it's not complete yet.

Nicolas