Retro Graphics Toolkit

A place for your artistic side. Discuss techniques and tools for pixel art on the NES, GBC, or similar platforms.

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nintendo8
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Retro Graphics Toolkit

Post by nintendo8 »

Retro Graphics Toolkit is a GPLv3 or later licensed open source graphics editor that stores truecolor information in addition to regular tiles. This allows for non destructive editing of palettes. When the palette is changed the tiles can be dithered to fit the new palette.

With Retro Graphics Toolkit you can save palettes, tiles, tilemaps, sprites and levels for the Sega Genesis, NES, Master System and Game Gear. Support for more systems is planed for future versions.

The best way to get started With Retro Graphics Toolkit is to read the wiki
https://github.com/ComputerNerd/Retro-G ... olkit/wiki

Although there is nothing special about the format outputted by Retro Graphics Toolkit (complying with existing formats for the system is one of my goals). I do provide examples currently for the Sega Genesis, NES, Master System and Game Gear.
https://github.com/ComputerNerd/Retro-G ... r/examples
Screenshots:
Image
The plane editor is what you will be using when importing an image and displaying on the game system. You don't even have to worry about making sure your image's dimension are a multiple of the tile width and tile height for the system. Retro Graphics Toolkit can center images to conform to tile size. This makes it very easy to directly import an image. Also a selection of color quantization algorithms and ways to pick which tile uses what row allows for quick and easy high quality images.
Image
Retro Graphics Toolkit features an advanced sprite editor capable on creating groups making alignment much easier, even including buttons to do very easy alignment and Retro Graphics Toolkit can import an image creating a sprite group large images are divided up using as few sprites as possible.

Another feature that goes in hand with Retro Graphics Toolkit's philosophy of easy importing is the sprite sheet importer. Typically sprite sheets have many sprites on it that are spaced in a non-uniform way with a background color that is not used anywhere on the sprite or uses an alpha channel. This means that simply dividing up the image into even rectangles will not work. Retro Graphics Toolkit solves this problem by first identifying the background color
Image

If a background color was used that is treated as transparent. Next line segments are created and those line segments are merged to create rectangles. The longest line segment determines the width and height of the rectangle that is created.
Image

Image
The level editor is a new feature starting in version 0.8 RC1. Sprites from the sprite editor can be displayed on the level editor as well.

Image
The easy to use palette editor is great for viewing the entire palette at once making changes a breeze.
Image
Levels are constructed with chunks. This shows Green Hill zone's graphics converted to the NES. And it looks much better than Somari. This shows the power of Retro Graphics Toolkit.

Source code: https://github.com/ComputerNerd/Retro-Graphics-Toolkit
Windows binary:
https://github.com/ComputerNerd/Retro-G ... kit.exe.7z
To download the windows binary click "View Raw" (without the quotes).

If you have any bug reports, feature requests, pull requests or patches I would like to hear about them. With Lua scripting it should be much easier to get Retro Graphics Toolkit to do what you need as opposed to writing your own tool. If you made any useful Lua scripts be sure to post them.
Last edited by nintendo8 on Thu Jul 09, 2015 10:02 am, edited 11 times in total.
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Hamtaro126
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Re: Retro Graphics Toolkit

Post by Hamtaro126 »

1: Does it have features for SNES? If not, Can you add support?

2: Can there be a Windows binary too? I use Windows 7 64-bit.
AKA SmilyMZX/AtariHacker.
nintendo8
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Re: Retro Graphics Toolkit

Post by nintendo8 »

Hamtaro126 wrote:1: Does it have features for SNES? If not, Can you add support?

2: Can there be a Windows binary too? I use Windows 7 64-bit.
It does not have SNES support right now I will add it at some point though also I am working on a windows binary right now. Right now I am waiting for fltk to compile.
nintendo8
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Re: Retro Graphics Toolkit

Post by nintendo8 »

Sorry for the double post but I now have a windoze binary up
https://github.com/ComputerNerd/Retro-G ... kit.exe.7z
Click View Raw to download
Last edited by nintendo8 on Tue Jun 04, 2013 4:39 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Macbee
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Re: Retro Graphics Toolkit

Post by Macbee »

*Downloading*.
Seems to be pretty cool! :)
Hope to see support for Sega Master System / Game Gear someday!

EDIT: There are many DLL files missing and no clue of what I should download to make it work.
nintendo8
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Re: Retro Graphics Toolkit

Post by nintendo8 »

Sorry about the dll error it is caused by me not staticly linking libgcc and libgccstd++ I will fix that shortly I will make a reply when I have fixed that.
nintendo8
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Re: Retro Graphics Toolkit

Post by nintendo8 »

If you had DLL errors with the windows binary please re-download.
https://github.com/ComputerNerd/Retro-G ... kit.exe.7z
Click View Raw to download
Last edited by nintendo8 on Tue Jun 04, 2013 4:39 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Macbee
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Re: Retro Graphics Toolkit

Post by Macbee »

nintendo8 wrote:If you had DLL errors with the windows binary please re-download.
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?pj85d8vg666tx5c
Now it works - thank you so much! :)
nintendo8
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Re: Retro Graphics Toolkit

Post by nintendo8 »

Just to let you guys know I added support for automatic 4 row palette generation and more awesome features check it out at github https://github.com/ComputerNerd/Retro-Graphics-Toolkit
Image
nintendo8
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Re: Retro Graphics Toolkit

Post by nintendo8 »

Someone requested an updated windows binary so here it is
https://github.com/ComputerNerd/Retro-G ... kit.exe.7z
Click View Raw to download
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CareerOfEvil
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Re: Retro Graphics Toolkit

Post by CareerOfEvil »

Hmm is that raspbian I see there?
nintendo8
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Re: Retro Graphics Toolkit

Post by nintendo8 »

No it is Gentoo GNU/Linux running lxde. Those screenshots are old I switched to xfce and there are some slight gui changes.
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CareerOfEvil
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Re: Retro Graphics Toolkit

Post by CareerOfEvil »

nintendo8 wrote:No it is Gentoo GNU/Linux running lxde. Those screenshots are old I switched to xfce and there are some slight gui changes.
Ah, I see. I'm only familiar with Ubuntu and Raspbian, honestly.
nintendo8
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Re: Retro Graphics Toolkit

Post by nintendo8 »

I am sorry to bump this old topic but I would like to point out that recently I have been doing some work on Retro Graphics Toolkit and have made huge improvements. I recently started keeping a change-log so that what has been improved is apparent https://github.com/ComputerNerd/Retro-G ... /Changelog I would like to point out that this only covers since I started keeping track of changes using a changelog, it is likely that there are more improvements or bug-fixes since the last release you downloaded that is not mentioned in the changelog. The most notable improves that for v0.7 is the advanced sprite editor and undoing and redoing for most actions.

I will note that about the NES example was my first NES program that I have ever wrote. If there are any issues with code being suboptimal or not working on real hardware feel free to tell me. It was good to see that all along Retro Graphics Toolkit has been producing valid data for the NES.

For sonic sprite mapping When importing and exporting it uses the same format the the github disassembles are using. So for sonic 1 it will import and export assembly data. For sonic 2 binary data will be produced. I tested Retro Graphics Toolkit's export sonic 2 mapping and dplc and it produced bit identical output. Please tell me if this is not the case for other objects.
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Hamtaro126
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Re: Retro Graphics Toolkit

Post by Hamtaro126 »

I propose these be added:

Nintendo's PPU display format (used in various games, example: SMB1-3, Duck Hunt, etc.)
Mario 1 tileset format (Attributes are 4-quad, depends on tile bits 6 and 7: $00, $40, $80, $C0)
Mario 3 tileset format (Similar to SMB1, but uses a different tile renderer, attribute bits are the same though!)

I'd really appreciate it if these get added.
AKA SmilyMZX/AtariHacker.
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