Aseprite Mega Drive Digitizer
Posted: Sun Nov 24, 2019 12:18 am
Hi everyone,
While thinking of what kind of art to make for a possible project with my business partner, we faced the problem of easily evaluating art on a CRT.
I thought of a few possible solutions to getting images from my computer to my CRT, from old graphics cards that can be set to 240p modes, to a retropie and coding up an art tool, etc, but then it dawned on me that why don't I just get the Mega Drive to display the art on the CRT directly?
I have a Mega Everdrive X7 which includes a USB port, so I got to work talking to the Mega Everdrive X7 using the examples provided by Krikzz.
My tests were successful and I have now built up a tool comprised of four parts which gets art directly and immediately from Aseprite to the Mega Drive with a click of a button:
1) A Mega Drive ROM which displays what it's told to by the computer through the USB port. Written in C using the brilliant SGDK by Stef.
2) A system tray app for Windows (MegaDriveSystemTrayApp.exe) which listens for commands on port 11,000 and when received, sends them over the USB port to the Mega Everdrive. Written in C#.
3) A command line app (MegaDriveDrawSocketApp.exe) which takes parameters from the command line and then connects to the system tray app on port 11,000 and sends through the commands for the system tray app to then deliver to the Mega Everdrive.
4) A lua script for Aseprite which presents a menu for the user to click on to perform different commands to the Mega Drive. It largely calls the MegaDriveDrawSocketApp.exe app with the correct parameters for stuff to then be sent to the Mega Drive.
We are likely to use Aseprite as the primary art tool for our game and so this works for us, but you can call the MegaDriveDrawSocketApp.exe command line app yourself directly if you prefer. If you run it without any parameters it will tell you what you can do and what the requirements are.
The attachment limit on this forum is small! So I have split up the file into two parts. After downloading, please rename them to MegaDriveDraw Release.zip.001 and MegaDriveDraw Release.zip.002 respectively. Then they should open. There is a readme in the archive with some simple install and usage instructions.
I hope some of you find this tool useful as we have. If I ever need to add features I will update it here in this thread.
Good luck with all of your projects!
While thinking of what kind of art to make for a possible project with my business partner, we faced the problem of easily evaluating art on a CRT.
I thought of a few possible solutions to getting images from my computer to my CRT, from old graphics cards that can be set to 240p modes, to a retropie and coding up an art tool, etc, but then it dawned on me that why don't I just get the Mega Drive to display the art on the CRT directly?
I have a Mega Everdrive X7 which includes a USB port, so I got to work talking to the Mega Everdrive X7 using the examples provided by Krikzz.
My tests were successful and I have now built up a tool comprised of four parts which gets art directly and immediately from Aseprite to the Mega Drive with a click of a button:
1) A Mega Drive ROM which displays what it's told to by the computer through the USB port. Written in C using the brilliant SGDK by Stef.
2) A system tray app for Windows (MegaDriveSystemTrayApp.exe) which listens for commands on port 11,000 and when received, sends them over the USB port to the Mega Everdrive. Written in C#.
3) A command line app (MegaDriveDrawSocketApp.exe) which takes parameters from the command line and then connects to the system tray app on port 11,000 and sends through the commands for the system tray app to then deliver to the Mega Everdrive.
4) A lua script for Aseprite which presents a menu for the user to click on to perform different commands to the Mega Drive. It largely calls the MegaDriveDrawSocketApp.exe app with the correct parameters for stuff to then be sent to the Mega Drive.
We are likely to use Aseprite as the primary art tool for our game and so this works for us, but you can call the MegaDriveDrawSocketApp.exe command line app yourself directly if you prefer. If you run it without any parameters it will tell you what you can do and what the requirements are.
The attachment limit on this forum is small! So I have split up the file into two parts. After downloading, please rename them to MegaDriveDraw Release.zip.001 and MegaDriveDraw Release.zip.002 respectively. Then they should open. There is a readme in the archive with some simple install and usage instructions.
I hope some of you find this tool useful as we have. If I ever need to add features I will update it here in this thread.
Good luck with all of your projects!