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Colors! is a simplistic digital painting application for Nintendo DS that is inspired by painting-techniques using Wacom boards in Photoshop or Painter.

Homepage & downloads: http://www.collectingsmiles.com/colors

Current features
----------------
Plain circle brush where pressure controls opacity
512x384 image resolution with 1 stage zoom
Replay the whole painting process of an image
Hue-circle and luminance/saturation-triangle style palette
Simple Load/Save support

I hope you will enjoy it!

Absolutely f**king awesome! I've been thinking of coding something like this myself!

The brush is beautiful. But as a photoshop-junkie, I have some features I would like to see: (don't kill me if some of them are already there)

- Pressure controlling brush-size as well as opacity
- A control for how much it should affect opacity
- A color-picker from the image. I draw a lot by plotting out an initial palette on the canvas, and picking colors from there.
- Undo ;)

edit: okay, just found the eyedropper-tool. Awesome.

Thanks! :)

Quote:

- Pressure controlling brush-size as well as opacity

I've heard this from a few other people as well. I'm very reluctant to implement additional features since I really want to keep things simplistic, but I'm starting to sway on that one.

Quote:

- A control for how much it should affect opacity

Do you mean that that is something that you would change while painting, or just for one-time calibration?

Quote:

- Undo ;)

No. Never. Absolutely not. :)

Quote:

Do you mean that that is something that you would change while painting, or just for one-time calibration?

Something to change all the time, much like the size of the brush. Basicly I want the same thing as the "opacity"-selector in Photoshop. This is often you're going from sketching to painting details. Or when you want to slightly adjust a color or something.

Quote:

- Undo ;)

No. Never. Absolutely not. :)

You sir, just made my death-list! ;)
No, seriously. When you already have that playback-feature, I guess undo would be quite easy to implement, no? And it IS handy. Especially, since the pen-code isn't 100% stable, so every now and then I get a stroke over the entire screen...

Oh, and here's my first little droodle:

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Quote:

Basicly I want the same thing as the "opacity"-selector in Photoshop

Ok, I understand. We'll see. :)

Quote:

When you already have that playback-feature, I guess undo would be quite easy to implement, no

Well. You would have to sit through the whole playback thing each time you wanted to do an undo. I guess I could autosave from time to time, so I could just playback from there to speed things up, but it would be kind of a hazzle. I would like to get the stylus jumping thing even better though, and with that 100% perfect, undo wouldn't be needed that much.

I'm really happy to see that you've managed to paint something already. More of that! :)

truly a neat start ! I was dreaming of a software like this one. I agree with keeping the simple but effective functions.
An opacity slider could help you're right Kusma and an option to get rid of the pressure sensitivity would make my day.
A pen who makes patterns like screentones (as in the Oekaki boards) would be cool aswell.
My last request is for us the poor lefthanded human beings, just an option to flip the functions assigned (pleaz ^^)
Thanks a lot Jesse ! (undos are baaaad)

My first doodle
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Neat program, I like it.
For the color wheel, instead of a white background, could you make it a neutral gray?

Just thought you'd like to know, there are some left handed people out there, and a large number of them are artists of some sort, the right brain is the artistic side.

Your "r" button is doing nothing, as is the majority of your "x,y,a,b"

You could make this homebrew left handed-friendly with a nominal amount of work. Please do.

A minor request:
Could you zero out all the VRAM when the thing starts?

I'm getting a lot of graphical glitches when I run this from DSChannels, since it uses the VRAM as scratch space... running it from the real R4 menu is fine.
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<link rel="signature" type="text/hilarious" href="/funnysig.txt" />

First off, this is a really nice, elegant piece of software. Good Job; I especially like the playback feature.

I would like to know, however, how the pressure sensing works, because mine doesn't work, apparently. It's always super faint, no matter how hard I press.

Excellent program. The pressure-sensitivity amazes me (done with a coordinate sampling average or something?), but the cursors are the real bonus for me. The combination lets me only make faint marks to determine where the cursor is at so I can make permanent marks almost exactly where I want. A combination of this/Phidias would make my day.

The replay option's great too.. even though it was my own crappy drawing, watching it unfold was awesome.
WIP (original, I know. :P):
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and I put the full slot (w/ replay & thumbnail) here.

a quick bug-report: The initial brush-size is not stored when clearing the screen.

steps to reproduce:
- Set brush to a big size
- Clear screen
- Draw a line
- Set brush to a small size
- Replay

The result is the line drawn with the thin brush, not the big one as it was drawn.

Just a quick fill-in on the bug above: The same thing applies to the color. It seems the entire brush-setting isn't stored. I need to go change it before I do anything if I want replay to work properly.

Some more quick feature-requests:
- Clear to current color. I often use darker background-colors when I paint. This makes it easier to work with variations of colors without having to draw the entire screen.
- PC-side replayer that dumps frames to disk. This would make speed-painting videos easy to create. :)
- Brush hardness selection. This might make very small brushes more practical to use, as they currently alias quite ugly.

And yes, this app has quickly gone to the top of my favorite-list of homebrew apps. It's totally awesome!

Very good job on colors, finally something that really allows me do sketch freely and smoothly. The Pressure is just amazing and gives a very natural feel.

As for improvements I'm going to give another vote for the lefties, it's just too awkward for us lefties to work with the current keymap. maybe even make it customizable thru an xml or txt file, this would make it even more flexible. It would be nice to use Y or X for the palette too, especially if your using it on a tabletop.

Setting for size/sensitivity.

Tune Sensitivity - It's easy to start trans and go to opaque, but the other way around is very hard to do.

I'd love to see a quick mixing panel so you could mix colors and then pick the ones u want to use. U can do this on the image, but it really isn't the same.

Remember last zoom position - saves from having to pan so much.

Show border in zoom - gives the ability to paint off the canvas, especially good for making borders and going off board with the brush.

Here's a very quick doodle :)

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DS-Xtreme 4Gb [Fw 1.1.2]

Last edited by alfatreze on Mon Jun 25, 2007 5:28 pm; edited 1 time in total

absolutely amazing software, I love it, I love the way the brush looks and feels ^^;, it would be good to have a few options like a blur or smudge (photoshop-junkie side of me talking) but otherwise it's very promising, 5 thumbs up, except I only have 2 ^^;

http://members.lycos.nl/hipocrieten/colors_slot0.png a small sample I made ^^;

Tonjevic wrote:

I would like to know, however, how the pressure sensing works, because mine doesn't work, apparently. It's always super faint, no matter how hard I press.

I have the same issue. Perhaps it's my screen protectors or something.

Otherwise it's a fun program to work with.

Thanks for all the positive comments. It makes me really want to dig in and fix everything. The two things I will get down to fixing first will be the left-handed support and I'll see what I can do with the some quick pressure sensitivity calibration. It's calibrated now for my DS Lite, and I've heard that they are a couple of different manufactures for the screens, making them work differently.

Keep posting images! :)

Last edited by Jesse on Mon Jun 25, 2007 6:01 pm; edited 1 time in total

TheYak wrote:

The pressure-sensitivity amazes me (done with a coordinate sampling average or something?)

Using the same forumla as many other as basis I just just tweaked the result of it until it felt right. Also, there is some averaging based on time in there that you can notice if try to make a new hard brush-stroke while moving very quickly. You will see that it fades in before going fully opaque.

I'm glad you like it!

so far I'm really impressed, I'm bummed the Pressure sensitivity doesn't work on my NDS, I'm using an old Nintendo DS Phat with a very early firmware revision (like v1.2 I believe)

Using a new Lite + R4 bought a month ago, no pressure sensitivity here either.

tiny feature : flip verticaly. Very handy to check composition.
can't stop ;)
some friend drawing on his cellphone, I was so jealous, now it's gone :)
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I don't know my firmware but the pressure sensitivity works fine for me. This the best painting program i've had so far. Keep up the good work :) What'd I want to see is you import your own PS brushes and use which ever ones you want, yay mini photoshop :)

Update released (v1.02)

* Left-handed support
* Fix for Kusma's playback-bug (thanks!)
* Placeholder pressure calibration support

I'm curious about what values the calibration tool reports on different DSs, so if you've been having problem with the pressure sensitivity, please select pressure calibration in the menu and let me know what value you end up using for "hard touch" along with the type of DS you have.

Awesome, thanks for the update. 1.01 didn't support pressure sensitivity for me, but with the calibration control in 1.02 it works fine. These are my values:
Hard: 100
Soft: 125
Actually I set Hard to 110 so I don't damage my screen.

I'm using an old-style DS from Australia.

Edit: The response to pressure at the left and right edges of the screen isn't as good. I guess it's a problem with the hardware. Maybe you could have a calibration matrix for the whole screen? I imagine that'd be a pain, though. The affected areas are about 1cm wide.

Last edited by z0r on Tue Jun 26, 2007 5:22 am; edited 1 time in total

Feature request: it'd be nice if the screens turned off when the lid is closed.

But, great program!

Cheers,
Alex

reminds of ink art 1.3, which comes with the 'experience pack' add on to xp tablet edition

On a Black European Lite with the latest firmware, the hard pressure is between 105-110 and the light pressure can be anywhere from 120 to 160 (with occasional ludicrous 200+ readings) but only becomes stable around the 130 mark. The middle left and right of the screen gradually stop reading pressure so colouring in the whole screen results in a fading concave pattern.

I love this program :)

It has a really nice 'feel', and the controls are totally intuitive. It's smooth and there's no real 'lag' I can tell between using the stylus and the image actually being updated :P

I also like that the color selector has a non-used 'border' around it (some apps like Phidias have selectors that go all the way to a screen edge, which can be hard to register on some DSes)

Tried v1.02 on a recent Onyx Lite w/both a SuperCard CF & R4DS here, and pressure sensitivity worked fine with default values...I need to play around with the configuration a little bit to get it perfect since I'm using a screen protector though :) ...and the pressure sensitivity totally surprised me since I didn't even know the DS supported such a thing :D

Anyway, great work! Thanks for this!

I don't have any real suggestions yet, and haven't run into any bugs. When/if more brushes/features start getting added it'd be neat to see some pixeling-related features, but I guess that'd go against the whole painting/brushwork basis behind the program as it is now :D

This is amazing tool - it gave me this very pleasant feeling I have each time I see something very good on DS - "Ah it was a good decision to have one"

I woud very much like to contribute some nice pictures - this ap is so superb even at this moment of development that I would draw and draw picture after picture - but...

I have problem saving it - it simply won't save
I hope it's not a faux pas to ask where should I seek any solve to the problem - I have fun myself - but maybe anyone wpold like to see also

Fuzz

Have same problem. AFAIK me and Fuzone are both using SuperCard DS ONE.

With DLDI i would know that i need to patch software for my card model, but i dont have any experinece with other libraries.

Edit: Fuzone is drawing picture after picture, and all are so great its a shame they cant be saved.

I bet i'm not the only one that would like to know how can you detect pressure.

Last edited by jetboy on Tue Jun 26, 2007 12:33 pm; edited 2 times in total

fuzone wrote:

I have problem saving it - it simply won't save

Have you tried this? http://chishm.drunkencoders.com/DLDI/

fuzone, just a guess, but make sure you DLDI patch the Colors.nds for whatever flash cart you're using.

I was sure it is some sort of lamers problem

So

::: drawig season open :::

Thanks a lot for halp and once again for developing such a tool

Fu

Any info on drw format? We could make PC application to view them, and present themin higher resolution. Since those are strokes it would look good in any resolution.

jetboy wrote:

I bet i'm not the only one that would like to know how can you detect pressure.

Touch pressure can be read from the touchscreen hardware. See the datasheet for the Texas Instruments TSC2046 touch screen controller.

My Euro DS lite gives:

hard 80
lightly 110

I could not get a opaque line with version 1.01 but can in 1.02.

Note that use of the pressure measurement given in the datasheet is to detect stylus or finger touch. Using my finger I get:

hard 23
light 70 to 194

The light finger touch is difficult to get to register and varies greatly.

I also get the fading at the left and right edges (this is fine on my DS Fat so probably a change in the construction).

On my old DS Fat:

hard 42
light 71

finger hard 14
finger light 74

Finger painting does not work very well on either DS unless I increase (reducing the pressure) the hard calibration value (eg 22 on the DS fat).

I have 104 and 206 on my oldschool DS (Non lite)

When calibrating i get:

hard 35
light 50

but i need to setup miore like 40-50 for it to work properly, otherwise i cant get the strong color.

Afaik its Euro DS.

btw. Thanks for the info on touchscreen.

Launchtime is over, so we must go back to work, but i ll make sure that Fuzone will upload some pictures of his tommorow.

Hi,

This is a great piece of software :)

Does this save the pictures as a PNG so I can copy them to my PC? Otherwise how have the people here saved their piccys?

qatmix wrote:

Does this save the pictures as a PNG so I can copy them to my PC? Otherwise how have the people here saved their piccys?

Yes, after you have saved an image it should be available as a .PNG in the root of your memorycard.

jetboy wrote:

Any info on drw format? We could make PC application to view them, and present themin higher resolution. Since those are strokes it would look good in any resolution.

I develop Colors! on PC as well (even though it's not really usable on PC), and will make sure the functionality you are asking for gets out there somehow. I was kind of surprised how well it worked to recreate a painting in higher resolution the first time I tried it. My grand plan is to make use of the Wifi on the DS have a central web-server that creates higher resolution images as well as speedpainting videos, but as you can understand that is quite an ambitions project and may be a pipedream. :)

Last edited by Jesse on Tue Jun 26, 2007 2:18 pm; edited 1 time in total

Anyone tried saving with 1.02?

After patching DLDI we can save, but we get corrupted png.

Png is corrupted and hangs up color when trying to load. It cant be displayed on PC neither.

The other files are ok. I tried that overwriting png's with original cat picture. This way when i load i see the cat, but can repaint the data i saved.

qatmix wrote:

Does this save the pictures as a PNG so I can copy them to my PC? Otherwise how have the people here saved their piccys?

It saves png, plus it saves other file that store strokes so you can see how the picture was made.

First off, this is pure awesome. I had no idea the DS was capable of actual pressure sensitivity beyond position and on/off. I like that the brush feels like photoshop brushes, too.

I've got an Aussie DS Lite, and my stable calibration settings are as follows:
Hard: between 30 and 50, erring towards 30
Light: between 30 and 70

Like a previous poster, I typically need "Hard" to be around 40 in order for it to register a full-opacity stroke in practise.
"Light" is basically ok around 60-70, though during calibration, if I tap very lightly, I can see the numbers jump from about 135 to 100 down to the above range, in milliseconds.

One thing of note, brush center never actually registers at the bottom edge of the screen (about 5mm or so), so past a certain threshold, it will still move left and right, but stay at a fixed y value.

Jesse wrote:

jetboy wrote:

Any info on drw format? We could make PC application to view them, and present themin higher resolution. Since those are strokes it would look good in any resolution.

I develop Colors! on PC as well (even though it's not really usable on PC), and will make sure the functionality you are asking for gets out there somehow. I was kind of surprised how well it worked to recreate a painting in higher resolution the first time I tried it. My grand plan is to make us of the Wifi on the DS have a central web-server that creates higher resolution images as well as speedpainting videos, but as you can understand that is quite an ambitions project and may be a pipedream. :)

This is very convinient
We are using Wifi to preview pictures made on PC on actual DS so we can see how does it look (isn't this character too small?)

So this is quite a similar pipeline but it works the other way .

Its still no way to save png correctly :(

LoTekK wrote:

One thing of note, brush center never actually registers at the bottom edge of the screen (about 5mm or so), so past a certain threshold, it will still move left and right, but stay at a fixed y value.

Not only that.
The brush do not register at the point you touch. The difference seems to be 0 pixels at the top of the screen and 5 pixels at the bottom. Like y values 0-192 were mapped to 0-187.

jetboy wrote:

After patching DLDI we can save, but we get corrupted png.

That sounds really strange, and I have no idea of how that could happen. Since the .drw file seems to be correctly saved I have a hard time understanding how the .png can fail to save correctly (using pnglib). Anyone who has a clue?

jetboy wrote:

The brush do not register at the point you touch. The difference seems to be 0 pixels at the top of the screen and 5 pixels at the bottom. Like y values 0-192 were mapped to 0-187.

Have you tried the touch calibration tool in Nintendos menus?

Jesse wrote:

jetboy wrote:

The brush do not register at the point you touch. The difference seems to be 0 pixels at the top of the screen and 5 pixels at the bottom. Like y values 0-192 were mapped to 0-187.

Have you tried the touch calibration tool in Nintendos menus?

It was working perfectly in comercial titles. I tried recalibrating anyway - still have the same effect.

That must be my console problem - i tried this on 4 other conosles and it works perfectly there.

edit: on Fuzone's DS you can draw all over the screen. To the very bottom of the screen (he have old, pink DS) so he can draw on the 5 bottom lines.

Just tried eagerly thr new version, thks for quick fixing us lefties. :P

So first my calibration values are a clear 60-65 for the hard, the light really jumps everywhere, but goes around 90-120, sometimes registers 70 80 150 200. since there's no visual feedback it's actually hard to tell if you really are pressing allthat lightly.

Also I hadn't reported earlier but with my DS-X firmware 1.1.2, I get some corruption on the top screen, a strip or randomly colored bright pixels fading in and out, on the 2nd fith of the screen, from bottom to top. It doesn't bother me, but no harm in letting know.

Could you add a feature to stop the playback by pressing start, currently u are forced to view it entirely.
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DS-Xtreme 4Gb [Fw 1.1.2]

Some ideas for features:

1. Are you sure check when clearing screen.
2. Skipping loading of the png if it is corrupt or missing.

After closer examination of one of the DS i tested it on, it seems that the brush is offsyncing with stylus in lover areas of the screen, but to the right not to the the up.

I also tried version 1.01 - and it cant save proper png neither. It might be some problem where pnglib and DLDI meets on Supercard DS ONE.

What card do you guys use? R4(DS) - Revolution for DS?

Yo! Here's another drawing. Still quite a quickie, but at least here's the
.drw-file if anyone's interested.

Thanks for the fix on the playback-isse, it works great :)
Another feature-request thoug: Clear to selected color. A white canvas is kinda impractical in some cases ;)

I too cannot save using a supercard (in this case a supercard lite)

Without using the DLDI patch, the thumbnail saves, but the PNG and .drw file are corrupted. Attempting to load the images causes the program to freeze on the loading screen.

When using the DLDI patch, saving causes the program to freeze at the saving screen and no data is written.

sample PNG
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This program seems quite awesome, it is just too bad that saving doesn't work.

I was investigating stylus offset thing.

It seems that you are not reading calibration data at all.
I made incorrect calibration (so i had to press 10 pixels higher than actual point) it was off in all other application, but when i loaded Colors - it was working in exactly the same way as when i got my calibration right.

Another idea for improvement. Could you please make calibration data saved? It seems that we need to set it every time we start the program.
BTW. it seems that the pressure settings are dependent either on battery status or temperature. I was getting different readings in the calibration menu when i came back home (temperature was higher and battery was almost dead). I ll investigate more on this later.

thanks a lot for the lefthanded config !
Jetboy you're a hardcore beta tester :)
I was walking in the streets today to trying to do some sketches with Colors but the sun was to bright even in the shadow, do you know if there's a way to set the luminosity to high level and keep it this way on reboot ?
Otherwise I have to build something around the DS to protect the screen from the sun.
Just one more question, is it possible to store more than eight drawings ?

trying more opaque settings
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moket wrote:

I was walking in the streets today to trying to do some sketches with Colors but the sun was to bright even in the shadow, do you know if there's a way to set the luminosity to high level and keep it this way on reboot ?

If your device is supported, LoveLite will do what you wish to do.

Excellent application! It reminds me of openCanvas because of the playback feature and similar brush look. (Freeware version 1.1 here)

One thing I would like to see is more brush configuration. Nothing too fancy, just a few options like hardness and environment blending like in openCanvas.

Looking forward to future versions.

Excellent app. I also have a suggestion:

Could you please make it possible that when zoomed in, it gives us the option to move the pic left, right, up and down because at the moment when zoomed it stays at the same place.

Thanks

As long as I understood Your request well - there is such an option

When in zoom press left on the cross-directional button on your DS and it works as space/hand in most graphic appz

under the right You have the picker -
the fact that You have the Pan tool, the picker, and a flip tool at first indicates that it is a usefull drawing tool - thanks God

[Still unable to save - will link to Youtube with camera made movie with playback from my last drawing]

kusma wrote:

I have some features I would like to see: (don't kill me if some of them are already there)
<zip>
- Undo ;)

With strokes history already implemented - that wouldnt be so hard to implement, but time consuming to use.

If Jesse would implement contorl of the playback (pause/play/stop/move1strokeForward - i think no rewind <- that would be too hard) we could revert to any moment in the painting history.

As for temperature/batery influence - it seems that temperature has some but minimal influence, and bateries start to influence when they are near discharge. I tested it within 20-30 celcius degrees range.

moket wrote:

Jetboy you're a hardcore beta tester :)

Sorry, but I love the program. I want it improved as much as possible, so i'm doing all i can to help.

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picture of a DS showing my last drawing

jetboy wrote:

kusma wrote:

I have some features I would like to see: (don't kill me if some of them are already there)
<zip>
- Undo ;)

With strokes history already implemented - that wouldnt be so hard to implement, but time consuming to use.

This has already been discussed - the trick is to use snapshots of the memory to save playback-time for short undos (ie undos of recent actions) - preferrably with logarithnic distance in the history to make short undos fast and long undos slow.

kusma wrote:

This has already been discussed - the trick is to use snapshots of the memory to save playback-time for short undos (ie undos of recent actions) - preferrably with logarithnic distance in the history to make short undos fast and long undos slow.

That plus forward one at a time strokes would work. The only problem is memory usage. One picture takes almost 400KB in memory, if layers are planned, that would up memory usage even more, so there wouldnt be much left for undos. And saving to the card would be too slow.

There is another thing about the saves that bothers me. It saves to the root directory, making it messed up. Since there is no way to know from where the rom has been launched we cannot save to the current dir. But we could use method that is used in Lemmings. We could have Colors in a directory, and store one config file in the root direcotry where name of the color directory is stored. That way we could save into Colors directory and have only one file in root. Of course this is the last important thing form sugestions presented here.

If I am not mistaken, there were suggestions of saving data specific for an application in the directory /data/<appname>

Nice and clean, but does not seem to have become a standard sadly.

oofrab wrote:

If I am not mistaken, there were suggestions of saving data specific for an application in the directory /data/<appname>

Nice and clean, but does not seem to have become a standard sadly.

Sounds wise.

thanks Dantheman for the hint. I will try this, seems perfect. I 'm a little bit afraid to screw something up, because nobody tested the soft with an Euro DS and M3lite.

Jesse <> As people start to post some pictures and feedback, I'm wondering if a thread dedicated to the everyday use of Colors could be nice (wether on this forum or not). I'm only asking this because I don't know if you want to keep this thread "Colors technical feedback wise" only or not.
It can be practical to have all the drawings centralised, just to make it easy for the new user to see what could be made in Colors.(and how Colors brightens your everyday life as a digital sketchaddict)

Quote:

I love the program. I want it improved as much as possible, so i'm doing all i can to help.

that's what I wanted to say. (I have a poor english language level). I'm impressed by your dedication !

trying some more detailed line work.
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did you fixed the link? btw. nice pic

moket wrote:

Colors.(and how Colors brightens your everyday life as a digital sketchaddict)

true true ... digital sketchaddict - a portable solution

Here is a picture made by another of my work-mates.

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and some of my own attempts:

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Sorry for poor quality, those were taken with digital camera, as we cant save.

Edit: added another picture by another friend:

[Images not permitted - Click here to view it] <- loco roco DS

Edit2: I hope our enthusiasm did not scare you. :)

Alrighty. I'm traveling quite extensivly right now so I may not be very responsive.

First off: Thanks so much for all the feedback and images you are posting. That's the kind of stuff that makes me happy and it's really cool to see how helpful people are here. :)

Quick comments to the last batch of posts:

>1. Are you sure check when clearing screen.
Agreed. I going to work do the basis for a neat UI in the next couple of versions and will try to take care of stuff like that.

>2. Skipping loading of the png if it is corrupt or missing.
Agreed. Will fix.

>Clear to selected color
Hmm. Actually I'm quite fond of not having that. I like picking a color and a big brush to wipe the screen. Let's see if more people request it.

>The Supercard problem
This is a real bummer and I'm not sure how to proceed on this one. Is there another homebrew app that saves .pngs (or other large files) that you could try to see if they have the same problem?

>It seems that you are not reading calibration data at all.
You may be right, I'll look into that.

>Could you please make calibration data saved?
Sure! I'll fix that along with the UI update.

>do you know if there's a way to set the luminosity to high level and keep it this way on reboot ?
I'll look into it.

>Just one more question, is it possible to store more than eight drawings ?
Yes, but as you may have understood by now I have a slight fetish for limitations. :)
But I understand the need, so I'll try to figure something out.

>One thing I would like to see is more brush configuration
I've planned to do some additional brush options in future version, but still keeping it very simple.

>As for temperature/batery influence
That is very interesting. I'm also planning to work a bit more on the pressure calibration to take care of the problem where it's not as sensitive on the left/right sides of the screen.

>There is another thing about the saves that bothers me. It saves to the root directory, making it messed up
I totally agree. I know there is work going on with libnds and libfat so you can know where you lanched from, but I will probably do some quick fix as suggested before that.

>It can be practical to have all the drawings centralised
Yes, I would like to do that on my website somehow but I'm not that used to working with websites, so it's probably going to take a while.

Thanks again for all your support!

> >Clear to selected color
> Hmm. Actually I'm quite fond of not having that. I like picking a color
> and a big brush to wipe the screen. Let's see if more people request it.
After i think of that its cool the way it is. Its part of the fun to prepare your background color.

> >The Supercard problem
> This is a real bummer and I'm not sure how to proceed on this one. Is
> there another homebrew app that saves .pngs (or other large files) that
> you could try to see if they have the same problem?
There is simple drawing program in DSOrganizer where you can draw pictures and save them as PNG, but they are only 256x192.
It works ok there. AFAIK there is source code available (http://www.dragonminded.com/?loc=ndsdev/DSOrganize).
I ll look for other applications that i could test the issue with.

> >Could you please make calibration data saved?
> Sure! I'll fix that along with the UI update.
That's the thing we can live with. It would be cool if it was fixed, but dont make it priority.

> >As for temperature/batery influence
> That is very interesting. I'm also planning to work a bit more on the
> pressure calibration to take care of the problem where it's not as
> sensitive on the left/right sides of the screen.

In the official SDK there is no pressure available, and Nintendo advises that you shouldnt put any UI elements near the border of the screen because it can make problems on some systems. (4 border pixels on each side) so it might be not so easy.

Also note that use of HORI protective foil makes screen a little less sensitive.

> >It can be practical to have all the drawings centralised
> Yes, I would like to do that on my website somehow but I'm not that
> used to working with websites, so it's probably going to take a while.
I used to work with websites a bit in the past so i can help. Also server with database/php/whatever we need should not be a problem.

> Thanks again for all your support!
Thanks again for the Colors!

It worked fine on my R4ds, I?m looking forward to the next brush settings!

jetboy wrote:

I used to work with websites a bit in the past so i can help. Also server with database/php/whatever we need should not be a problem.

I may take you up on that offer. I would love some feedback of what's possible, so drop me an email so I can get your adress, and I'll send you some of my thoughts.

lots of good things to come !!!

Quote:

Yes, but as you may have understood by now I have a slight fetish for limitations. :)

In fact I like the idea of having some limits to play with. But as overdoing is very easy as such low scale, you can't go in crazy sketching mode. I've just realized that you are willing us to learn patience, understanding and true eye vision through Colors, let's get under chinese waterfalls with waterproof DS ;)
In a way drawing on a DS is a big advantage : it fools everybody, because people think you are actually playing a game, and don't notice your presence because you're a nerd, you can draw them all!

JetBoy, the drawing from your mate seems very good (I like those dynamic shapes). I'm sure the gallery will grow quickly.

I've also found that (on the M3lite) if you set the brightness in Moonshell in "extend" mode and reboot : the settings are kept in Colors.

another friend.
[Images not permitted - Click here to view it]

I really like this program. :3 I'm looking forward to furture releases.

I have but one request. ^_^;

Is it possible to add a feature adding the use of Layers? o.o; Not like infinate, maybe one or two at the most. It would be useful for some.

Jesse wrote:

jetboy wrote:

I used to work with websites a bit in the past so i can help. Also server with database/php/whatever we need should not be a problem.

I may take you up on that offer. I would love some feedback of what's possible, so drop me an email so I can get your adress, and I'll send you some of my thoughts.

I sent the email. I ll contact you that way since now, but i ll still post ideas here. Speaking of what:

We have caught ourselves many times in an event that we started painting in zoom mode being sure we paint on full screen. That happens pretty offten when we start drawing, so a way to warn that we are in zoom mode would be pretty cool. Maybe some sprite ona another layer showing magnifying glass, or a frame in the upper screen showing which part of the screen is zoomed.
Maybe sprite could move away from the stylus, so you could paint on the whole screem, or maybe its too disturbing.

Would smoodge tool be hard to implement? Isn't it against your plan to keep Colors simple?

my only issue as a simple app is the undo. itsa shame when you accidently pressthe screen elsewhere. can muck up the whole composition. Could you not have a frame counter and just set upto say 10 undo levels. Im not a programmer so i couldnt tell you , but just an Adobe Photoshop/Illustrator A.C.E.
Vector Illustrator version soon? `,-))
.
Nice one tho m8. do or dont implement. You created a nifty tinkering sketcher anyhow. Just get miffed when an error occurs after 20 mins and it gets binned.

PS also pngs in colors rooty, but i guess you have all these requests.
take care

Peace

Wax

Jesse wrote:

>As for temperature/batery influence
That is very interesting. I'm also planning to work a bit more on the pressure calibration to take care of the problem where it's not as sensitive on the left/right sides of the screen.

Since the the left/right screen sensitive problem is not present on all hardware (DS lite only?) I would recommend not trying to compensate for it in software.
One way to avoid the problem would be to allow the user to move the drawing area (similar as to how you can when zoomed) so that the edge of the drawing area is somewhere in the middle of the touchscreen. This would also remove the problem where people cannot draw right to the edge on their touchscreens.
Maybe an idea to move the pressure calibration boxes into the middle of the screen though to provide the best response/values.

As for the lack of undo, I like it as you are forced to draw over your mistakes or incorporate them some other way into the picture and then you get to see this process in the replay.

> Since the the left/right screen sensitive problem is not present on all
> hardware (DS lite only?) I would recommend not trying to compensate
> for it in software.

It only concerns some models of DS light - on others it works fine.

> One way to avoid the problem would be to allow the user to move the
> drawing area (similar as to how you can when zoomed) so that the
> edge of the drawing area is somewhere in the middle of the
> touchscreen. This would also remove the problem where people
> cannot draw right to the edge on their touchscreens. Maybe an idea
> to move the pressure calibration boxes into the middle of the screen
> though to provide the best response/values.

It may not be necceary. The problem where people cannot reach the boreders is mainly because stylus position-calibration data is not read and set properly. However the problem with less sensivity near the borders persists. I would sugest fixing position-calibration first then obserwing how it behaves.

> As for the lack of undo, I like it as you are forced to draw over your
> mistakes or incorporate them some other way into the picture and then
> you get to see this process in the replay.

I agree to the point. But being able to stop replay and continue form that stage seems tempting too.

My phatty DS has the pressure problem, but this may be related to the screen protector.
_________________
FireSlash.net

Hi, I love the program. It's way better than phidias when it comes to accuracy. But I am still missing features like the blur tool and a proper eye dropper.
An eye dropper, that's already in there! That's what you are probably thinking now. Well, the eye dropper doesn't seem to work for me. Neither does the pan view feature (I have no idea what pan view is supposed to do, but if I use it, nothing happens, so I guess it's broken.)
I'm using a R4 and didn't patch the file with DLDI (My R4 is supposed to do that on the fly, but I think it does it right because I can save and load normally)

> An eye dropper, that's already in there! That's what you are probably
> thinking now. Well, the eye dropper doesn't seem to work for me. Neither
> does the pan view feature (I have no idea what pan view is supposed to
> do, but if I use it, nothing happens, so I guess it's broken.)
Are you sure you are using version 1.02 ?

> I'm using a R4 and didn't patch the file with DLDI (My R4 is supposed to do
> that on the fly, but I think it does it right because I can save and load
> normally)

Actually, original Color is in R4 version when you download it, so there is no need to patch for you.

jetboy wrote:

Would smoodge tool be hard to implement? Isn't it against your plan to keep Colors simple?

It's probable one of the different brushmodes I want to implement. I'm not sure how hard it is to make a great implementation though.

masscat wrote:

Since the the left/right screen sensitive problem is not present on all hardware (DS lite only?) I would recommend not trying to compensate for it in software.

You have some good points there. Thanks.

Quote:

I agree to the point. But being able to stop replay and continue form that stage seems tempting too.

That is actually a great way for me to get around not having undo and is a real easy fix. :)

laurens wrote:

An eye dropper, that's already in there!

I'm going to make it a bit more obvious how it works in future versions.

Panning works in a very similar fashion (hold the button and then touch the screen with the stylus and drag), and needs some better feedback as well.

jetboy wrote:

We have caught ourselves many times in an event that we started painting in zoom mode being sure we paint on full screen

Yes. I've done that myself a copule of times and will try to implement some feedback mechanism.

Excellent homebrew this. Really nicely implemented. Worked perfectly on the EZFV, saves and all.

Only problem I had was drawing on my phat DS near the left/right edges of the screen in the centre. No matter how hard I pressed, it wouldn't draw a thing. No problem at the top/bottom of the screen or in the corners though. Anyone else had this happen? Hard registered as 95, soft as 102 FWIW.

I got a C at GCSE art and I can see why now ;-P so I won't make you suffer my rubbish plant and broom still life.

EDIT: Perhaps you could add a check for Phat/Lite at start up to set "suitable" defaults for the hard/soft pressing? Here is a thread on how to do it:
http://forum.gbadev.org/viewtopic.php?t=13532

Quirky wrote:

EDIT: Perhaps you could add a check for Phat/Lite at start up to set "suitable" defaults for the hard/soft pressing? Here is a thread on how to do it:
http://forum.gbadev.org/viewtopic.php?t=13532

There is no point in doing this. Suitable pressure settings differ per individual system. I tested this on about 8 different machines. However feature to save the pressets is planed, so you wouldnt need to set it up on your system more than once.

Hey Jesse,
As I posted earlier, your software ran OK on my R4DS but there?s is a small problem I noticed when using it in two DSs: when you draw on the bottom of the scren with a small brush it does not cover the area you are touch but a little upper. as you paint ao the bottom sides of the screen the circle mark goes upper, it gets mismatched to your pen by around 3 or four milimiters. do you know why that happens?

w4s4b1 wrote:

software ran OK on my R4DS but there?s is a small problem I noticed when using it in two DSs: when you draw on the bottom of the scren with a small brush it does not cover the area you are touch but a little upper. as you paint ao the bottom sides of the screen the circle mark goes upper, it gets mismatched to your pen by around 3 or four milimiters. do you know why that happens?

May I reply to you.
The problem you are describing is most probably caused by not reading stylus position calibration (the one you set in nds-firmware). Jesse knows about it and is going to work on it in one of the next versions. He said that some post earlier.

Hey guys! When posting your pictures here, could you please post .drw files aswell?
Its a lot of fun to watch as those pictures paint :)

[quote="jetboy"][quote="w4s4b1"]software ran OK on my R4DS but there?s is a small problem I noticed when using it in two DSs: when you draw on the bottom of the scren with a small brush it does not cover the area you are touch but a little upper. as you paint ao the bottom sides of the screen the circle mark goes upper, it gets mismatched to your pen by around 3 or four milimiters. do you know why that happens?[/quote]

May I reply to you.
The problem you are describing is most probably caused by not reading stylus position calibration (the one you set in nds-firmware). Jesse knows about it and is going to work on it in one of the next versions. He said that some post earlier.[/quote]

Well I be waiting for the next update, I already tested the calibration and the problem is still there with the software.
thank you for your answer anyway!

w4s4b1 wrote:

Well I be waiting for the next update, I already tested the calibration and the problem is still there with the software.

My i explain again. Normaly it works like this (highly simplified):

1. read calibration data from DS
2. initialize stylus reader with the data read in point 1.
3. the rest of the program

It seems like in colors part 1 is skipped or not working properly.
That means whatever way you calibrate your DS input, you will get the same result in colors. Or in other words - we cant do anything about it untill Jesse will fix that.

jetboy wrote:

Hey guys! When posting your pictures here, could you please post .drw files aswell?
Its a lot of fun to watch as those pictures paint :)

perhaps we should have a separate "Colors paintings"-thread on the "Off topic"-forum?

kusma wrote:

perhaps we should have a separate "Colors paintings"-thread on the "Off topic"-forum?

We will get better than that.
Collors web gallery is already in the making. ;)
(but dont expect working prototype before monday)

Hm, that's cool, but why are there 2 freaking blinking clocks on the top screen?

[edit]
OMFG, that's very very strange, you know where the clocks come from ? from the Ninja DS menu (although the clocks in colors appear more 'oval' and with nothing to show the time)

I've learned that the EZ4 has the same problem, although it just shows the ez4 logo..

That's very strange... I can't wait to know what is the source of the problem..

PS: note that the clock is only on the bottom screen in the begining, when I enter the homebrew launcher, the clock isn't there anymore (the bottom screen being used to show the homebrews while the top screen is unused)

Well, well, it seems like someone had graphical glitches too when loading from DS organize.. he said you should clear VRAM, I guess that would be a good idea.. I still wonder why there are 2 'clocks' and why they are fading out, fading in though

Last edited by mastertop101 on Fri Jun 29, 2007 9:13 pm; edited 3 times in total

mastertop101 wrote:

Hm, that's cool, but why are there 2 freaking blinking clocks on the top screen?

O_O never encountered anything like that. Maybe its a problem with video memory initialization.

Quote:

and why they are fading out, fading in though

It seemed strange to me too.

Last edited by jetboy on Fri Jun 29, 2007 9:17 pm; edited 2 times in total

Read my previous post again (edited),
plus, here's a video : http://mastertop101.free.fr/COLORS.wmv

mastertop101 wrote:

Read my previous post again (edited),
plus, here's a video : http://mastertop101.free.fr/COLORS.wmv

I think I have an idea of what is going on here thanks to this video, so I can fix it.

Thanks!

Jesse wrote:

>The Supercard problem
This is a real bummer and I'm not sure how to proceed on this one. Is there another homebrew app that saves .pngs (or other large files) that you could try to see if they have the same problem?

I don't think there is much you can do. AS far as I can tell the problem is with the DLDI patches for supercard not working properly. Yours is not the only app I have run into problems on my supercard with. Quake, Doom, and Lemmings all also have save problems after patching.

I fixed the problem yesterday by picking up a Max Media dock to use instead of my supercard. So far it has worked in almost all situations that the supercard failed in.

Thorprime wrote:

I don't think there is much you can do. AS far as I can tell the problem is with the DLDI patches for supercard not working properly. Yours is not the only app I have run into problems on my supercard with. Quake, Doom, and Lemmings all also have save problems after patching.

I fixed the problem yesterday by picking up a Max Media dock to use instead of my supercard. So far it has worked in almost all situations that the supercard failed in.

What super card were you using? Super Card SD (slot-2) or Super Card DS One (slot-1)?

What is strange that on DS ONE it saves 2 files properly and only have problem with the png.

Is the problem occurring with applications that are patched, or those that are made especially for Super Card too?

What problems did you have with lemmings? They seem working perfectly on my DS-One.

Saving problem for SuperCard DS One (slot-1) solved!

You need to patch it with the version 2 from this page:

http://dldi.drunkencoders.com/index.php?title=SuperCard_DS_%28microSD%29

I still dont know how to fix it for SuperCard SD (slot-2) or SuperCard SD Lite (slot-2) :(

The bad thing is i lost some data in the process (we need the "are you sure" feature when saving too - i saved a couple of times instead of loading).

Thanks Jesse, this is one of the greatest homebrew apps I've ever seen.

I'm finally able to draw/paint anywhere I go without any hassle - and for that, you're my newest bestest friend ;)

Here's a quick drawing - inspired by that scary girl from F.E.A.R.

[Images not permitted - Click here to view it]

A wonderful program! It doesn't have as many features as my Phidias but the drawing feeling and simplicity is just awesome. Very easy to create great art with your app. I will have a hard time if I try to compete with you :)

I just can't save, only load. Using SC miniSD with scsd_moon.dldi.

Tassu wrote:

I just can't save, only load. Using SC miniSD with scsd_moon.dldi.

Try those devices (my friend that had slot-2 Super Card device got rid of it recently so i cannot test it myself):

http://dldi.drunkencoders.com/index.php?title=SuperCard_Lite_%28SD_Card%29
http://dldi.drunkencoders.com/index.php?title=SuperCard_%28SD_Card%29
http://dldi.drunkencoders.com/index.php?title=SuperCard_%28Compact_Flash%29

Please report if any of them worked. Thank you.

i loved phidias earlier versions. still handy and i use it a lot for ideas etc.
colors even seems to rock more! reminded me of arteffect.
phidias is a more deluxe paint approach whereas colors is more of a painter /arteffect approach.
i find both useful and hope they both mature.
i do however find colors a lot more polished and hope the quality remains thruout dev.
good luck and thank you very much.
still not that wonderful app from the scanner darkly dude, but already awesome for starters.

New Feature Idea.

Instead of using the top screen to replicate the bottom one, why not use it for some display info, like color, size, brush, and the remaining space for an active zoom, so you could use with the zoom function more easily.

I'm just gettig a couple of Ideas, I'll actually do a quick mockup and send a pic.

Hmm, taking a bit longer than I envisioned. All for the better as It'll be more complete. Striving for adding the ideas of a couple of simple but powerfull featues, trying to keep with the general intent of the program. But I want to make them really simple to use.
_________________
DS-Xtreme 4Gb [Fw 1.1.2]

jetboy wrote:

What super card were you using? Super Card SD (slot-2) or Super Card DS One (slot-1)

I mentioned it before, forgot to repeat myself. This is a supercard lite (micro SD, slot-2)

Thorprime wrote:

I mentioned it before, forgot to repeat myself. This is a supercard lite (micro SD, slot-2)

Try patching with those drivers:
http://dldi.drunkencoders.com/index.php?title=SuperCard_%28SD_Card%29
http://dldi.drunkencoders.com/index.php?title=SuperCard_Lite_%28SD_Card%29
http://dldi.drunkencoders.com/index.php?title=SuperCard_%28Compact_Flash%29

Please report your results. Thank you.

@Tassu
I tried Phidias and i like it too. Actualy being technical type i get beter results form Phidias than from Colors. I grown up doing stuff for Commodore64 and i'm used to pixeling, while my painting skills are underdeveloped :)
You did really good job with Phidias. Thanx!

You two are my heroes. Although I'm a HORRIBLE horrible artist, I've been thinking about getting a Wacom for a while. Now, I know this will never be a replacement for the Cintiq, but...it's a lot cheaper! And I'm loving both programs.

And also, it's good that you two aren't being hostile to each other!

Thanks Tassu and Jesse!

Also, I noticed small bugs. Although I suppose the error is based on the DS hardware.
Both programs don't handle fast, repeated strokes very well. Although they do fine if I don't lift off the stylus, they can't seem to catch up with, say, a speedy crosshatching. I'm assuming it's the limitations of the DS hardware, though?

Tassu: Phidias also has a bug where if you Smudge the bottom of the screen, artifacts appear. (That is, using the smudge tool and dragging the stylus from bottom to top)It is as if there is a very thin black line on the bottom border. And yeah, the smudge always appears black, regardless of any color choices.(Note: only tested on 256x192.)
I'm not sure if this is exactly the most appropriate thread to mention this, though...

kidcodea wrote:

i loved phidias earlier versions.

It's interesting you say the "earlier" versions, because I too feel the same way. I noticed the pencil tool changed from the previous version. It will now show an opaque pencil stroke while the stylus is down, and darken it up once the stylus is lifted. This makes sketching very difficult, especially when creating shadows or thick lines. I found that to sketch as I did in previous builds, I had to create a new brush and then use the paintbrush instead of the pencil tool. The pencil tool adds a grain effect now, and I think that's what the problem is. With the right brush settings and opacity, I'm back to normal in Phideas again, so all is good.

After having a go with Colors, I found the difference between the two to be perfect. I now have to great outlets for whatever my creative mood is.

I quite enjoy the streamlined workflow of Colors, it's down right perfect IMHO. There's really not much I need to do or think about when I have to change things, and I value that because it lets me focus more on painting :)

Draft for Colors! web gallery is up.
At the moment you can reach it here: http://colors.brombra.net

There is not much at the moment but you can view all pictures you guys posted in this thread, plus you can upload new ones.

This is quick draft, so there is no error handling, so please be gentle.
Direct upload from DS is planned, but this is song of the future.
If you have any suggestions feel free to share.

Looking forward for more pictures from you all :)

uploaded one of mine http://colors.brombra.net/pictures/24/colors_slot1.png and its working nice.

thank you thank you thank you for making the ds a mini-cintiq :)
keep up the awesome work, ill upload more once i have more quality material.

ps: i miss at least a onestep back undo. is it planned? (sorry if it has been mentioned already)

btw i once showed this to tassu (phidias) so ill show it to you also, in case u dunno it. soon we will have my longtime deluxe paint dream on ds.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=C12oQalay9Q

now renamed http://www.flatblackfilms.com/DS.html inchworm.
the moment i can do onionskinned sprites alla dpaint on my ds i might start to unrust my game making skills :)

inchworm is more of the phidias territory then colors, but anyway, if u dunno it u might enjoy watchin it.

also some info http://www.dsfanboy.com/2007/03/12/fatbits-pocket-painter-mario-paint-for-the-ds/#comments

kidcodea - thanx for letting us know. It seems there is quite some competition in DS paint programs field :)

But i'm not writing for that - i wanted to thank those who are uploading pictures (awesome!), and say that until digg-it mechanism is in place, i ll make it so recent pictures show on top. I want to add zip support so you can download png, drw, tmb files at once.

EDIT: Added zip support to gallery so you can download png, drw, tmb files at once. It took me more then i expected to implement that. Do not expect next stage before next Monday.
_________________
Colors! gallery -> http://colors.collectingsmiles.com
Any questions? Try http://colors.collectingsmiles.com/faq.php first, or official forums http://forum.brombra.net

I have a wondefull artistic ideia for your application...

Blowing!!!

You could use the mic to for us to blow the area touched by the Stylus..

to make some effects like this

[Images not permitted - Click here to view it]

I want to try this inchworm
_________________
http://flickr.com/photos/stuffbox

yes, just like the blowing ballons on that mind training game, or the archeological part of that pokemon competitor game i cant recall the name of.

i like that suggestion. it would however need a toggle on button, else u couldnt really breath close while drawing ;)

tbh what i really miss as urgent in this app is... BANKS of slots. i need to save more :)

Thanks for this link...

http://colors.brombra.net

I clicked on it while I was at work and now I got busted for viewing pornography and also dsdev.org (one of my favorite sites) also got banned.

Good job! :o/

Even though I hate you right now, Colors is a really sweet program!

jetboy: You do know that there are legal issues with just copying the images other people draw onto another server? I own the copyrights to my pictures, and you can't just start redistributing them without permission. That being said, I'd like to hereby grant you the permission to redistribute the pictures I've posted in this thread as long as they are freely available to anyone without any sort of fees, but be aware that other people might be upset.

Is there some way I can update my pictures, like by adding drw- and tmb-files?

kusma wrote:

jetboy: You do know that there are legal issues with just copying the images other people draw onto another server? I own the copyrights to my pictures, and you can't just start redistributing them without permission. That being said, I'd like to hereby grant you the permission to redistribute the pictures I've posted in this thread as long as they are freely available to anyone without any sort of fees, but be aware that other people might be upset.

Sorry i was overenthusiastic. I wanted to make place where people could see all the pictures linked in this thread in one place. I had no bad intentions. I assumed if people wanted to put them in this thread they wouldnt mind putting them on Colors! gallery. Indeed that was not right. Sorry again.
EDIT: Already fixed. Wont happen again.

btw. Should i put any disclaimer on the upload page? Any ideas how should it sound?

Quote:

Is there some way I can update my pictures, like by adding drw- and tmb-files?

There will be user support added, you will be able to manage your own contribution. For now just upload them again and i will delete old versions.
Sorry again for invonvinience.
_________________
Colors! gallery -> http://colors.collectingsmiles.com
Any questions? Try http://colors.collectingsmiles.com/faq.php first, or official forums http://forum.brombra.net

kusma wrote:

jetboy: You do know that there are legal issues with just copying the images other people draw onto another server? I own the copyrights to my pictures, and you can't just start redistributing them without permission. That being said, I'd like to hereby grant you the permission to redistribute the pictures I've posted in this thread as long as they are freely available to anyone without any sort of fees, but be aware that other people might be upset.

Is there some way I can update my pictures, like by adding drw- and tmb-files?

Do you know you're placing your artwork into the public domain by posting them here? If you were to look at the terms and conditions here, you'd find that they are really vague, and protect no one without each party specifically implying their intentions/limitations/restrictions with each post. Who's got time for that?

Legally, this can go both ways if you guys wanted to push and shove about it, believe me, I've had court cases like this with my company already.

In the end, I think everything has sorted itself out amicably. Cheers!

Hey jet, thanks for the site.

I've uploaded my drawing a few moments ago but for some odd reason the .dwg file didn't show up (although I'm sure I attached it).

Also if you need any help with the site design feel free to PM me - I'd be glad to help.

Hey Shtroodle!
Excelent picture. Thank you for you offer, i will get back to it when we figure out what features will be on the page in some more finished version.
I'm tweaking those scripts whenever i find some time, but i had 3++ years break from php, so i need to relearn a lot of things on the way.

And to all that that needs to fix something in gallery - please upload fixed version and i will delete the other one. I'm refreshing gallery quite often, so i will notice.
_________________
Colors! gallery -> http://colors.collectingsmiles.com
Any questions? Try http://colors.collectingsmiles.com/faq.php first, or official forums http://forum.brombra.net

jetboy wrote:

I wanted to make place where people could see all the pictures linked in this thread in one place. I had no bad intentions. I assumed if people wanted to put them in this thread they wouldnt mind putting them on Colors! gallery. Indeed that was not right. Sorry again.
EDIT: Already fixed. Wont happen again.

That or have Colors! write out images with some sort of metadata that identifies the author and the license (e.g. Free Art License, Creative Commons Attribution, Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike, etc) that the author specifies.
_________________
-- Where is he?
-- Who?
-- You know, the human.
-- I think he moved to Tilwick.

jetboy wrote:

Sorry i was overenthusiastic. I wanted to make place where people could see all the pictures linked in this thread in one place. I had no bad intentions. I assumed if people wanted to put them in this thread they wouldnt mind putting them on Colors! gallery. Indeed that was not right. Sorry again.
EDIT: Already fixed. Wont happen again.

I think you misunderstood my intentions. I didn't want my pictures removed, I just wanted to warn you about the copyright-issue. Feel free to put them back up if you want to.

Quote:

btw. Should i put any disclaimer on the upload page? Any ideas how should it sound?

I think a simple "Images uploaded will be made available to the public" or something should suffice. The important part is to make it apparent that the pictures are put online. Perhaps you should state the intended use explicitly?

x999x wrote:

Do you know you're placing your artwork into the public domain by posting them here? If you were to look at the terms and conditions here, you'd find that they are really vague, and protect no one without each party specifically implying their intentions/limitations/restrictions with each post. Who's got time for that?

Actually, no, you're not. The terms on this site does not exclude you any copyrights, and copyrights are automatically given on any work made in most countries. There is no need to explicitly state your copyright on a work. Read the copyright article on wikipedia for more information.

I've been playing around with colours for a bit now, and I have to say that it continues to grow on me.

In any case, there are a couple of features that I think would be useful:

The first is the ability to name your images whatever you want when you save them.

The second is more of a niggle of mine. I'd like the images and so forth to be saved to the colors directory, or maybe a subdirectory (or even more pedantic, different folders for each drawing's files withing a /imgs/ subdirectory). I mostly suggest this because I really dislike clutter in my DS's folders.

kusma wrote:

I think you misunderstood my intentions. I didn't want my pictures removed, I just wanted to warn you about the copyright-issue. Feel free to put them back up if you want to.

Please dont make any drama out of it. I put those pictures there when there was no way to upload them. Now there is and everyone who wants to put one's pictures can do so. I work on the site for fun, so if there are any chances for getting into troubles i would gladly avoid them.

Please note that those pictures will be manipulated. First they are made into 256x192 "thumbnail", then both small and normal versions are compressed as jpg (65 quality for thumbs, 90 quality for normal ones). You still can download original png both as a separate link and in zip archive. I do it to conserve bandwith. With recent changes it uses 1/4 of the previous version bandwith, while there is no easily visible picture degradation. The bandwith is not a concern at the moment, but it will be in the long run.
_________________
Colors! gallery -> http://colors.collectingsmiles.com
Any questions? Try http://colors.collectingsmiles.com/faq.php first, or official forums http://forum.brombra.net

Last edited by jetboy on Fri Jul 06, 2007 11:22 am; edited 1 time in total

jetboy wrote:

Please dont make any drama out of it.

Uhm, how am I making a drama here? I just warned you that it was a possibility of copyright-issues.

kusma wrote:

I just warned you that it was a possibility of copyright-issues.

Thank you.
_________________
Colors! gallery -> http://colors.collectingsmiles.com
Any questions? Try http://colors.collectingsmiles.com/faq.php first, or official forums http://forum.brombra.net

x999x wrote:

Actually, no, you're not. The terms on this site does not exclude you any copyrights, and copyrights are automatically given on any work made in most countries. There is no need to explicitly state your copyright on a work. Read the copyright article on wikipedia for more information.

Yes, I did, as did my lawyer, and what you link to is just bullets for his gun in court, because it's riddled with stipulations and reads like a part-time college studen taking law classes wrote it :P Did you see the part about having to reside in certain countries to be afforded any rights at all? Ouch!

1 - Your work isn't safe, so post what you're comfortable sharing, period.

2- We're all friends here!

3- I'm sorry for carrying this on, I just wanted to chime in because I recently went thru thsi nightmare with my company!

4- Sorry!!

can u plz fix the ratio on my dog pic plz? tx

jetboy wrote:

The bandwitch is not a concern at the moment, but it will be in the long run.

...the ... bandwitch?? It's good that you say shes not marauding at the moment, but the second part of the sentence gives me chills... I'll get you my pretty, and your little instruments too!

*AHEM* Yeah, so, anyway, sorry to be the grammar police, but the correct spelling is bandwidth. Unless your spelling is the foreign form from another language that I'm not familiar with.

Just tried your program, partly because I didn't want this post to be entirely off topic, but I also enjoyed Phidias so I thought I'd have a go. Both this and Phidias have their strengths, and I daresay I like this one better ;)
_________________
If I use a term wrong or something then feel free to correct, I?m not much of a programmer.

Original DS Phat obtained on day of release + flashme v7
Supercard: miniSD, Kingston 1GB, Kingston 2GB
Ralink chipset PCI NIC

Dood77 wrote:

*AHEM* Yeah, so, anyway, sorry to be the grammar police, but the correct spelling is bandwidth. Unless your spelling is the foreign form from another language that I'm not familiar with.

Sorry, i'm not natvie speaker, so my language is not perfect. I try to use it anyway as this is the best way to learn. I learned correct spelling of the bandwith now. Thank you.

Quote:

Just tried your program, partly because I didn't want this post to be entirely off topic, but I also enjoyed Phidias so I thought I'd have a go. Both this and Phidias have their strengths, and I daresay I like this one better ;)

ehem, this is not my program, i'm only responsible for web gallery and i'm overactive in the forum.
Autor of the program is Jesse (look www.collectingsmiles.com/colors for more details).
_________________
Colors! gallery -> http://colors.collectingsmiles.com
Any questions? Try http://colors.collectingsmiles.com/faq.php first, or official forums http://forum.brombra.net

jetboy wrote:

Dood77 wrote:

*AHEM* Yeah, so, anyway, sorry to be the grammar police, but the correct spelling is bandwidth. Unless your spelling is the foreign form from another language that I'm not familiar with.

Sorry, i'm not natvie speaker, so my language is not perfect. I try to use it anyway as this is the best way to learn. I learned correct spelling of the bandwith now. Thank you.

Quick, change that "new" spelling of bandwidth before he sees you! :P

kidcodea wrote:

can u plz fix the ratio on my dog pic plz? tx

Your picture is distorted because you apply additional image manipulation in some other software than colors and save picture of different proportions.

The Jesse's original idea behind the webpage was so people can send their images via wifi straight from DS, and download other's pictures back to DS to watch how they were paint. That part is not ready yet and will take some time to complete. You have to upload files manualy, but we still want people to be able to get pictures copied to DS manualy and be able to read them on DS. If one does not want to put drw file, that's a pitty, but that is one's choice. We will rather take picture without drw file than not take picture at all, but we encourage you to upload them.

Watching as those pictures were paint is both fun, and a learning experience.

I havent got reply from Jesse on this topic as he travels alot recently and is away from his computer, but maybe there will be a way to set in DS which way the image should be viewed, so i could read it when you upload your file and I could display it properly on the website, while leaving proper png, so it can read properly on DS.

I understand your desire as an artist to be able to manipulate your picture as you like before you publish them, however we want untouched Colors! pictures in Colors! gallery if possible.
_________________
Colors! gallery -> http://colors.collectingsmiles.com
Any questions? Try http://colors.collectingsmiles.com/faq.php first, or official forums http://forum.brombra.net

oofrab wrote:

Quick, change that "new" spelling of bandwidth before he sees you! :P

I think my english is still beter than "all your base are belnog to us".
However spelling is not the topic of this forum, so please cut it down. Thank you.
_________________
Colors! gallery -> http://colors.collectingsmiles.com
Any questions? Try http://colors.collectingsmiles.com/faq.php first, or official forums http://forum.brombra.net

[quote="jetboy"]

kidcodea wrote:

I understand your desire as an artist to be able to manipulate your picture as you like before you publish them, however we want untouched Colors! pictures in Colors! gallery if possible.

then please remove it please. thanks.
all i did was a crop btw.
displays fine in all other websites anyway, picasa etc

kidcodea wrote:

then please remove it please. thanks.
all i did was a crop btw.
displays fine in all other websites anyway, picasa etc

I deleted it with regret as i love your pictures, espeially
Tuareg Nazareno.
I expected all you did was crop.
The problem is i assumed that all pictures come straight from Colors! and didnt put the code to scale them with correct aspect ratio.

Anyway, i have a feeling i hijacked the thread. Its now more about gallery than it is about Colors! Sorry, about that. I ll post and adres here to the forum about the Colors gallery when i get one.
_________________
Colors! gallery -> http://colors.collectingsmiles.com
Any questions? Try http://colors.collectingsmiles.com/faq.php first, or official forums http://forum.brombra.net

Hi Great program!
Really looking forward to a better UI, I sometimes press 'save' instead of 'load' ...

I've added my pictures to the gallery , but the first one I forgot my name, so I retried but now it's double posted ... I feel stupid now!

There are some great artistz around! Still that pussycat from Mattias Snygg blows my mind!

Edit: Jetboy thanks for your enthusiasm!

Last edited by madwurmz.com on Sat Jul 07, 2007 12:24 am; edited 2 times in total

The program is awesome. It is clean, smart, and light. Its really an inspiration to draw.

I dont read all this forum thread, but I want to report some problems, some I saw reported earlier, but just to reporting anyway...

-the png does not appear correctely (yes, I am using a supercard) . Maybe export to bmp can fix the prob?

-when the draw is a little more worked, the program, when saving, does not save. Instead, stay sayng "saving" ad eternium.

But the program itself is great. Nice application for ds. I did not knew that ds had touch sensitive input. I cant wait the next version, and sometimes I draw somethings just for fun. Its very good.

Will there be an "Undo" feature in the future?

I don't mind not having one, just asking :)

Oh, I added a piccy, sorry the drw is so huge, i forgot what the character looked like and was trying to remember it all as I drew :P

leonardozimbres wrote:

-the png does not appear correctely (yes, I am using a supercard) . Maybe export to bmp can fix the prob?
-when the draw is a little more worked, the program, when saving, does not save. Instead, stay sayng "saving" ad eternium.

Are you using DLDI patches from this page?
http://chishm.drunkencoders.com/DLDI/

Please don't - they dont work for SuperCard so well.

Instead use patches from
http://dldi.drunkencoders.com/index.php?title=Category:Devices

If you are using SuperCard DS-ONE Version 2 is working right.
http://dldi.drunkencoders.com/index.php?title=SuperCard_DS_%28microSD%29

If you are using slot 2 CuperCard - first try dldi patches fot you model (flash, sd or lite), and if it does not work, try patches for other models of SuperCard. Please report your results. Thank you.

SuperCard Flash: http://dldi.drunkencoders.com/index.php?title=SuperCard_%28Compact_Flash%29

SuperCard SD (use moonshell version)
http://dldi.drunkencoders.com/index.php?title=SuperCard_%28SD_Card%29

SuperCard Lite SD (if this not work - try the moonshell version)
http://dldi.drunkencoders.com/index.php?title=SuperCard_Lite_%28SD_Card%29

Hey Jesse! Maybe its not so bad idea to put prepatched versions for different devices on the page? I can help with that.

x999x wrote:

Will there be an "Undo" feature in the future?

AFAIK there is no real undo planned, but maybe there will be a way to stop the replay, and start painting from that point on. Annoying enough not to use it too often, but working right enough to fix problems in serious cases.

Quote:

Oh, I added a piccy, sorry the drw is so huge, i forgot what the character looked like and was trying to remember it all as I drew :P

That is perfectly ok.

Question for Jesse. As for the drw files, how big can they be? The largest i have seen so far is 960KB (Sleeping Kayu by Shtroodle http://colors.brombra.net/details.php?i=40 ).

Maybe some kind of compression would be appropriate? Something simple so it would load/save/send via WiFi fast. On the other hand it might be not worth the trouble. Btw. at the moment website can accept files as big as 1444000 bytes, but i can up the limit if needed. How big drw file can be fit into DS memory?
_________________
Colors! gallery -> http://colors.collectingsmiles.com
Any questions? Try http://colors.collectingsmiles.com/faq.php first, or official forums http://forum.brombra.net

Hey Jesse,

I am having a lot of fun with Colors. Thanks for that.

I am noticing a bug though. Sorry if this has been mentioned already but I occasionally get a stray line that draws from the right side of the screen to my current drawing position. I have actually seen this in other games where they let you doodle a logo. In Tony Hawk American sk8land (sp?) the logo editor has this problem much more than Colors seems to have. Has anyone else experienced this? I thought perhaps it was reading pressure on the ds as a screen press although I don't think I was touching the side of the screen.

Also I noticed the eyedropper and the pan are flipped on my buttons... i.e. the buttons in the diagram labeled as pan are the eyedropper and vice versa.

Cancerboy wrote:

Hey Jesse,

I am having a lot of fun with Colors. Thanks for that.

I am noticing a bug though. Sorry if this has been mentioned already but I occasionally get a stray line that draws from the right side of the screen to my current drawing position. I have actually seen this in other games where they let you doodle a logo. In Tony Hawk American sk8land (sp?) the logo editor has this problem much more than Colors seems to have. Has anyone else experienced this? I thought perhaps it was reading pressure on the ds as a screen press although I don't think I was touching the side of the screen.

Also I noticed the eyedropper and the pan are flipped on my buttons... i.e. the buttons in the diagram labeled as pan are the eyedropper and vice versa.

I did a sketch lastnight (Sheer-Kahn on gallery site) to see if I could "deal" with the off-center brush when it's smaller than about 5 pixels, and it's not that bad. After about 10 minutes you start to get a "feel" for it, and if you can actually believe it, I prefer it this way..

Why? Well, this isn't exactly pencil to paper, and when doing stuff in tight places it's almost impossible to see beyond the stubby NDS Stylus tip, as opposed to my mechanical .05mm pencil tip. With the off-center, I can carve away pixels without having to wonder what's below my stylus.

One suggestion would be to allow for handle points on the brush, either the corners or the middle depending on the user's preference. Additionally, a checkbox to show or hide the outline of your brush would be very very helpful.

Cancerboy wrote:

I am noticing a bug though. Sorry if this has been mentioned already but I occasionally get a stray line that draws from the right side of the screen to my current drawing position. I have actually seen this in other games where they let you doodle a logo. In Tony Hawk American sk8land (sp?) the logo editor has this problem much more than Colors seems to have. Has anyone else experienced this? I thought perhaps it was reading pressure on the ds as a screen press although I don't think I was touching the side of the screen.

Stylus jumping is a problem with the touch screen. You can see people coping with it in some of the drw files on the gallery (ragdoll by gibo for example). There are threads discussing it and how to over come it. As you say, it is present in some commercial games.

Unreasonable request/suggestion:
One thing I would like to see on the gallery website is a drw file viewer. Maybe a Java applet or something that can playback the drw file. Being Java it could easily be adapted into a PC app for producing high res pictures.

@Jetboy

Is there a way to delete our submissions? I just realized I uploaded the wrong saved version :(

I don't want to post the correct version of my drawing because it will look like a double post :P

Can you help?

masscat wrote:

Stylus jumping is a problem with the touch screen. You can see people coping with it in some of the drw files on the gallery (ragdoll by gibo for example). There are threads discussing it and how to over come it. As you say, it is present in some commercial games.

Thanks masscat

masscat wrote:

Unreasonable request/suggestion:
One thing I would like to see on the gallery website is a drw file viewer. Maybe a Java applet or something that can playback the drw file. Being Java it could easily be adapted into a PC app for producing high res pictures.

I would say it is reasonable. :)
Something like that has been already planned. But it will take some time.
_________________
Colors! gallery -> http://colors.collectingsmiles.com
Any questions? Try http://colors.collectingsmiles.com/faq.php first, or official forums http://forum.brombra.net

Hello,

first of all: Great tool! I love it.

If it just would work with my card:

I'm using an 2GB N-Card, but I've the same problems like the SuperCard-Users: I cannot save! I've patched the tool with the DLDI-File for my card, but the only result is that i now can load pictures, but still no saving. I also tried the SuperCard DLDIs, but that didn't work either.

I also updated the system of the card, but still no changes.

At the DLDIWiki there's an info that says "Can be set Read-only", but I don't know what to to with that sentence. The DLDI-Tools (GUI and Command-Line) are not offering options to activate/deactivate a parameter like that.

Any suggestions?

Infos about the N-Card may be found here: http://www.superdslink.com/

Greetings,

Mitch

Edit: And for further updates: A "Undo Last Stroke" would be great. No more, no less. :D

3x13 wrote:

I'm using an 2GB N-Card, but I've the same problems like the SuperCard-Users: I cannot save! I've patched the tool with the DLDI-File for my card, but the only result is that i now can load pictures, but still no saving. I also tried the SuperCard DLDIs, but that didn't work either.

I also updated the system of the card, but still no changes.

That seems like a problem with DLDI driver. Not much that Jesse can do about it. That is a pain. All you can do is wait for updated drivers, or get new card - i would suggest R4 or SuperCard DS-ONE.

Or you can try drivers form the http://chishm.drunkencoders.com/DLDI/ page. They might be right unlike SC ones.

Have you tried DLDI drivers from official page?

Quote:

At the DLDIWiki there's an info that says "Can be set Read-only", but I don't know what to to with that sentence. The DLDI-Tools (GUI and Command-Line) are not offering options to activate/deactivate a parameter like that.

That wont help you anyway i'm afraid.
_________________
Colors! gallery -> http://colors.collectingsmiles.com
Any questions? Try http://colors.collectingsmiles.com/faq.php first, or official forums http://forum.brombra.net

Hi, thanks for this nice app. Here are the results of my tests.

I have a SCL (english), just upgraded to 1.81 english firmware (doesn't seems to change anything though, I did some tests before and after).

For other apps, I use SuperCard Lite (SD Card) DLDI by brisssou (2007-01-19), and it works well.

Sometimes I got a white screen when starting Colors, then the FS is corrupted. I don't really get the context... It seems it depends on other files around.
Though I format when there is a pb and checked for bad blocks once.

Those load but write nothing:
SuperCard Lite (SD Card) by brisssou 2007-01-19
SuperCard (SD Card) by MoonLight 2007-02-14

This one write something broken:
SuperCard (SD Card) by Chishm 2006-12-25

Hope it helps

Last edited by errabes on Sun Jul 08, 2007 5:12 pm; edited 1 time in total

Hey jetboy, thanks for your reply.

jetboy wrote:

All you can do is wait for updated drivers, or get new card - i would suggest R4 or SuperCard DS-ONE.

Hmm, an other card is not an option. Too expensive. So I'll wait and hope... :)

jetboy wrote:

Or you can try drivers form the http://chishm.drunkencoders.com/DLDI/ page. They might be right unlike SC ones.

You mean by random? Just download all of them and check them out? I already did that with four of them, but all were worse (also cannot load).

jetboy wrote:

Have you tried DLDI drivers from official page?

You mean from the official page of my card? Yes, I have. I also tried if there's a difference while using the chinese version of the DLDI-Tool, but no...

jetboy wrote:

That wont help you anyway i'm afraid. (Context: The "Can be set Read-only"-Hint)

Sure? Because I am afraid that the DLDI is set to "Read only" by default. Because I' ve just found out, I've the same problem with ScummVMDS (Lucas Arts Adventures on DS): Only loading.

3x13 wrote:

You mean by random? Just download all of them and check them out? I already did that with four of them, but all were worse (also cannot load).

No point in trying random. They wont work, but if the version for your card on that page and on the viki was differen it was worth a try.
For Supercard those versions are different. And there are multiple versions for multiple Supercards. In case of your card there is only one driver i suppose.

Quote:

Sure? Because I am afraid that the DLDI is set to "Read only" by default. Because I' ve just found out, I've the same problem with ScummVMDS (Lucas Arts Adventures on DS): Only loading.

I'm not quite sure, but i presume that this option is for writing files and setting Read only flag on them. That would prevent them from being overwritten but not from being created in first place.

I just bought 2MB card (Kingston it is supposed to be of japanese origin but i'm not sure if it isn't counterfied) and i cannot get png files to write properly with neither of the drivers versions for my card. What's strange drw saves properly, aswell as tmb. So it looks like there is a problem only with png saving. It might be something about the way writing is implemented. It might be a difference if it writes whole blocks, or byte after byte. Those are just guesses, however at least its some idea Jesse will be able to investigate. I will probably also get my hands on slot-2 super card so i ll investigate that too.

edit: Phidias saves files with no problem on this 2MB card.
edit2: strange - once it saves right on the 2MB card @_@, then not again...

I will also sum this up and write about it in DLDI thread, so maybe we will get some answers there. But i'll do it tommorow.

oh. btw, can you 3x13 see if it writes drw files properly in any mode on your card? (you can do it by preparing proper 512x384 png and overwriting corrupted one on the card - it will load wrong picture, but you should be able to see original one when you use repaint option)
_________________
Colors! gallery -> http://colors.collectingsmiles.com
Any questions? Try http://colors.collectingsmiles.com/faq.php first, or official forums http://forum.brombra.net

Hum, seems like my last entry is missing... Why? Deleted by anyone?

Doesn't matter, just a new update about the N-Card:

I found out there are many different versions of the N-Card and I managed to find an more actual firmware. Including an auto-DLDI-patcher. After upgrading I can save my pictures - but the PNG is corrupted. The thumb looks fine, the DRW I don't know, because I cannot load corrupted PNGs.

I can now save in ScummVMDS without problems and I also can save PNGs in DSOrganizers Scribble-Pad.

The saving process is very slow, so maybe there's some kind of time-limit which causes the corruption?

3x13 wrote:

After upgrading I can save my pictures - but the PNG is corrupted. The thumb looks fine, the DRW I don't know, because I cannot load corrupted PNGs.

jetboy wrote:

you can do it by preparing proper 512x384 png and overwriting corrupted one on the card - it will load wrong picture, but you should be able to see original one when you use repaint option

Or you can sent those drw files to me (follow the link in the colors! gallery) and i ll check them. I can post them in gallery if they will be ok and if you agree. Otherwise i ll just send fixed png to you.
_________________
Colors! gallery -> http://colors.collectingsmiles.com
Any questions? Try http://colors.collectingsmiles.com/faq.php first, or official forums http://forum.brombra.net

Last edited by jetboy on Mon Jul 09, 2007 3:26 pm; edited 2 times in total

Colors! is simply one of my favourite homebrew programs out there at this moment :D, and so I tried to make somewhat if a logo if Jesse likes it :shrug:

[Images not permitted - Click here to view it]

so yeah, I'll keep on using it no matter what :P

Hey jetboy,

aah - now I got what you meant with that. Did it and the DRW works fine. It's "just" the broken PNG.

That means, there's hope with the next update, right? :) Either the new Colors! version or the next generation of my firmware.

So meanwhile if i get to create a nice pic, I'll send you the draw file. :D

Tassu wrote:

A wonderful program! It doesn't have as many features as my Phidias but the drawing feeling and simplicity is just awesome. Very easy to create great art with your app. I will have a hard time if I try to compete with you :)

Thank you very much, your compliment mean a lot to me. As people have said it two very different so there is definitly room for both of us. :)

I'm very happy to see that Colors! has taken a life of it's own. I've been away for a while and I'm stunned to see eveything that has been happening here. A huge (!) thanks to jetboy for creating the gallery, and I think we'll see more of that in the future.

I'm still off traveling so I can't create an update for all of you (well, actually the last version was uploaded from a hotel room, but that is an exception :), but next week will be dedictated to solving all the problems and implementing new features, so hang on until then.

Dudu.exe wrote:

I have a wondefull artistic ideia for your application...

Blowing!!!

I love this idea. It'll definitly go down in some way on my todo-list. Thanks!

alfatreze wrote:

New Feature Idea.

Instead of using the top screen to replicate the bottom one, why not use it for some display info, like color, size, brush, and the remaining space for an active zoom, so you could use with the zoom function more easily.

Yes, I've been thinking a bit along these lines as well. The current usage of the top-screen could be better. Let me know if you finish your mock-up!

Thanatos-Drive wrote:

Both programs don't handle fast, repeated strokes very well. Although they do fine if I don't lift off the stylus, they can't seem to catch up with, say, a speedy crosshatching. I'm assuming it's the limitations of the DS hardware, though?

Well, not really. At least in Colors! it's mostly a performance issue, where a lot of calculations are done when you release the stylus from the screen. It's pretty optimized already but it is possible that I can do some more work on it to make it more seamless.

kidcodea wrote:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=C12oQalay9Q
...
inchworm is more of the phidias territory then colors, but anyway, if u dunno it u might enjoy watchin it.

That was very interesting. Thanks for the info!

jetboy wrote:

but maybe there will be a way to set in DS which way the image should be viewed, so i could read it when you upload your file and I could display it properly on the website, while leaving proper png, so it can read properly on DS.

Yes. That sounds like feature worth implementing. On the list!

jetboy wrote:

I understand your desire as an artist to be able to manipulate your picture as you like before you publish them, however we want untouched Colors! pictures in Colors! gallery if possible.

That would be my preference as well. I've been also been considering some form of simple tools for this directly in Colors!.

jetboy wrote:

Maybe its not so bad idea to put prepatched versions for different devices on the page? I can help with that.

That would of course be nice. :)

jetboy wrote:

As for the drw files, how big can they be? The largest i have seen so far is 960KB (Sleeping Kayu by Shtroodle http://colors.brombra.net/details.php?i=40 ).

Hmm, that's strange. I've have a static allocation of 256KB for the drw-files. If you create something bigger than that (about 30000+ brush strokes), it stops recording. But it's not like I have debugged it very much. :) And yes, it's probably a good idea to improve this with compression and stuff in the future.

Cancerboy wrote:

Also I noticed the eyedropper and the pan are flipped on my buttons... i.e. the buttons in the diagram labeled as pan are the eyedropper and vice versa.

My mistake. Thanks!

x999x wrote:

I did a sketch lastnight (Sheer-Kahn on gallery site) to see if I could "deal" with the off-center brush when it's smaller than about 5 pixels, and it's not that bad. After about 10 minutes you start to get a "feel" for it, and if you can actually believe it, I prefer it this way..

Hmm. That comment will give me some headaches. :)
I understand what you mean though and while I definitly will fix the calibration problems as a top priority I will try to think of a way to do what you are suggesting in a nice way.

masscat wrote:

One thing I would like to see on the gallery website is a drw file viewer. Maybe a Java applet or something that can playback the drw file. Being Java it could easily be adapted into a PC app for producing high res pictures.

That's a good idea. Too bad I don't know Java. :) But I've been meaning to learn Haxe so you never know...

Xtreme984 wrote:

Colors! is simply one of my favourite homebrew programs out there at this moment :D, and so I tried to make somewhat if a logo if Jesse likes it :shrug:

[Images not permitted - Click here to view it]

Thanks! Cool logo. I really like the idea of having the ! in Colors! as a paintbrush. While I've got some other plans for a logo in the future, yours is much better than my current scribble, so if I may use it as a temporary one I will!

Jesse wrote:

... so if I may use it as a temporary one I will!

of course, I made it jsut for that purpose Jesse :), in Photoshop CS3 for that fact, I'd have created it in Colors! but not enough familiarized with painting techniques for that ;P

Ouch. Sorry for the 10 replys in a row, but hopefully some of you got some of your questions answered. As I said, I hope I can release a new feature-packed and super bug-fixed version sometimes next week. My top two bugs to be fixed are the calibration thing and the DLDI problem with Supercard. The last one is hard since I don't have one to test with, but I at least have one ideas I will try.

Keep them pictures coming!

Jesse wrote:

x999x wrote:

I did a sketch lastnight (Sheer-Kahn on gallery site) to see if I could "deal" with the off-center brush when it's smaller than about 5 pixels, and it's not that bad. After about 10 minutes you start to get a "feel" for it, and if you can actually believe it, I prefer it this way..

Hmm. That comment will give me some headaches. :)
I understand what you mean though and while I definitly will fix the calibration problems as a top priority I will try to think of a way to do what you are suggesting in a nice way.

Thank You Jesse ;)

I remember this being referred to as a "Brush Handle."

Therefore you can hold the brush in the middle, as is traditionally done, or by it's "handle" in the corner, which is what the current version of Colors appears to do when the brush is < 5 pixels.

Great application, I've learned great techniques from watching the playback of others. Thanks to all and especially Jesse and Jetboy!

Jesse wrote:

masscat wrote:

One thing I would like to see on the gallery website is a drw file viewer. Maybe a Java applet or something that can playback the drw file. Being Java it could easily be adapted into a PC app for producing high res pictures.

That's a good idea. Too bad I don't know Java. :) But I've been meaning to learn Haxe so you never know...

I like Java as it is available for a number of platforms (I use Linux mainly). If you post the format of the .drw files I may have a look at doing an app and/or applet.

Great homebrew! Better than lots of DS games! :)
Thanks and good luck with future updates

go to youtube.com and try looking for DS colors :)
_________________
Colors! gallery -> http://colors.collectingsmiles.com
Any questions? Try http://colors.collectingsmiles.com/faq.php first, or official forums http://forum.brombra.net

jetboy wrote:

go to youtube.com and try looking for DS colors :)

Awsome! This makes me want to fix the export-to-video feature. I can't wait to get back. :)

masscat wrote:

If you post the format of the .drw files I may have a look at doing an app and/or applet.

The format is currently super-simple, but it will be expanded. It's just a file containing 4-byte commands with this format.

But you probably need a lot more info to recreate an image (the exact method of how brushes look and how they are applied on the screen for example), so I wouldn't recommend giving it a try. :)

Jesse wrote:

But you probably need a lot more info to recreate an image (the exact method of how brushes look and how they are applied on the screen for example), so I wouldn't recommend giving it a try. :)

I quite like the idea of writing it without knowing and seeing how it changes the pictures :)

masscat wrote:

I quite like the idea of writing it without knowing and seeing how it changes the pictures :)

Hmm... the results might be quite interesting. Especialy if you use totaly different brushes.
_________________
Colors! gallery -> http://colors.collectingsmiles.com
Any questions? Try http://colors.collectingsmiles.com/faq.php first, or official forums http://forum.brombra.net

What about doing it in Flash?

I found something like this online last year and luckily saved the bookmark of my doodle :P

I would love to see something like that added to the Colors Gallery. It would rock!

http://artpad.art.com/gallery/?iulb4f1hxmaw

x999x wrote:

What about doing it in Flash?

Yes. That is why I wanted to use Haxe. It can compile for Flash.

Here is version 0 of a Java drw file playback app. It can easily be adapted to be an applet.
Run it with:

Code:

java -jar ColorsDraw.jar

The source code is here.

It does the drawing using the Java drawing functions and my guess at the brush size so the results are a little different :) and most of the features are not implemented, but demonstrates the idea.

NOTE: the first colour at the start of playback will not be picked up.

I have an aversion to Flash as Adobe's support of Linux (and other OSs) is sometimes not the best.

That's an understatement :-)

Adobe doesn't seem to care much for Linux's existence. Period.
_________________
"My boot, your face..." - Attributed to OOPMan, Emperor of Eroticon VI

You can find my NDS homebrew projects here...

Please refrain yourself from platform wars here. Thank you.
_________________
Colors! gallery -> http://colors.collectingsmiles.com
Any questions? Try http://colors.collectingsmiles.com/faq.php first, or official forums http://forum.brombra.net

Hej, folks,
Thanks for this wonderful ap: I got so anthousiast that I bought a DS just for it!

Despite the great job a few improvements would be tremendous:

1) The possibility to delete a saved picture, it's already fine to be able to overwrite an old one but:

2) Different GUI for 'load' and 'save' screens: they are very similar
and if you didn't click that well you can overwrite a file instead of
loading it. OK, the title at the top of the screen says it all, but
sometime you don't pay enough attention and you screw up...
Maybe take apart 'save' and 'load' and cast 'calibration' between them?

3) more slots in the save/load screens even if the thumbs get smaller.

4) The PAN fonction in zoom mode is not explained in the buttons configuration screen at launch nor is the 'pipette'.

5) to have a 'left-hand' and 'right-hand' set up would free some buttons instead of having them both at the same time.

6) daydreaming: 'undo' button...

Thanks again for this great tool! Long live Konungariket Sverige!
_________________
..................... \\\
..................... o____o

..................... f a b a r

My mistake : PAN and 'pipette' / eyedropper are explained but they are mixted up on my DS (Colors!v1.02): eyedropper is right and PAN is left button contrary to the button mapping screen.

By the way:

7) Background color setup (yes I'm lazy...)

^__^
_________________
..................... \\\
..................... o____o

..................... f a b a r

Fabar wrote:

Hej, folks,
Thanks for this wonderful ap: I got so anthousiast that I bought a DS just for it!

You are not the only one, i know 4 people who bought DS just because of collors, Jesse has some friends who did that too :)

btw. Did you checked Colors! gallery? We are waiting for some pictures from you.

Edit: You are fast! :) Excelent picture, i hope you will have some more meetings at work :)
_________________
Colors! gallery -> http://colors.collectingsmiles.com
Any questions? Try http://colors.collectingsmiles.com/faq.php first, or official forums http://forum.brombra.net

This is absolutely the killer homebrew app to have! It seriously occupies a lot of my free time. Jesse, you just saved me 3000 dollars from buying a cintiq. HUZZAH!

The only issue I run into is the calibration of the stylus. Near the edges of the screen it tends to be off by a lot. Otherwise it's pure gravy!

Some feature requests (maybe its overkill)

Soft/Hard Brush options - For those puffy clouds we love to draw :)
levels function - I know this was mentioned before
smudge tool
Color Dodge - This might be overkill but having the option to choose the blend of your current color.

And please no undo, since when do artists have a ctrl-z at their arsenal?

Also, Jetboy, awesome idea for an online gallery.
Now I'm no php genius but I play one on TV... but is there a possibility to add a registration feature. That way it would be easier to group pictures under artists and would be easier to delete pictures.

Oh, and how about a comment feature. Yeah I'm asking for a lot ;)

Narazie

kprojekt wrote:

Also, Jetboy, awesome idea for an online gallery.

Actually it was Jens' original idea to have a gallery. I'm merely implementing it when the time allows. And both features you mentioned are already planned.

Trzymaj się!
_________________
Colors! gallery -> http://colors.collectingsmiles.com
Any questions? Try http://colors.collectingsmiles.com/faq.php first, or official forums http://forum.brombra.net

Fabar wrote:

Despite the great job a few improvements would be tremendous:

1-3 should be fixed when I get the new UI in.

Fabar wrote:

5) to have a 'left-hand' and 'right-hand' set up would free some buttons instead of having them both at the same time.

Perhaps, but I'm not a big fan of many buttons for different functions. We'll see. :)

kprojekt wrote:

The only issue I run into is the calibration of the stylus. Near the edges of the screen it tends to be off by a lot. Otherwise it's pure gravy!

We discussed this a bit earlier, and the consensus was not to try to do calibration for that. Instead the plan is to allow panning outside the borders of the image, and that is coming up.

Jesse wrote:

kprojekt wrote:

The only issue I run into is the calibration of the stylus. Near the edges of the screen it tends to be off by a lot. Otherwise it's pure gravy!

We discussed this a bit earlier, and the consensus was not to try to do calibration for that. Instead the plan is to allow panning outside the borders of the image, and that is coming up.

I seem to get an issue near the bottom of the screen. The brush is offset when near the bottom of the screen and not the canvas otherwise its center using it anywhere else. Would this be an issue with my particular DS console ?

I have updated my Java application and made it into an applet too.

Get the updated .jar file here.

Get the updated source file.

You can see a test page with the applet on at http://masscat.afraid.org/ninds/Colors/test_page.html.

This version implements buffering of the playback sequence meaning that you can move about within the sequence smoothly. This does introduce a delay whilst the .drw file loads and generates this buffering.

EDIT: it was pointed out to me that I credited Mattias Snygg as the creator of Colors! on my test page. I have now corrected it to be Jens Andersson. Apologies to Jens.

Last edited by masscat on Fri Jul 13, 2007 11:54 am; edited 1 time in total

1) About left-handed and right-handed configuration:
Even if there is a will to avoid too many buttons (which is highly understable), it would prevent a small problem: (maybe I have heavy hands but) it occurs that while drawing I'm pressing the right buttons set with the edge of the hand, panning or 'eyedropping' unwillingly. Being able to switch off those buttons would let to rest the hand on the NDS while drawing...

2) I wouldn't be a pro-undo if this kind of 'interpolation line' didn't happen:
[Images not permitted - Click here to view it]
when it does stretch across an Almost-Finished-Masterpiece it hurts (a little).

But maybe I'm the only one to meet this kind of misadventure? Colors! rocks anyway.
~ : )
_________________
..................... \\\
..................... o____o

..................... f a b a r

Fabar wrote:

2) I wouldn't be a pro-undo if this kind of 'interpolation line' didn't happen:
[Images not permitted - Click here to view it]
when it does stretch across an Almost-Finished-Masterpiece it hurts (a little).

That is just a bug in my Java app/applet.

But the 'interpolation line' does happen while using 'Colors!'
For example check the replay of this one:
http://colors.brombra.net/details.php?i=56
You'll witness the phenomenon.
_________________
..................... \\\
..................... o____o

..................... f a b a r

They are two different problems.

The lines jumping across the screen in Colors! is the result of a stylus jumping problem caused by the way the software reads and uses the touchscreen. By software I do not mean Colors! itself but the lower level library (libnds or similar). There are threads discussing it and how to over come it. It is also present in some commercial games.

The reason for the lines in my Java app/applet is me not correctly maintaining the render state and then using (0,0) as the endpoint of a line.

It's called stylus jumping...
_________________
http://licklick.wordpress.com

I thought I'd try a smaller image. Made a 256x192 .bmp in DSOrganize, copied it to the root and renamed it. It worked fine aside from graphical glitches outside the image borders and screwing up the playback.

Can't upload it to brombra, of course, as it says it wasn't made in colors. kinda ugly pic (proof-of-concept) anyway.

gbadev.org forum archive

DS homebrew announcements > Colors!

#132241 - Jesse - Mon Jun 25, 2007 12:52 am

#132243 - kusma - Mon Jun 25, 2007 1:20 am

#132244 - Jesse - Mon Jun 25, 2007 1:29 am

#132246 - kusma - Mon Jun 25, 2007 1:50 am

#132249 - Jesse - Mon Jun 25, 2007 2:02 am

#132260 - moket - Mon Jun 25, 2007 4:16 am

#132263 - starky00 - Mon Jun 25, 2007 7:21 am

#132267 - maagic42 - Mon Jun 25, 2007 9:13 am

#132270 - phlip - Mon Jun 25, 2007 10:38 am

#132278 - Tonjevic - Mon Jun 25, 2007 12:56 pm

#132285 - TheYak - Mon Jun 25, 2007 2:43 pm

#132286 - kusma - Mon Jun 25, 2007 3:15 pm

#132289 - kusma - Mon Jun 25, 2007 3:35 pm

#132293 - alfatreze - Mon Jun 25, 2007 4:38 pm

#132294 - Xtreme984 - Mon Jun 25, 2007 4:49 pm

#132296 - dantheman - Mon Jun 25, 2007 5:04 pm

#132298 - Jesse - Mon Jun 25, 2007 5:56 pm

#132299 - Jesse - Mon Jun 25, 2007 6:00 pm

#132303 - Xtreme984 - Mon Jun 25, 2007 6:55 pm

#132317 - Egglet - Mon Jun 25, 2007 9:36 pm

#132331 - moket - Mon Jun 25, 2007 11:04 pm

#132335 - Masterofdarkness - Tue Jun 26, 2007 12:48 am

#132351 - Jesse - Tue Jun 26, 2007 3:49 am

#132364 - z0r - Tue Jun 26, 2007 5:16 am

#132365 - z0r - Tue Jun 26, 2007 5:17 am

#132366 - Ant6n - Tue Jun 26, 2007 6:21 am

#132371 - Egglet - Tue Jun 26, 2007 9:07 am

#132374 - JLsoft - Tue Jun 26, 2007 9:27 am

#132386 - fuzone - Tue Jun 26, 2007 12:16 pm

#132388 - jetboy - Tue Jun 26, 2007 12:28 pm

#132389 - Jesse - Tue Jun 26, 2007 12:28 pm

#132390 - JLsoft - Tue Jun 26, 2007 12:31 pm

#132396 - fuzone - Tue Jun 26, 2007 1:00 pm

#132400 - jetboy - Tue Jun 26, 2007 1:07 pm

#132402 - masscat - Tue Jun 26, 2007 1:13 pm

#132404 - fuzone - Tue Jun 26, 2007 1:25 pm

#132406 - jetboy - Tue Jun 26, 2007 1:38 pm

#132409 - qatmix - Tue Jun 26, 2007 1:54 pm

#132410 - Jesse - Tue Jun 26, 2007 2:08 pm

#132412 - Jesse - Tue Jun 26, 2007 2:13 pm

#132413 - jetboy - Tue Jun 26, 2007 2:14 pm

#132414 - LoTekK - Tue Jun 26, 2007 2:17 pm

#132415 - fuzone - Tue Jun 26, 2007 2:21 pm

#132416 - jetboy - Tue Jun 26, 2007 2:22 pm

#132417 - Jesse - Tue Jun 26, 2007 2:23 pm

#132419 - Jesse - Tue Jun 26, 2007 2:26 pm

#132421 - jetboy - Tue Jun 26, 2007 2:35 pm

#132422 - alfatreze - Tue Jun 26, 2007 2:53 pm

#132424 - jetboy - Tue Jun 26, 2007 3:16 pm

#132449 - kusma - Tue Jun 26, 2007 9:39 pm

#132451 - Thorprime - Tue Jun 26, 2007 10:02 pm

#132458 - jetboy - Tue Jun 26, 2007 10:36 pm

#132466 - moket - Wed Jun 27, 2007 12:23 am

#132468 - dantheman - Wed Jun 27, 2007 12:51 am

#132473 - zazery - Wed Jun 27, 2007 3:43 am

#132492 - khan - Wed Jun 27, 2007 8:38 am

#132493 - fuzone - Wed Jun 27, 2007 8:47 am

#132494 - jetboy - Wed Jun 27, 2007 8:48 am

#132495 - fuzone - Wed Jun 27, 2007 9:00 am

#132497 - kusma - Wed Jun 27, 2007 9:02 am

#132501 - jetboy - Wed Jun 27, 2007 9:55 am

#132507 - oofrab - Wed Jun 27, 2007 10:53 am

#132508 - jetboy - Wed Jun 27, 2007 10:57 am

#132522 - moket - Wed Jun 27, 2007 2:13 pm

#132523 - jetboy - Wed Jun 27, 2007 2:26 pm

#132524 - fuzone - Wed Jun 27, 2007 2:48 pm

#132525 - jetboy - Wed Jun 27, 2007 2:55 pm

#132557 - Jesse - Wed Jun 27, 2007 8:20 pm

#132560 - jetboy - Wed Jun 27, 2007 8:56 pm

#132563 - w4s4b1 - Wed Jun 27, 2007 9:10 pm

#132589 - Jesse - Wed Jun 27, 2007 11:47 pm

#132598 - moket - Thu Jun 28, 2007 2:24 am

#132605 - HirunHikari - Thu Jun 28, 2007 3:50 am

#132638 - jetboy - Thu Jun 28, 2007 10:18 am

#132665 - D`wAX - Thu Jun 28, 2007 2:16 pm

#132670 - masscat - Thu Jun 28, 2007 2:57 pm

#132671 - jetboy - Thu Jun 28, 2007 3:16 pm

#132694 - FireSlash - Thu Jun 28, 2007 7:13 pm