Gen 2 update: So many colors.

For the longest time, color was the domain of SBTCVM's old plotters and later, SBTGA. now the TTY has returned with a vengeance, in the pygame frontend.

View the dazzling 27-color 3-trit RGB color settings.

Yes! The packed art system has its own colors.  Nice isn't it?

Also, the default packed art colors have lost the blue tint, falling back to white grey and black.





More information: tty colors documentation

Gen 2 Update: ternary-packed-art encoding

You may be wondering what ternary has to do with art? or what those two have to do with encoding things?

Well, take a look at the screenshot to the right. Notice anything... odd?

That's right! its a curses/log-friendly scheme for terminal block art. its only 3 shades but its 9x more efficient than text art.  The catch is: it can only output chunks of pixels 9 characters wide, and 1 character high. 

However, an automated, pygame-based conversion tool has been added to the newly created gfxcon.py utility.


To learn more, see: ternary-packed-art documentation on GitHub.

Gen 2 update: pygame frontend

Overview

SBTCVM, for the longest time, used pygame for its frontend.  From the first prototype, all the way to Gen 1's last major version: SBTCVM Mark 2

Gen 2, however, has taken a more flexible approach. Already having a curses frontend, with a second, tk-based, frontend in planning.

Now, pygame has returned with the recent completion of the TTY emulation, and the basic structure of the pygame frontend's code.

PYG_SBTCVM.py SBTCVM's Pygame frontend.

UI

Its UI is sparse, similar to other VM's and emulators with an SDL-based display, i.e. DOSBox.

In the window title, we see that 3 eared mascot again *1, along with the trom name, and of course, "SBTCVM Gen2-9".

At the moment, only SBTGA v2 mode 0 is supported. If your wondering what that is, its the same TTY the curses frontend emulates.  

When SBTGA does start getting implemented though, expect the window to adjust its size periodically.

Footnotes:

1. You can find that icon, in its assorted sizes in VMSYSTEM/GFX