This is a small program which can be used to view the excellent color cycling pictures of Mark J. Ferrari (http://markferrari.com), showcased in this web-based viewer by Joseph Huckaby: http://www.effectgames.com/demos/canvascycle
I did not have access to the original LBM files, so I've written a parser for the
converted JSON images used in the canvascycle web viewer. Use the included
download_images script to grab all of them directly from there (uses wget).
Alternatively, to download them manually, follow instructions in the wiki:
https://github.com/jtsiomb/colcycle/wiki
Since version 1.4, LBM images are also supported (DOS PBM and Amiga ILBM).
Latest release (1.4): https://github.com/jtsiomb/colcycle/releases/download/v1.4/colcycle-1.4.tar.gz
Source (git repo): git@github.com:jtsiomb/colcycle.git
Copyright (C) 2016-2024 John Tsiombikas nuclear@mutantstargoat.com
This program is free software; feel free to use it, modify and/or redistribute it, under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 3, or at your option, any later version published by the Free Software Foundation. See COPYING for details.
For the DOS build, you will need the Watcom C compiler (OpenWatcom also works).
Simply type wmake to build.
On UNIX you have the option of building with the OpenGL backend, or the SDL backend:
-
On modern computers with properly installed GPU drivers, the OpenGL backend should be significantly faster, which is why it's the default build option when you just type
make. You may need to install GLUT, and GLEW first if you don't already have them. -
If you're on an older computer without a modern graphics card, make sure you have SDL 1.2 installed, and type
make BACKEND=sdl.
To cross-compile the windows version, set the CC variable to point to the mingw
cross-compiler when invoking make, like so: make CC=i686-w64-mingw32-gcc.
While there is currently no provision for building directly on windows, that
can be done with minimal modifications to the makefile.
Just pass the image you want to view as a command-line argument to colcycle.
If you pass a directory name as an argument, the program will cycle through all images in that directory, showing each one for a few seconds.
For the OpenGL or the SDL version, you may set the environment variable
FULLSCREEN to 1, if you wish to run fullscreen. Also hitting 'f' while the
program runs toggles fullscreen mode.
- Why DOS?
The whole point of all this was to use Mark Ferrari's awesome color cycling images as a screensaver on my dos machine. The GL/SDL backend is just there for ease of development, so that I can write most of the code on GNU/Linux.
- Where can I find
DOS4GW.EXE?
If you got the source from git, there won't be any binaries inside. Get the
release tarball of colcycle, which contains all the necessary binaries, and
copy dos4gw.exe from there. Alternatively, pretty much every 90s PC game
has it.
- Why don't you include any actual images with the code?
I don't own the rights to Mark Ferrari's artwork, so I can't redistirbute it.
Use the download_images script to get them directly from the canvascycle
website, or download them manually: https://github.com/jtsiomb/colcycle/wiki