The Sinclair QL Forum

I'm helping (or trying) to convert an illustrated adventure game listing to SuperBASIC. It includes some 28 images in .PIC format, which I think is PICtor raster image format, or possibly DrawPlus. Very old format.

I haven't got any software able to convert these PIC files and none of the online converters seem able to recognise the files. Can anyone help with conversion in any way? Or know of a suitable online converter site? If I can convert to something like GIF, PNG or JPG I can then do the QL conversion myself.

dilwyn wrote: Wed Mar 22, 2023 11:36 am I'm helping (or trying) to convert an illustrated adventure game listing to SuperBASIC. It includes some 28 images in .PIC format, which I think is PICtor raster image format, or possibly DrawPlus. Very old format.

I haven't got any software able to convert these PIC files and none of the online converters seem able to recognise the files. Can anyone help with conversion in any way? Or know of a suitable online converter site? If I can convert to something like GIF, PNG or JPG I can then do the QL conversion myself.

What platform are you coming from?

ImageMagick handles PICtor files, and should be available as an exe on windows!

The source files are from Windows. The program is written in one of the M$ basic dialects, saved as an ASCII text file, so fairly easy to port. Will try I-M over the coming days. Thanks.

you can try GrafX2

http://grafx2.chez.com/

but as IM you have to get used to it
Greetings from Switzerland

Markus

the *.pic image format is described, in technical details, at https://www.fileformat.info/format/pictor/egff.htm -- if that's of any help whatsoever? And less technically at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PICtor_PIC_image_format.

Cheers,
Norm.

According to the info on this XnViewMP can convert.PIC files https://fileinfo.com/software/xnsoft/xnviewmp

Turns out that the blurb with the game code is misleading. Although the graphics files have the file extension .PIC these are not Pictor or DrawPlus graphics. They were probably made with one of those originally, but ended up in a different format.

Thanks Norman, Richard and Markus for the information you all suggested.

XorA suggested they might have been just Raw images used in QBASIC and he seems to have been right. I've installed DosBox and a couple of versions of QBASIC so I can actually run these games - hadn't realised until now that 32-bit QBASIC could run on 64-bit machines with dosBox (just never occurred to me it might). Then I can check that my attempted QL ports run the same as the original DOS BASIC versions.

I need to get used to the DOS way of doing things - these graphics are loaded with the BLOAD command in QBASIC (similar to LBYTES in SuperBASIC). So once I've looked at the game code to make sure I BLOAD the files to the correct address/segment etc I can create a program in QBASIC to load and view the graphics, then the simple solution for conversion will be to grab grab a screenshot which I can paste into any old Windows graphics viewer to save as JPG/PNG/GIF/BMP which are easily converted to QL files. The code sets SCREEN 1 in QBASIC which I think is 320x200 resolution in 4 or 16 colours.

Something to keep me out of mischief while I sit here optimistically (not!) waiting for the tradesman who should have turned up at 9am. If he turns up, I can then go to fetch parts to repair the fence panels which blew down in last night's gale. One of these days I'll probably be found dead from the shock of a British tradesman that actually turns up on time!

another graphics converter
win32/64 exe works with wine
can export mode 4 and mode 8 QL screens
https://www.dadither.com/
Greetings from Switzerland
Markus

Thank you Markus. I downloaded it. Windows 10 did everything it could to persuade me not to download it! (rarely downloaded, so untrustworthy as far as W10 is concerned it seems).
Should prove very useful for making QL graphics. Handles .bmp, .png, .jpg, .gif files and converts to QL modes 4, 8, 16,32,33 with a lot of options. In total, it converts to 36 platforms including retros such as QL, Spectrum, SAM, BBC Micro and many others I've never heard of. Plenty of dithering options etc to tinker with for best results. Wish I'd come across this before!

desin wrote: Wed Mar 29, 2023 2:21 pm another graphics converter
win32/64 exe works with wine
can export mode 4 and mode 8 QL screens
https://www.dadither.com/

DaDither.png

Greetings from Switzerland
Markus

Darn, if I had known of that tool I probably would have never written mine!