My github.io
This doesn’t have much practical use with modern computing, but I did have fun with it. Basically, I wanted to create an image format that is easy to write manually, by using a hex editor or some other tool to write the bytes. The inspiration retro games – I found manually creating a palette and sprite to be interesting.
The Imretro format supports 3 main modes:
As the names suggest, they set how many bits a pixel uses, which decides how
many colors are available for the palette. In 1-bit mode, only 2 colors are
allowed: one mapped to 0 and one mapped to 1. In 2-bit mode, 4 colors, and
in 8-bit mode, 256 colors.
The image can also include a palette. If it doesn’t use a palette, it should be
decoded using default palettes. For example, the default palette for 1-bit mode
is #000000 and #FFFFFF. If it does include a palette, then there are 2
additional choices: color channel number and color accuracy.
There are 3 choices for color channel count are Grayscale, RGB, and RGBA. The color accuracy choices are 2 bits per channel or 8 bits.
For example, with RGB and 8 bit color channels, then orange (#FFAA00) would
be 11111111, 10101010, and 00000000. With RGBA and 2 bit color channels,
then the color would only need a single byte: 11100011 (the last 11 is to
set the alpha channel so that the color is fully opaque).
This project was very good practice for processing bytes. It’s also a great way to learn the idiomatic way to decode and encode images in various languages.