Multipaint Metal Edition

Notice: The Multipaint site should be now ok.

Notice 2: Mac users, if you can't get Multipaint to work, check the website (link below) and check the comments too.

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It's time I gave this 8-bit paint program (works on PC, Linux, Mac) a public update.

Largest change is the new color model, which is perhaps now a bit more sensible. If there is no "room" for a new color inside a color resolution area (say 8x8 pixels), the color under the pointer will be changed to the current color.

The old mode, which prevented color changes if there was no "room" inside color area, is still retained as the 'b' mode, as it can be useful when painting fast or using the geometry tools. (it's the huge B icon at the bottom of the tool box)

Demoing the new preset dither patterns and adjustable offset:

Multipaint supported custom dithers ("rasters") before, but having these presets might come in handy. The offset can only be changed by using the bracket [ ] keys, for horizontal and vertical.

Using a loose dither and changing the offset as you go along can produce nice results quickly, as in the image above.

However I believe that almost all mechanical approaches to dithering are bound to be more or less exploratory tools, and the real work is nearly always about making pixel-level decisions.

The keysheet, highlighting the key shortcuts I think could be most useful to learn first:

u/U for undo/redo

g for grid on/off, G for grid size switch

c for grid constraint on/off.
j for spare page (alternative page for holding brushes, fragments etc.)

m for magnify=zoom

, for pick color (also middle mouse button)
ctrl for force color (change underlying 8x8 area)

A couple of tips I forgot to mention in the manual:

-This type of drawing can benefit from having a slow mouse setting. Personally, I can't draw with very fast mouse.
-I often use VICE for previewing C64 images every now and then, because it's able to predict the color blurring of a monitor. This is also why I'm not too keen to add a preview window, because it wouldn't do it's job properly. However, it may arrive one day.
-If you draw a circle with a loose dither, then grab it as a brush and draw with the dither off, you can get a kind of "airbrush".

In the future

There still remains many items and known issues on my to-do list. Preview window, aspect ratio (That MSX!), better CPC output, more flexible UI, etc., but they'll have to wait for some time yet.

Overall changes for this version:

-Changed the color behavior to a more straightforward model. Old behavior retained as ‘b’ mode.

-Overall color behavior is more uniform between formats, multicolor and otherwise

-Changes to mouse event handling should make the program a bit more useable across platforms and computer speeds

-Added preset dither (raster) patterns and offset adjustment

-A bit more visible grid (not in plus4 and CPC modes)

-Metal User Interface. Why? I wanted some program changes to be visual. Tiny adjustments to icon graphics and visual behavior. Visible dither on icon, visible spare page on icon.

-Bug fix: UI elements overlapped in CPC mode when using ZOOM=3

-Bug fix: Machine selection through prefs.txt did not really work

-Bug fix: In CPC mode palette changes could not be undoed (in loading pngs for example)

The website:

http://multipaint.kameli.net/