

                                P A R A N O I A
                          -  - ----------------- -   -

                          
                     DEGAS to Dreamcast IconFile Converter
                     written by The Paranoid in july 2002.
                     
    Preface:
    --------
      This program is freeware. It may be copied freely as long as
      neither program nor documentation are being altered, added or
      subtracted.
      This program comes with absolutely no warranty. The author
      cannot be held responsible for any kind of damage done to your
      hardware, software, brain or finances that are or are not
      connected to the usage of this software in any way.
      
    Requirements:
    -------------
      An Atari ST, STE, TT or Falcon or compatible system, any
      resolution, any memory-size. This program might need around
      60 KByte of free memory to work. Any operating system bearing
      enough similarity with the Atari TOS should be fine.
      It was not meant to run on an emulator. If it does, fine.
      If it does not and instead eats your harddisk, damages your
      printer and crashes your Windows - Strictly your problem.

    Usage:
    ------
      This program is being shipped as "TTP" which stands for
      "Tos Takes Parameters". On executing this program you will
      be prompted to enter a commandline which is supposed to
      feature the filename of a DEGAS PI1-formatted picture.
      Drag and Drop will, in a half-way decent user interface,
      work just as well.
      Then, the program will generate an ASCII-file ICONDATA.S
      that can be read and included in source-files for the
      Dreamcast Visual Memory Unit (VMU).
      
    Details:
    --------
      The Degas PI1-format is basically just a screen-dump that
      features the palette in its header. The format is fairly
      simply:
        Byte  0      - Checkbyte for Resolution
        Byte  2 - 33 - 16 colour palette, 1 word per entry, ordered
                       bit  0- 2  blue
                       bit  4- 6  green
                       bit  8-10  red
                       All other bits are unused
       Byte 34       - Picture data in Atari ST interleaved bitplane
                       format, ordered
                       word 0 - 16 pixels in bitplane 0
                       word 1 - 16 pixels in bitplane 1
                       word 2 - 16 pixels in bitplane 2
                       word 3 - 16 pixels in bitplane 3
                       word 4 - 16 pixels in bitplane 0
                       ...
                       Making up 32000 bytes in total.

      The Iconfile for use with the Dreamcast VMU-program also 
      contains a 16 colour picture, palette and format are
      different though:
        Palette      - 16 colour palette, 1 word per entry, ordered
                       bit  0- 3  blue
                       bit  4- 7  green
                       bit  8-11  red
                       bit 12-15  alpha/contrast
        Picture      - 32x32 pixel logo, 4 bits per pixel, thus
                       2 pixels per byte (bit 4-7 contain left
                       pixel, bit 0-3 right pixel)
                       
     
    Conversion:
    -----------
      This program takes care of the conversion. The DEGAS-PI1
      picture is supposed to have only the upper left 32x32 pixels
      used that contains the logo as it is supposed to be displayed
      on the Dreamcast memory browser. All other graphics data the
      Degas picture might contain will be ignored.
      The palette on the Atari ST contains 3 bits per Red/Green/Blue
      while the Dreamcast offeres a 4th bit as well as a contrast
      layer for transparent icons. 
      This program will therefore multiply each palette entry of
      the Degas picture by 2 to get decent brightness and will
      set the alpha/contrast-layer to full on every entry.
      The picture data will be directly converted as stated above.
      
    Output:
    -------
      The output of this program is always called ICONDATA.S and
      will be written to the current directory. It is a file in
      plain ASCII-format and should be readable in any editor.
      It is meant for include in source-files for the VMU
      Assembly kit (Sanyo LC86000 Assembler) and contains all
      relevant keywords like ".org $ADDR" and ".byte $DATA"
      as well as some commentary lines.
      The output file can of course be edited.
      
    Errors:
    -------
      The program has been written in MC68000-assembly and should
      run fine on any Atari ST, STE, TT or Falcon. Since only
      GEMDOS-routines are being used, compatibility with modern
      operating system replacements like MiNT, MagiC and Geneva
      should be sufficient.
      The program will detect a file not found-error, disk full
      or disk-protected and a general data missing error.
      It is, however, not fool-proof and will neither check
      if your input-file is sane or bogus nor will it test for
      syntax correctness on your input line.
      Using this program on anything else but a DEGAS PI1-file
      will most probably crash it.
      
    Compatibility:
    --------------
      This program was tested on an Atari Falcon, TOS 4.04 and
      MiNT/N.AES as well as on an Atari MegaSTE, TOS 2.06.
      
    Thanks and Greetings:
    ---------------------
      Greetings to the whole Atari community for being a great
      community and fun to be around with.
      Thanks especially to Evil of DHS, Ultra of Cream and Deez
      of Mind Design.
      Best wishes and thanks for the motivation to everyone of
      Paranoia: TNT, Strange, Luebke, Der Komtur, MRF and Marcstar.
    
    
    Signing off, The Paranoid
                  of Paranoia from the Lunatic Asylum
                  (    think you can handle it ?!    )



                       
        