New Dreamcast related tools

[Protofall]

Lately I've been working on some programs relating to the Dreamcast. I've mentioned them a bit on Twitter and other places, but now I've put all 4 of my programs into one GitHub repository:


DOWNLOAD: https://github.com/Protofall/Crayon-Utilities


The four programs are:

• DtexToRGBA8888: A program that takes a DTEX file made by tvspelsfreak's texconv program and converts it to either a PNG or a raw RGBA8888 format binary. Note ofc it won't add more bits of info to a channel if it is less than 8 bits since that data is permanently lost

• VmuEyeCatchCreator: A tool that takes a single PNG source file that is 72 texels wide and 56 texels high and creates a binary that can be attached to a vmu_pkg_t struct and be displayed on the DC's BIOS's VMU manager screen

• VmuLcdIconCreator: Takes a PNG source file (Must be 48 wide by 32 high) and creates a 1BPP binary that can be loaded and displayed with KOS' vmu_draw_lcd() function

. It now also has the ability to make multiple frames of greyscale animation, although I've never used it and you can only update the icon once per frame/vblank in modern KOS.

• VmuSfIconCreator: A tool that takes a set of PNG source files (All must be 32 wide and "a multiple of 32" texels high) and creates image and palette binaries that can be attached to a vmu_pkg_t struct and used to make an animated savefile icon

All four programs were made in C/C++, are terminal based for easy use in automated scripts and are under the BSD Clause 3 license so you can include it in your own projects and even bundle it into commercial products if need be without any cost.

Dependencies:

• libPNG

• texconv (But only to make some demo DTEX files for my converter. My converter itself doesn't need texconv or qt to run)

Technically none of these programs are "complete". DtexToRGBA8888 is missing BUMPMAP and Mipmap support and VmuSfIconCreator and VmuEyeCatchCreator attempt to reduce the number of colours in the image if they're more than 16/256, but they don't do the best job at it. I do want to implement all these things eventually, but I don't know when.

The GitHub also has a wiki section that describes some of the more complicated stuff related to the formats used in these programs. Official SEGA documentation either didn't correctly explain these things or did so in a complicated manner.

I hope people find it useful . If you do use it, message me on twitter or Discord since I dunno how to see DMs here, I'd be interested to see what you're working on

[Protofall]

Awesome! Always welcoming new contributions to the DC scene.