MSX Pixel Tools

These are few simple tools I used to make Night Knight.

Convert PNG images into sprites and tilesets to be used by the MSX in screen 2 mode.

• png2sprites.py
• png2tileset.py
• png2scr.py

Each tool has help in the CLI with -h.

The output is dumped to stdout, so you can redirect it to a file:

./png2sprites.py examples/sprites.png > sprites.h

The expected colours are those of the Thoshiba palette. See this file for further info about the RGB values.

When the output is a C include file, it is wrapped in an ifdef block with a LOCAL define to specify when the data is extern or not.

/* in the file including the data */
#define LOCAL
#include "sprites.h"
#undef LOCAL

...
/* in any other file */
#include "sprites.h"

The ASM output can be easily modified in case your assambler doesn't support the same syntax.

Requirements

• Python 3
• Pillow

png2sprites

Converts a RGB PNG image to MSX Screen 2 16x16 pixels sprite data.

RGB(28, 28, 28) is used for transparent and any other colour will be expanded to its own sprite. See the example: it has two frames with two colours and the end result is 4 frames (2 for each colour).

png2tiles

Converts a RGB PNG image to a MSX Screen 2 tileset.

The output is limited to 256 tiles.

png2scr

Converts a RGB 256x192 PNG image to a SCR file to be loaded on an MSX in Screen 2 mode.

The output is a binary file (to stdout) with the tile data followed by the colour information.