XBIN?! More Like BORE-BIN! ohhhhhh...

acheron.org discussion board: XBIN/ADF Threads: XBIN?! More Like BORE-BIN! ohhhhhh...
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of pageLink to this message  By Corky on Wednesday, January 27, 1999 - 04:33 am:

What the heck is XBIN? I've seen it being hyped everywhere I go, but I still don't know what it is. You ask yourself, does he have down syndrome?

As a matter of fact, I do. My name is Corky, and I was the star of a show called Life Goes On.

"I didn't mean to burn down the restaurant!" - Corky of Life Goes On.

Thanks,
Corky
*drool*


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of pageLink to this message  By Eto on Wednesday, January 27, 1999 - 08:01 am:

XBIN is just an ANSI with different colours. Instead of the standard 16, you can make any/all of the colours one of any RGB value. like, colour '1' is blue. you can change it to be red, green, or any shade inbetween. (hey, that rhymed!)..

You can ALSO change the FONTS. Now, what this means is that you can change the 'APPEARANCE' of each character. So, if you really wanted, you could make an 'A' look like a squiggle, or whatever you desire.

There are also some advanced stuff in XBIN, like being able to have 512 characters (at the expense of having only 7 foreground colours), etc.

So far, only ONE drawing program supports XBIN, called Empathy. However, you can do the same thing with ITPDRAW and ARTWORX by saving to ADF. PabloDraw (by me) will soon support XBIN, ADF & IDF, so it'll give a little more choice in editors..

That's about it, really. It's just ansi with a twist of lime. or, in a coder's point of view, Ansi++. (:


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of pageLink to this message  By dieznyik on Wednesday, January 27, 1999 - 12:31 pm:

its about goddamn time i got into this... im sick to death of the limits of ansi... i think i've done all i can reasonably do and now i am creatively hampered by the silly limits... so, next stuff is gonna be icecolour modified font screwed up palette nonsense!

now i do need to know something! how can i convert adf or xb the same way ive been doing with vtag? [where the resolution is the same]... i dont want a dumb vga screen capture because it doesnt give you anything... i have a job i gotta get done and i have to find a way to do this sometime this week otherwise im screwed =P

help!


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of pageLink to this message  By Eto on Thursday, January 28, 1999 - 07:58 am:

vtag? Well, if you mean converting to BMP/GIF/etc, you will be able to use PabloDraw 0.98 (coming end of feb) - it already supports saving to BMP, but 0.98 will support xbin/adf/idf.

if that's not what you mean, then i have no idea what you are talking about... hehe (:


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of pageLink to this message  By dieznyik on Saturday, January 30, 1999 - 12:49 pm:

how many times do we talk about this? =)

augh!


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of pageLink to this message  By Eto on Tuesday, February 2, 1999 - 04:01 pm:

dieznyik: As many times as it is asked, I guess...

d:


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of pageLink to this message  By skaboy on Tuesday, February 2, 1999 - 09:09 pm:

woo everyone get ready! empathy 0.80 is being released either tomorrow night or thursday night, and man its roolin! ive gotten so much amazing feedback (man everyones wonderful comments is what keeps me goin!), tons of features requests, the works. and im here to tell you that ive taken the liberty of implementing 95% of them requested, (hells yeah!). everything the artscene (and specific individuals) have been longing for over the years, i/we (avenge plug here, hehe :) are making reality with empathy. basically keep up the great support guys, as will i!

oh, and i also thought i'd give a more indepth explanation of the XBiN format, as other messages seemed to leave out some info :). first off, XBiN stands for eXtended BINary. it is a format that was orignally designed by tasmaniac of ACiD, but due to its complexity in design and function, it was never implemented into an editor.. a wonderful and extremely well thought out idea, was left as just an idea, only that :(... now around the time that i was starting empathy (early august) radman approached me and asked me if i would add XBiN support to this new editor he had heard me talk about, and it was quickly made evident to me what great potential this system had -- and well the rest is kindof history :) i had hoped it and empathy would catch on, but wow, i never expected the results to be this amazing :) its kindof tough to speculate how a generation raised on thedraw and more powerful clones like aciddraw will react to a new extremenly POWERFUL editor with a totally different feel, and sure enough everyone seemed to love the change, as well as the new format being introduced :) -- my dream came true! (if you want more on this read my nfo file in the empathy release).. k now onto technical nfo -- well as you all know, over the past 15 years, the board/art scene has been limited to the standard DOS 16 color palette, as well as the standard 256 char character set (you know, where alt+254 = little square :). everyone just accepted this as *the* only wayto go, so the whole medium was created around it (thus the wonders of ansi and ascii :). now with XBiN (and empathy), you are no longer limited to these previous standards.. for instance, if youd like a to have a circle in your pic or logo instead of a rigid block, YOU CAN HAVE IT! in empathy/xbin you can actually edit each pixel of EACH character, totally alter it ALL to your liking!. this brings up another point -- "wow skaboy thats cool, but damn sometimes i really need 4 shades of red, what do i do??!" -- well XBiN/emp to the rescue again!. in emp/xBin you can also edit the RGB DAC hues (red/green/blue components) of EVERY color! (as well as no longer being limited to low color backgrounds!). eto had mentioned ADF before as being the same, lemme explain this part also :) adf, as with the even more archaic iDF (icedraw format), was one of the predecessors to the XBiN format. although theyre similar in their function (somewhat), theyre design and implementation is completely different -- i like to think of (as radman put it) "XBiN is ADF on crack!" anything that can be done with ADF or BIN, XBiN can do better, smaller, and with more flexibilty , but for those die hard ADF'ers, i will always support the format to the extreme - of course! :) k moving right along.. basically, with XBiN the possiblities are endless. you can take your art, and your creativity to a new level, one never before seen by you or your peers in the digital artscene. now that radman has also created an ACiD XBiN team due to empathy and XBiN's craze, you're going to start seeing more and more of it around, and your eyes and mind will be in awe more and more every pack release im sure ... do you remember back to the days when you would wait for the latest artpack to see lordjazz's or apex twin's latest creation(s), yearning to see what one could do with this not yet globally (or even sometimes locally :) mastered medium?!? -- well those days are back my friends, and now on a new and technilogically upto date level. man its exhilarating!! :) -- well in closing, have fun, and dont forget if you have any kinda comment/featre request for emp,.. email me! :) thats the shit that keeps me goin! :)

-skaboy (avenge!cult99)
(sparky@wt.net)

(btw, if anyone wants even MORE technical information on the format itself, you can leeach the XBiN specs off of artpack.acid.org i do believe :)


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of pageLink to this message  By napalm on Tuesday, February 2, 1999 - 10:56 pm:

Umm.. ok, dont read above for risk of your head exploding, instead check out cia pack 60 and agent_42's kickass pasquale ADF :)


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of pageLink to this message  By constructive thext (cr618396-a.crdva1.bc.wave.home.com - 24.113.55.86) on Tuesday, February 16, 1999 - 11:19 am:

XBIN == lowtech RIPscrip


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of pageLink to this message  By God among Lice (bootp-231-230.bootp.virginia.edu - 128.143.231.230) on Tuesday, February 16, 1999 - 12:58 pm:

xbin can't be compared to ripscrip at all. :P

XBIN == hightech ansi. :)


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of pageLink to this message  By maestooopid ( - 209.94.128.4) on Wednesday, February 17, 1999 - 04:36 am:

XBIN == stoooooooooooooooooooooopid..


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of pageLink to this message  By Eto (gatekeeper.ils.ca - 198.53.18.254) on Wednesday, February 17, 1999 - 07:12 am:

xbin and rip are totally different. rip is 'animated' (or streamed), where xbin is a binary dump of compressed or uncompressed data used to display an image. It more closely matches the likes of gif/pcx/bmp...

xbin is not stupid, either.. it is taking full advantage of text mode, and it's capabilities. if you think xbin is stupid, what is ansi/ascii?

bleah.


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of pageLink to this message  By mongi (dialup176-1-24.swipnet.se - 130.244.176.24) on Wednesday, February 17, 1999 - 02:21 pm:

xbin IS stupid.


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of pageLink to this message  By dangermouse (px1.syd.aone.net.au - 203.12.178.133) on Wednesday, February 17, 1999 - 06:03 pm:

Xbin is about as useful as ANSI these days, so I can't see how XBin is stupid. XBin is giving ANSI artists something new to play with and a much larger colour pallete to muck around with.


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of pageLink to this message  By mongi (curium.k.kth.se - 130.237.75.88) on Thursday, February 18, 1999 - 03:26 am:

That is kind of ruining the fun with the limited media. It's like saying minimalism doesn't allow you to do too much, so let's make it more complicated and put some more stuff on those pictures.


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of pageLink to this message  By maestro ( - 209.94.128.4) on Thursday, February 18, 1999 - 04:24 am:

yeah, what mongi said.


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of pageLink to this message  By Eto (gatekeeper.ils.ca - 198.53.18.254) on Thursday, February 18, 1999 - 07:59 am:

ruining the fun? well, if all ansi/ascii artists really wanted to 'unlimit' themselves, they would have gone to hirez. (some have, i believe).

XBIN is still VERY limiting. you STILL have a limited set of characters to play with, and a limited set of colours. EVERYTHING about xbin is the SAME as ansi/ascii, BUT, you can just change the characters and colours you use!! There is no difference between the two in my mind. Just more flexability! this does NOT take away the limits of ansi/ascii, since people will still draw in ansi/ascii.

Think of it this way, it's a seperate medium, as ansi is to ascii. ascii is limited to what characters you are (supposed) to use. does this make ANSI less limiting than ascii? does it make it STUPID? no. XBIN is just another 'LEVEL' so to speak of this medium. ascii was used because lots of systems/boards were only 7 bit, and didn't HAVE the extended characters that are 'allowed' in ANSI. why don't we all go back to a 7-bit character set of 128 characters? yeah, that makes sense. pff.

Why can't people be open to new mediums, instead of shun them and push them away? XBIN should be embraced as a new way of making art. It is not meant to be the death of ANSI... I mean, look at ascii.. it wasn't killed by ANSI, was it?


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of pageLink to this message  By Leonardo.iCE (gatekeeper2.monsanto.com - 199.89.234.124) on Thursday, February 18, 1999 - 09:30 am:

I havn't seen any XBIN art yet. but it seems like a good idea to me. I don't think its stupid at all, and its not taking away the limitations of ansi art. Ansi art is ansi art, xbin is xbin.


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of pageLink to this message  By mongi (dialup198-1-39.swipnet.se - 130.244.198.39) on Thursday, February 18, 1999 - 10:25 am:

Yeah OK. Let's xbin be a completely different art..
I've been drawing a lot with adf really, using ciadraw, so I know exactly what xbin is about.


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of pageLink to this message  By God among Lice (bootp-231-230.bootp.virginia.edu - 128.143.231.230) on Thursday, February 18, 1999 - 01:00 pm:

yea.. like I've said before in previous (now killed) threads, xbin is all about creating your own limitations. That's something that fascinates me deeply.

It's like, many painters in the past develop styles that you could say creates their own limits, and in a sense you can create your own limits even with hirez, through the style you're using. But xbin/adf allows you to completely formalize that personal limitation. It's completely defined and there available for others to see.


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of pageLink to this message  By dangermouse (px1.syd.aone.net.au - 203.12.178.133) on Thursday, February 18, 1999 - 01:38 pm:

I mucked around a little with xbin when it first came out and shit, I reckon its harder than ANSI. My main reason for this statement is exactly when God said - you can create your own limitations, your own characters so to speak. Thinking about this aspect of xbin and indeed your artwork is definately harder than ANSI, and indeed will act as an interesting artistic medium for the future.


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of pageLink to this message  By mongi (berkelium.k.kth.se - 130.237.75.74) on Friday, February 19, 1999 - 06:54 am:

It's exactly like ansi! WHen you edit the chars, just think of them like small ansis, and then you use your small ansis in a bigger ansi.. like I said earlier, it's like ansi at a higher resolution. As far as colors are concerned, they aren't all that complex as editing the chars =)


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of pageLink to this message  By God among Lice (bootp-231-230.bootp.virginia.edu - 128.143.231.230) on Friday, February 19, 1999 - 06:01 pm:

Yea.. that's an interesting point from Mongi that points out the essence of xbin. Have you ever seen those Photomosaic pics? Like Darth Vader made up entirely of scenes from the star wars movies? I think it's a very similar thing that people do with ansi/xbin. The difference is that there's a lot more art involved, since the parts are being placed by hand, whereas those photomosaics are done via algorithm.

The custom characters of xbin can be compared with the stock of pictures used to create the photomosaics. You're choosing the best parts from what you're given or from what you've created and creating something larger out of those parts.


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of pageLink to this message  By warpus (gateway-g1.londonlife.com - 204.101.39.130) on Monday, February 22, 1999 - 06:39 am:

a good idea for a compo would be to distribute a set of characters that you'd have to use for a piece of art.

actually, that's a really good idea :)


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of pageLink to this message  By tomi (darth.nls.fi - 195.156.38.2) on Monday, February 22, 1999 - 10:14 pm:

warp: that's a great idea =)
just arrange it, i'm with it =)


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of pageLink to this message  By God among Lice (bootp-231-230.bootp.virginia.edu - 128.143.231.230) on Tuesday, February 23, 1999 - 01:01 pm:

whoa... yes.. awesome idea. :)

do it do it do it


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