-------------------------------------------------------
       //                                                       \\
      ||     WW             q                                    ||
      ||     WW             qq                                   ||
      ||   WWWWWW           qq                                   ||
      ||       WW  i   i  qqq   g ggg    rrrr   i   i   ttt      ||
      ||      WW   i  i     q    g   g  r    r  i  i   t   t     ||
      ||     WW     ii      q    g  g   r r  r   ii    t   t     ||
      ||    WW     i i      q    ggggg   r   r  i i    tttt      ||
      ||           i i           g              i i    t         ||
      ||           ii            g              ii     t         ||
      ||                                                         ||
      ||=========================================================||
      ||    Wingrit: Windows GBA Raster Image Transmogrifier     ||
      ||                  by : Jasper Vijn (cearn)               ||
      ||                          v0.8                           ||
      ||                 (last update: 2008-02-24)               ||
      ||                  (started: 2005-01-15)                  ||
       \\_______________________________________________________//


// --------------------------------------------------------------------
// Introduction
// --------------------------------------------------------------------

  Yay, yet another image converter. Do we really need another one? 
Well maybe, maybe not. As far as I can tell there are two 
very complete gfx exporters right now: gfx2gba (by Markus, not
the other one) and cog (by OneManBand). The second one seems not to
be available anymore, and the first one wasn't quite able to do what 
I wanted. Also, both of these are pure command-line tools.
  Wingit is a GUI tool, making it easier to get started. The main view
offers a preview of the image you want to export, which is always nice.
There's a palette viewer too. By using FreeImage, it can read pretty
much every kind of image (yes, GIFs too).
  As for the exporter itself, I've pretty much crammed it full of 
options. There are separate sections for palette, image and map 
control, which include cropping the exported image, various bitdepths 
(including 1 and 2bpp for use BitUnpack) compression and 
tile-set reduction. There are also options for tile-grouping, not
only can this be beneficial for sprites in 1d mode, but you can also 
use it to create meta-maps of arbitrary sizes. The output file(s)
can be C, GNU asm or binary, a header file is optional and there are 
choices between u8, u16, and u32 type-sizes. Naturally, the variable 
name can be altered independently from the file-name.

While the program is useful as is, there is always room for more. 
There are a few other things I'd like to add, like vertical map 
layout, merging palettes, and an extra output format or two. And, 
of course, proper documentation. But I'd also like to get back to real 
GBA stuff so I'm leaving it as is for now. 
  Btw, if you would like to see things like this added, the source 
code is freely available, so why not try it yourself? (Then again, 
seeing my code...)


NOTE: (Win)grit was born '(Win)git. But because the linux kernel
versioning is also called 'git' and g(r)it's supposed to be a
multi-platform too, it had to be renamed. Hence, 'grit'.

- J Vijn

mail: cearn@coranac.com
url: http://www.coranac.com


// --------------------------------------------------------------------
// Changes
// --------------------------------------------------------------------

v0.8
+ Added GRF format.
+ Added 'fake' compression.
See grit.txt and documentation for details.

v0.7
+ Name change to '(Win)grit'
+ Fixed pathing problem in ext-tiles (thanks dovoto)
+ Updated documentation.

v0.7b
+ Palette/color transparency options.
+ External tileset support for tile mapping.
+ Logging ... kinda. All logging goes into gxplog.txt in the git directory.
  I'll add a window for displaying it later.
 

Still to come
- Uhm ... column based maps maybe?
- GBA/NDS Examples