Usenti is a simple bitmap editor for paletted images, it is the result of me being completely fed up with the lack of dec^H^H^Hany palette support in Paint, and finding the bigger photo applications a little too big for comfort. The basic toolset is very similar to MS-Paint, but often less annoying. The various palette/color manipulation tools like the palette-bar palette swapper, and variable zooms and gridlines can make drawing basic things a lot easier.
The main drive for Usenti has always been for use in GBA development. As such, it has a good exporter to GBA-usable formats. The same one as in grit in fact, so I'll refer you to that for further details.
Readme
Usenti downloads
Current version: 1.7.10.
- 20080614: binary: usenti-1.7.10.zip
- 20080614: binary: usenti-1.7.9.zip
- 20071028: binary: usenti-1.7.8.zip
- 20070418: binary: usenti-1.7.7.zip
- 20060827: binary: usenti-1.7.6.zip
Well I downloaded the program and it does look a bit like paint. Since I have at times been frustrated by paint I'm anxious to see how it works. I noted the grid in the upper left and that does look like a good aid. I'll try it and giveyou some feed back.
Ron Hartwell
How to Use a Router Tool
Hey Cearn.
I was thinking (uh oh =P), and wondered if you'd thought of creating a custom Usenti format in which you can add alpha blending to the palettized[sic] colours for use in DS games (ie, for making realistic shadows), as it gets quite annoying setting the bits by hand.
Cheers!
Great program! I'm not programming for the GBA nor the DS, but I use it every time I need control over the palette on 8 bpp files because I think it's the best software in the world for that purpose.
Thank you for your good work!
@ Aikku
I know, I know; I'm way too late to reply.
Anyway, while it would be a good idea to to have some alpha control, there'd be no way to visually show the effect it has. usenti just used ye olde GDI for rendering, which doesn't have transparent rendering, and I'm not sure how it would react if I used the
rgbReserved
field as alpha.I should port the whole thing to something more modern like C# and/or GDI+, but I simply don't have the time for it :\.
Hey funny you mention that it's written in GDI! I'm using Usenti to support a GDI application that only support 8-bit bitmaps. Problem is they use a custom palette, and of COURSE it is different from MS-Paint's default 8-bit palette.
Major kudos for this tool.
Hi, can you give me a hint on why usenti doesn't want to run on wine on ubuntu? I'm tired of using photoshop for simple gfx tasks for my games but since i've moved to ubuntu i'm not able to use it anymore. Any kind of help to run it on my system will be really appreciate! thanks a lot even for your amazing gba programming book!
I'm afraid not, no :(. It's possible that I'm doing something tricky with pointer arithmetic, but that shouldn't be a problem during loadup. As far as I can recall, there's nothing terribly non-standard about the code, so I really can't say what the problem would be.
I have thought of a way Usenti could support transparency without neading to change from GdI, will email you the image mock up ive made
Please.
Need a "clear pallette from ... to ..."
super editor!
i use it for creating http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=63737 - Rubicon demo
To get it working with Wine i needed to download a .dll file: "mfc42.dll" and place it in the same folder. It doesn't run perfectly, but it's useable.
This editor is perfect for editing Doom sprites while ensuring the palette remains un-altered! Thank you so much!
Wow, tried many paint programs for editing bmp fonts but THIS was the only one that preserved the palette AND has adjustable grid widths so that fixed width fonts can be quickly edited. Great for text only apps now that MS has made the console even more unusable in Win 10.
Amazing!
I’ve never tried to– I’d recommend doing a test batch first just to make sure that the texture is alright!
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Everything fine but, the palette thing on the right disappeared and idk how to make it back
Very useful tool. I was about to give up a project where I needed to swap the #0 and #255 colors from approximately 100 bitmap images, but this was very helpful. Though, it would be excellent to have a batch converter for that sort of thing.
I found a 'glitch': when you drag the program window out of the screen boundaries somehow, the program will remain there, making it practically impossible to restore the window state to make it visible again. You can even control it again with the Win + arrow keys temporarily, but the program will always start hidden.
I found a bug where the palette and color overlays overlap each other, here's an image of how it looks, any fix?
https://imgur.com/a/IIt8guc