Neo Paint. Best painting tool for DOS ever. 😀

derSammler wrote:

Neo Paint. Best painting tool for DOS ever. 😀

does it support the PCX file format? sorry I forgot to add that requirement. I can write in a function to do others if need be, but would prefer to continue with PCX 256 color images.

Yes, it does.

graf2x seems to be a good pixel-paint program too.

On the Win3.1 side, PSP3 is pretty nice.

There was a DOS version of the legendary DeluxePaint by Electronic Arts.

TempraGIF on DOS works well enough for the task. As does the Photopaint component of Coreldraw 3 (can't vouch for earlier/newer versions).

The DOS versions of both GrafX2 and Deluxe Paint II are the only ones I use. If you weren't all too thrilled with Deluxe Paint, check out GrafX2. It does come with some docs, but I've found it reasonably easy to figure out by just playing with it (YMMV I guess...).

Try Neo Paint first. 😉

Neo Paint is definitely easy to use, I will give it that. 😜 I remember I liked the demo version that came on the CD with my copy of the "Amazing 3-D Games Adventure Set" book way back when.

BeginnerGuy wrote:

Helloooooo

I've been doing a lot of pixel art for my projects using a version of paint shop pro on my 9x rig. Issue I'm having is that I'm making these for programs running in mode 13h (VGA 320x200 @256 color) which is not square, which is resulting in minor aggravation due to the change in aspect.

How about setting your Windows resolution to 640x400, if your graphics driver supports that . Then you would have the same aspect ratio as mode 13h .

darry wrote:

BeginnerGuy wrote:

Helloooooo

I've been doing a lot of pixel art for my projects using a version of paint shop pro on my 9x rig. Issue I'm having is that I'm making these for programs running in mode 13h (VGA 320x200 @256 color) which is not square, which is resulting in minor aggravation due to the change in aspect.

How about setting your Windows resolution to 640x400, if your graphics driver supports that . Then you would have the same aspect ratio as mode 13h .

What about a version of Zsoft PC Paintbrush ?
As far as I know, there even was a port to Windows 1.x/2.x, which in turn got drivers for certain
graphics hardware (Paradise, V7, etc.) to allow such a 640x400 resolution in 256 colours.
The GUI Gallery has some pictures of it, I recall. 😀

(Alternatively, there is that MCGA driver that shipped with Windows 3.0 wit Multimedia Extensions..
I believe it should work just fine in Windows 3.1, too)

Surprised no one has mentioned Animator Pro. This was the other hard-hitter (as well as Delux Paint) for 2D during the early 90's. While the colour palettes/models are different (HAM/halfbrite etc compared to VGA etc) I can't see the tools being too different from Amiga and PC (I only used it on the Amiga), although I may be wrong. You could maybe pick-up an amiga delux paint manual (loads on ebay, DPIII was shipped with many ECS Amigas, and DPIV shipped with most AGA Amigas iirc). tbh These early paint programs have a pretty basic tool-set, it shouldn't be too hard to mess around and find your way, they ain't a fraction of the complexity of something like photoshop... I did and I was't too competent with anything back then o.0

Thanks for all the replies guys, now I have a whole bunch to toy with. I haven't skipped over any replies.

ZSoft PC paintbrush looks easy enough for me considering it's resemblance to modern ms paint and I believe they invented the PCX format (iirc from the header.. 🤣) I'm going to start with Neopaint per the first recommendation and go in order to see what works for me.. That's going to be whatever is the easiest to figure out how to use (that includes changing the color palette) because I really want to get cracking on making assets and have something to show for all this work by summer '18.

I'm sure I may have some questions but I've been busy with adding serial networking this week and haven't gone back to graphics yet (typical programmer problems).. I'll be back to this in a few days

I would be very interested to hear which has become your favourite, so if you have a moment to write how you liked (or disliked) the proposed programs, please do at some point. Thanks!