User avatar
intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Sun Feb 18, 2024 1:09 pm

A very talented developer and regular in the Amiga demo scene out of Belgium who goes by the moniker steffest created Deluxe Paint in a browser: DPaint.JS.

dpaint-about-img.png
What an awesome image and logo.


Steffest's description of his impressive software:
Web-based image editor modeled after the legendary Deluxe Paint with a focus on retro Amiga file formats. Written in 100% plain old JavaScript, no dependencies, open source.

In the documentation he goes on to explain that this isn't intended to be a 1:1 port.
It's certainly not a remake of Deluxe Paint, but it's heavily inspired by it, regarding Amiga spirit and pixel handling.

I like to think of as "What if Deluxe Paint was made today?"

Why would he do all of this?

steffest:
The main reason is that I wanted a modern tool for creating Amiga Icons, a long gone ancient file format that no modern editor supports. (And that even the icon editors on the Amiga platform struggle with)

Next to that I was missing some pixel-specific features that I knew from the good old Deluxe Paint days.

Dpaint.js was born: a tool that combines the pixel approach of Deluxe Paint with the modern features of today's image editors and the platform independent nature of browser based applications.
It looks and feels like, to me, Deluxe Paint X. What I mean is had Electronic Arts continued to support Deluxe Paint I think it would have naturally received some of the features steffest has implemented. Things like:
  • Layers
  • Masks
  • Blend modes
  • Multiple undo/redo
  • Copy/paste from external programs
Incredibly, there is 100% ADF disk support which allows for direct editing of files on ADF disks. It also has some very cool customizable dithering options.

And maybe the most amazing feature? A Deluxe Paint Amiga Preview. "For that nostalgic itch, you can even directly open your image in the original Deluxe Paint, right in your own browser." (emphasis mine)

uae.gif
GIF created by steffest


Simply amazing what he's done here with Javascript. I look forward to exploring its features with my own Amiga art creations.

User avatar
3D-vice
Germany

Posted Mon Feb 19, 2024 11:19 am

I simply second all of what you have written! I am very curious to explore the depths of DPaint.JS. Maybe this can be a valid tool to use for my own lil' game project...





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