RastaConverter is a graphics converter from modern computers to old 8bit Atari computers. The tool uses SDL2 and FreeImage graphics libraries.
The conversion process is optimization of the Kernel Program. It uses most of the Atari graphics capabilities including sprites, midline color changes and sprite multiplication.
- Extremely optimized emulator of subset of 6502 CPU and ANTIC to simulate execution on real machine.
- Optimization: Late Acceptance Hill Climbing (LAHC) and Diversified Late Acceptance Search (DLAS), with support for reproducible runs, evaluation limits, auto-save and resume.
- Dithering: chess, Floyd–Steinberg, random-Floyd, line, line2, 2D, Jarvis, simple, and Knoll; tunable strength and randomness.
- Color distance: YUV (default), RGB Euclidean, CIEDE2000, and CIE94; independently selectable for preprocessing and optimization.
- Dual-frame mode: two alternating frames (A/B) with YUV or RGB blending, optional temporal luma/chroma penalties to reduce flicker, and export of both per-frame and blended outputs.
- Performance: multi-threaded execution with per-thread line caches and configurable cache size.
- Image pipeline: resize filters (box, bilinear, bicubic, bspline, Catmull–Rom, Lanczos3) plus brightness/contrast/gamma adjustments.
- Hardware control: fine-grained control over Atari registers, including enabling/disabling hardware sprites (players/missiles) per scanline.
- Details mask: provide a mask image to emphasize selected regions and bring out fine details in the result.
- Interfaces: SDL2 GUI and headless console modes.
- Palette selection: choose target palette files via Adobe ACT to match different monitors and CRT settings.
- Cross-platform: CMake-based builds for Windows, MacOS and Linux, with scripted Profile Guided Optimization.
- Extras: scripts and generators to assemble Atari executables.
The converter uses Late Acceptance Hill Climbing (LAHC) and Diversified Late Acceptance Search.
Atari executables for those and many other pictures can be downloaded here.