2000-11 thru 2008-01
[ more info | sourceforge ]
This is a mouse-driven pixel-based paint program. When complete, it will be a functional clone of the Amiga version of the awesome Electronic Arts' product, "Deluxe Paint", written by Dan Silva.
Why do we need another paint program? In a lot of cases, There's no real reason to write yet another paint program, but to be honest, I wanted to see if I could. (And it seems as though I can.) It also can be said that most of the paint programs similar to Deluxe Paint require an antique machine with very a stringent configuration. Such packages as Deluxe Paint on the Amiga itself, Dpaint IIe for the PC and the like. 4P is designed so that it can be easily ported to other computing platforms easily: Linux/Unix/BeOS/MacOS/Windoze. It also won't require DOS (Dpaint IIe) or an Amiga emulator (Dpaint II).
Many people have said that Deluxe Paint was the best tool for editing low-color, low-resolution images in the past. Deluxe Paint also had one of the most straightforward interfaces, and damnit, it was fun to play with for hours on end. I hope to be able to recapture all of this with 4p.
This software has been re-born quite a few times. I first wrote it in plain C, then did a rewrite in NoWeb literate programming, then attempted another rewrite using some new graphics libraries, and then considered rewriting it in Java/Swing. I have gone back to the plain C version, and have recently been slowly adding functionality, and re-working it with a definite completion goal in mind.
Current (2008-01) plans are to rewrite it in C++, using the QT GUI libraries.