GIFtoC64Sprites is a Windows tool for converting a GIF animation to Commodore 64 multicolor sprites. Based on the idea by Jeff Harris and his NodeJS code, this .NET tool adds support for multicolor sprites.

Download the latest release.

The source GIF animation needs to be resized to 48 x 42 pixels and color reduced to four colors. These four colors are selected by you. Use Gifsicle for this task: First pick four colors from the Commodore 64 palette that you think match the animation best. Then create a textfile colors.col with the RGB values of these four colors:

; Note that each of these colors must be represented in the C64 palette
0 0 0           ; Black ($00)
187 187 187     ; Light grey ($0f)
255 119 119     ; Light red ($0a)
0 136 255       ; Light blue ($0e)

Execute Gifsicle:

gifsicle.exe --use-colormap colors.col --resize 48x42 --output prepared.gif input.gif

Given a resized and color reduced GIF animation prepared.gif, execute the converter, passing the selected colors in the colors argument:

GifToC64Sprites.exe --input prepared.gif --output sprite.spr --colors 0fae

The result is a file sprite.spr with all frames for the top-left, followed by all frames for the bottom-left, then top-right, then bottom-right.

The original Commodore 64 example application by Jeff Harris needs some modifications to show multicolor sprites:

lda #%00001111 // multicolor (1) highres (0)
sta $d01c 

Store your four colors in the color registers:

lda #$00    // Black
sta $d021   // Background color

lda #$0f    // Light grey
sta $d025   // Multicolor register #0

lda #$0a    // Light red
sta $d026   // Multicolor register #1

lda #$0e    // Light blue
sta $d027   // Sprite #0 color
sta $d028   // Sprite #1 color
sta $d029   // Sprite #2 color
sta $d02a   // Sprite #3 color

The folder c64-sample-app contains a working minimal example, based on the original example, but written in Kick Assembler syntax.

Here is the application running in VICE: