Starflight Images

The directory entries that contain images are listed below (there may be others that I have not identified yet):

  i  NAME         TYPE  START   END     #REC    RLEN  SLEN
  6  ELO-CPIC        1  0x0100  0x022c  0x012d  0x10  0x00
  8  GAZ-CPIC        1  0x022d  0x02ef  0x00c3  0x10  0x00
  9  MEC-CPIC        1  0x02f0  0x03a1  0x00b2  0x10  0x00
 21  MYS-CPIC        1  0x03a2  0x051c  0x017b  0x10  0x00
 30  NOM-CPIC        1  0x051d  0x0563  0x0047  0x10  0x00
 31  SPE-CPIC        1  0x0564  0x05d9  0x0076  0x10  0x00
 33  THR-CPIC        1  0x05da  0x0674  0x009b  0x10  0x00
 37  VEL-CPIC        1  0x0675  0x0798  0x0124  0x10  0x00
 38  VPR-CPIC        1  0x0799  0x07e6  0x004e  0x10  0x00
 39  MIN-CPIC        1  0x07e7  0x0869  0x0083  0x10  0x00
 44  TPORT-PIC       2  0x6600  0x6696  0x0097  0x10  0x00
 49  BPORT-PIC       2  0x6697  0x678f  0x00f9  0x10  0x00
 54  SPLASH          1  0x086a  0x0c69  0x0400  0x10  0x00
 60  MED-PIC         1  0x0c6a  0x0ce9  0x0080  0x10  0x00
125  HUM-PIC         1  0x0e80  0x0e9d  0x001e  0x10  0x00
126  VEL-PIC         1  0x0e9e  0x0eb8  0x001b  0x10  0x00
127  THR-PIC         1  0x0eb9  0x0ec9  0x0011  0x10  0x00
128  ELO-PIC         1  0x0eca  0x0eef  0x0026  0x10  0x00
129  AND-PIC         1  0x0ef0  0x0f17  0x0028  0x10  0x00
138  EARTH           1  0x2ebc  0x2f03  0x0048  0x10  0x00
141  CREDITS         1  0x308e  0x348d  0x0400  0x10  0x00
142  COP-CPIC        1  0x348e  0x3544  0x00b7  0x10  0x00

There are four types of images, depending on the enconding used to store them:

  • No encoding: 320×200 4-color images, including SPLASH and CREDITS.
  • Single frame: 54×100 2-color images, including HUM-PIC, VEL-PIC, THR-PIC, ELO-PIC and AND-PIC. These are the race outlines
    displayed in the crew assignment screen.
  • Multiple frames: variable size 16-color images, including all the others.
  • Color coded: this is used only in the EARTH image.

In images of the first type (no encoding) each pixel is stored in 2 bits, so the total size is 320*200/4 = 16000 bytes, although
they are stored in 16384 bytes. Single frame and multiple frames use a form of RLE (run length encoding) method, in which the pixels
of each color are encoded and stored separatelly. The color coded EARTH image is a 48×24 image in which each pixel is encoded
in a byte, the byte value determining the altitude and in this way the color (since it is such a small image, it was enlarged by
a factor of five here).

These are not screen captures, but were extracted and converted from actual image data stored in the data files (the colors may not
be accurate, however, since the image files do not store color information, but only indexes into the EGA palette):

SPLASH

CREDITS

BPORT-PIC

BPORT-PIC

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