目次 — INDEX#

1. Get a copy (入手)#

PC-98 Paint is on itch.io — https://delacannon.itch.io/

Download it there, unpack, run. Opens on a 640x400, 16-colour canvas with two layers (Background, Line art).

RULE OF THE HARDWARE. One byte per pixel, 4 bits per channel, canvas capped at 640x400. Nothing is ever anti-aliased. If a picture looks smooth, it is dither, not blending.

2. The screen (画面)#

Panels float and are dragged by their body (anywhere not a cell). Tab hides all of them.

Canvas mouse: middle-drag or H = pan · Ctrl+wheel = zoom at cursor · wheel = scroll · Ctrl+Alt+drag = pan with any tool held.

3. Command bar (コマンドバー)#

Icon		Action	Key
	New	new 640x400 canvas	Ctrl+N
	Open	.p98 / .mag / picture	Ctrl+O
	Save	.p98 project	Ctrl+S
	Undo	greys out at the bottom of the stack	Ctrl+Z
	Redo		Ctrl+Y
	Zoom	zoom tool (R-click = out)	+ / -
	Palette	palette panel
	Effects	effects window	Ctrl+E

4. Tool panel (ツール)#

Row 1 — brush size. Eight cells: 20, 14, 10, 7, 5, 3, 2, 1 px. Right-click any size cell to cycle brush shape: round → square → diamond → horizontal → vertical → slash → backslash. [ and ] step the size 1..64.

Rows 2-5 — tools. Left button paints colour A, right button paints colour B.

Icon	Tool	Key	What it does
	Pencil	B	1-px hard pixel
	Brush	N	sized/shaped stamp
	Eraser	E	paints colour B / transparent index
	Picker	I	L = pick into A, R = into B
	Bucket	G	contiguous or global, with tolerance
	Gradient	—	linear / radial / diamond / conical, dithered
	Spray	S	airbrush
	Tone scrape	U	削り: L raises dither density, R lowers
	Line	L
	Curve	C	Catmull-Rom
	Polygon	P	click points, close to finish
	Rect	R
	Filled rect	—
	Ellipse	O
	Filled ellipse	—
	Text	T	stamps the Text-menu string
	Select rect	M
	Select ellipse	—
	Lasso	—	freehand
	Magic wand	W	by colour
	Move	V	moves the selection’s pixels
	Zoom	—	L in, R out
	Pan	H
	Stamp	K	custom brushes / sprites — §11
	3D wire	J	wireframe solids — §12

TIP. Every tool paints through the current dither tile, density, stencil flag and paint clamp. Change the tile and the same tool becomes a texture brush.

Esc cancels a stroke in progress and leaves no undo entry behind.

5. Colour & paint clamp (カラー)#

16 cells, indices 0-15, each 4 bits per channel.

Mouse	Result
Left click	set colour A
Right click	set colour B
Ctrl + click	toggle the barrier flag
Double click	open the RGB editor (0-15 per channel)
SWAP button / X	swap A and B

6. Tone panel — dither (網点)#

Colour here is not an index, it is a tile: 17 ordered tone steps (0%..100% Bayer) plus 24 hand-made meshes — checkers, stripes, hatches, brick, weave, scales, halftone dots, noise. Click a cell to select; the name shows top-right. Tiles are anchored to canvas coordinates, so overlapping strokes merge into one continuous tone instead of showing seams.

Control	Meaning
Density	dithered opacity 0-100 — build tone up in passes
Stencil (skip gaps)	lay down colour B only; the pixels A would cover keep what was there
	mixing is always A against B — pick both before you tone

TIP. Stencil off = two-colour texture. Stencil on = shading over finished art. Tone scrape (U) reads local density and pushes it up/down — that is how you sculpt a gradient out of one tile instead of picking twenty greys.

7. Layers (レイヤー)#

Row: ● visibility · □ lock · name. Click a row to make it active.

Also in Image: Add layer, Merge down, Flatten image.

8. Magnifier window (拡大)#

The second, editable canvas from the Multi Paint layout (View ▸ Magnifier window). Floats over the 1:1 view showing a small region at x2..x24 with a pixel grid — and you draw straight into it with the current tool.

• Follows the pointer on the main canvas, re-centring only near the edge (no jitter).
• Alt-drag or middle-drag inside it scrolls the region by hand.
• Wheel zooms.

9. Menus (メニュー)#

File — New… · Open… · Save · Save As… · Import picture… · Export as PNG / BMP / JPG / MAG… · Quit

Edit — Undo · Redo · Cut · Copy · Paste · Select All · Deselect · Invert Selection · Clear pixels · Fill with colour A

Image — Canvas size… · New canvas preset ▸ · Flip horizontal / vertical · Rotate 90 CW / CCW · Add layer · Merge down · Flatten image

Canvas presets: PC-98 640x400 · 640x200 (tall pixels) · 640x350 · 320x200 · 512x384 · MSX2 256x212 · Icon 64x64 · Sprite 32x32. 640x200 displays with its tall pixel aspect.

Brush — Stamp tool K · Capture stamp from selection Ctrl+B · Capture textures from the picture · Import sprite as stamp… · Tile align (seamless texture) · Stamp panel

3D — Wireframe tool J · Solid ▸ (10 primitives) · Shading ▸ · Shade along a palette ramp · Draw wires over the shading · Perspective · Hide back edges · 3D panel

Palette — presets ▸ · Build palette from canvas… · Edit colour A… · Sort by brightness · Cycle forward / back · Ramp A to B across palette · Re-map canvas to palette…

Text — Text to place… · Use bitmap font · Built-in font size… · Load font (TTF / BDF / ROM / sheet)…

Effects — Effects window… (Ctrl+E)

View — Zoom in / out / 100% / Fit to window · Pixel grid · 8x8 tile grid · Show clamp region · Symmetry ▸ Mirror X / Mirror Y / Diagonal · History panel · Magnifier window · Hide panels (Tab)

Help — About / shortcuts

10. Effects (エフェクト)#

Ctrl+E. Live preview. Everything runs in float RGB and is re-quantised back onto the 16 colours with a dither method you choose, honouring the selection.

Dither methods (effects, import, re-tone): Bayer 2x2/4x4/8x8, clustered dot, clustered line, spiral, blue noise (void-and-cluster, generated at runtime), white noise, Floyd-Steinberg, False Floyd, Jarvis-Judice-Ninke, Stucki, Atkinson, Burkes, Sierra 3/2/Lite, Stevenson-Arce — with serpentine scanning and adjustable strength.

Extrude shading — the plug-in that pulls a gradient out of your line art. Pick the ink colour, an angle, and a reach in pixels; each pixel is shaded by how far it sits downwind of the nearest line pixel. Options: ramp entries (Ramp from sits against the ink), linear / ease-out / ease-in falloff, ordered dither between ramp entries, and “only on colour X”.

TIP. Effects obey the selection. Select one shape, run CRT bleed on it alone, deselect.

11. Stamps (スタンプ)#

The stamp tool (K) paints artwork instead of a generated disc. Everything is whole-number: integer scale, integer pixel placement, no interpolation — the pixels drawn are the pixels that land.

Ten seamless 16x16 wagara samples ship in: Seigaiha, Asanoha, Ichimatsu, Shippo, Kikko, Uroko, Yagasuri, Sayagata, Kanoko, Tatewaku.

• Capture (Ctrl+B) — the selection, or the whole layer, trimmed to its ink.
• Import sprite as stamp… — PNG/BMP/GIF mapped onto the document palette; alpha (or a flat backdrop colour) becomes the holes.
• Capture textures from the picture — reads a finished picture’s 8x8 dither cells back out as stamps, folding phase and colour-swap variants together, and reports the shading ramp.
• Right-click a captured stamp to throw it away. Samples never leave.

Putting a stamp down. A stamp stays selected across tools, so pick one and you can draw a line, an ellipse or a curve with it. To go back to a plain brush: click the selected stamp again, or click any size cell in the tool panel. The pencil and the eraser never stamp — they stay single-pixel tools whatever is selected.

TIP. A stamp is used by every brush tool — that is the point of it. If strokes keep coming out as artwork, the stamp is still selected: click its cell once to drop it.

12. 3D wire (ワイヤー)#

J rubber-bands a solid into the box you drag. Ten primitives: cube, pyramid, tetrahedron, octahedron, icosahedron, sphere, cylinder, cone, torus, prism — drawn as plain lines through the same painter, so they take the current colour, tile and brush.

Sides / rings subdivide the round solids · turn / tilt / twist rotate · perspective or orthographic · hide back edges drops edges belonging only to away-facing faces. The fit accounts for canvas pixel aspect, so a sphere on 640x200 is still round on screen.

Shading — faces filled behind the wires: Flat (facets) or Smooth (interpolated corners). Tone is an ordered dither between A (lit) and B (shadow), or an entry from a palette run with shade along a palette ramp. Bands posterises into N steps; light / height aim the lamp; ambient lifts shadows; wires can be switched off once the faces carry the shape.

Faces are laid far-to-near — enough for a convex solid. A torus seen edge-on can still sort a face or two wrong. TIP. Sort the palette by brightness before using a ramp, or the ramp comes out as confetti.

13. Text & fonts (文字)#

Text is stamped from real 1-bit glyphs through the normal painter, so it picks up the current dither tile, stencil flag and paint clamp exactly like a brush stroke.

Text menu: the string to place, letter and line spacing, font, bitmap vs vector toggle.

TIP. Small heights are unforgiving: a condensed face at 11px breaks up at any threshold; a monospaced one stays clean down to ~10px.

14. Files (ファイル)#

MAG round-trips losslessly, palette included; 256-colour MAG is reduced to 16 on load. PNG/BMP/JPG export takes an integer magnification 1x..8x, so pixels stay hard.

Exact copy on import. A picture that already fits sixteen colours — a PC-98 screenshot, a MAG rip — is offered an exact copy: the canvas takes the picture’s own size, the palette is lifted off it, and not one pixel is quantised or dithered.

Quantisers for everything else: median cut, k-means, popularity, octree, fixed PC-98 16, or keep the current palette.

15. Undo & history (アンドゥ)#

Ctrl+Z undo · Ctrl+Y or Ctrl+Shift+Z redo · command-bar arrows · History panel (View ▸ History panel): every action by name, oldest first, current position highlighted, undone steps dimmed. Click any row to jump there — including row 0, “Original”.

64 levels, capped at 192 MB. Strokes, shapes, fills, effects, layer ops, palette changes, canvas resizes and rotations share one stack. A gesture cancelled with Esc rolls back cleanly; a click that painted nothing makes no entry.

16. Keyboard card (キー一覧)#

1
 ┌──── TOOLS ───────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
2
 │ B pencil   N brush   E eraser   G fill    L line    R rect   │
3
 │ P polygon  C curve   S spray    U scrape  I picker  T text   │
4
 │ O ellipse  M select  W wand     V move    H pan              │
5
 │ K stamp    J 3D wire                                         │
6
 ├──── PAINT ───────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
7
 │ X swap A/B      [ ] brush size      Ctrl+B capture stamp     │
8
 │ L-button = colour A       R-button = colour B                │
9
 ├──── VIEW ────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
10
 │ Tab hide panels   + / - zoom   Ctrl+wheel zoom at cursor     │
11
 │ middle-drag pan   Ctrl+Alt+drag pan   wheel scroll           │
12
 ├──── EDIT ────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
13
 │ Ctrl+Z undo   Ctrl+Shift+Z / Ctrl+Y redo   Esc cancel        │
14
 │ Ctrl+A select all   Ctrl+D deselect   Del clear pixels       │
15
 │ Ctrl+C copy   Ctrl+V paste                                   │
16
 ├──── FILE ────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
17
 │ Ctrl+N new   Ctrl+O open   Ctrl+S save   Ctrl+Shift+S as…    │
18
 │ Ctrl+E effects                                               │
19
 ├──── PALETTE (mouse) ─────────────────────────────────────────┤
20
 │ click = A   R-click = B   Ctrl+click = barrier   2x = edit   │
21
 └──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

17. Troubleshooting (こまったとき)#

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 ║  END OF MANUAL                                               ║
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 ║  「絵は一枚ずつ、点は一つずつ」— one picture, one pixel       ║
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