ComputerCraft-Ascii-Viewer

This project is a toolkit for parsing movies/videos to ascii and visualize them in ComputerCraft, terminal or in countless places.

Requirements

Basically, this project needs a lot of requirements to run, i have split them into some topics.

ToolKit - The brain of project

The ToolKit consists of 3 tools, in which they use the same dependencies.

FFmpeg

FFmpeg is a codec for video manipulation and it's necessary to split the video into several images, to later be transformed into ascii.

It's a severely codec-heavy, so it must be self-installed on your operating system: Linux, Mac & Windows.

Graphics Magick

I put this thread up because i had certain problems using image-to-ascii.

Check this link to install Graphics Magick based on image-to-ascii's own recommendations.

Minecraft - The reason of project

First you need to have minecraft obviously and install a ModLoader, such as forge or fabric.

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Note for Fabric users

You need to download the Fabric API and paste into "mods" folder (in .minecraft).

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ComputerCraft | CC Tweaked

It's important to note that CC Tweaked and ComputerCraft are different. ComputerCraft was discontinued in 1.8.9 while CC Tweaked received some updates in this code and supports the newest versions of minecraft.

You can download the CC Tweaked to forge or fabric.

• After downloading, paste the mod into "mods" folder (in .minecraft).

How to use

This topic is separated into ToolKit and Minecraft for making things more simpler.

ToolKit

Open a terminal, navigate to ToolKit, run yarn . or npm install . to install the packages and navigate to ToolKit/bin.

parser.js - The creator

This tool creates a file (in json) with all the ascii images inside it.

The algorithm is simple, it extracts frame by frame using FFmpeg and transforms it to ascii using image-to-ascii.

To use write node parser <inputFileName> <outputFileName>

• inputFileName it's a .mp4 file. Drop your video in ToolKit/media and use the same name in parser.

• outputFileName it's your output file. It will be created in the ToolKit/converted.

transmitter.js - The broadcaster

This tool broadcasts the ascii-video created by the parser.

To use write node transmitter <fileToBroadcast>

• fileToBroadcast it's a file with the ascii-video. The algorithm will search this file in ToolKit/converted.

This is an interactive tool, and after you initialise then you can use two commands: start & stop.

• start: start your broadcast.
• stop: stop your broadcast.

viewer.js - The viewer

This tool is useful to not need minecraft to see ascii-video.

To use write node viewer <IP>

• IP is the IP of the machine that is running the transmitter. It's important to note that you need to add a prefix and suffix for the websocket to recognize it: ws://<IP>:3333.

Minecraft

CC Tweaked

It's important to note that ComputerCraft blocks access to the local ip range by default, so we must unlock this.

• Go to .minecraft/saves/your world/serverconfig
• Open the computercraft-server.toml file in a text editor (like vscode)
• Change the line 47 from "deny" to "allow".

After that you mustn't have any problems with the connection.

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To put the Lua script into minecraft you need to:

• Put a computer in the minecraft world and initialize it
• Go to Minecraft/ and copy the json & viewer.lua into .minecraft/saves/your world/computercraft/computer/id of your computer/.

To use this tool, go to your computer and write viewer <IP> <textScale>

• IP is the IP of the machine that is running the transmitter. It's important to note that you need to add a prefix and suffix for the websocket to recognize it: ws://<IP>:3333.
• textScale is the scale of text displayed on monitor. It's an optional property that can range between 0.5 and 5.

Example

Let's define that:

• inputFileName = dancin.mp4
• outputFileName = dancin.json
• IP = ws://localhost:3333
• textScale = 0.5

To broadcast your ascii-video do:

• Drop your video in ToolKit/media
• Open a terminal and go to ToolKit/bin
• Run node parser dancin.mp4 dancin.json and await the process ends
• Run node transmitter dancin.json
• When your connect the clients (either the terminal or minecraft viewer) type start or stop.

To view inside minecraft do:

• Do all the steps of "How to Use" in minecraft thread
• Place one or more monitors next to your computer
• Run viewer ws://localhost:3333 0.5 in your computer.