Comment on Comparison between graphics modes in Space Quest III

• fibojoly@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Hercules used to play in 720 x 400 or thereabouts.

  And that CGA palette looks wrong to me, haha. All the games I ever saw were either cyan magenta black and white, or black red green yellow. First time I see a mix like this.

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  • frezik@midwest.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    CGA has some complexities. I haven’t gone over everything, but I think the pictures are correct.

    Check the wiki section on color palettes: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_Graphics_Adapter

    And as another poster said, VGA conversion is a problem all its own. See the 8-bit Guy’s video: youtu.be/niKblgZupOc

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    • fibojoly@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      VGA let’s you pick a palette of 256 colours out of 262144, which is because the RGB components were actually on 6bit, not the full 8bit we would come to expect later. The 320x200 resolution would also be a sore point for artists and that’s how you ended with quite a few games sticking to the EGA palette and using dithering to simulate more colours while using a superior resolution (640x480, or was it 800x600?). I’ve some vivid memories of Cobra Mission for example, or the Commander Keen saga.

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      • anomnom@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        VGA was 640x480 but you could do square pixels at 768 × 576 but only in 16 colors I think.

        SVGA (Super VGA) was the first time I saw 800x600 glorious pixels.

        But since our hardware upgrade was slow at home we jumped right to XGA.

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      • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Oh man, I remember that brief time where games had a “256 color mode.”

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  • captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    CGA had a number of modes, but one of the 4 color 320x200 modes was most often used in game; these look like they’re supposed to by white, black, cyan and magenta. The thing is, it could use NTSC color artifacting to actually show more colors on a composite monitor through the use of dithering.

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  • raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    CGA was 4 colors out of 16 I believe, with the two default color sets like you say. But I only see 4 colors in the images, too. Maybe the white in the black green red yellow is actually yellow?

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  • Zombiepirate@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I think that bad CGA palette comes from quick & dirty VGA conversions. This was probably near enough to the changeover that it was worth doing a good job because there were still quite a few people still using CGA.

    Just a guess though.

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    • DmMacniel@feddit.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      This may open your eyes regarding CGA: www.youtube.com/watch?v=niKblgZupOc

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