Comparison between graphics modes in Space Quest III (1989)

Comparison between graphics modes in Space Quest III (1989)
from Zombiepirate@lemmy.world to retrogaming@lemmy.world on 01 May 20:19
https://lemmy.world/post/28972834

I’ve been playing some games through ScummVM, and there’s a cool feature that lets you load the game using whichever graphics mode the software originally supported. It also lets you use shaders to simulate a CRT, because these bare pixels were never meant to be seen with human eyes. I thought it was fun to compare the art from the different versions.

The posted image is from the EGA version

Here is the CGA:

And Here is Hercules(Amber):

#retrogaming

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Zombiepirate@lemmy.world on 01 May 20:59 next collapse

Here are some from inside Monolith Burger, too:

EGA:

CGA:

Hercules (amber):

raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world on 01 May 21:21 collapse

What’s weird is - I could swear Hercules had higher resolution. Didn’t it?

fibojoly@sh.itjust.works on 01 May 21:40 collapse

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.

Zombiepirate@lemmy.world on 01 May 22:03 next collapse

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

Just a guess though.

Maestro@fedia.io on 01 May 22:14 next collapse

No, CGA had multiple color modes. It could only display four at a time, but there were a few palettes to choose from. Of course, some hackers went waaay beyond and made it do 1K colors: https://int10h.org/blog/2015/04/cga-in-1024-colors-new-mode-illustrated/

Zombiepirate@lemmy.world on 01 May 22:37 next collapse

Right, I meant that when doing the conversions the quick and dirty way was to default to the gross palate instead of picking bespoke colors and palettes for everything.

That’s a very cool page that you linked, I’ll have to read through it in detail.

fibojoly@sh.itjust.works on 02 May 05:24 collapse

Oh man! This is some brilliant trickery, haha! I love those. Back in the day, though, there was scant few sources of info so most people would rediscover this sort of stuff on their own, unless part of some group like the demo scene. Wish I could have read this sort of article back then…

DmMacniel@feddit.org on 01 May 22:33 collapse

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

frezik@midwest.social on 01 May 22:17 next collapse

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

fibojoly@sh.itjust.works on 02 May 05:18 collapse

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.

prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 02 May 12:16 next collapse

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

anomnom@sh.itjust.works on 03 May 07:20 collapse

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.

fibojoly@sh.itjust.works on 03 May 07:28 collapse

Oh dear, yes, SVGA! I had forgotten about that one, hahaha!

captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works on 02 May 05:35 next collapse

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.

raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world on 02 May 09:01 collapse

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?

thejbw@lemm.ee on 03 May 00:09 next collapse

Man, scummvm has come a long way since I used it to play Sam and max on my GP32X

Elkenders@feddit.uk on 05 May 05:00 collapse

Day of the tentacle on gp32 for me.

calavera@lemm.ee on 05 May 09:53 collapse

The EGA image is bleeding 80s style, it’s so cool