[HN Gopher] Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade EGA/VGA Comparison
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Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade EGA/VGA Comparison
Author : ingve
Score : 368 points
Date : 2021-03-17 11:31 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.superrune.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.superrune.com)
| fho wrote:
| Quick ... someone train a network on that ;-)
| jbverschoor wrote:
| They should really use a crt filter for proper comparison.
|
| I really enjoy the dark scenes in blue monochromatic. It gives a
| really good athmosphere. Somethings that's lost in the 'upgrade'
| tommica wrote:
| Hah, was just playing this game, and the fist-fighting is
| impossible - no idea how anyone managed to successfully play that
| minigame
| fullstop wrote:
| I think that you were supposed to mostly rely on stealth. You
| don't have to fight the big guy in the castle -- you can get
| him very drunk take him down with one punch.
|
| edit: just for fun, here is the scene --
| https://youtu.be/9ivNLD75rAU?t=2854
| [deleted]
| theklub wrote:
| This was one of my favorite games as a kid and I still have love
| for it.
| mgraupner wrote:
| Same for me, I just thought it was incredible hard as soon as
| you got into some fighting with the bad guys (especially Castle
| Brunwald).
| fullstop wrote:
| I think that I enjoyed Fate of Atlantis more, especially
| because it had the three paths to give it some more ways to
| play. I avoided the "Fists" path because my keyboard didn't
| have a number pad.
|
| I went back to both of them, decades years later, and found
| Last Crusade to be much more challenging in a way that games no
| longer offer (besides Dark Souls) -- they let you make mistakes
| which hinder or make completion almost impossible. You could
| get pretty far in to Last Crusade and not have the required
| items to progress further.
| the_af wrote:
| Many gamers hated this kind of "getting irreversibly stuck"
| situation of early adventure games, and in fact Lucasarts
| made a conscious effort to avoid it in later games (e.g. Full
| Throttle, Monkey Island, etc). You couldn't even die (yes, I
| know about the dying easter egg in Monkey Island).
|
| This was in contrast with Sierra Online's adventures, which
| had plenty of surprise deaths and deadend situations. This
| led to saving frantically at every step, which isn't
| particularly fun.
|
| I loved Sierra games -- the first three EGA Space Quest games
| are my favorites -- but I see the point of avoiding player
| frustration.
| fullstop wrote:
| I don't like getting stuck permanently. Even in Dark Souls
| there are no ways to get irreversibly stuck, although you
| can make it significantly more challenging by killing
| certain NPCs along the way and losing the ability to use
| the services that they once offered.
| Storm-Bringer wrote:
| Agreed, such a brilliant game
| jl6 wrote:
| It's the same story all through the history of computer graphics:
| good artists can make something look good even with constrained
| tools.
|
| Conversely, increasing the technical capabilities of the tool
| does not guarantee a good art style.
| _dps wrote:
| If you have an interest in this kind of art, this GDC
| presentation by Mark Ferrari "8 Bit & 8 Bit-ish Graphics" gives
| lots of great detail about the art process, tools, and practices
| of the time (Ferrari worked on the EGA art for Monkey Island,
| among several others).
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMcJ1Jvtef0
| corysama wrote:
| When I was a kid in high school and considering a career in
| art, Mark Ferrari was kind enough to invite me to hang out in
| his home studio and chat about making art for games.
|
| Apparently he had to fight with the engineers over switching to
| a dithered art style because at the time they were using run
| length encoding for compression. But, he re-painted a few
| scenes to be dithered and the improvement was so obvious that
| the engineers gave in and "made it work" (switched to LZW
| compression).
| megameter wrote:
| The art for Indy 3 in EGA definitely shows signs of dither
| being desired but not used, which I always found made it feel
| sparse and unfinished, even in VGA. Mind, I was coming to
| this from the standpoint of really getting into the Lucasarts
| adventures after LOOM. It's likely that on this game they
| were stretched for space regardless, since it spans a lot of
| scenes.
| rob74 wrote:
| I originally played the Amiga version back in the day, but it was
| (as far as I can see) 100% identical to the EGA version and
| therefore looked pretty bad compared with Amiga-native games or
| better ports. To their credit, Lucasfilm put more effort into
| later games (Indy IV, Monkey Island I/II etc.). The Amiga's
| graphics were in between EGA and VGA (palette of 4096 colors, but
| only 32 colors at the same time without further tricks), so it
| wasn't really straightforward to port a PC game...
| kjrose wrote:
| Honestly, one of the best things I learned when I was doing work
| on complexity with Stuart Kauffman was the idea of enabling
| constraints. The fact that in many circumstances putting
| constraints can actually lead to more complex and better
| situations when there is creation. Essentially, the enabling
| constraint has the effect of putting more of the creation on the
| line of criticality and thus suddenly you get far more creative
| growth.
|
| These EGA/VGA comparisons (this is the second I've seen so far)
| almost demonstrate this perfectly. It's really quite fascinating.
| croes wrote:
| Played it on CGA
| rlv-dan wrote:
| EGA has terrible colors yet I am strangely drawn to this
| esthetics. Of course a big part of this is that the artists at
| Lusasfilm where amazing.
| TLightful wrote:
| No ticket.
| darkwater wrote:
| The "EGA is better" crowd makes me think of the "vinyl is better"
| one. Sure, albums produced with the vinyl as the target, verbatim
| put on CD, were better on real vynil. But that doesn't mean the
| vinyl is better per se, at least not technically.
|
| Here is almost the same, due to its limitation EGA needed some
| creativity that VGA didn't need. But in the end VGA was also
| mastered and produced some masterpieces (for example Monkey
| Island 2 to remain into the LucasArts realm).
| eecc wrote:
| EGA... the instagram filter of the '80s.
| the_af wrote:
| EGA Monkey Island is similarly beautiful.
|
| I feel EGA forced artists to work within the limitations of the
| available color palette, and good artists created awesome stuff
| (like shown in this case). Once they had VGA, some artists rushed
| to use every color gradient they could get away with, and this
| ruined their art till they got the hang of it.
|
| Something similar happened with the transition from pixel art to
| 3D games -- games were 3D because they had to, whether necessary
| or not. And many suffered from it. (Arguably, many still do!)
|
| Of course, I hold the extremist opinion that even some CGA (4
| colors!) games were beautiful in their own way. I don't think
| more is always better, a lesson that seems to be lost on some
| game developers...
| mrob wrote:
| The early LucasArts VGA games look worse than their EGA
| versions, but their artists learned to use VGA better. The Dig
| makes great use of VGA color.
|
| https://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/dig/screenshots
| the_af wrote:
| Agreed! And what an amazing game The Dig was. I liked that it
| was less "humorous" than the standard adventure fare, too.
| fullstop wrote:
| Last Crusade supported CGA. I don't know how it was
| implemented, though -- it looks like dithering was used at
| least to emulate some of the EGA colors. [1]
|
| That wasn't the only change, through. I remember that there is
| a rotisserie in the castle which rotates in EGA/VGA, but does
| not in CGA, so they likely knew that the computers with CGA
| could not handle the animation as well.
|
| 1. https://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/indiana-jones-and-the-
| las...
| deadlyllama wrote:
| CGA looks worse in modern screenshots though. The colour
| palette could be awful but the monitor would add some blur
| between the pixels and that helped. EGA had the same. VGA
| 320x200 was pixel doubled (640x400 was fed to the monitor) so
| it looked much blockier.
|
| And if the colour palette wasn't to your taste... For years I
| had CGA with a monochrome composite monitor. So it was all
| shades of green. The old LucasArts and Sierra games were fine
| on mono CGA.
|
| Also we walked uphill both ways to school, etc, get your 4k
| displays off my lawn...
| kiwidrew wrote:
| Yep, CGA in monochrome is quite pleasant. Black, amber, and
| two intermediate shades of amber, what more could one
| need?! It's really much nicer than any of the garish CGA
| colour palettes. [With the possible exception of the black-
| red-cyan-white undocumented palette.]
|
| EGA is great though, 320x200x16 is just one of those
| natural sweet spots that many different early computers
| eventually settled on.
| toyg wrote:
| I had a greyscale VGA and Fate of Atlantis looked pretty
| good too.
| aasasd wrote:
| Frankly those screenshots in CGA look like 90% dithering and
| are pretty hard to take in.
| the_af wrote:
| Yes, to me those are examples where CGA didn't work well.
| It wasn't suitable for this kind of scenes. This cyan-
| magenta-white default palette was also pretty jarring; the
| green-red-yellow one was better looking.
| moonbug wrote:
| but when viewed on a composite monitor, you see something
| quite different.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composite_artifact_colors
| fullstop wrote:
| Yeah, it feels like someone was told that they needed to
| support CGA a few weeks before the final deadline.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| IMO, nothing looks good in CGA. It's not just that it's 4
| colours, it's 4 awful colours.
|
| I'd take a 1-bit Mac game over CGA.
| the_af wrote:
| This is obviously highly subjective, but you might be
| thinking of CGA's default palette (magenta-cyan-white-
| black). The device had more than one palette, and many
| games used the red-green-yellow-black palette, which
| looks much more pleasing to me.
|
| Here's an example where it's used, and it looks cool to
| me: https://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/defender-of-the-
| crown/scr... (the text is hard to read, but that's
| because of the low resolution).
|
| > _I 'd take a 1-bit Mac game over CGA._
|
| Those indeed look pretty cool, but that's a matter of
| higher resolution which allows for cool dithering
| effects. CGA color modes were pretty low res, so it's
| likely that's the actual problem you have with them, not
| just the 4 colors. Or rather, the combination of both
| factors.
| nwallin wrote:
| That's the low intensity dark green-dark red-brown-black
| palette, not the high intensity light red-light green-
| yellow-black palette. The high intensity mode was about a
| quarter as garish as the cyan magenta mode, which won't
| make your eyeballs bleed, but it's still a mite bit
| uncomfortable.
|
| The dark green dark red brown black palette was indeed
| probably the least bad palette, but it suffered severely
| from a lack of contrast. That's why the text is hard to
| read, because it's black text on a brown background, not
| because of the resolution.
|
| The reason the cyan magenta white black palette was so
| common is because it had both black and white, meaning
| the text was easy to read.
|
| The Tandy graphics adapter allowed a programmable
| palette. It was still just 4 colors, but the programmer
| could choose which 4 colors they were. (out of the 16
| colors a CGA monitor could display) This was such a minor
| increase in complexity for a 10x improvement in
| usefulness it's shocking to me that IBM didn't include
| that in the CGA.
| the_af wrote:
| First things first: thanks for the insightful reply!
|
| Yes, I meant the low intensity palette, you're correct. I
| disagree with you in that I don't find it "the least
| bad", but actually beautiful. It has a kind of "wood
| engraving" vibe to me.
|
| > _That 's why the text is hard to read, because it's
| black text on a brown background, not because of the
| resolution._
|
| I respectfully disagree. It's true that the contrast is
| lower than with a brighter color, but it's still not a
| problem for my eyes. For me, it actually has to do with
| the blockiness of the low res font; also there's some
| aliasing with the "m" and similar characters that
| confuses my eyes and I have to make an extra effort the
| parse the characters -- the same would happen were this
| black font on white background.
|
| The Tandy fascinates me since I saw that video by The 8
| Bit Guy. Sadly, I never owned one!
| laumars wrote:
| Bare in mind the displays of the time would have blended
| the pixels.
|
| Likewise those who complain that CGA is "only 4 awful
| colours" have clearly never used a proper CGA system the
| way it was originally intended.
|
| The following YouTube video does a good job describing what
| CGA was really like back in the day:
| https://youtu.be/niKblgZupOc
| setpatchaddress wrote:
| This is largely cherry-picking revisionism. I saw CGA on
| the displays of the time at the time with the games of
| the time, and can confirm it was mostly terrible. EGA
| couldn't come fast enough.
| Lio wrote:
| My first PC XT clone had Hercules and CGA on an orange monitor.
|
| 4 shades of a single colour isn't so bad.
|
| Really wish I hadn't sold it now as I did a lot on that
| machine. Even ran Windows 2.0 passably.
|
| I really, really wanted something capable of playing
| Wolfenstein though so it had to go. :(
| the_af wrote:
| My first PC XT clone also ran Hercules with an ambar monitor.
| SIMCGA FTW! I still feel very nostalgic about that look &
| feel. I programmed my first real graphics using that
| hardware.
|
| (I started with a Commodore 64, but I was too young and
| didn't really manage to output graphics with it).
| tptacek wrote:
| _Of course, I hold the extremist opinion that even some CGA (4
| colors!) games were beautiful in their own way._
|
| I agree! I have a CGA game still inked on my left arm (in case
| any of you ever need to identify my headless corpse).
| the_af wrote:
| Which game?
| tptacek wrote:
| The Black Cauldron.
| codetrotter wrote:
| Can we get to see a picture of your tattoo? It sounds
| cool!
| borisjabes wrote:
| I really thought this game/book was lost in time. Glad to
| know there's a fellow pig herder fan.
| tptacek wrote:
| Both the books (all of them) and the Sierra game were a
| very big deal to me. Weirdly, I've never seen the Disney
| movie.
| foobarian wrote:
| Speaking of CGA, Defender of the Crown was my favorite.
| https://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/defender-of-the-crown/scr...
| the_af wrote:
| Gorgeous! Thanks for sharing. I think CGA is an extreme case
| of "working with limitations/constraints". It was hard to get
| it right, but when they did, as in this case, it was awesome.
| tclancy wrote:
| Man, I must have had hundreds of hours into that! Always go
| with the Greek fire.
| Akronymus wrote:
| CGA shines on a crt, usually.
|
| Some CGA games just look stunning with CRT/composite
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHXx3orN35Y
| the_af wrote:
| Indeed. I found out about CGA's amazing composite output only
| recently, watching a video by The 8 Bit guy. I was completely
| unaware of this back in the day...
| apozem wrote:
| As someone with no nostalgia for the PSX/N64, it's hard not to
| look back on that as an entire generation of ugly graphics.
| SNES pixel art has aged beautifully, Cloud's polygons have not.
|
| That's not even counting the many, many games with wonky
| cameras. It feels like cameras were not widely figured out
| until the 360/PS3 generation.
| short_sells_poo wrote:
| Perhaps I'm just looking at things through rose tinted glasses,
| but I very much agree with this. I like to think that good
| pixel art works with the imagination. The artist puts down the
| broad strokes and lets the imagination fill the rest! There is
| a huge amount of skill that goes into good pixel art. It's not
| enough to have attention to detail, but an intuition about
| engaging and working with imagination.
|
| The more realistic the graphics, the higher the risk that it
| falls into the uncanny valley trap. The brain is already half
| fooled that it is seeing reality (or something that is supposed
| to be real) but if it's only slightly off, there'll be a
| feeling of unease. Of course, early 3d games were far off from
| feeling real, but they were already a step up and there was
| less headroom for imagination. The low polygon count models
| just look janky instead of endearing.
|
| Pixel art completely sidesteps this uncanny valley by not
| trying to be realistic, instead it tries to engage the brain to
| fill in the details. It's perhaps halfway between reading a
| book and watching a movie.
|
| E.g. looking at early 3d games, they just feel dated. One
| cannot help but compare them to today's 3d graphics and of
| course the oldies fall short by a very far margin. Comparing
| pixel art games to a modern AAA 3D game title is just so
| obviously apples to oranges that there is no struggle due to
| loss of fidelity.
|
| Again, perhaps my view is biased because I grew up with the
| pixelated games of old. Still, I'd like to assign the
| excitement of the early 3d titles more to the novelty (at the
| time) than from the fidelity of the graphics. I think the pixel
| art style will (or already does) have much more staying power.
| m16ghost wrote:
| >E.g. looking at early 3d games, they just feel dated. One
| cannot help but compare them to today's 3d graphics and of
| course the oldies fall short by a very far margin. Comparing
| pixel art games to a modern AAA 3D game title is just so
| obviously apples to oranges that there is no struggle due to
| loss of fidelity.
|
| >Again, perhaps my view is biased because I grew up with the
| pixelated games of old. Still, I'd like to assign the
| excitement of the early 3d titles more to the novelty (at the
| time) than from the fidelity of the graphics. I think the
| pixel art style will (or already does) have much more staying
| power.
|
| I happen to agree that early 3d games like PS1/N64 look
| rather ugly, but nostalgia is very powerful, and retro low
| poly models is now its own aesthetic [0]. Like with pixel
| art, artists will take liberties with what was actually
| capable with hardware at the time, but people who grew up
| with the style will probably appreciate it more.
|
| [0]https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/321754/Designing_a_dem
| ak...
| the_af wrote:
| > _I like to think that good pixel art works with the
| imagination._
|
| Fully agreed with this and the rest of your post. Are you
| familiar with Scott McCloud's "Understanding Comics"? I'm not
| particularly a fan of the whole book, but I really agree and
| am fascinated by the concept of "closure" he describes: the
| way the mind "fills in" the details that are missing in
| sequential art (i.e. comics), so you mentally create movement
| and detail when there is objectively none. This even works
| for storytelling itself, from a few "action" frames you
| mentally reconstruct the story, and this requires little
| effort.
|
| I think the same happens with pixel or line art. You just
| need some cues and then your brain gets to work on creating
| the scene.
| majormajor wrote:
| I never played this Indiana Jones game, or have much memory
| of other EGA games that I can think of, and to me, 90% of the
| VGA screenshots in this article look better than the EGA
| ones.
|
| To me, the limited color palette doesn't strike me as a
| differently meaningful sort of limitation than, say, the
| appearance of Mario 64 vs Mario Galaxy.
|
| The imagination always fills in the gap - I don't _remember_
| KOTOR looking worse than Mass Effect looking worse than Mass
| Effect Andromeda, say, but if I go back and look at them,
| they definitely were more limited - but if you don 't have
| the memory of just how much your imagination originally
| filled in, I think it's harder to look past the actual
| pixels.
| rightbyte wrote:
| I though C&C Red Alert was incredibly realistic. Or that
| rail shooter Star Wars game with "live action".
|
| Looking at them now makes a case for imagination being an
| important part.
| the_af wrote:
| I'm sure it has to do with the games I grew up with, but I
| still think EGA Last Crusade is better than VGA, and I find
| beauty in EGA Monkey Island and even in blockier games like
| Kings of the Beach or Street Rod! And of course, I love the
| EGA graphics of my adored Space Quest I, II & III.
|
| Yes, this means I go back to those games _now_ and I still
| find their graphics cool looking and evocative.
|
| > _The imagination always fills in the gap_
|
| Fully agreed! I think this is a quality that gets lost with
| games with more realistic graphics.
|
| > _To me, the limited color palette doesn 't strike me as a
| differently meaningful sort of limitation than, say, the
| appearance of Mario 64 vs Mario Galaxy._
|
| I believe it _is_ a meaningful limitation. It 's like
| working in a black & white drawing with a pencil, or with
| an early comic book illustration. It's not just fewer
| colors, you must re-think the illustration. An obvious
| example is the use of dithering, which when done right can
| be a beautiful art form. With VGA, you need way less
| dithering, if at all.
| MetaWhirledPeas wrote:
| > Of course, I hold the extremist opinion that even some CGA (4
| colors!) games were beautiful in their own way.
|
| This is one reason I appreciate Downwell. You unlock new
| 4-color palettes as you progress. Some are really nice to look
| at and completely change the mood of the game.
| the_af wrote:
| What is Downwell?
| aasasd wrote:
| Seems like another one of those games with a few colors and
| swappable palettes.
|
| 'Down Ward' does that too:
| https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/fisholith/down-ward-
| owl... (or would do if it was funded--not sure of its
| fate).
| the_af wrote:
| Oooh, now that I've seen it I like Downwell. To me it has
| a distinct "Speccy" vibe to it. It's not just pixel art,
| it looks like a ZX Spectrum game!
| stupidcar wrote:
| 100% agree. It's telling that most contemporary pixel artists
| work by choice with a limited palette. The actual number of
| colors, even in complex pieces, is often shockingly small.
| aasasd wrote:
| Mac games of the old are known for 1-bit graphics:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y01lZbrxxb0
|
| Not much to look at, but plays well into the noir theme in this
| case.
|
| The aesthetic recently had a resurgence in the indie scene,
| with 'Obra Dinn' and whatnot. Many gamemakers especially
| reminisce about Gameboy's four-color palette.
|
| Some modern low-color games might have more than two colors,
| but are designed essentially in grayscale and allow switching
| the whole palette:
| https://pioneersgame.tumblr.com/post/112307966203/i-doubt-th...
|
| Though of course, this time the four colors aren't some
| arbitrary acid-neon colors, but are chosen by the authors.
| the_af wrote:
| Good call: Obra Dinn -- a game that fascinates me --
| definitely captures the old Mac aesthetic. Intentionally, of
| course.
| incanus77 wrote:
| I had a PCjr in the 90s, which meant that most games were CGA
| unless I happened to find one that supported the rare-but-more-
| common-than-native-PCjr-EGA Tandy TGA 16-color mode, in which
| case I'd get 16 colors. Every game acquisition was a crapshoot
| to see if I was lucky or not. Native EGA was out.
| the_af wrote:
| I only owned PC clones. I discovered the Tandy in that 8 Bit
| Guy video in which he argues it was the best DOS gaming
| computer. I wish I had owned one!
| Tarq0n wrote:
| The same thing applies to MIDI music from the same era. Though
| I'm not sure how much of it was related to the technology and
| how much was the culture or aesthetic influences of game makers
| at the time.
| aasasd wrote:
| I now felt alarmed enough to check which version of Maniac
| Mansion I have in the 'to-play' pile. Don't know if there are
| marked differences in V2: PCGamingWiki notes that it has
| 'moderately improved graphics with more overall colors'. Still
| looks pretty EGA to me in the opening sequences.
|
| However, it turns out that by default the V2 displays wrong in
| ScummVM, while accurate to the hardware limitations. You need to
| switch the 'render mode' to Amiga to get intended colors:
| https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Maniac_Mansion#Higher_qual...
| Narishma wrote:
| The default is the right way to play it then, if you want EGA
| graphics.
| aasasd wrote:
| Not really my objective, no. I want good artwork, whatever
| standard it's in.
| brandonmenc wrote:
| Lots of rose colored glasses here.
|
| Yes, looking back on the EGA graphics, there is definitely a
| level of skill and stylization that I took for granted at the
| time and have a certain nostalgia for, but when the VGA versions
| of these games came out they were all mind-blowing and you just
| kind of had to be there - no one was selecting the EGA option if
| they had a VGA card.
|
| I remember the VGA version of Indiana Jones in particular being
| awesome in VGA, on a CRT, live in motion.
| dharma1 wrote:
| yep. I had EGA and played most of these games on it - I
| remember seeing the same games on my friends VGA screens and
| they were sooooo much better on those.
|
| Looking at them now, the EGA ones have a certain amount of
| nostalgia, but I vividly remember 16 colours being really
| limiting, especially at those resolutions where dithering was
| really noticeable.
| flanbiscuit wrote:
| I remember when I got my first VGA card, I was so excited and
| the games did look so much better to me! It's also how I felt
| about getting my first audio card (the original Sound
| Blaster)
|
| Even looking at the comparisons in that post I still prefer
| the VGA versions over the EGA versions. Guess I did not get
| enough exposure to EGA to have that much nostalgia for it. My
| family got a computer around '91 and I think the VGA card
| came within a year after purchase
| miohtama wrote:
| It was very early for VGA, or more technically MCGA 300 x
| 200 x 256 colour mode. Artists had not yet figured out how
| to utilize 256 colour palette to the best of art.
| gbil wrote:
| While I played this game on an Atari 1024ST which I believe used
| an EGA like display I remember a (not so) similar graphics
| quality situation with Space Quest V which I started playing in a
| CGA monochrome monitor and at some point Roger was supposed to
| mop a floor with a yellow - if I remember correctly - logo that
| changed from dark yellow to shiny yellow while cleaning it. I had
| to buy a EGA color monitor to get through this part of the game
| as no matter the path I chose, I couldn't really see any changes
| with the monochrome one in order to complete the task...
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I had a similar issue with conquest of camelot. I was playing
| on a monochrome display, and you had to find an amulet in the
| catacombs. I spent hours looking for it, then I played it on my
| dad's computer with EGA, and it was bright yellow on gray and
| glaringly obvious.
| timbit42 wrote:
| EGA can display 16 colors from a 64 color palette.
|
| The Atari ST can display 16 colors from a 512 color palette.
|
| The Atari STe can display 16 colors from a 4096 color palette.
|
| The Amigas can display 32 colors from a 4096 color palette.
| mrob wrote:
| And in the 320x200 mode used by these games, standard EGA can
| display only 16 colors from a 16 color palette, for backwards
| compatibility with CGA monitors.
| Lio wrote:
| The Amiga also had HAM mode that could display all 4096
| colours but it was somewhat limited in what you could use it
| for. When I first saw that it looked like witchcraft.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hold-And-Modify
| aruggirello wrote:
| Nitpicking, but the OCS ("classic") Amiga can also display 64
| colors (in _half brite_ mode) or even the full 4096 color
| palette (in _hold and modify_ /HAM mode). That's what made
| people's jaws drop back then.
| the_af wrote:
| Never owned an Amiga. HAM was used for static screens and
| photos, right? What were the screen modes used for actual
| games?
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| With extremely unusual exceptions, no games used HAM,
| because it took several frames to completely redraw the
| screen. 32-color was the standard.
| LocalH wrote:
| Although the earliest A1000s didn't include EHB mode
| sigmaprimus wrote:
| Im pretty sure I have the retail box and floppies for this game.
| Going from 16 to 256 colors does seem to make the scenes look
| prettier but for me the 1st game that stands out in my memory
| showcasing the VGA improvement is a simple breakout game called
| Bananoid.
|
| These images brought back some powerful memories, one in
| particular is hearing the chorus of the song Self Control by
| Laura Branigan comming out of my friends C64 in or around 1986.
| The next time I heard a simmilar example was a .wav file of the
| song Daisy but that was years later.
| mmastrac wrote:
| Bananoid was awesome because it could make use of the VGA
| offset registers for smooth scrolling. I was blown away when I
| saw it.
| the_af wrote:
| One VGA with multidirectional smooth scrolling that really
| impressed me, back in the day, was a shoot'em up called
| Zone66 [1]. It was hard to get running on DOS, but it was a
| beauty -- and fun, too!
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_66
| fullstop wrote:
| Do you remember "VGA ART" ?
|
| https://archive.org/details/msdos_shareware_fb_VGAART
|
| I remember being very excited for Zone66 since I had seen
| other things by Renaissance and it used protected mode to
| squeeze every ounce of processing power out of my PC. In
| the end, though, the game just wasn't very fun. It had a
| cool introduction, though!
| pygy_ wrote:
| The VGA versions of the games could be played on EGA hardware,
| the 320x200 x256colors graphics were displayed, dithered, in
| 640x200x16colors mode.
|
| The EGA versions had distinct 16 colors graphics.
|
| I guess you had the VGA versions
| markonen wrote:
| The retail box came with a replica of Henry Jones's grail
| diary. That was mind blowing for a ten-year-old who had just
| seen the movie. All in all still one of my fondest gaming
| memories.
| Grustaf wrote:
| I find it very hard to quickly see which is which, the two
| versions are so different. It would be nice with a more explicit
| side-by-side layout.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Not sure if you're being sarcastic... you know you only see the
| VGA one when you hover over it with your mouse? You know which
| is which because you know which one you're pointing at, right?
| Grustaf wrote:
| How would I know that?
| scoutt wrote:
| From TFA
|
| > Hover the cursor over the images to see the remastered
| VGA version. If you're on a iOS device, you can simply tap
| the images
| Grustaf wrote:
| Ah, I just opened the page and scrolled down, saw what
| looked like pairs of images but couldn't really tell if
| one had more colours than the other. The text didn't help
| to enlighten me either. But now I see the description in
| the intro.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| How do you think I know it? I'm just trying to help you use
| the site and access the content, mate.
| Spare_account wrote:
| From the HN commenting guidelines:
|
| > _Please respond to the strongest plausible
| interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one
| that 's easier to criticize. Assume good faith._
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Eh? I did assume good faith. I checked if they were
| wanting a serious reply because it wasn't clear, then I
| explained how to do what they wanted to do, even though
| it was already in the article.
| Spare_account wrote:
| Perhaps I've fallen victim to a regional language
| difference but even with the most generous interpretation
| I could manage, the addition of "mate" on the end of your
| comment left me with the impression that you were being
| (mildly) aggressive.
|
| I will refer myself to my own quote from the guidelines
| :-)
| Grustaf wrote:
| Did you really think I was being sarcastic?
| distances wrote:
| Or on mobile, tap the image. TBH I was also wondering for a
| good while where the other images are.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Maybe people are confused about the animation as well - the
| images are animated but these minor things like doors
| moving around aren't the changes they're talking about.
| [deleted]
| ergot_vacation wrote:
| As someone who grew up playing in VGA, EGA was always the
| "outdated" option I was glad to avoid (and let's be honest, most
| EGA artists did not have the skills of Steve Purcell). But this
| makes a pretty damning case in favor of the original art.
|
| The thing this immediately brought to mind for me was the way
| Silent Hill 2 was absolutely massacred a few years back in its
| supposed "remaster" (they left out the FOG):
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Hill_HD_Collection. This
| seems to be an eternal pitfall: "Upgrading" graphics while
| failing to realize that impressive visuals are about artistic
| skill and effort (often MOSTLY), not just technical stats.
| danans wrote:
| I used to love the credits at the end of old video games - they
| were half the motivation to get to the end of the game. Some of
| them had surprisingly good, almost cinematic music - I can still
| remember the credits music from the end of Sega Master System's
| "Ys The Vanished Omens" like it was yesterday.
|
| Q for players of modern video games: do they still have great
| ending credits scenes like that?
| danaliv wrote:
| Oh, I loved Ys. Ys III on Genesis was one of my favorite games
| from that era.
|
| I only play a select few contemporary video games, so my sample
| is somewhat limited, but none of them have had the sort of
| credits scenes that we enjoyed in the '80s and '90s. Nowadays
| it's just another cutscene like all the others sprinkled
| throughout the game. In fact, when I finished the main quest
| line in Assassin's Creed: Valhalla, I wasn't even sure I was
| done! This might be particular to open world games though,
| which don't really have an end, per se; you just sort of run
| out of things to do.
| ergot_vacation wrote:
| Not even a cutscene in a lot of cases: just the standard text
| on black background like you'd see in a movie (though some of
| them will do the movie thing and have little "hidden" scenes
| cut into the credits at points).
| dpeck wrote:
| What a great game, I remember playing it for many many hours on
| our family's 286 computer. I'm not sure I ever got to the end,
| but I definitely remember crashing that biplane :)
| Razengan wrote:
| Used to fantasize about this game after seeing its ads in
| magazines, trying not to feel bad about my Commodore 64.
|
| Think I actually got to play Fate of Atlantis before Crusade and
| that game still blows me away.
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| I never had an actual EGA GPU and only experienced EGA through
| switching to the EGA mode as some games offered. Nevertheless I
| feel like there is something oddly
| special/atmospheric/psychedelic/whatever in the EGA pictures. I'm
| glad I have seen this kind of graphics. EGA is pixel art squared,
| it is to colour what pixel art is to actual graphics so never
| seeing EGA is the same kind of loss as never seeing pixel art.
| the_af wrote:
| Ditto, and fully agreed with your post. Though it's odd seeing
| EGA called a "GPU"... that's later terminology, back then this
| were graphics adapters or, in our street parlance, "graphics
| cards" ;)
|
| There was also an odd time where every graphics card got called
| a "VGA" in its broadest sense, unrelated to actual VGA modes.
|
| I feel it's time to talk about the beloved Hercules adapter and
| SIMCGA!
| cousin_it wrote:
| Yeah. I never played this game, but the EGA scenes feel evocative
| and the VGA ones don't. Similar to the Loom discussion the other
| day.
|
| Mostly it feels like the EGA artist was better at dramatic
| lighting. For example, in the EGA version of the dead templar,
| the neck area is pure black for a reason: it makes the skull, the
| focal point of the image, stand out more. But in the VGA version
| they decided to paint something there, so the image became less
| focused.
| Agingcoder wrote:
| Try it! I have very fond memories of this game. It's maybe not
| on par with fate of Atlantis, but still really good.
| mosdave wrote:
| > It's maybe not on par with fate of Atlantis, but still
| really good.
|
| thanks, I was hoping someone would comment on this. I haven't
| played this one, but FoA is one of my favorites.
| soenkeliebau wrote:
| I don't know, in the EGA version the sarcophagus is much more
| prominent, which takes away the focus from the face quite a
| bit. To me the VGA version actually feels like it is more
| focussed on the face and shield by making the background less
| intrusive..
| subbz wrote:
| It feels like the EGA is the original.
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