Re: The Pawn is back. And it's not alone!
Posted: Sun Nov 03, 2019 4:58 pm
The choice of graphics mode to use for the game wasn't easy at all. I wanted to conserve the charme and "look and feel" of the original as much as possible while pulling off most of what the Q68 can do.
The Pawn graphics originals are max. 320x200, originally targetted (and created on) the Atari ST. They were reportedly created using NeoChrome on the ST and use, as already mentioned only 16 colours from a pallette of 256.
First, I tried creating a PE interface for the game - A Window (in DISP_MODE 3 or 7) that held the main text and received user input, and a secondary window that popped up on top of the text when the location you were in had a picture attached. That didn't really sort out and was simply annoying. So, dump it.
I then even put the picture display window in a separate job to be able to detach it from the main job's window (the two jobs using the picture buffer to communicate), but that also simply didn't feel right and was still annoying. So - dump that again.
BTW: The slowdown in these high-res modes isn't really a problem for an adventure game.
Then - again targetting high-res modes - I went for inline graphics (mixed with the text as it is now). That felt much better, however the pictures looked more like thumbnails than the impressive pictures I remembered - 320x200 is way to small to display in an appealing way on such a large screen.
That meant I had to try upscaling and dithering the pictures to 16-bit hi-res and 640x400 (interpolating the 16 colours to 65000). That worked nicely, however, the pictures were starting to look mushy and blurry (if interpolated) or really pixelated (when up-scaled only). Also, the dithering took its toll on the poor CPU - displaying a picture took nearly a second which was not really a problem, but slightly annoying. Didn't feel right as well and had about as much character as a Windows 10 GUI.... Dump that again.
I then decided to go the minimalistic way: change to DISP_MODE 6, my favourite mode on the Q68 and a full-screen application (it is still PE-aware and obediently multi-tasks) - Here, the pictures had about the right size without any scaling and could be presented in their original glory (still only 16 colours) - However, there simply isn't enough screen real estate in this mode to display the large amount of text for the game - I had to reduce font sizes, accepting to make them a bit harder to read, but I was able to manage the amount of text without extensive scrolling. (Maybe I did overdo it a bit using a 4x10 font when a 5x10 would probably still have been sufficiently small, but I'm awaiting your feedback on that) In the end, I really think it's pleasing now as it is and looks very 1985-ish.
Testing is now almost done, last few bugs fixed - to be released soon.
The Pawn graphics originals are max. 320x200, originally targetted (and created on) the Atari ST. They were reportedly created using NeoChrome on the ST and use, as already mentioned only 16 colours from a pallette of 256.
First, I tried creating a PE interface for the game - A Window (in DISP_MODE 3 or 7) that held the main text and received user input, and a secondary window that popped up on top of the text when the location you were in had a picture attached. That didn't really sort out and was simply annoying. So, dump it.
I then even put the picture display window in a separate job to be able to detach it from the main job's window (the two jobs using the picture buffer to communicate), but that also simply didn't feel right and was still annoying. So - dump that again.
BTW: The slowdown in these high-res modes isn't really a problem for an adventure game.
Then - again targetting high-res modes - I went for inline graphics (mixed with the text as it is now). That felt much better, however the pictures looked more like thumbnails than the impressive pictures I remembered - 320x200 is way to small to display in an appealing way on such a large screen.
That meant I had to try upscaling and dithering the pictures to 16-bit hi-res and 640x400 (interpolating the 16 colours to 65000). That worked nicely, however, the pictures were starting to look mushy and blurry (if interpolated) or really pixelated (when up-scaled only). Also, the dithering took its toll on the poor CPU - displaying a picture took nearly a second which was not really a problem, but slightly annoying. Didn't feel right as well and had about as much character as a Windows 10 GUI.... Dump that again.
I then decided to go the minimalistic way: change to DISP_MODE 6, my favourite mode on the Q68 and a full-screen application (it is still PE-aware and obediently multi-tasks) - Here, the pictures had about the right size without any scaling and could be presented in their original glory (still only 16 colours) - However, there simply isn't enough screen real estate in this mode to display the large amount of text for the game - I had to reduce font sizes, accepting to make them a bit harder to read, but I was able to manage the amount of text without extensive scrolling. (Maybe I did overdo it a bit using a 4x10 font when a 5x10 would probably still have been sufficiently small, but I'm awaiting your feedback on that) In the end, I really think it's pleasing now as it is and looks very 1985-ish.
Testing is now almost done, last few bugs fixed - to be released soon.