Hacker News Reader

Comment by gbil | Hacker News Reader

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...

View on HN

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.

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.

Never owned an Amiga. HAM was used for static screens and photos, right? What were the screen modes used for actual games?

With extremely unusual exceptions, no games used HAM, because it took several frames to completely redraw the screen. 32-color was the standard.

Although the earliest A1000s didn't include EHB mode

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.

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

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com