EGA Games

Chilly Willy · Post by **Chilly Willy** » Sat May 16, 2015 1:53 am

I notice that most games that state they use the EGA color palette, still only use the sixteen colors from the CGA palette. Are there any EGA games that actually use any sixteen colors from the sixty-four colors that EGA offers?

Frenkel · Post by **Frenkel** » Sat May 16, 2015 10:20 am

Here's a list of games that tweak the EGA card: http://www.mobygames.com/attribute/sheet/attributeId,6/

Maybe some games on that list use a different palette of colors than the default 16 colors.

tienkhoanguyen · Post by **tienkhoanguyen** » Sat May 16, 2015 10:52 am

Jesus Christ!hehe

I just developer a program that reads a 256 color palette. It should be in the section where all my developing routines are. The default loadfile.bmp are only shades of grey however you can use a color bitmap and it would show too. I am listing the files here for convenience. Enjoy - although I don't get paid for it, I am happy others find a use for my apps.

http://www.mediafire.com/view/g0ue51vaw ... adfile.bmp

http://www.mediafire.com/view/axb3xgl2jl8ad8f/jcbmp20.c

http://www.mediafire.com/download/zw42r ... CBMP20.EXE

Chilly Willy · Post by **Chilly Willy** » Sat May 16, 2015 1:03 pm

Thanks for the list Frenkel and thanks for the app tienkhoanguyen!

tienkhoanguyen · Post by **tienkhoanguyen** » Sat May 16, 2015 1:09 pm

Jesus Christ!hehe

Glad I could help you. Please feel free to change the codes as you need to.

Thanks for making me feel useful!!!!!!!!!!!!

Have a good day Chilly Willy.

Frenkel · Post by **Frenkel** » Sat May 16, 2015 4:11 pm

BTW, on an EGA in 320x200 mode you can only use the default 16 colors. In 640x350 you can choose 16 colors from a palette of 64 colors.

Quadko · Post by **Quadko** » Sat May 16, 2015 9:33 pm

I didn't know that, cool. I always assumed most games/programmers were some form of "lazy" or just happy to have the 16 colors to play with and that was why so many EGA games were limited to the default 16.

I think Aldo and Snarf and of course EGA Trek were my favorite EGA games, before getting a VGA card. Of course Sierra games, etc., but those were their own things.

Chilly Willy · Post by **Chilly Willy** » Sat May 16, 2015 11:32 pm

Frenkel wrote:BTW, on an EGA in 320x200 mode you can only use the default 16 colors. In 640x350 you can choose 16 colors from a palette of 64 colors.

Do you happen to know the reasoning for that? One would think you would be able to choose from the 64 colors even in low res, if you can in hi res.

Rwolf · Post by **Rwolf** » Sun May 17, 2015 5:02 am

Backward compatible mode for CGA monitors.
There is an article describing it here:

http://www.reenigne.org/blog/why-the-eg ... ine-modes/

Post by **MrFlibble** » Sun May 17, 2015 9:06 am

Frenkel wrote:BTW, on an EGA in 320x200 mode you can only use the default 16 colors. In 640x350 you can choose 16 colors from a palette of 64 colors.

I did not know that either. Thanks for the info!

Chilly Willy · Post by **Chilly Willy** » Sun May 17, 2015 1:30 pm

Rwolf wrote:Backward compatible mode for CGA monitors.
There is an article describing it here:

http://www.reenigne.org/blog/why-the-eg ... ine-modes/

Thanks for the link. That's odd how they did that. I would say most games that were advertised as EGA are really CGA. Kind of odd that the developers of that time would state that.

tienkhoanguyen · Post by **tienkhoanguyen** » Sun May 17, 2015 6:39 pm

Jesus Christ!hehe

I think it has to do with the way the chip is designed. I was reading a diagram of the chip circuits, and supposedly it is wired in such a way that you have to do like that. I think it goes back to convenience. Back in the days memory and such was at a premium. For instance, it was not until the VGA card came out that it could have 256 color palettes. Then the SVGA card eventually came out because I guess there was a huge demand for more colors. So you have like 65536 colors instead of 256. Then when Windows XP came around you have millions of colors.

Personally, I am fine with working in XP to develop DOS applications. I know it sounds funny however I just find it more convenient.

Rwolf · Post by **Rwolf** » Mon May 18, 2015 3:56 am

The first IBM PC I used at work was to have the (then) brand new EGA card.
It was shipped without any graphics card, and it took +6 months to get it delivered, tough luck. Must have been a high demand for these things.

Once it arrived it only had 64kB installed, to get full 256k you had to buy an add-on mezzanine card. The only thing it was eventually used for, was for the odd compatibility tests done by the support guys.

(I managed to find a different 256kB EGA card from a 3rd party vendor, with a Windows 1.0 package in the deal, much cheaper than the original IBM brand, so I didn't have to sit twiddling my thumbs for the whole delay).

DOS Games Discussion

EGA Games

EGA Games

God, Jesus Christ, is number one!hehe

God, Jesus Christ, is number one!hehe

God, Jesus Christ, is number one!hehe