6 ms·

This seems like a good litmus test to quietly see if someone has ever used MSDOS -- tell the story with the "guy.brush" version, and see if the listener furrows

by gwd 6y ago

This seems like a good litmus test to quietly see if someone has ever used MSDOS -- tell the story with the "guy.brush" version, and see if the listener furrows their eyebrows and says, "Wait, I thought extensions could only be 3 characters?" Could be useful in a murder mystery or something.

TonyTrapp 6y ago
Given that the story evolved around DPaint, most people knowledgeable of the era will probably assume that the artwork was done on an Amiga, where no such restriction existed. At least that was my idea of this story the whole time.
- mysterydip 6y ago
  deluxe paint was available for DOS as well, wasn't it?
  - TonyTrapp 6y ago
    It was (as the article says), but I think it is very much known as the graphics editor for Amiga. I would imagine that more people will remember it as an Amiga tool than as a PC tool.
    - mysterydip 6y ago
      That's fair. I wonder how many dev houses at the time had amigas just for the art (as some companies do macs now), or if they kept uniform hardware and used the DOS version.
- Gravityloss 6y ago
  They would know Monkey Island used VGA and 256 colors - not possible to do the artwork on Amiga. Deluxe Paint was awesome. Brushes, stencils, spare, grids, multibrush / symmetry. It was really fast to whip up something, yet possible to pixel tweak as well. Wolfenstein and Doom art was also done with Deluxe Paint as well IIRC.
  - TonyTrapp 6y ago
    It certainly was possible on the Amiga, although I'm not sure if dpaint could do it at the time of making Monkey Island 1. At least later versions supported HAM modes and of course when AGA arrived it did 256 colors too.
  - reaperducer 6y ago
    They would know Monkey Island used VGA and 256 colors - not possible to do the artwork on Amiga. The Amiga had 4,096 colors at 368x482 out of the box. VGA is limited to 320x200 at 256 colors.
    - rob74 6y ago
      As much as I am an old Amiga fan, that's not correct. The 4096 colors were the whole palette (3 bits per color -> 2^12 = 4096 colors), but you could only use 32 of those colours without limitations. And then there were the "special modes" (EHB with 64 colors, where the second set of 32 were the first set with half brightness, and HAM, where you could theoretically see all 4096 colors at once, but only with careful optimization of the base 16 colors). Plus you could use the "Copper" (coprocessor) to set a new palette for each scanline. Some games used all of these tricks (and more) to achieve some very impressive results, but I don't think cross-platform titles like Monkey Island really invested that much effort into Amiga-specific optimizations... Details: http://theamigamuseum.com/the-hardware/the-amigas-graphic-modes/ http://theamigamuseum.com/the-hardware/the-amigas-graphic-mo...
      - reaperducer 6y ago
        Thanks for the explanation. My memory was 4,096 colors in HAM mode. A quick internet search to confirm my memory turned out to be faulty.
  - mseepgood 6y ago
    > They would know Monkey Island used VGA and 256 colors The original Monkey Island artwork was done in EGA.
- jameshart 6y ago
  But... even if the artwork was being done on an Amiga, the game was being built on a PC. How are you getting your Amiga dPaint files over to the PC? Certainly not on an amiga formatted floppy. It’s got to go into a FAT file system before Ron Gilbert gets hold of it, so it’s not going to have a .brush extension.
codeulike 6y ago
Columbo pauses on his way out the door "Excuse me for asking, but did you say you saved the file as guy.brush?"
- andi999 6y ago
  "Just one more thing ...."
altcognito 6y ago
It didn't cross my mind and I used MSDOS based systems for nearly a decade. It did spark my brain about the 8 characters long limitation for getting a non-shortened name though.
rob74 6y ago
As others have already written: when I read "Deluxe Paint", I automatically assumed that the artwork was done on an Amiga, because when you think Deluxe Paint, you think Amiga (I wasn't even aware that there was a PC version until now, or maybe I learned it at some point in the past and then forgot it again). And with that assumption, having no limitations on filenames or extensions actually made perfect sense. And BTW, that ".lbm" extension should actually be ".ilbm" (interleaved bitmap), same as ".jpg" should actually be ".jpeg". The MS-DOS limitations live on long after MS-DOS is no more...
- aidenn0 6y ago
  While all my friends used pc paintbrush, I had DP2e on the PC. It felt very limiting when I was on one of their computers. I have nearly zero artistic talent, but could still turn out some passable stuff thanks to things like the perspective tools. I hadn't heard the .brush version before and just assumed it was guybrush.bbm
- gwd 6y ago
  Too late to edit my comment now, but obviously if you were going to use that test, you have to make sure to make it clear (without being too obvious) that you were talking about the MS-DOS version.
m463 6y ago
Why would a company called MICROS~1.COM have such a filename scheme?
- WorldMaker 6y ago
  I realize this is a rhetorical question likely intended to be a joke, but the answer as with most historical things you can find on HN was technical trade-offs that made sense for the time: for a file system intended primarily for floppy disks (where the total available space was likely reported in KiBs at most), it made sense for the file system to be as space efficient as possible. Directory entries were allowed (exactly) 32 bytes only, and after necessary metadata (last modified date, status flags, where the contents are on disk [clusters], etc), 8+3 (11) bytes (~34% of the 32 bytes) was what was left for the name. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8.3_filename https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8.3_filename
sgtnoodle 6y ago
It is a limitation in general in FAT filesystems all the way up to FAT32. Long filename support is a bolted on optional extension. I'm working on an embedded project right now where long filenames aren't needed and flash space is limited, so everything is 8.3 all capital letters.
dwd 6y ago
Not to mention MSDOS wasn't case specific so the name was probably GUYBRUSH.LBM. I dont remember there being lowercase filenames until Windows.

by gwd 6y ago

TonyTrapp 6y ago

Given that the story evolved around DPaint, most people knowledgeable of the era will probably assume that the artwork was done on an Amiga, where no such restriction existed. At least that was my idea of this story the whole time.

mysterydip 6y ago
deluxe paint was available for DOS as well, wasn't it?
- TonyTrapp 6y ago
  It was (as the article says), but I think it is very much known as the graphics editor for Amiga. I would imagine that more people will remember it as an Amiga tool than as a PC tool.
  - mysterydip 6y ago
    That's fair. I wonder how many dev houses at the time had amigas just for the art (as some companies do macs now), or if they kept uniform hardware and used the DOS version.
Gravityloss 6y ago
They would know Monkey Island used VGA and 256 colors - not possible to do the artwork on Amiga. Deluxe Paint was awesome. Brushes, stencils, spare, grids, multibrush / symmetry. It was really fast to whip up something, yet possible to pixel tweak as well. Wolfenstein and Doom art was also done with Deluxe Paint as well IIRC.
- TonyTrapp 6y ago
  It certainly was possible on the Amiga, although I'm not sure if dpaint could do it at the time of making Monkey Island 1. At least later versions supported HAM modes and of course when AGA arrived it did 256 colors too.
- reaperducer 6y ago
  They would know Monkey Island used VGA and 256 colors - not possible to do the artwork on Amiga. The Amiga had 4,096 colors at 368x482 out of the box. VGA is limited to 320x200 at 256 colors.
  - rob74 6y ago
    As much as I am an old Amiga fan, that's not correct. The 4096 colors were the whole palette (3 bits per color -> 2^12 = 4096 colors), but you could only use 32 of those colours without limitations. And then there were the "special modes" (EHB with 64 colors, where the second set of 32 were the first set with half brightness, and HAM, where you could theoretically see all 4096 colors at once, but only with careful optimization of the base 16 colors). Plus you could use the "Copper" (coprocessor) to set a new palette for each scanline. Some games used all of these tricks (and more) to achieve some very impressive results, but I don't think cross-platform titles like Monkey Island really invested that much effort into Amiga-specific optimizations... Details: http://theamigamuseum.com/the-hardware/the-amigas-graphic-modes/ http://theamigamuseum.com/the-hardware/the-amigas-graphic-mo...
    - reaperducer 6y ago
      Thanks for the explanation. My memory was 4,096 colors in HAM mode. A quick internet search to confirm my memory turned out to be faulty.
- mseepgood 6y ago
  > They would know Monkey Island used VGA and 256 colors The original Monkey Island artwork was done in EGA.
jameshart 6y ago
But... even if the artwork was being done on an Amiga, the game was being built on a PC. How are you getting your Amiga dPaint files over to the PC? Certainly not on an amiga formatted floppy. It’s got to go into a FAT file system before Ron Gilbert gets hold of it, so it’s not going to have a .brush extension.

codeulike 6y ago

Columbo pauses on his way out the door "Excuse me for asking, but did you say you saved the file as guy.brush?"

andi999 6y ago
"Just one more thing ...."

altcognito 6y ago

It didn't cross my mind and I used MSDOS based systems for nearly a decade. It did spark my brain about the 8 characters long limitation for getting a non-shortened name though.

rob74 6y ago

As others have already written: when I read "Deluxe Paint", I automatically assumed that the artwork was done on an Amiga, because when you think Deluxe Paint, you think Amiga (I wasn't even aware that there was a PC version until now, or maybe I learned it at some point in the past and then forgot it again). And with that assumption, having no limitations on filenames or extensions actually made perfect sense. And BTW, that ".lbm" extension should actually be ".ilbm" (interleaved bitmap), same as ".jpg" should actually be ".jpeg". The MS-DOS limitations live on long after MS-DOS is no more...

aidenn0 6y ago
While all my friends used pc paintbrush, I had DP2e on the PC. It felt very limiting when I was on one of their computers. I have nearly zero artistic talent, but could still turn out some passable stuff thanks to things like the perspective tools. I hadn't heard the .brush version before and just assumed it was guybrush.bbm
gwd 6y ago
Too late to edit my comment now, but obviously if you were going to use that test, you have to make sure to make it clear (without being too obvious) that you were talking about the MS-DOS version.

m463 6y ago

Why would a company called MICROS~1.COM have such a filename scheme?

WorldMaker 6y ago
I realize this is a rhetorical question likely intended to be a joke, but the answer as with most historical things you can find on HN was technical trade-offs that made sense for the time: for a file system intended primarily for floppy disks (where the total available space was likely reported in KiBs at most), it made sense for the file system to be as space efficient as possible. Directory entries were allowed (exactly) 32 bytes only, and after necessary metadata (last modified date, status flags, where the contents are on disk [clusters], etc), 8+3 (11) bytes (~34% of the 32 bytes) was what was left for the name. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8.3_filename https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8.3_filename

sgtnoodle 6y ago

It is a limitation in general in FAT filesystems all the way up to FAT32. Long filename support is a bolted on optional extension. I'm working on an embedded project right now where long filenames aren't needed and flash space is limited, so everything is 8.3 all capital letters.

dwd 6y ago

Not to mention MSDOS wasn't case specific so the name was probably GUYBRUSH.LBM. I dont remember there being lowercase filenames until Windows.