3 ms·

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, mul

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.
- Gravityloss 6y ago
  You're right, I was wrong!
fulafel 6y ago
A DP "brush" made for a character would have many fewer colors since most of the scarce color palette would be reserved for the scene art (the Amiga modes were also paletted). The character art would have been started at an early stage.
mortenjorck 6y ago
Another reason why the Amiga to PC workflow wouldn't have worked: Aspect ratio. The Amiga's standard 320-wide resolution was 320 x 200, while VGA used 320 x 240. These were both typically scanned to fill a 4:3 screen, meaning the Amiga's resolution had slightly tall pixels (DeluxePaint actually had an option to compensate for this when using round brushes and the circle tool, called "square pixels"). So artwork transferred from an Amiga to a PC would look slightly squished.
- wenc 6y ago
  VGA used 320x200. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Graphics_Array#Standard_graphics_modes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Graphics_Array#Standard_...
  - mortenjorck 6y ago
    You're right, that was the standard VGA resolution, and probably used in the majority of games of the era. What I'm remembering was apparently known as Mode X, which some games used for a square-pixel 320 x 240: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mode_X https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mode_X
- fulafel 6y ago
  The resolution was interesting since it was different for NTSC and PAL: NTSC had 320 x 200 while PAL had 320 x 256. In practice games varied[1] whether they were full screen or had black bars in PAL. [1] http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=97812 http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=97812

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.

Gravityloss 6y ago
You're right, I was wrong!

fulafel 6y ago

A DP "brush" made for a character would have many fewer colors since most of the scarce color palette would be reserved for the scene art (the Amiga modes were also paletted). The character art would have been started at an early stage.

mortenjorck 6y ago

Another reason why the Amiga to PC workflow wouldn't have worked: Aspect ratio. The Amiga's standard 320-wide resolution was 320 x 200, while VGA used 320 x 240. These were both typically scanned to fill a 4:3 screen, meaning the Amiga's resolution had slightly tall pixels (DeluxePaint actually had an option to compensate for this when using round brushes and the circle tool, called "square pixels"). So artwork transferred from an Amiga to a PC would look slightly squished.

wenc 6y ago
VGA used 320x200. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Graphics_Array#Standard_graphics_modes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Graphics_Array#Standard_...
- mortenjorck 6y ago
  You're right, that was the standard VGA resolution, and probably used in the majority of games of the era. What I'm remembering was apparently known as Mode X, which some games used for a square-pixel 320 x 240: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mode_X https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mode_X
fulafel 6y ago
The resolution was interesting since it was different for NTSC and PAL: NTSC had 320 x 200 while PAL had 320 x 256. In practice games varied[1] whether they were full screen or had black bars in PAL. [1] http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=97812 http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=97812