5 ms·

I love the aesthetic of VGA DOS games like this.

by qbasic_forever 4y ago

8f2ab37a-ed6c 4y ago
Yes! I wonder what it is. The color palette? The limited audio palette? The spartan UX?
- Markoff 4y ago
  I would say lot of DOS programs and games were just using cold temperature colors, so it has specific 80/90s cold feel, I think later they started to get warmer and warmer.
  - EarlKing 4y ago
    At a guess? Most of those early games were made with graphics that would look good if it turns out the guy running it only had an EGA and, therefore, was restricted to a very specific set of 16 colors. It took a while for everyone to upgrade.
    - Markoff 4y ago
      SE was released same year as very colorful Lemmings, which were not cold at all, so I don't take this excuse.
      - SigmundA 4y ago
        Lemmings was 320x240 resolution like most VGA games at the time allowing 256 colors, scorched earth was one of the first high res games doing 640x480 which only allowed 16 colors if memory serves.
      - CyberDildonics 4y ago
        Where does your focus on "cold" come from? These games used a specific color palette with just as many warm and cold colors.
      - EarlKing 4y ago
        Yeah, and? Wing Commander was released in 1990 and not everyone could run that either. Back then there was no equivalent of Steam Survey to tell you what everyone had on their PC, and hence people targeted the lowest common denominator in order to ensure sales.
    - sumtechguy 4y ago
      More than likely it was one dude working by himself and he did not have the tools/ability to make good artwork. A lot of DOS shareware games have that problem. The gameplay might be interesting but the art is merely ok to fairly bad. At that time you may have a copy of turboc/watcomc but not a watcom tablet and a copy of paintshop. Also pixel art is a particular artistic skill most people do not have. So you were reduced to poking data into some terrible shareware editor with an awful color palate . I made my own spacewar style game at one point. I was reduced to putting bytes into a file to get the gradients right on the hulls of the ship. Oh and each gradient is stealing a color from my limited palate of 240 colors (16 were reserved, for whatever reason at the time). You want higher res you are now talking VGA. But the trade off was resolution for color. So you could have 640x480 but only 16 colors. Or you could have 320x240 but 256 but a blocky mess. This was when a VGA card might have 1MB of memory total (usually less, unless you paid for something fancy). Throw in page flipping (which you really really want) and you are out of room on the card. Scorched Earth was more about how many crazy weapons you could make and throw at each other with fun generated effects. We can now look back at the whole catalog and see what was really good at the time. With collections like eXoDOS. You will find a good 95% of the games are very poor if compared to what you can get today. If you bought something like this on steam today you would be thinking what is up with this junk. Back in the 90s though it was a fun bit of software.
      - eurasiantiger 4y ago
        I would say this is it: inexperienced indie developers taking UI inspiration from the software of the day (various audio trackers / windows 1.0) and then copying each other. AAA games like Lemmings and Wolfenstein 3D were not entirely that way, even if they still used some of the same UI paradigms (think: the hardware detection screen when starting wolf3d, or the action selection in Lemmings)
        sumtechguy 4y ago
        Also bashing out art is a skill one part learned one part natural. There are lots of little things you can do to make good artwork. There are many tutorials out on YT, which someone in the 90s would have had no access to. Studios could hire 3-4 artists to get everything to look nice. A guy bashing out some software in his bedroom could not hire anyone even if he wanted to. If you are doing it by yourself and you have not had the exp doing it, it will come out very meh. So the budding new artist (by necessity) will copy what they see not understanding the 'why' something looks the way it does. In this case it looks like he resorted to procedurally generated effects and items. Which makes for fun code and compact data (also important at that time).
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
barrysteve 4y ago
The 90s DOS games had great taste. They were severely limited by tech and they still managed to make colour and art style choices that fit together beautifully. Heart Of China had some iconic images that still stick with me. Prince of Persia one had great animations for the time it came out. Every pixel in Scorch's tank pixel art feels so well placed, combined with the quips it's like they all had their own character. The tank selection screen could have had an empty landscape picture behind it, like the main menu, but Whicken chose instead a scrolling background that gave a great sense of movement and amped you up for the coming PC Speaker squealing carnage. Of course you get the easy benefit of the whole design being internally consistent because it's made by one guy, which makes it feel like a cohesive whole.

I love the aesthetic of VGA DOS games like this.

8f2ab37a-ed6c 4y ago

Yes! I wonder what it is. The color palette? The limited audio palette? The spartan UX?

Markoff 4y ago
I would say lot of DOS programs and games were just using cold temperature colors, so it has specific 80/90s cold feel, I think later they started to get warmer and warmer.
- EarlKing 4y ago
  At a guess? Most of those early games were made with graphics that would look good if it turns out the guy running it only had an EGA and, therefore, was restricted to a very specific set of 16 colors. It took a while for everyone to upgrade.
  - Markoff 4y ago
    SE was released same year as very colorful Lemmings, which were not cold at all, so I don't take this excuse.
    - SigmundA 4y ago
      Lemmings was 320x240 resolution like most VGA games at the time allowing 256 colors, scorched earth was one of the first high res games doing 640x480 which only allowed 16 colors if memory serves.
    - CyberDildonics 4y ago
      Where does your focus on "cold" come from? These games used a specific color palette with just as many warm and cold colors.
    - EarlKing 4y ago
      Yeah, and? Wing Commander was released in 1990 and not everyone could run that either. Back then there was no equivalent of Steam Survey to tell you what everyone had on their PC, and hence people targeted the lowest common denominator in order to ensure sales.
  - sumtechguy 4y ago
    More than likely it was one dude working by himself and he did not have the tools/ability to make good artwork. A lot of DOS shareware games have that problem. The gameplay might be interesting but the art is merely ok to fairly bad. At that time you may have a copy of turboc/watcomc but not a watcom tablet and a copy of paintshop. Also pixel art is a particular artistic skill most people do not have. So you were reduced to poking data into some terrible shareware editor with an awful color palate . I made my own spacewar style game at one point. I was reduced to putting bytes into a file to get the gradients right on the hulls of the ship. Oh and each gradient is stealing a color from my limited palate of 240 colors (16 were reserved, for whatever reason at the time). You want higher res you are now talking VGA. But the trade off was resolution for color. So you could have 640x480 but only 16 colors. Or you could have 320x240 but 256 but a blocky mess. This was when a VGA card might have 1MB of memory total (usually less, unless you paid for something fancy). Throw in page flipping (which you really really want) and you are out of room on the card. Scorched Earth was more about how many crazy weapons you could make and throw at each other with fun generated effects. We can now look back at the whole catalog and see what was really good at the time. With collections like eXoDOS. You will find a good 95% of the games are very poor if compared to what you can get today. If you bought something like this on steam today you would be thinking what is up with this junk. Back in the 90s though it was a fun bit of software.
    - eurasiantiger 4y ago
      I would say this is it: inexperienced indie developers taking UI inspiration from the software of the day (various audio trackers / windows 1.0) and then copying each other. AAA games like Lemmings and Wolfenstein 3D were not entirely that way, even if they still used some of the same UI paradigms (think: the hardware detection screen when starting wolf3d, or the action selection in Lemmings)
      - sumtechguy 4y ago
        Also bashing out art is a skill one part learned one part natural. There are lots of little things you can do to make good artwork. There are many tutorials out on YT, which someone in the 90s would have had no access to. Studios could hire 3-4 artists to get everything to look nice. A guy bashing out some software in his bedroom could not hire anyone even if he wanted to. If you are doing it by yourself and you have not had the exp doing it, it will come out very meh. So the budding new artist (by necessity) will copy what they see not understanding the 'why' something looks the way it does. In this case it looks like he resorted to procedurally generated effects and items. Which makes for fun code and compact data (also important at that time).
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

barrysteve 4y ago

The 90s DOS games had great taste. They were severely limited by tech and they still managed to make colour and art style choices that fit together beautifully. Heart Of China had some iconic images that still stick with me. Prince of Persia one had great animations for the time it came out. Every pixel in Scorch's tank pixel art feels so well placed, combined with the quips it's like they all had their own character. The tank selection screen could have had an empty landscape picture behind it, like the main menu, but Whicken chose instead a scrolling background that gave a great sense of movement and amped you up for the coming PC Speaker squealing carnage. Of course you get the easy benefit of the whole design being internally consistent because it's made by one guy, which makes it feel like a cohesive whole.