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> A good example of the same kind of thinking, much later, would have been Abrash's exploration of the undocumented "Mode X" on the MCGA cards (https://en.wikip
by pengaru 3y ago
> A good example of the same kind of thinking, much later, would have been Abrash's exploration of the undocumented "Mode X" on the MCGA cards (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mode_X https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mode_X), without which Wolf3D and Doom would have been much less awesome.
Neither Wolf3D or Doom used Mode-X, they're both 320x200 "Mode-Y" games IIRC.
- CamperBob2 3y agoThanks -- I'll remove that postscript, as it appears to be wrong. A quick search doesn't make the story 100% clear, so it's better not to spread potential misinfo.
- pengaru 3y agoConveniently both your examples have received technical deep dives by Fabien Sanglard, who has made both the relevant texts freely available in PDF form [0][1]. Mode-X was an annoying video mode to actually make use of without a performance hit. So despite its highly desirable combination of square pixels and 256-colors, it didn't see much use in games from the DOS days. 13h (320x200x256) was far more common because of its contiguous, linear frame buffers. Mode-X needed annoying bank switching where the first bank had pixels 0,4,8... and second bank pixels 1,5,9... and so on. The VGA was such a PITA. [0] https://fabiensanglard.net/b/gebbwolf3d.pdf https://fabiensanglard.net/b/gebbwolf3d.pdf [1] https://fabiensanglard.net/b/gebbdoom.pdf https://fabiensanglard.net/b/gebbdoom.pdf
- CamperBob2 3y agoWow, those actually are pretty great. There goes the rest of the day...!