Grzyb wrote on 2020-02-07, 14:52:Digger (and some other games by Windmill) - garbage
J-Bird - wrong palette, no palette effects
Popcorn - wrong palette
Round 42 […]
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georgel wrote on 2020-02-07, 11:34: Would you give an example of a vintage game that is running on CGA but not on VGA?
Digger (and some other games by Windmill) - garbage
J-Bird - wrong palette, no palette effects
Popcorn - wrong palette
Round 42 - garbage
I recall CGA commonly criticized for its ugly cyan-magenta-white default palette.
Actually, many games use different palettes, but fail to do that when run on a VGA.
So, my rule for choosing a VGA for XT is: it must provide register-level CGA compatibility option.
Also, VGA chipsets with CGA compatiblity mode provide Hercules mode as well - which may come in handy sometimes, eg. Spacewar looks better on Hercules than on CGA.
It hink the issue is related to register-level compatibility, which was very important in the beginning.
CGA games or programs that are either EGA/VGA-aware or use BIOS calls might display the other palettes, too.
Problem is, that most games did direct hardware access, because they were developed for speed with an XT classs machine plus a snowy CGA in mind.
On such a slow system, using BIOS calls for CGA or trying to detect EGA/VGA hardware or EGA/VGA BIOS perhaps didn't make much sense back in the mid-80s.
By the late 80s, this may had changed. But then, VGA was becoming the de-facto standard, anyway, so that only quality software was behaving nicely (on CGA).
Anyway, I'm speaking under correction here. My memories are a bit lacking here, also.
For further information, please have a look at this older thread.: Re: The year is 1990 and you still have a PC/XT and can't upgrade. Which games are you playing?
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