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First post, by blinddarm

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Rank Newbie
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Newbie

Hi all,

it's been a long time ago that i've been logged in here.
A few years ago, i started a topic to fix an old game, called DIGGER to run on an old machine with Hercules Graphic Card, using CGA Emulation.
ripsaw8080 helped me to fix that by using a hex editor.
See:
Digger and Hercules Graphic, using CGA Emulation

Now, my Hardware has changed to a plain 386 Desktop PC, using a standard VGA Card.
Most of the games from my childhood working fine 😀
Some games need MOSLO to work correctly (i even purchased the latest Moslo Deluxe from the official website) and it works really fine 😀
But there is a small thing that don't like on CASTLE ADVENTURE from Kevin Bales.
When i was a kid, this was one of the very first games i played on a real IBM XT 5160, using a plain HERCULES Card, without any CGA Emulation.
The game was displayd in 80 column mode (half display on the left) and somehow i liked that mode.
Nowadays, on CGA (and above) cards, the game will displayed in standard 40 columns (fullscreen with "streched" symbols)
Also i miss the typical green color from that Monitor... the screen is typical b/w in VGA Monitors.

Is there any chance to hack/modify the EXE file to force the game to 80 columns and green (or maybe amber) color in VGA?
The game itself has only one "color" (standard textmode)

I dont have any experience to do this on my own, but may be someone can give me a hint (maybe by using a hex editor or something)

regards,
Norman

EDIT: sorry for my bad english 😢

Think Kilobyte

Reply 1 of 3, by ripsaw8080

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Rank DOSBox Author
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DOSBox Author

I also remember Castle Adventure on a mono monitor, but in amber color. I have a set of tool programs I wrote that help to simulate the effect on VGA; however, they aren't easy for others to use, so I combined them into a simple TSR program. It forces 80-column text mode, switches to the 14-line font that is more consistent with mono, and sets the color. There is one program for green and a separate one for amber; they aren't fancy, and you'll have to restart the system to remove them from memory.

Filename
camono.zip
File size
398 Bytes
Downloads
74 downloads
File license
Fair use/fair dealing exception

BTW, I made a fix for the savegame bug in Castle Adventure that might be of interest to you: Castle Adventure exe packing type?

Reply 2 of 3, by blinddarm

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Rank Newbie
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Newbie

wow, this is really cool, a million thanks for that 😎
Works really fine and gives me nearly the feeling of the old IBM PC 😊

IMG_20180910_0802094.jpg
Filename
IMG_20180910_0802094.jpg
File size
404.65 KiB
Views
695 views
File license
Fair use/fair dealing exception

Also thanks for the hint with that Load/Save fix!
regards,
Norman

Think Kilobyte

Reply 3 of 3, by VileR

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Rank l33t
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l33t

I also don't enjoy playing 40-column games on VGA really... the default character set gets super-stretchy, ugly and difficult to read.

What I do is change the font. Here are a couple of programs to do that for 40-column text mode: one sets a font with thicker horizontal strokes (proportioned more like the CGA 40-column font), the other one sets a font with thinner vertical strokes (actually derived from the FM Towns). Both are much easier on the eyes than the default.

Filename
nicer-fonts-for-vga40col.zip
File size
3.61 KiB
Downloads
69 downloads
File comment
(Once you load one of these, you'll have to restart before you can load the other)
File license
Fair use/fair dealing exception

some samples for the "NICER40C" font:

vga40col-nicer.png

and for "THIN40C":

vga40col-thin.png

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