NewRisingSun wrote:What's there to say about it? AGI games shake the screen, yeah. SQ2 shakes the screen on EGA and CGA when you get knocked out after boarding the shuttle; same with KQ3, I suppose.
Well, what I wanted to know is if DOSBox emulates it, because I didn't see it happen in KQ3.
I tested the CVS that was released on December 11 to see what was changed regarding the subjects that were discussed in this thread:
1. I've found two regressions - when machine=vga, and you're booting Serenia/Ulysses or AGI booters, or using the -cga or -rgb switches with DOS AGI games, the text will be corrupt. In previous CVS builds the text was fine. Here are two screenshots:
The second regression can be seen when b&w CGA graphics are displayed when machine=cga. Graphics appear completely corrupted. Here are screenshots from Maniac Mansion (old version) and Spellcasting 101:
2. SQ3 now works with Tandy DAC (you can hear Roger saying "where am I"). Sampled sounds sound like they do on a SoundBlaster, but the music doesn't. The music sounds like it does on a regular Tandy speaker. I don't know how it's supposed to sound, but I was told that the Tandy DAC should sound like SB. I attached two WAVs of the music from the very beginning of SQ3 (after the intro).
By the way, the Tandy speaker is indeed not activated when machine!=tandy.
3. I'm saving the best for last:
The hue control 😀
When machine=cga, the DOSBox "intro" says that while in composite mode, the colours can be changed by using (ctrl-)F11, which means that you should press F11 to change the hue in one "direction", and Ctrl-F11 to change it the other "direction". I don't see why Ctrl-F11 was used instead of F12, for example, because along with the color change, Ctrl-F11 also reduces the emulation speed, which then has to be increased by using Ctrl-F12. The DOSBox hue control is cyclic, however, so all of the possible palettes can be reached by only using F11. Other than that, the hue control emulation seems really great to me (although I've never seen the real thing 😒 )
Another thing that would be nice to add, although I wouldn't know how and if it's worth the effort, is some sort of an indicator for the hue setting number (e.g. hue=0, hue=-15, etc.). It can be usefull if someone founds his perfect setting for a specific game, and wants to return to this setting each time he starts the game in DOSBox without having to look for it again. It will also be helpful for tests and for knowing what the "auto-guess" sets.
I tried to find the closest hue setting to MESS, which supposed to be hue=0, but I don't know if I quite found it. I know there are other differences between MESS's and DOSBox's composite emulation, but I wouldn't know how they effect the palette. Here are the screenshots I generated:
DOSBox CVS, KQ1 booter using auto-guess (hue=-15)
DOSBox CVS, three Ctrl-F11 strokes (hue=0?)
MESS 0.102 (hue=0?)
after seeing all the possible hue settings for KQ1, it really does seem that in this game the "auto-guess" chooses the best one (most of the rest look like "KQ1 through the eyes of an LSD user" 😁 )
However, in The Black Cauldron the situation is different. The auto-guess chooses a hue setting which makes Taran's hair purple, instead of the reddish-brown it should be. I've found that four strokes of Ctrl-F11 are enough to get the desired palette:
Black Cauldron (DOS) using auto-guess hue setting
Black Cauldron after four strokes of Ctrl-F11
It seems that most of the colors are actually nicer when auto-guess is used, but it doesn't matter, because Taran's hair can't be purple. By the way, it seems that in this game MESS "fixed hue=0" is the best setting:
Incidentally, if the hue is changed, the auto-guess will not work until DOSBox is restarted.
EDIT: Well, it seems there is an indicator for the hue setting number, I just missed it because it's in the "background window" of DOSBox. However, this indicator seems to ignore the effects of the "auto-guess" and always starts from hue=0.
It also seems that the auto-guessing will return to work if you change the hue back to hue=0 (according to the DOSBox indicator, that is), but I'm not sure, it's very confusing 😕
EDIT #2: I forgot to mention that, because of the cyclic nature of the hue control emulation, the hue setting number can potentially reach +/- infinity, so any specific palette can actually have an infinite numbers of "hue=" settings!