I think this would fall under the EGA graphics engine.... A-Train used a 16-color pallette which shifted through 4 patterns to form a day/night cycle. All modern graphics cards display in-game graphics as brown & black.
Thanks
I haven't played the game, but might it actually be using the 640x480 with *configurable* (from among 65535 colors I believe) 16 color palette VGA mode? EGA used a fixed palette, there's no way to change those colors as far as I know.
A-train was one of my all-time favorite games back in the day, and I was disappointed when I experienced problems with it under Dosbox, so I thought I'd post to a forum. The thread here seems incomplete so I'd like to reopen it:
Using Dosbox 0.63 which functions great with other games (Sierra adventures like KQ and SQ - earliest versions - and from Wasteland to Syndicate Wars (i.e. very early game to recent but still requiring dos).
The problem: main A-train game screen does not display in color. The splash screens do, and so do the menus and the "satellite" overview map, but the view of the city is in two colors: black and crud yellow.
Info: install of PC version of A-Train allows choice between monochrome/color and various sound cards. I choose color and any one of the sound cards and game installs successfully, but same problem persists in every combination. Installing in BW functions perfectly - in BW. I've found this same problem unanswered in other forums.
Soyo motherboard (sorry can't remember what these are exactly
Celeron processor (sorry can't remember which exactly)
512 ram
Radeon 9000
Turtle Beach Santa Cruz (sound board)
Win Xp
All drivers recently updated.
i can confirm your problem.
it has amazed me a few times as well.
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wrote:i can confirm your problem.
it has amazed me a few times as well.
Amazing though it is, it seems DOSbox might be incorrectly handling int 10 / ax = 1013. This call, "select paging mode / page number", suggest it does something with the DAC registers, which would support the original posters assumption it uses 4 different 16 color patterns. I don't have too much time to go into it any further, maybe someone else can check what effect this could have.
Another problem might be that the game uses int 10 / ax = f100, which DOSbox doesn't support. However, the game doesn't seem to suffer from the call being not suported, and I cannot link it to the color problems the game experiences.
JAL
wrote:I haven't played the game, but might it actually be using the 640x480 with *configurable* (from among 65535 colors I believe) 16 color palette VGA mode? EGA used a fixed palette, there's no way to change those colors as far as I know.
EGA allows assigning each of the 16 attributes to any of 64 colors (2 bit RGB). The 64 colors are fixed. VGA, being EGA compatible, also uses this scheme, but the 64 colors can be assigned to any of the possible DAC colors (6 bits RGB, 262144 colors). If I'm not mistaken, it is also possible on VGA to either use the scheme above, or directly link any of the 16 attributes to a DAC color. And if I'm also not mistaken, the infamous int 10 / ax = 1013 can select between the two.
Note that I'm digging most of this up from memory, so if I'm wrong, I hereby stand corrected 😀.
JAL
it's the int 10 f1 interface that game uses.
I added it in my personal code and the game suddenly has colors.
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wrote:it's the int 10 f1 interface that game uses.
I added it in my personal code and the game suddenly has colors.
Ah, so I was wrong anyway 😀. At least, I hope, I pointed you in the right direction 😀.
JAL
I just commited it. It's an amazing game! The colour effect is stunning!
@Jal: Yeah. It motivated me to fix it as I failed to see why the infamous int10 ax 1013 was broken.
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I am assuming this issue will be fixed by the next release. 😦
you are correct cuttock
Water flows down the stream
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Thank you my freind 😀
Even though this is directly my problem, i have no clue what you guys are talking about with the int 10 and whatever.
can i fix this problem with a particular installation option?
change manually dosbox?
help
download the dosbox from
http://cvscompile.aep-emu.de/dosbox.htm
have fun.
Water flows down the stream
How to ask questions the smart way!
This has been fixed in the source code for DOSBox but there hasn't been a new official release yet. Click the link in my signature for info on unofficial CVS builds that will have the fix included.
thank you for the fast response!! was enjoying Atrain all yetserday -- sweet game
