Does anyone know how to clear the video-buffer in order to get no visual glitches while cga-emulation on hercules card?

GrandPrixCiruet uses the same cga-emulation then "emu", but it switches the Hercules-Monitor with a high-pitch-sound and the visuals are errorfree. If I do not use the internal cga-emulation on the game and start "emu0 80" and after that GPCGA.exe I get some lines on the top of the picture that are wrong and perhaps are from the dos-commandline... I don't know. So what das grand prix-circuet with it's internal cga-emulation that there are no errors in the picture?

I need to know this because I have the same (and other) visual glitches if I try to run CGA only games with emulation on hercules mode.

Thx
Doc

Jo22 wrote on 2020-03-21, 16:49:

By doing proper programming, the HGC was able to run in 640x400 pels also. Same as the hi-res CGA did in the Olivetti M24 and similar computers.

Grzyb wrote on 2020-03-23, 01:19:

That screenshot is 640x400 - so it must be using the undocumented 640x400 interlaced mode.
Fascinating, I didn't know there was some software actually using that mode...

That's what I Iove about this forum. Every time I think I know all there is to know about the MS-DOS era, I get proven wrong and learn something new about that magical time that I never knew before. 😊 I never knew the Hercules Graphics Card was capable of displaying graphics at 640x400 resolution!

By the way, do you agree that it's a shame that the developers of the HGC never bothered to implement a graphics mode that supported both brightness levels for individual pixels, like it did in text mode? Variable pixel-level brightness combined with dithering at 640x400 resolution would have made it possible to display many games designed for 320x200 16-color graphics at a much higher quality!

Also imagine what possibilities that would have given to games that would be designed to take advantage of the native graphics capabilities of such an improved Hercules card. The projectiles and explosions in Space War would pop out visually with increased brightness, for instance.

I really like Korean Dungeon Boy's Hercules visuals. They're reminiscent of a PC-98 game (same resolution, but monochrome). Too bad the monochrome CGA mode looks nowhere near as good, as the graphics get badly downscaled. I somehow got it to show up in 4 color mode when trying it on my HP Vectra VL2 4/66 that has Cirrus Logic GD542x integrated video and it's kind of an eyesore. I wish they added a high-res MCGA/VGA monochrome mode. Another good CGA game not mentioned here yet is Round 42.

digger wrote on 2020-03-28, 11:28:

By the way, do you agree that it's a shame that the developers of the HGC never bothered to implement a graphics mode that supported both brightness levels for individual pixels, like it did in text mode?

I do agree.
HGC already had 64 KB of RAM, enough for 720x348x2bpp, so implementing such a mode probably wouldn't be expensive.
EGA did it better - for monochrome monitor there's the F mode, which supports 3 mono shades + blinking as the 4th "color".

Another one I just remembered with Hercules graphics is Sim earth by maxis.

We should collect the best cga-emulator for each cga-only-game.

I am struggling with alley_cat 🙁

dr.zeissler wrote on 2020-03-29, 19:53:

We should collect the best cga-emulator for each cga-only-game.

I am struggling with alley_cat 🙁

Not surprising, since Alley Cat does a lot of trickery to get the most out of CGA graphics cards, such as rapid palette switching and the like. 😸

How close have you gotten to making that game work on a computer with a Hercules card?

It's working, but I have to choose between flickering of the moving objects or very low fps.
There is a digger-version patched to work with hgcibm and this works great.

Also struggling with:
-World Karate-Championship
- Wintergames/Summergames/Worldgames
- Pitstop2

Don't find the switch for hercules for defender of the Crown
and I am also beginning to tip the unnecessary files that are
not needed for XT without soundcard and mda.

Therefore I am using kgb that protocols all file-activity.

OldCat wrote on 2018-07-05, 09:46:

[*] Digger - quick, fun, works via SimCGA (you have to jump through a few hoops) on Herc.
[*] Sokoban - did not like it too much as a kid, but appreciate logic games more now. Native CGA and Hercules support.[/list]

I use have a digger version called "digger_herc" and it works great with hgcibm.
Are you sure that Sokoban has a native hercules-support? please tell me the switch. my version is cga/tandy.

Some games do work with "ucga -f". It's scanline and not centered on monitor, but it's extremly fast.
Fast enough to get alleycat nearly 100% ok 😀
Beside that some other cga-titles do work with ucga, but I have still no luck with:

- Worldgames, Wintergames, Summergames
- hunt for red october (starts but freezes shortly)
- sglider1 shows weird characters at the beginning (menu?), game seams ok so.
- World-Karate Championship (International Karate)
- boulder-dash 1+2

Hey guys, thank you so much for adding new information to this thread and keeping it alive. I had a bit of various problems to tackle these last few months, which explains radio silence.

krcroft wrote on 2019-06-29, 23:32:

Shamus (1984)
Jet (1985)

Thanks!

Dhigan wrote on 2020-03-21, 08:32:

https://www.mobygames.com/images/shots/l/169-the-ancient-art-of-war-dos-screenshot-title-screen.gif How could you guys not be ta […]
Show full quote

How could you guys not be talking about The Ancient Art of War in it's CGA glory ?

It's a lovely game, thank you for sharing. How does it look in monochrome? Can it be emulated on Hercules?

Jo22 wrote on 2020-03-21, 15:24:

PopCorn is awesome. The colour is wrong, though. It's supposed to be red, not pink, I believe. I found out by checking several e […]
Show full quote

dr.zeissler wrote on 2020-03-21, 08:52:

Technically this game has fantastic effects that I never saw on cga on any other game:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SygD93F95js

PopCorn is awesome. The colour is wrong, though. It's supposed to be red, not pink, I believe.
I found out by checking several emulators and on an old OAK card in CGA emulation mode.
https://youtu.be/cu88uKmqlEU?t=164

Unfortunately, even its own game designers got it wrong.
They simply forgot, I suppose. 🙁

Two things here:
- dr.zeissler - thank you!
- jo22 - why do you think that the pink colour is wrong and should be red? Based on colours in EGA/VGA mode or something else?

Asaki wrote on 2020-03-21, 10:41:

I'm surprised no one has mentioned text-based games. For some reason, I really itch to play Infocom with that green or amber glow.

It might be fun to try to get Telnet games working, too. MUD2 is free these days 😉 (Though I vastly prefer it in color.)

That's fairly obvious case. I myself don't miss the era of text-only games that much, though.

liqmat wrote on 2020-03-21, 15:51:

I don't think anyone mentioned Korean Dungeon Boy yet. Some of the cleanest, well drawn Hercules gfx you'll see this side of the Milky Way. Fun too! (kind of important I guess)

dark&scary.jpg

It's beautiful, now I must install and play it!

BSA Starfire wrote on 2020-03-22, 03:56:

He is one of my all time favourite games and it works a treat on Hercules and it's officially been released for free by the ori […]
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He is one of my all time favourite games and it works a treat on Hercules and it's officially been released for free by the original makers also, double bonus!
https://streetrodonline.com/downloads/

Get the Street Rod SE version as the hercules files seem to be missing from the original, anyhow no reason to go for the non SE as you only lose content but don't gain anything.
My slowest PC is a 286/12 with 1MB RAM and a clone Herc card, it runs perfectly on this machine, give it a go and tear up the streets in your vintage American hot rod!
herc_mon_4.jpg

I remember playing this in primary school, but on VGA. Didn't even know there was a Hercules version. Thank you very much for bringing it up!

Does anyone know the hercules switch on the cga defender of the crown?

OldCat wrote on 2020-05-05, 11:11:

why do you think that the pink colour is wrong and should be red? Based on colours in EGA/VGA mode or something else?

When run on a real CGA (or a VGA with proper CGA compatibility mode), Popcorn uses the red-cyan-white palette.

Jo22 wrote on 2020-03-21, 15:24:

PopCorn is awesome. The colour is wrong, though. It's supposed to be red, not pink, I believe.
I found out by checking several emulators and on an old OAK card in CGA emulation mode.
https://youtu.be/cu88uKmqlEU?t=164

So you either "believe" it, or do you actually know it? Unless you can prove by running on an actual IBM CGA card, I would rather say the OAK card does it wrong.

Also, that footage is so over-brighten that it does not prove the correctness of *any* color. 😉

derSammler wrote on 2020-05-05, 12:02:

So you either "believe" it, or do you actually know it? Unless you can prove by running on an actual IBM CGA card, I would rather say the OAK card does it wrong.

I used to play it on a real CGA, and I can confirm that it was red, not magenta.

Edit: "dosbox -machine cga" does it right:

Grzyb wrote on 2020-03-29, 10:05:

I do agree. HGC already had 64 KB of RAM, enough for 720x348x2bpp, so implementing such a mode probably wouldn't be expensive. E […]
Show full quote

digger wrote on 2020-03-28, 11:28:

By the way, do you agree that it's a shame that the developers of the HGC never bothered to implement a graphics mode that supported both brightness levels for individual pixels, like it did in text mode?

I do agree.
HGC already had 64 KB of RAM, enough for 720x348x2bpp, so implementing such a mode probably wouldn't be expensive.
EGA did it better - for monochrome monitor there's the F mode, which supports 3 mono shades + blinking as the 4th "color".

Yes, that would make it much more interesting!

Although I could have sworn some games did it already, for example Targhan by Silmarils (photo off the actual Hercules sreen):

but upon closer inspection (the image is hi-res, you can zoom it quite close) it turns out it's just the artefacts of cathode ray tube monitor.

Pixels that appear darker ("half-brightness") have a bit of on/off curve on the sides which makes them less shiny, while pixels that appear brighter ("full brightness") are essentially part of longer line of pixel, so that on/off attenuation takes places only on the edges of the whole line. Not sure if I make myself clear, I can elaborate should anyone reply that I don't.

dr.zeissler wrote on 2020-03-25, 21:07:

We should split the thread. Hercules native+cga-emulation...and real cga.

Please don't. If you check my opening post, the intention was to find games that work well on monochrome screens (I should have put it in the title), both Hercules and CGA plus all the CGA games that can be played on Hercules. There's enough "best of CGA" lists on the internet as it is.

Somebody tried SIMEGA to play EGA titles on Hercules?

sorry for the "raw" material...native hercules via sometimes tweaked cga-emulation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vix4DRCoNHM