VOGONS

Color in D/Generation not working properly

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First post, by insectoid

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I've been trying to get D/Generation to work in full color in DOSBox 0.74. I've tried it in real-mode DOS on a Win98 machine, and it comes out looking like this screenshot from Screen Thief:
DGENVG01.png

However, I've tried it in DOSBox on my Win7 machine, both 0.74 and the latest SVN build, in multiple video modes (S3, ET4000, nolfb, down to vgaonly) and it always comes out in mostly-grey, like this screenshot:
dgenvga_grey.png

My dosbox.conf file is attached, though I have tried running with the defaults (no conf) with the same results. I've also tried varying the cycles (3000 instead of 10000, for example). The sound and the game itself work great.

My machine: Core i5-2400 3.1GHz, 8GB RAM, EVGA nVIDIA GeForce GTX 550 Ti 1GB, Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit. DOSBox versions: 0.74, SVN r3838. I haven't tried any older versions because having multiple .confs for certain environments is already tedious. 😉

Thanks!

P.S. Off-topic, but related to the SVN build: I noticed that the %CONFIG% environment variable is not being used by the CONFIG command in the SVN build. Is this a permanent change? I find it useful for batch files (testing for settings with 'CONFIG -get')

Bzzz.

Reply 1 of 3, by ripsaw8080

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It's a sort of Easter Egg, or rather a Halloween Trick. The game intentionally performs grayscale summing on its palette when the system date is October 31. I guess it's supposed to make the game more spooky. Dungeon Keeper also does special stuff on Halloween, IIRC.

You can just wait a day and the color will return, or you can use the DATE command in SVN to change the date. In 0.74 you can use the 4DOS shell to get the DATE command.

BTW, if you play the game on December 25, there's a Christmas tree next to the receptionist's desk.

Reply 2 of 3, by insectoid

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(checks on Win98 machine and DOSBox SVN) Hey... you're right! That's actually pretty clever. Thanks, Ripsaw... shame on me for thinking it was DOSBox's fault... you guys do great work. 😀

I know of several games (Jazz Jackrabbit, for instance) that change the graphics on December 25, but I'd never seen a Halloween Easter egg before today. Learning something new all the time... like to check the date on a machine I haven't used in ages! (It was set to Jun 01 2000 or something like that; hence the game being in color...)

Bzzz.

Reply 3 of 3, by Qbix

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insectoid wrote:

P.S. Off-topic, but related to the SVN build: I noticed that the %CONFIG% environment variable is not being used by the CONFIG command in the SVN build. Is this a permanent change? I find it useful for batch files (testing for settings with 'CONFIG -get')

The functionality has been restored. Thanks for the report.

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