You can control the CGA card with io port prodding, using the OUT command.

QB is just much slower at this, so fancy things (mid-scanline operations, et al) would still need assembler. Iirc, you CAN inject assembler into a QB function, but I dont remember how.

Found it.
http://petesqbsite.com/sections/tutorials/tut … _appendix1.html

So, if you want to do the fancy CGA craziness, fast enough to actually do it, you can make and use assembler functions to do it.

Traditional NTSC composite/artifact color, works by halving the effective horizontal resolution, and abusing the fact that certain single pixels next to each other 'bleed' to create a new effective color.

This is how, eg, maniac mansion does stuff.

Fancy artifact color interrupts the scanline mid-render, which changes the effective signal the crt interprets as the scanline is generated.

This second method is how you get 1k colors in demos, like the 8088mph demo.

https://youtu.be/YwU3dc96Ot4?si=jMVASZO4oi7uYA7t

(Technical writeups for 1k color mode)
https://www.reenigne.org/blog/1k-colours-on-c … a-how-its-done/

https://int10h.org/blog/2015/04/cga-in-1024-c … de-illustrated/