Every time I try to find Space Quest IV for the Amiga to add to my ever growing childhood collection, I'm always told not to bother as it's terrible. In fact one person on the Lemon Amiga site said, "they booted it up on their A1200, 'played' it for 10 minutes, vomited at the non-amiga-worthy graphics, swore at the arrogance of sierra for releasing a daft excuse for a port and almost destroyed the hard drive". Well worry not! As I've just found out through the Sierra Gaming World Facebook group, that Darasco has finally released an enhanced version for the Amiga OCS.
And here's the full details. "This is a new release via Darasco from the SCP group to reconstruct the palette and graphics of the Sierra game ‘Space Quest IV’ for Amiga OCS. Both screenshots were taken from a real Amiga via RGB output. The music also belongs to the original Amiga version with MIDI support via Roland MT-32. (An mt32-pi was used.). This title was perhaps the one most in need of a remaster, and now you can enjoy it. The palette remains unique for all the adventure, due to the limitations of the SCI engine for Amiga, but Darasco has spent a long time trying to find a more consistent palette for the entire game."
Wow. This is really great.
ReplyDeleteI remember playing it on the Pc and the Amiga one and I was ashamed of it.
I knew that Amiga could do a much better work.
It seemed like it was using 8 colours, but the game even mentioned using 32 colours!
Ridiculous
This is great 🙏
ReplyDeleteCorrects one of the greatest wrongs on the Amiga...
ReplyDeleteIt's awesome. Way better than the horror conversion from 1991
ReplyDeleteSame problem with King's Quest 5, Police Quest 3, SQ1 remake, Larry 1 remake. Dynamix did so much better with Rise of the Dragon and Heart of China..
ReplyDeleteYeah I always wondered that myself; Dynamix' adventure games were very close to the VGA original (although I disliked the redrawn faces in Heart of China).
DeleteLooking forward to this!
ReplyDeleteAt the first screens I actually thought: well this is no better , but then it changed 😄. The old Sierra Amiga VGA ports were inexcusable. If you look what LucasGames did with Monkey Island 2 Especially. 'Even' when they used 64 colors (EHB) with Conquest of the Longbow, they still messed up. ( Now 'Universe' was a game that did it right: 256 colors on a stock A500). I do hope though things like the color-cycle in the 'portal' scene 00:06:16 will be restored. CD32 AGA with speech next please 😁. Awesome project.
ReplyDeleteI think you mean 256 colours on a stock A1200??....OCS/ECS is only 6 bit planes so 64 colours MAX
DeleteUniverse indeed displayed more than 64 colours on OCS Amigas, using the palette slicing technique to change the palette on every scanline. This allowed the Amiga to display hundreds of colours onscreen without resorting to HAM mode with its artifacts.
DeleteUniverse used palette slicing to change the palette on every scanline, giving it hundreds of unique colours on a OCS Amiga without resorting to HAM mode. If you would like to experiment with this mode, check out the software "HAMLab"
DeleteI take that claim that 'Universe' displays 256 colours with a MASSIVE pinch of salt. Both the PC and Amiga graphics feature extremely heavy dithering - even by the standards of the time. Each image is essentially in one colour range (bluish-green for example, or bluish-purple). Not only do the graphics look nowhere near 256 colours, these is absolutely no need for that many with such narrow colour-bands. If I were to judge compared to genuine 256-colour games of the time, I would say that 'Universe' may be using 32 colours with heavy dithering in some images - but mostly looks like only 16 colours with heavy dithering.
DeleteThe Wikipedia page for Universe notes that the Amiga version was notable for its then-unique ability to display 256 colors at once on a standard Amiga 500, thanks to an innovative system called SPAC (Super Pre-Adjusted Colour). It was advertised as such. Some say the claim of the 256 colours figure was exaggerated and that the engine actually achieved around 128 distinct colours, giving the impression of an AGA-like palette.
DeleteJustice at last! This port was a travesty, and everyone knew it!
ReplyDeleteI heard it was so ugly because the game used a generic 32-color palette for everything, but that can't be true, unless whoever picked those colors was blind as a bat!
This looks a lot better. Most PC-to-Amiga conversions looked horrible: they just did some auto-transfer with little or no tailoring for the Amiga's colour palette. This even applies to the Monkey Island games too. I also hope this new version uses the blitter to do the animation. The other big fault of these PC-to-Amiga ports was unbelievably choppy animation and scrolling.
ReplyDeleteWell done!! And this prove how a "simple" reworking colours can do marvel just on a humble OCS....now i expect,at last,a massive reworking palette "opera" for ALL the amiga OCS mauled by shitty Atari ST conversions both from arcade( ninja spirit,shadow warriors,double dragon 3 etc..) and original ST ones(torvak the warrior,targhan,cadaver...). It's time to use enhanced palette,at last! Yaaaaahhhh!!!!
ReplyDeletewhy not aga 256 colours? And speech version too
ReplyDeleteLooks way better, closer to the VGA original, perhaps if it were EHB we could get closer,less dithering and more subtle color gradients?
ReplyDeleteAnyway, great job!
That looks so much better.
ReplyDeleteI would like to see an improved version of King's Quest 5 on the Amiga, possibly with Copper-controlled palette adjustments.
Truly waiting for this and play it immediately through :D my number 1 most favorite space quest game. Respect for insane awesome work <3
ReplyDeleteI was horrified when seeing SQ4 on Amiga. Then I saw the PC version, but I prohibited myself from playing it.
ReplyDeleteAmiga SQ3 was way better, although the graphics were simpler...looking forward to your version!
Not yet published. Will be published in EAB.
ReplyDeleteRELEASED!! :)
ReplyDeleteCrashes on Pistorm32 1200 and 1200 with TF 030/50mhz accelerator. What am I doing wrong?
ReplyDeleteConfirm English version works on Terrible Fire 030/50mhz but does not work on Pistorm32. However DE version works on Pistorm32. Don't know why
ReplyDeleteenglish version works for me with 1200 + pistorm32 + cm4. In fact, you can change languaje in DE version to English, in menu options or removing languaje line en resource.cfg
ReplyDeleteConfirm English version works for me, 1200 + Pistorm32 + CM4, Kickstar 3.1. In fact, DE version can change the languaje in menu options to EN o removing languaje line in resource.cfg
ReplyDeleteEnglish version works for me with 1200+pistorm32+cm4. In fact DE version can change to EN in game menu o removing languaje line in resource.cfg
ReplyDeleteUsing DE and deleting language line worked for me. Changed to English and works. Why wouldn't the EN version work?
ReplyDeleteHi! There is a way to play this enhanced edition with FS-UAE? I tried but it don't recognise the "slave" file...please help!😭
ReplyDelete