Many years ago in the early 90's there was a classic Adventure game by Sierra called King's Quest V, which featured the first King's Quest instalment to replace the typing user interface with a point-and-click user interface. It was in my opinion one of the best games in the series, which even today sits proudly on my shelf amongst other greats by Sierra. Well if you too remember this game will be pleased to know that anouk33 has shown a new video of a King's Quest remaster bringing it closer to the graphics of the PC version.
And here's the full details. "This is a new version of Kings Quest V remastered by kikems / amigawave and Darasco / SCP group to reconstruct the palette and graphics of the Sierra game 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.)..Space Quest IV remaster is coming soon."
Links :1) Source
Hmm, this is harder to say, some scenes actually look a little better and some of them added details that were missing (clouds in the sky, for example, in one scene), but it looks like it has the exact same a mount of colors but the remaster make intensive use of dithering in every scene, which reduces the contrast, I think these images probably look a lot better on CRTs though.
ReplyDeletePerhaps if it were possible to use EHB to double the amount of colors and reduce the necessity of dithering?
Or make it AGA and actually use the same PC artwork instead?
Great work though, it's an improvement...
Going AGA as you say would be a much better choice for this one IMHO. Some screens I actually prefer the original, even though they are less detailed. No doubt others who are happy with dithering will still appreciate this remastered version.
DeleteDifference is negligible, original has a bit more contrast which isnt' bad, but the original is even better in some screens, like when he talks to the owl.
ReplyDeleteSeriously? Worse than the original? That's not true, put on some glasses.
DeleteI agree, some scenes are actually a downgrade from the original and the ones that have improved you would not notice a difference unless comparing them side by side.
DeleteFantastic! This will look excellent on real hardware, or with a good crt shader and some smoothing via emulation. You can already see the improvement in detail in the video. That was my greatest gripe about the Amiga version, missing details and everything just looked a bit scrappy and slightly gaudy in spots.
ReplyDeleteKing's Quest V is a much better port than the original Space Quest IV port, but still, you can tell they might've been using a stock 16 color palette for the conversion.
When you know how to use color and some of technical tricks of the Amiga hardware, it was possible to do respectable conversions to 32 colors, using palette swapping, Gouraud shading and using the blitter, and then some if you take into consideration what the programmers did with the title 'Universe' which appeared to simulate 256 colors on screen, though this would've been constrained by static screens with only limited scrolling, half-brite mode and the complexity of implementing the hardware trick itself. The original coder who worked for Core developed a specialised utility for this purpose which made the whole a thing a bit simpler to do - more details are here https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/44/how-to-obtain-256-arbitrary-colors-with-limitation-of-64-per-line-in-amiga-ecs
If this had been available as a general utility and conceived a bit earlier, some of the adventure game conversions could've been so much better. Unfortunately the original tool itself seems to have been lost to time, but I'm sure someone could reverse engineer it if they tried.
But already enjoying what it is going on here with KQV with the extra color palettes and Gouraud shading!
Can't wait to see what they do with Space Quest IV.
Downloaded - but two problems. The language is either in Spanish or Italian (probably Spanish), so is there an English version or how do you change the language if it's in the program?
ReplyDeleteSecond Retroarch doesn't support Midi for it's Amiga core at this time, and as much as I'd like that, I can accept that it has fairly limited use across the Amiga software library and that's likely why it hasn't been implemented as yet (but will be happy once it is!). However without Midi the game is deathly silent... is there away too turn the original sound back on? or is it Midi only?
Make the annoying owl not so annoying.
ReplyDeleteHonestly I wished past game developers used dithering to resolve the color palette issue before they ship out Amiga games - it can really work wonders. However, I am not sure how difficult it to do this back in the 80s and 90s, presumably anouk33 used some sort of modern software tool to regenerate all these images with dithering.
ReplyDeleteI was asking myself the same question, the first serious art software I used was DPaint but never really imported any image into it which needed to have a color reduction...
DeleteAccording to AI, even late 80s software were capable of dithering higher color images...
Or make use of HAM
ReplyDeleteThat looks better already. However, I think that for this to be a success, it's necessary to bring more colors to the screen using copper tricks.
ReplyDeleteI'd probably agree with other commentators on the dithering, It is way too strong in parts. You really need a hybridisation approach and only use dithering in less visible parts were the colours are very close or the transitional dithering is very low. However in this application there are too many areas that catches your eye
ReplyDeleteHmm - this seems to be using the same single generic palette as the original, just converting screens to it using dithering. I wish it did what Space Quest IV remaster is doing, and customized palettes per area. This way it could look near-identical to the PC release.
ReplyDeleteAgreed. SQIV looks stunning, this is marginally better.
DeleteI agree too. SQIV is much better converted, this one is mediocre at best. Too much dithering. I know it's a rich coloured game, but extra half brite could give a hand instead of all that retinated gfx
DeleteYeah, it's not great... and I pretty much agree with the comments... it adds even more pixels and some scenes are better in the original...
ReplyDeleteIt still has the same number of colors but displayed differently... we already have all that on DOS... and in better quality...
They should have done a real remaster with the AGA palette, if anything.
Here additional video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqJDlW-TDGg
ReplyDeleteUpdated version continue with original Sierra engine and the limit of 32c and only one palette for all game. We not have source code of engine, it's not possible go to AGA, EHB or other things.
ReplyDeleteSome scenes look better in the original, others the remaster! - As for me I'm very happy either way as I'm a huge Sierra fan! - NIIIIIIIIIIIIICELY DONE :D
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