DM/CSB in 256 VGA

[Gambit37]

I've often wondered what DM and CSB might have looked like if they'd been recoloured in a 256 colour PC VGA palette.
For a quick and dirty example:



It seems people do like the old pixellated graphics. Anyone interested in a graphical update like this?

[Bit]

CSBwin can handle just the 16-color-palettes. Think DSB can handle 256 colors, and you could do it for Sphenx' DM2-conversion. My clone can handle even truecolor now and higher resolution, but there's no official release at the moment, and I am still spending my full time for DM2-conversion. Once we got DM2 under control, we will spend the results to DSB. Maybe there will be one clone that will not need the DOSbox, but that's just the end of one development-path then.

[Gambit37]

I was thinking of these for DSB and RTC (both handle truecolour images). I don't mean to create *REAL* 256-colour images, just something that looks like it could have been... a sort of semi-retro update to the original graphics I think it could be quite fun to play the original DM and CSB in the original pixellated resolutions but with better coloured monsters, items, etc...

And as Sphenx managed to get a DM2 custom dungeon working, these could be used in original DM2 also.

It's not a project I'm going to do anytime soon, I just wondered if there would be any interest.

[Bit]

I'm pretty sure this wouldn't be in vain. Even if no one directly requests, if available, they surely would be used.

[Sphenx]

Gambit, this is within my plans for the DM1 conversion and exactly what I would want to do! I clearly want to use the DM2 engine to globally upgrade the DM1 experience, graphics and sounds included. I already started to put more colors to some of the original creatures, but that requires some time to get the whole thing done - if you are for making some of them, I will gladly work with you.
About the format, don't bother using a 256 colors palette, just work on 24b RGB: we'll use an images convertor to reduce to 256 colors. I have one such thing to make DM2 graphics.dat which uses the DM2 palette.

CSBwin can handle just the 16-color-palettes.

You forgot CSBWin3D

A more difficult project would be to bring more animation to the original creatures. For example DM2 supports animation sequences which consist generally of 3 to 6 images. But that will require even more time and design of new images, quite a lot of work!
Just having more colorful versions of the creatures will be great!

[Gambit37]

I was thinking of this for DSB abd RTC primarily, so that each monster can have any colours and not be constrained by a fixed palette.

The method of applying a palette to a true colour image isn't ideal because you end up with colour shifts or dithering. If you want images done in the DM2 palette, they would really need to be drawn in that palette to begin with.

Anyway, it's not something I'm working on for a long time yet... I was just curious what people thought...

[Joramun]

I like it. In this vein, how difficult would it be to make "new monsters" in order to be free of licence ? Maybe the recoloring is enough ?

[Trantor]

I like the idea, too, but to be honest, I'd be happier if you put the time you would spend on this in creating a dungeon. Of course, if you have fun doing it, by all means go for it! I'm just saying I'd rather play a new dungeon with the same old graphics then an old dungeon with new graphics - but you already know I'm not the most visual person around here anyway.

[Gambit37]

Like I said, it's not something I'll be doing anytime soon. My custom dungeon comes first. I found a technique doing graphics for my custom game that I thought could be used to freshen up the old monsters while still having them look "retro"; I just wondered what people thought of it.

[Paul Stevens]

what people thought of it.

I like it very much. Those 16 colors
and large pixels definitely made it obvious
that the artist was struggling to do something
reasonable. That was mildly distracting.

The extra colors do not seem at all out-of-
place, even in this old game.

[Sphenx]

I DM2ized your Antman:

[Gambit37]

Neat, looks good