'Original glory' could be defined as "on original hardware on a screen where the graphics looks as they're supposed to instead of being stretched and changed in all sorts of ways"
Playing at 1600x1200 with a point scaler and aspect correction enabled gives you a pixel-perfect representation of the original graphics.
If you had a lower-quality CRT back in the day, so you remember fuzzier pixel boundaries, a CRT emulation GLSL filter will give you an extremely accurate recreation of that.
DOSBox-Staging now defaults everything to proper aspect-corrected settings and includes a good selection of CRT emulation filters: https://dosbox-staging.github.io/
I (well, my parents) had a monitor that could do 1600x1200 in IIRC 1994 or ‘95. By 2001 or so I’d grabbed a pair of CRTs for $50 each (used) that could do 2650x1920.
This is why lots of us were slow to adopt flat screens: they were a big step backwards in pixel density for quite a while (plus typical picture quality was shit on them until the late ‘00s or so, resolution aside)
[edit] just providing context for those who weren’t there and are used to retro gaming being stuff that displayed on CRT TVs.
You're misunderstanding. Almost all major DOS games right up until about the mid-90s used a single common screen resolution of 320x200. When improvements in display tech allowed for more capable graphics cards, the priority was always for more color depth, not higher resolution. So the large majority of games were 320x200@2bpp (4 colors) with CGA, then 320x200@4bpp (16 colors) with EGA, then 320x200@8bpp (256 colors) for VGA. [1]
CRTs themselves have no concept of pixels or pixel density -- they're analogue devices where the primary limiting factor is the refresh rates supported by the hardware -- so the screen resolution in pixels is entirely a function of the display hardware generating the video. Almost all CRTs were 4:3, so typically you'd have a 320x200 game being displayed at a physical 4:3 resolution on the monitor. This means that in most cases, the pixels were not square, but rather each pixel was slightly portrait-orientation, having its own aspect ratio of 5:6. Most games artists took this into account, so if they wanted to draw a square that was 30 pixels across, they'd make it 25 pixels tall.
So the point of the 1600x1200 number is that this is the lowest resolution at which a display with square pixels can replicate the exact aspect ratio of both the screen and the pixels used in those classic games. Note that the aspect ratio of the pixels is 5:6 -- 5 is a prime number, so you can't reduce the ratio further. So if you turn each pixel in the original 320x200 screen into a grid of 5 by 6 square pixels, you get 1600x1200.
So only 1600x1200 (or an exact multiple) can provide a pixel-perfect rendering of the graphics from games from that era. Add a filter that emulates some of the visual artifacts from CRTs of the era -- scanlines, bloom, etc. -- and you're getting a pretty exact recreation of the experience you'd have had playing games in the DOS era. [2]
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[1] SVGA games at higher resolutions started becoming more common around 1994/95, but within a couple of years after that, Windows began to displace DOS as the primary target platform for PC games, leaving the vast majority of DOS games in the 320x200 camp. There were some outliers that used e.g. EGA's 640x350 mode, or otherwise supported higher resolutions at the expense of color depth (SimCity is a major example that comes to mind, along with a few games that used 320x200 but expected square pixels (producing a 16:10 screen aspect) but these are exceptions rather than the rule.
[2] At least visually. There are a lot of other sensory elements of classic gaming that remain entirely absent with modern hardware -- the static charge on the glass of the CRT monitor, the smell of air passing over the hot electronics in the PC, the mechanical sounds of reading data from floppy and hard disks, etc.
Was going to stroll down memory lane, and play it on a retro website. Sadly, Firefox is broken in this regard (what a shocker), with a broken UI that maps escape to 'exit pointer lock' or 'exit fullscreen'. Esc is used to bypass mega-long intros, and scenes between play, and other things of course.
There's no way to change the esc key to another key, which is just silly. Which makes Firefox silly.
I remember triying it a few years ago when the online version was released. The problem is that a lot of modern shorcuts are mising, like click on an enemy unit to atack instead of pressing A and then clicking on it. It was fantastic when it was released. Perhaps someone can add all those small tweaks and make an updated version.
I mean, if you have any 32-bit Windows, you can run it. You just have to launch it directly from the DOS command line, and you need to install an IPX->TCP/IP wrapper (or Kali/something similar) for multiplayer. I was playing Dune on my Windows XP box well into the 00s and NTVDM supported it fine.
But yeah, DOSbox is probably a better option these days.
It needs NTVDM/VM86 (the 16-bit wrapper in WoW) to run DOS code. Since Microsoft didn't want to code up an emulator (you can't run 16-bit code natively in long mode) to support 80s/early 90s code, it was just dropped with the 64-bit transition.
Many fond memories of my dad struggling to make this run on our family PC which was well below the system requirements, his eventual success and my ultimate love of the game.
AFAIR it required some unusally large amount of base mem (not highmem). I learned a lot about computers by repetitively breaking the family PC trying to get it to work (by disabling random things in autoexec.bat and CONFIG.SYS to free up as much of that 640k as possible), then trying to fix it before my dad came home. Good times.
The first installment in Westwood's "Command and Conquer" product line, but I remember someone mentioning that Command and Conquer was also the name of the game engine. The second installment was supposed to be a fantasy-themed, but idea was somehow scrapped and turned into modern warfare.
Dune II didn't have an engine name, it pretty much invented the whole modern RTS genre (Herzog Zwei was a prototype for the genre, however) and much of it was bespoke/non-general code.
For C&C and RA they had the "Westwood Engine", C&C2 & RA2 used the "Westwood Engine 2"; both of these (and the Dune II prototype engine) were also referred to as "the Command and Conquer Engine". They then had a small gap of 3D games (Renegade, for instance) that used the "Westwood 3D" engine which was expanded and renamed to "SAGE" for Generals. All followup C&C games used "SAGE 2.0".
the months leading up to C&C release were quite exciting as game magazines were releasing details left and right , and when they released the demo https://cnc.fandom.com/wiki/Command_%26_Conquer_demo it was such good times. those graphics, the gameplay mechanics, the voice lines. And when the final release on several CDs was there, we got to enjoy those sweet video sequences. Still up there in TOP 10 of best RTS
There is a new Dune 4X RTS game that I started to play some months ago and it's fun but also a bit generic (it's from the creators of Northgard so feels like a more polished reskin sometimes) https://store.steampowered.com/app/1605220/Dune_Spice_Wars/
> Real-time strategy (RTS) is a subgenre of strategy video games that does not progress incrementally in turns,[1] but allow all players to play simultaneously, in "real time". By contrast, in turn-based strategy (TBS) games, players take turns to play. The term "real-time strategy" was coined by Brett Sperry to market Dune II in the early 1990s.[2][3]
> While not the first real-time strategy (RTS) video game, Dune II established the format that would be followed for years to come.[1][2] As such, Dune II is the archetypal real-time strategy game. Striking a balance between complexity and innovation, it was a huge success and laid the foundation for Age of Empires, Command & Conquer, Warcraft, and many other RTS games that followed.
If you enjoyed Dune II, and also enjoyed later Westwood RTS games, go download openRA and find yourself a "totally legit" copy of the game disk for Dune 2000, which was a remaster of Dune II on the engine used for Red Alert games.
It features way better controls, a really good soundtrack, and full video cutscenes with actors! It's very fun, and feels so much more mature and polished than the original, though if you grew up with the original you might not feel as nostalgic for it.
35 comments
[ 0.29 ms ] story [ 90.2 ms ] threadBut would like to watch.
Page is accessible through Google cache: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp...
someone never heard of dosbox
If you had a lower-quality CRT back in the day, so you remember fuzzier pixel boundaries, a CRT emulation GLSL filter will give you an extremely accurate recreation of that.
DOSBox-Staging now defaults everything to proper aspect-corrected settings and includes a good selection of CRT emulation filters: https://dosbox-staging.github.io/
This is why lots of us were slow to adopt flat screens: they were a big step backwards in pixel density for quite a while (plus typical picture quality was shit on them until the late ‘00s or so, resolution aside)
[edit] just providing context for those who weren’t there and are used to retro gaming being stuff that displayed on CRT TVs.
CRTs themselves have no concept of pixels or pixel density -- they're analogue devices where the primary limiting factor is the refresh rates supported by the hardware -- so the screen resolution in pixels is entirely a function of the display hardware generating the video. Almost all CRTs were 4:3, so typically you'd have a 320x200 game being displayed at a physical 4:3 resolution on the monitor. This means that in most cases, the pixels were not square, but rather each pixel was slightly portrait-orientation, having its own aspect ratio of 5:6. Most games artists took this into account, so if they wanted to draw a square that was 30 pixels across, they'd make it 25 pixels tall.
So the point of the 1600x1200 number is that this is the lowest resolution at which a display with square pixels can replicate the exact aspect ratio of both the screen and the pixels used in those classic games. Note that the aspect ratio of the pixels is 5:6 -- 5 is a prime number, so you can't reduce the ratio further. So if you turn each pixel in the original 320x200 screen into a grid of 5 by 6 square pixels, you get 1600x1200.
So only 1600x1200 (or an exact multiple) can provide a pixel-perfect rendering of the graphics from games from that era. Add a filter that emulates some of the visual artifacts from CRTs of the era -- scanlines, bloom, etc. -- and you're getting a pretty exact recreation of the experience you'd have had playing games in the DOS era. [2]
----
[1] SVGA games at higher resolutions started becoming more common around 1994/95, but within a couple of years after that, Windows began to displace DOS as the primary target platform for PC games, leaving the vast majority of DOS games in the 320x200 camp. There were some outliers that used e.g. EGA's 640x350 mode, or otherwise supported higher resolutions at the expense of color depth (SimCity is a major example that comes to mind, along with a few games that used 320x200 but expected square pixels (producing a 16:10 screen aspect) but these are exceptions rather than the rule.
[2] At least visually. There are a lot of other sensory elements of classic gaming that remain entirely absent with modern hardware -- the static charge on the glass of the CRT monitor, the smell of air passing over the hot electronics in the PC, the mechanical sounds of reading data from floppy and hard disks, etc.
(I happen to have shown it to my 13yo son a few days ago. He wasn't impressed.)
There's no way to change the esc key to another key, which is just silly. Which makes Firefox silly.
But yeah, DOSbox is probably a better option these days.
VM86 mode is not available when in 64-bit long mode either (though it could be used via virtualization).
I still fire it up, every once in a while, at night, trying to recapture the mood of those early days.
Nevermind, found it: https://www.filfre.net/2023/06/a-dialog-in-real-time-strateg...
For C&C and RA they had the "Westwood Engine", C&C2 & RA2 used the "Westwood Engine 2"; both of these (and the Dune II prototype engine) were also referred to as "the Command and Conquer Engine". They then had a small gap of 3D games (Renegade, for instance) that used the "Westwood 3D" engine which was expanded and renamed to "SAGE" for Generals. All followup C&C games used "SAGE 2.0".
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=39980574&goto=item%3Fi...
- Controlling the Spice, Part 1: Dune on Page and Screen [1]
- Controlling the Spice, Part 2: Cryo’s Dune [2]
- Controlling the Spice, Part 3: Westwood’s Dune [3]
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[1] - https://www.filfre.net/2018/11/controlling-the-spice-part-1-...
[2] - https://www.filfre.net/2018/11/controlling-the-spice-part-2-...
[3] - https://www.filfre.net/2018/12/controlling-the-spice-part-3-...
> Real-time strategy (RTS) is a subgenre of strategy video games that does not progress incrementally in turns,[1] but allow all players to play simultaneously, in "real time". By contrast, in turn-based strategy (TBS) games, players take turns to play. The term "real-time strategy" was coined by Brett Sperry to market Dune II in the early 1990s.[2][3]
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real-time_strategy
> While not the first real-time strategy (RTS) video game, Dune II established the format that would be followed for years to come.[1][2] As such, Dune II is the archetypal real-time strategy game. Striking a balance between complexity and innovation, it was a huge success and laid the foundation for Age of Empires, Command & Conquer, Warcraft, and many other RTS games that followed.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune_II
It features way better controls, a really good soundtrack, and full video cutscenes with actors! It's very fun, and feels so much more mature and polished than the original, though if you grew up with the original you might not feel as nostalgic for it.