Yes yes...VGA designed for future gaming, etc. Was there any benefit to having a vga card vs an ega card when it comes to the SCI remake of KQ1? I'm not trying to bully or harass you. I honestly want to know

Oh for crying out loud, take it to PM if you really have to get it out there. GOG has an established space for making suggestions and the link has already been posted.

In the meantime, perhaps everyone should read this page before a mod comes across this topic:

http://www.gog.com/support/website_help/forums_feedback

As I explained to you, if you look up the actual computer reviews, you can find those online btw, of the 1990 SCI/VGA remake, you will find heavy criticism levied at Sierra for failing to utilize the full benefit of the VGA cards of the time.

The entire point here, which you need to understand, is that Sierra did fail on their job to make the 1990 SCi/VGA remake a fully operational VGA game. They chose, instead, to make sure all EGA computers and users could still operate the game.

I have used many examples on why people do this. Here is another example: Let's say someone was making a game whose engine can support both 32bit and 64 bit gaming, while promoting that game as a 64 bit game in all marketing materials, and yet having 32 bit plastered on the cover, because they didn't utilize anything that required 64 bit processing. Doesn't change the fact that the game engine can operate 64 bit technology, and they would be telling the truth by saying so. It just means they screwed up a bit.

That's basically what Sierra did. They did call it an SCI/VGA remake, and their SCI engine is fully capable of powering VGA and (with later updates) SVGA graphics, but they chose to also make it compatible with EGA. EGA being minimum requirement. It was all about introducing their new graphics engine saying it was the NEXT WAVE, and indeed it was the NEXT WAVE for that new period of VGA and SVGA gaming.

The OFFICIALLY LICENSED hint book I showed you, with full pictures in its third printing, referred to the game as a VGA remake not because the guy got his info wrong, but because Sierra was pushing hard for people to grasp the concept that the SCI engine was moving through to the future.

They did a very poor job with the KQ1 remake, and I will not claim they didn't. They should've had expanded VGA graphics in addition to their EGA graphics. But, that is not what they did. That also does not change how they marketed the game.

It's one thing to say: "Well, they screwed the pooch" and another to completely deny how they marketed their new SCI/VGA engine.

Thank you for your explanation. I do respect your answer and I think you and I are essentially on the same page. At least where it really matters. I am going away now. I enjoyed this back and forth bickering we did. Not for harassment, but it got us to come to a consensus on the subject. And you did teach me something. I didn't know people got mad at Sierra for stating VGA when it didn't really offer any VGA benefits. Thank you for that info and have a good one

I really don't understand why this is such a heated discussion.

When King's Quest 1 SCI was released, Sierra's SCI engine didn't have any true VGA capabilities, was, however, fully VGA compatible. Which essentially meant that there wasn't a problem with people who had a VGA card. Nothing more.

I've seen enough gaming magazines in those day who simply got it wrong. Especially multi-plattform magazine often simply wrote "VGA" underneath a PC screenshot even though the game clearly only used the EGA format.

It is very much possible that even certain early SCI-engine version did in fact have VGA capabilities but if they had, they were never used (except perhaps with "Jones in the fast lane", but I'm not sure).

As far as I remember, Sierra never claimed that KQ1 SCI had VGA graphics, just NEW graphics.

By the way, KQ1VGA - the remnake by AGD - also doen't use VGA graphics. It does use the typical VGA resolution of 320x200 pixels, but it uses a lot more than 256 colors.


And to clear up graphics depth confusion:

EGA used 4 bits (16 colors)
and
VGA used 8 bits (256 colors)

Super VGA was a rather wonky desicription and meant basically everything above that. Most of the time is was 640x400 or 640x480 but still using 256 colors.

Hi-Color was 16 bit (65536 colors)

Then came "true color" which was 24 bit (16.8M colors).
And later came 32 bit which still used 24 bit color management (still 16.8M colors) but also added 8 bits of alpha blending (i.e. transparency).


But to end this discussion: King's Quest 1 SCI was released, before Sierra startet using 256 color VGA graphics and uses (fantastically looking) 16 color EGA graphics which work flawlessly on then freshly released VGA adapters.

I like the SCI remake a lot (in fact, more than the AGD remake) and I do hope it will be available soon.

I do stand corrected. You are correct. I stated 24 bit only had roughly 65,000 colors when it did have over 16.7 million. The 32 bit added the ability to use opacity's/transparencies, and arguably can be considered extra colors, but really they aren't.

A common misconception people have about vga vs svga is that svga offered more colors. All it was, was measures of higher resolutions. When they were able to go up to and exceed 800x600 resolutions. The term SVGA really isn't commonly used anymore, as almost everything now is just simply referred to as VGA.

[url=http://kingsquest.wikia.com/wiki/King%27s_Quest_I:_Quest_for_the_Crown]http://kingsquest.wikia.com/wiki/King%27s_Quest_I:_Quest_for_the_Crown[/url]

I noted this on the King's Quest wiki, that a few sources actually call it "King's Quest I: VGA".

See for example the King's Quest Collection Series Manual.

http://www.sierrahelp.com/Documents/Manuals/Kings_Quest_-_Collection_Series_-_Manual.pdf

Although technically its not VGA, despite marketing.

However, just because the King's Quest Companion or Collections calls it a 'VGA version" doesn't mean that they are correct. The Collection's also states, that it has icons like KQ5. But that's of course also 'wrong'.

Also you can find a number of Sierra sources that do infact call KQ1 remake "EGA".

KQ1 SCI actually had more in common with King's Quest 4 SCI, or Quest for Glory II's version of the Sci engine (which although VGA compatible were only utilizing EGA graphics).

On a related note, early on many Sierra games were released in both VGA and EGA versions. For example King's Quest V came in two versions. Although later on they included multiple versions in one box, and you just changed the graphics settings via the installation software.

http://kingsquest.wikia.com/wiki/The_Royal_Scribe

That's crazy that they marketed sometimes as EGA & sometimes as VGA. I have scanned copies of the original Sierra Catalogs that came with most of the Sierra games in the 80's & 90's. The 1991 & 1992 catalogs advertised the KQ1 SCI remake. The 1991 showed it as MS-DOS EGA/TANDY. The 1992 had advertised the game, stating "now re-illustrated in EGA for the '90's". Neither one of the Sierra catalogs state VGA anywhere in the descriptions. And these were official catalogs from Sierra marketing there software. I think that in itself can cause a lot of confusion for people that see EGA in one place, and VGA somewhere else

"simply referred to as VGA"

You don't hear a lot about 'VGA" much anymore either. Since the VGA cable format was done away with. DVI (just about dead), HDMI, or DisplayPort replacing the cable standards.

They go by resolutions signals now, like 1080p/I or 780p Or HD and Full HD.

When new games are made in a pseudo 8-bit or 16 bit graphics they have a tendency to now call it "Pixel Art" in the marketing?

I have to wonder as EGA started to lose its usage, that they resorted to just calling it "VGA" so there would be no confusion for anyone looking for compatibility with newer systems?

The reason why KQ1 SCI is an "EGA" game, Because it was part of the last generation of Sierra's SCI EGA games.

KQ5 which was to be released later the same year, the first game to utilize VGA. It was their first attempt at VGA, and was marketed as pushing the boundaries of the multimedia at the time. Something practically each 'new' KQ game did previously, and after..

All later remakes then had the technology from KQ5 to work with.

Much of SIerra's budget went to Roberta Williams whenever she went about creating a new technology for a game. While most of the other developers had to stay one step behind, using whatever she introduced after the fact.

Its a matter of the cart coming after the horse so to speak.

Sierra never wanted other developers to overshadow Roberta's technology demonstrations ;).

So at the time of KQ5's release, it was marketed as the 'newfangled" VGA, and anything that came before it was simply "EGA" and the 'old technology". Because KQ1 remake was to be released before KQ5, they also didn't want it overshadowing KQ5. A second team led by Josh Mandel was put on it, and he had only access to the EGA technology version of SCI.

That makes a lot of sense. Since they went completely VGA with KQ5 & all future games, they may have just stated VGA in all future descriptions, as a simple way of letting people know it's VGA compatible & would work with there VGA cards. I myself, have a HD monitor using the HDMI port. Since HD monitors are becoming really cheap, I wouldn't be surprised if HDMI eventually becomes the standard

I like HDMI for the reason I can switch my game consoles onto it, or use it as a second screen on my laptops.

But apparently to use multi-screen support in games, you have to use DisplayPort, DVI (or VGA adapters) at least with NVidia. HDMI is not supported.

I hear Radeon video cards are a bit more forgiving.

Of course there are some hardware adapters that will link together several devices including HDMI into one 'superwide' resolution, by merging the signal. But its also rather expensive.

I'm not sure I understand, I have 3 computers with Nvidia graphics cards and haven't had any problems with multi-monitor hdmi or mixed hdmi and DVI-D setups while gaming.

Arablizzard thank you for that. Perhaps the people on the websites I was trying to find more information about it on were unclear.

Maybe they were confusing it with the 3d Surround requirements (DVI-D)?

http://www.geforce.co.uk/hardware/technology/3dvision-surround/faq

As someone who knows would I be able to do it with a laptop monitor, with two side monitors? Alienware 14 (2014 model).

I currently use a gechic 1502i for the HDMI plug. I guess the other option would be to get a displayport ready monitor?

I should be able to do two HDMI if I get an displayport to HDMI converter?

That's probably what happened, yes. Although, I doubt you'd get very good performance with a laptop graphics chip. Multi-monitor gaming is really for the desktop pc realm.

How is this really relevant to the original topic?....