i'm making a #QBasic game using mode 13h, 320x200 8bpp. i'm using the line doubling feature of the VGA card to make it 320x100 then manually doubling each pixel horizontally for 160x100
i realized i could use a palette with 3 bits red/green and 2 blue, and then do "subpixel" dither to generate the in between colors. i made a converter to test if that would look good, and it does
here's a thread of images showing what that looks like
1/5
every image has a CRTized version made using https://mattiasgustavsson.itch.io/crtview by @Mattias_G and the crispy pixel original
my converter has a bias factor between 0 and 1, that biases towards non-dithered colors. it's kind of a push and pull between less busy dithering and more detail
2/5
little known fact: qbasic can produce mind boggling effects
i'm making this engine in qbasic for DOS as a challenge, using qb1.1, the interpreted one, without resorting to assembly language hacks. hence the low resolution (fewer tiles/pixels = better performance)
3/5
right now my qbasic engine can run locked to 70, 60, 35, 30, or 18.2 frames per second. @discatte tested it and it runs at 35 fps on a 486sx-20mhz
i intend for it to have OPL music and sounds, with a PC speaker sfx and no music fallback for the 18.2 fps mode
4/5
Eniko Fox
EdenDestroyer