FAT-WHYME

A Brief History of Game Technology

As more and more arcades games from Pong and arcade games Pacman exciting … children cried tech ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64, and the PC is the computer of their parents to buy to help you do your homework. And the household accounts is spent. And if you're lucky, sometimes it can be left alone to play Minesweeper.

Actually, it was good times. Fortunately, they left. But you can not really appreciate what we have now, without knowing how much we have evolved since then. Take a trip with us at the dawn of a new PC.

1980: The dawn of the PC

The IBM PC was first published in 1981, and in the coming years if there was one, that is what you get for your truck full of money. A green screen black and white black (a bit ambitious on behalf of Hercules graphics), or perhaps the most advanced color graphics adapter pursuing their dreams forever. Among L6K – yes, k – 512k memory standard, up-gradable to a 640k so phenomenal, as in "should be enough for everyone." A floppy disk that were actually 5.25 inches flat black that erupted almost as soon as it seemed. And a processor that ran at slightly less than 5MHz. In 1983, you can reinforce this with a 20 MB hard drive, which was As thought I needed.

It would be a long tiring journey from there to Crysis. As the game went, you have three options, look at the screen and the appearance that some really nothing exciting happening in the text adventures like Zork Infocom series, or games using incredibly simple graphics and chess, composite ANSI symbols. The final choice was to use a mixture of solid color, colored dots and symbols such as the ubiquitous smiley face, developers Graphics can create incredibly simple. They have to do for years. In retrospect, the word that comes to mind is: ouch. But the real torture was start.

Rock and ice

CGA PC games has been the first real standard graphics – and the worst. The good news is you can finally draw appropriate graphs. They were in low resolution – 320×200, with some clever tricks to slightly higher in black – if art was not desperately impressive, but at least I could finally start making maps and castles and spaceships needed to play games.

The catch was the color palette. CGA could produce 16 colors, but once that only four cases. The official palette cyan, magenta and black. The second, green, brown and red. Games seemed likely to be in a stunning winter wonderland, or had been dug in the algae on a rock particularly ugly. Very careful programming can be squeezed some juice on the system, such as changing the platforms in an update screen, or frame colors together. A particularly clever hack was to plug a screen television, using the blur (sometimes called "poor man's anti-aliasing) points to discredit new colors that are not normally available.

In summary, CGA has been horrible, and his death a moment of great celebration. However, it has paved the way for greater strength of the PC – wit. It is one of the main reasons for Platform lasted so long, and all that dev never pressed the juice a little more of it is due in part to thank for it. CGA has continued to support ETC (Enhanced Graphics Adapter) 16 colors at a time of 64) showed in 1984.

Finally, VGA appeared in 1987 and displays 256 colors. A thing of beauty, if he could afford, but would not be the norm for years. This was the era of graphic adventure games and role in heavy combat, genres perfectly adapted to the lack of PC power. RPG based on the "ramp of the prison and the use of computer math skills to fight monsters and recover loot. It would take many years before the story and characters really became important.

Adventure is another story. These days, are largely dismissed as outmoded and could not keep the neighbors in that technology is. It is new development. For most of the history of the PC, which looked to see the state of the art graphics. Sound. Complexity. Nothing came up, and it all started with the team of husband and wife Ken and Roberta Williams in 1984 with the launch King's Quest, Quest crown. Ken took the lead in technology, led the design Roberta. For the first time players can travel through a world Fully animated exploration of the physical world. He used every trick in the book to try to immerse players in the world, the method of television 16 color CGA compression, with commands in text mode to interact with almost anything on the screen.

In 1988, King's Quest series also marked the first time: his fourth game, the perils of Rosella, was the first major PC game to support a dedicated sound card – specifically Adlib. At this point, the game was based on the speaker, having to play everything from sound effects to the background music in a series of atonal, grating, noise farty guarantee everyone driving bleepy small house opposite the crazy. In comparison, Adlib card to connect a desire to connect an entire orchestra. His time in the top was short lived.

Creative Labs Sound Blaster beaten the market, which could be anything that can Adlib, but also have digital sound effects – without hitting the ground. Last original creators and commander of the squadron, even outside "Speech Accessory Pack" for these games, stunning the world, although covering a handful of characters, and only a handful of words that are spoken in every game.

It took time for developers are Adlib, SoundBlaster mainly because the former had a pretty crappy sound quality, but the release of Sound Blaster 2.0 in 1991, the winner was clear. The only real competitor until the sound card began to be built on the base plate was directly Gravis UltraSound whose scope has surround sound for the PC just in time for a little game called Doom.

The destination is the biggest game has been released on PC. It was a great game in itself, but never had a game so completely highlighted the power of the platform. It was an adventure game can be found on the Amiga and Atari ST. 3D graphics are impressive in terms of speed and detail especially in comparison with simple games, weighing in 3D that had preceded it, including its own ID Wolfenstein 3D, and his own predecessors, Catacombs 3D (Later remade as the catacombs deep, textured wall horrible, people went crazy to see them …) and 3D Hovertank.

Exciting Times

The most interesting of Doom is that he was still not close to being the first, or 3D with the latest technology of the game there. Last last year was characterized by elements of Underworld as inclined surfaces and the ability to look up and down. Even Core Design, creators Tomb Raider, had a crack at it with Company. It was one of the games ever more gray, but with some interesting features like the ability to send a photo for developers, get a carriage return by mail, and the "star" in the game itself. No, what Doom was on their side was the speed, excitement visceral, and an engine that was good enough to create (at least for now) incredibly realistic environments.

But what is 3D correct? Doom was actually only 2.5 D, and their maps were completely flat. Consequently, I could not put a coin in another until the level of Quake engine. Other engines were more advanced, with Freescope which is by far the most impressive. This burst on the scene punch as in 1987. Unlike Doom and Wolfenstein, levels have been built with solid blocks (primitives, in all senses) and could be explored and went at will. However, it has been slow, and lacks many features such as textured walls, so that their games at once clumsy and desperate ugly. However, it proved popular. Players can create their own 3D worlds Freescape construction kit, and a more recent version even had its own short program – Cyberzone – hosted by Craig Charles and James Grout.

It was more annoying than edge diamond drill lasted only one season and painful, but never had more than Doom, and nobody can take away.

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