[MUD-Dev] Re: MUD Development Digest

[Koster]

On Friday, February 27, 1998 5:56 AM, Dr. Cat[SMTP:cat at bga.com] 
wrote:
> > From:  "Koster, Raph" <rkoster at origin.ea.com>
> >
> > Ultima I used a redefined B&W character set at 80x24 for all
> > graphics,including the "3d" dungeon view, which was very simple. 
The
> > space sections were overhead view, with an asterisk for a star, 
and
> > little ship icons... Space got left out of all subsequent Ultimas, 
and
> > Richard now says he was "putting the kitchen sink in" and now 
knows
> > better. :)

>  The Apple II family didn't have
> hardware redefinable character sets, like the later Atari 800 and
> Commodore 64 did.  Some companies provided software character 
generators
> that ran in the "hi-res" graphics mode, but Richard wasn't using one 
of
> those.  The wildenress display used "tiles" that were twice as tall 
and
> twices as wide as a text character, giving the ability to put around 
> 20x16 tiles on the screen.  Maybe less than 16 vertically, I forget 
> whether he used the Apple's hardware 4 line text window.  The remake 
had
> a little less because of the addition of fancy blue and white 
borders, as
> used in Ultima 3 and 4.  The towns and castles used smaller shapes 
to get
> more detail and maneuvering room on-screen, and matched the 40x24
> dimensions of an Apple text screen.

Oops, I MEANT 40x24. :P

My experience btw was on the Atari, which did use redefinable char 
sets at 40x24... I never actually saw the Apple version. U1 didn't use 
artifacting for the colors, but U3 did, as I recall, and it resulted 
in the tile size become 2x2 characters...

-Raph