dMZX Forums: 40x25 MZX? :P -> MegaZeux Feature Requests -> Tracker

I was curious if any of the devs have considered the low res ANSI mode of old IBM PC's like used in SuperZZT?

I feel like it would have crossed a dev's mind at this point due to the square nature of that mode on original machines, making vertical and horizontal movement more uniform. It wasn't a popular mode for sure, but it would have it's uses I think...

Obviously, it's pretty easy to suggest a feature vs. engineering it into existence...but it feels overlooked somehow. Especially if crossed with SUPERMZX...that could be quite...wild I suppose.

Anyway, back to whatever it was I was doing. Peace.

This gets requested enough I'm not going to reject it, but the end result might not look exactly like what you want.

There is another request that is most likely going to get added (3.0?) at some point that addresses variable sized gameplay resolution. I suspect "40x25" mode support would add some kind of double width/half resolution toggle to that. The DOS port then would just have to approximate whatever it's given as best as it can (including using real 40x25 mode if appropriate).

edit: in the meantime, you can fake it with extra chars. If you're looking for double width specifically during gameplay, I made a vastly simplified version of the display code in HELLQUEST 2 that simulates 40x25 with unbound sprites and the extended charsets.

Lachesis, on 21 October 2024 - 10:55 PM, said:

I appreciate the demo you provided. It looks nice, though I can't understand a single line of the robot doing the hard work. I get the concept, but this is a case of 'i don't feel good using it cause I can't touch it without either messing it up and if I do I can't put it back together again' and therefore probably shouldn't rely on it in any serious way. It's a nice 'what if' to play with, though. A very very long time ago in QBASIC I made a mode 7 (40x25, 16 color) puzzle game and rather liked the 'petscii-ish' appearance of everything. There's nothing much to gain other than aesthetic and it's probably just a case of greener grass and fences and whatever all that cliche stuff is about.