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Topic: Graphic Enhancement Thread (Read 119783 times)
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Draxas
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If the assumption is that sometime in the distant future these enhanced graphics will be inserted into the game, then yes, they will only need the standard 16 orientations.
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Valaggar
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I, for one, would use unlimited orientations (graphically they seem unlimited, but the game considers them to be 16 orientations really. Something like the Slylandro Probe's orientations in the latest version of Elvish Pillager's Crazy Mod).
Also, the background, the weapons, the planet, the asteroids and the sounds need to be enhanced to fit with the improved ship graphics.
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Vux_Brush
Frungy champion
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one at a time 
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Shiver
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Was any of this ever going to be implemented in the game as a mod?
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AngusThermopyle
*Smell* controller
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A paranoid android.
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It was my understanding that the UQM code needed a serious overhaul before any high resolution graphics could be used. I don’t know what progress has been made on this, however.
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xenoclone
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I would think that you'd have to basically port the whole game over to a new engine. By "port" I mean rewrite entirely... I don't think DOS ever supported higher than VGA graphics, did it? Probably need to move over to a DirectX-based engine.
I, for one, would love to work on a modern SC remake. The only problem is justifying the time commitment, ya know?
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Novus
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Fot or not?
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I don't think DOS ever supported higher than VGA graphics, did it? A bit of off-topic nitpicking... it sure did, as long as you had proper drivers (which Windows also needs in order to support higher-than-VGA graphics). Just the natural result of the fact that VGA was the last video standard to gain total acceptance with manufacturers.
Naturally, all this fiddling with direct hardware access meant that graphics cards had to be compatible on the hardware level. This worked well as long as everyone was following IBM's lead (MDA, CGA, EGA, VGA), but after that, manufacturers started to add their own extensions ("Super VGA"), for which a video BIOS extension (VBE) was later developed by VESA. SC3 (on PC) is one example of using VBE to go beyond VGA.
However, this was too little and too late to prevent manufacturers from developing hardware to specifically meet the needs of Windows ("Windows accelerators"), and 3D accelerators such as the 3dfx Voodoo (whose Glide API was available to both DOS and Windows software). Grand Theft Auto, for example, did 3D acceleration under DOS this way.
So, in conclusion, DOS-based software can and did support quite advanced graphics hardware, far beyond VGA. However, once Microsoft got DirectX sorted out (and consumer graphics hardware started to support OpenGL in a meaningful fashion), little reason remained to access graphics hardware directly, especially since using a (relatively) high-level API allowed for hardware to change rapidly without losing compatibility.
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xenoclone
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Well this is pretty nit-picky! You have indeed explained the scenario in my head: that Windows took over games by the time anything beyond SVGA became feasible for games development. Naturally, hardware is essentially OS-agnostic if you know how to write a driver for it. 
I look forward to your results. I personally have to resist the charms of Star Con. On the one hand, I 'd love to re-write it with a modern engine. On the other hand, I don't want competition with my own project!
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JonoPorter
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Don't mess with the US.
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I took the androsynth and threw it into my engine. This demo shows off the new bump mapping feature of the Graphics library I'm writing to complement my engine. The bump map was auto generated so it’s not that great.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0G8cU2pqNA
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