agvulpine

I recommend editing top post with abbreviated instructions to mitigate confusion and simplify the process. Buy Hyperspace Dollars or Experience Points by donating U.S. Dollars to keep the SSCC Game Server online. Read original post @ http://www.ssforum.net/index.php?showtopic=24616. Send donations via PayPal to freakmonger@hotmail.com $ 1.00 USD == $ 50,000 HSD or 250 exp. $ 20.00 USD == $ 1,000,000 HSD or 5,000 exp. $ 100.00 USD == $ 5,000,000 HSD or 25,000 exp. $ 500.00 USD == $ 25,000,000 HSD or 25,000 exp (x5). Donate as much as you can justify to keep this game alive! Send [Dr Brain] a ?message in-game or PM through this forum including the following details: * Your PayPal email address * How much you donated to freakmonger * How much HSD or EXP you would like, on which players (maximum 25,000 exp per account).

Allow me to try again. You said: My vid card has both DVI-D and VGA interfaces. I have a NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT vid card. My current monitor is a 22" Dell which has both plugs. I want to get another one. Do I just plug the second monitor into the VGA port, or would it be better to get another vid card? I said: It all depends. If you WANT to do it, then yes, it will work. That's why your video card HAS two video outputs; for dual monitor support. Will it work well depends heavily on what you ultimately use dual monitor support for, and weather your culmination of hardware can handle it. If it can't, then get something better. Are you asking a serious question, or are you asking us to spend your money for you? You rich or something--to even ask this question before trying it out first?

That is entirely up to you. If you have a second monitor that already supports VGA, then go ahead and use it, and decide if it does what you want. If you're planning on buying a second monitor, then you may have to find one that supports VGA (becoming less popular and more expensive), or buy a second video card. Analog isn't BAD, neither are CRTs. Just make sure you know all the variables involved when purchasing one and what their strengths and weaknesses are. What's great is you can pick up some used professional quality CRT monitors used by graphics artists, that are huge and cost $4000 new, for under a $100 or FREE if you're lucky. Some people just don't know what they have, and believe "flat is better".

http://dump.vulp.us/fora/subspace/crapgraphics/res176_subspace_4x.gif http://dump.vulp.us/fora/subspace/crapgraphics/repel_continuum040_4x.gif

My suggestion is that later versions of Continuum include the better graphics for all to enjoy. You can't tell the differences in the explosion or repel graphics? The explosion fireball looks all flat and piss-yellow when it fades away... and the repels are all covered in diffuse speckling instead of smooth gradient. Mind you, these are just a subset of all the graphics affected by unfortunate color reduction.

I've recently downloaded all of the old versions of the original Subspace, dating from 1996. In playing with these versions (and yes, you can still play them off-line... it's NEAT, try it!), I discovered that sometime between the beta stage and when Subspace hit store shelves, many of the graphics were reduced in color depth from their original stunning quality. This may have been in an attempt at a global 8bit color pallet. Continuum appears to use graphics from the final version of Subspace, where Virgin Interactive left off. In doing so, Continuum is inadvertently using lower quality graphics than is necessary as Continuum supports 32bit graphics. NOTE: All of the graphic elements are individually 8bit indexed color, so there was NEVER a change to file-size. The color reduction that was later introduced was a "global pallet" in which all graphics had shared the same 8bit color pallet; which left little room for gradients and smooth textures. I have compared multiple graphics elements, but not all... mainly ones where I noticed the most significant crap-tation. Here are a few examples. Graphics below were taken from the earliest Subspace I could find v1.07 from 1996, and from the latest version of Continuum v0.40 from 2007. http://dump.vulp.us/fora/subspace/crapgraphics/res146_subspace107.gif http://dump.vulp.us/fora/subspace/crapgraphics/explode2_continuum040.gif (left) subspace.exe: BITMAP 146 from Subspace 1.07 (1996) (trimmed due to size) (right) explode2.bm2 from Continuum 0.40 (2007) (trimmed due to size) Here you can clearly see the reduction in color depth which resulted in degradation of quality. The right example is in the game right now, and perhaps the most often seen graphic! As a veteran player from 1997 having only recently discovered Continuum, this is what alerted me to this problem. --- http://dump.vulp.us/fora/subspace/crapgraphics/res176_subspace107.gif <- good http://dump.vulp.us/fora/subspace/crapgraphics/repel_continuum040.gif <- bad (top) subspace.exe: BITMAP 176 from Subspace 1.07 (1996) (bottom) repel.bm2 from Continuum 0.40 (2007) Another shining example of depreciated quality due to pallet reduction. --- http://dump.vulp.us/fora/subspace/crapgraphics/res178_subspace107.gif <- original http://dump.vulp.us/fora/subspace/crapgraphics/warp_continuum040.gif <- Continuum http://dump.vulp.us/fora/subspace/crapgraphics/res178_subspace107_lvls-0-080-200_con-35.gif <- brightened original (top) subspace.exe: BITMAP 178 from Subspace 1.07 (1996) (middle) warp.bm2 from Continuum 0.40 (2007) (bottom) brightened version of BITMAP 178 from Subspace 1.07 (1996) Here's an example where the graphic was changed sometime in the course of history, and then the effects of color reduction took its toll even later. Now, I know what you're thinking--that the current version is more vibrant--so I took the liberty of improving the brightness and contrast levels to get the bottom graphic. NOTE: It may be possible to find an even better quality graphic with the designer's original intentions, before quality was lost due to color reduction. I've also animated this version (left), against the version currently used in Continuum (right). http://dump.vulp.us/fora/subspace/crapgraphics/res181_subspace107_fixed_ani.gif http://dump.vulp.us/fora/subspace/crapgraphics/warp_continuum040_ani.gif Which do you like better? --- Also, slightly unrelated to the discussion of quality loss due to Virgin's goal of a global pallet... It should be noted that much of the graphics have changed over the history of Subspace. Here's an example similar to the one above where the original graphic needed some brightening, but does look good in comparison to the current graphic in use. This is highly subjective however. Original (left), Continuum (right). http://dump.vulp.us/fora/subspace/crapgraphics/res178_subspace107_fixed_ani.gif http://dump.vulp.us/fora/subspace/crapgraphics/over5_continuum040_ani.gif Wormhole! Don't see much of these guys in today's maps. <_< --- I propose that the Continuum developers explore the earlier versions of Subspace to find graphic elements from their original quality when they were first introduced into the game. Especially consider the graphic elements shown above. There may be a hitch, though. The earlier [modern] ships for example (the first 4) may show higher levels of detail... but we may find that the latter 3, and 4th ship (the Shark especially) may have already been subject to the lower quality sampling of the color depth by the time they were introduced. I wasn't around when the Shark was first introduced--You had to buy the game to play it. I hope if nothing else, you enjoyed the history lesson. In the mean time, if individual players want to improve their graphics quality and/or use older style graphics, you can find old versions of Subspace at subspacedownloads.com. You can download versions as far back as 1.07 through 1.35 or (2.00?). Using any Resource Editor (google), you can extract these graphic elements for yourself and apply them to your Continuum folder. http://subspacedownloads.com/?act=list&amp...order=file_name Some people have already extracted a number of old graphics, but mainly only those which differ in type not quality. http://subspacedownloads.com/?act=list&cat=6 Have fun. And yo, get some more players into this game! I can't believe Subspace had been revived 5 years ago; I only just discovered Continuum a couple weeks ago! I remember over 100,000 concurrent players in '97, WTF.