Discovery of "crappy" graphics used in Continuum

[agvulpine]

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.

[Emit]

Pretty sure we can just extract all the previous graphics files and just sub it into the our current ones. And thus "better" graphics. Quite honestly speaking, I can't tell that much from the graphics except for the wormholes.

[agvulpine]

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.

[Cancer+]

TBH, it looks like that Continuum is just brighter on the graphics. The wormhole looks way different and the animated one looks a bit different but other than that, Continuum just looks brighter. Looks like Pritt had bad eyes.

[agvulpine]

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

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

[»1587200]

Go to Hyperspace, there's plenty of wormholes there.

[rootbear75]

i like the left portal (original) better

 

they took out a "ring" in the 4th step of the animation, and it makes the current animation look more choppy

 

also: Recommendation:

 

MOVE -> ^Development

Edited November 13, 2008 by rootbear75