: 2. Switch to 320x400 mode whenever one selects practice, qual, warmup
: and race.
: 3. Switch back to 640x480 when one hits escape
: <<<
: We thought about doing this for ICR II (run the interface always in
: 640x480 and game play at the user selected level). A lot of people pop in
: and out of driving, however, while trying to set up their car
: (garage->drive->garage->drive->etc.), and the constant mode switching is
: NOT GOOD on at least some video card/monitor combinations. (One of our
: engineers has a monitor that, when he mode switches, he runs about a 10%
: chance of having is monitor turn off, since it can't deal with [I'm
: assuming] the refresh rate change.) We finally decided against it, even
: though it would've meant less work for us (only one set of interface
: artwork).
As is told you in an email, you can do menues and the like in 320x200,
game in 320x400, no modeswitching needed that affects your monitor.
Or even do the menues in 320x400 with a 320x200 look.
: And artwork IS NOT EASY. It takes an artist several days to "get it right"
: per screen. A track shot takes even more time. There are 15 tracks in ICR
: II, at *three* different resolutions (the track shots on Macintosh/Windows
: are at 447x330). It is a manpower intensive effort, and frankly adding a
You don't need to do all the bitmaps in three different resolutions. Just
scale them down from you highest resolution as you already do with the
car textures in Nascar (or does anyone have two paintkits, one for 320x200
and one for 640x480 cars ?). BTW i scaled down screenshots of 640x480 nascar
to 320x200 and didn't see a noticible difference between the scaled pic and
the real 320x200 pic as far as out-of-the-window graphics. And with a moving
image the difference would vanish almost completely.
: 320x400 mode is probably not going to increase our market share
: significantly enough to justify it.
You don't need to redo any artwork. See my email again.
I know a lot of people, who played the demo and found the graphics to be
too ugly. When they heard they can't do fully detailed SVGA even on a Pentium
they decided not to buy the game. So your sales figures may even go up.
: >>>
: In my eyes doing a windows and a dos-version is total bullshit!!!
: <<<
: Everyone is entitled to their own opinion.
Everyone interested in Indy II will buy it as a dos-version, if there is not
special windows version. According to Microsoft all dos games should run
under win 95. If not take back your Win 95 copy for refund.
So it's double work for the same game. You complain about the manpower a
320x400 mode would take ? You have some questionable business policy.
Better make one quality product instead of two lower quality products for the
same machine.
Ralf