this post was submitted on 21 Dec 2024
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Might and Magic Book One does not. Heroes of Might and Magic 2 does not. Carmageddon does not. ~~Elder Scrolls Arena does not.~~ (It does, the pixels are designed for CRT effects but the Dosbox staging filter adds black lines to the game still).
I played them. With the filter. That's where I got the idea from.
Edit: These are pre-2000's games, sure. It isn't big enough of a problem for me anyway, I can ignore the title.
Which one? There a dozens commonly used ones. All of these games are from the CRT era and were developed on and for CRT monitors.
Notice the dithering pattern on the characters in this screenshot:
https://www.mobygames.com/game/1619/might-and-magic-book-one-secret-of-the-inner-sanctum/screenshots/dos/115836/
This was only done for CRTs, since it results in blended pixels.
More CRT dithering everywhere, just two generations later and with more colors and fine detail - but it's still the same technique:
https://www.mobygames.com/game/1513/heroes-of-might-and-magic-ii-the-succession-wars/screenshots/dos/634491/
https://www.mobygames.com/game/367/carmageddon/screenshots/dos/887670/
Notice the color banding on the textures? CRTs blend that together, resulting in a much smoother look even with software rendering.
https://www.mobygames.com/game/803/the-elder-scrolls-arena/screenshots/dos/305893/
Our old friend Mr Dithering makes an appearance once again.
I hope I've made my point clear. It's fine if you prefer the clean pixelated look of LCD displays, but it's clear that this is not what these games were meant to look like.
I did find something which did use CRT effects. However the Dosbox Staging one is still a bad one. Elder Scrolls Arena.
With.
Without.
I will make the edit clarifying the mistake.
However it does not change that the others do not use the effects (there is no indication the pixels in might and magic book one were for the CRT effects, unlike here. The pixels in Might and Magic Book One are also too sharp), and the problem has always, and solely, been the title of the post and nothing more.
And as I stated it is not too much of a problem for me, already. Not something I cannot ignore.
No-CRT filter screenshots that I have available. I do not have screenshots for the CRT filter. I suppose I could boot up and try to put the filter for this one; I have Heroes 2 installed too but it is currently a pre-configuration I do not want to mess with in case I possibly mess it up. It feels like a pain to do so though as I'm already occupied for the day, and would like my PC time to, you know, play. Since this is unrelated to help requests, in which case I may have made time for it (I'd usually do it in the past, but not for a while).
Edit: Changed No CRT to No-CRT for clarity
Dosbox Staging has one CRT filter which is the one I've used. The town wall graphics (edit: In might and magic book one) get completely messed up with it. It is possible the bad effects for each of the 4 games mentioned was caused by a bad CRT filter.
That said it would've been better to include screenshots which do use the CRT filter. I have played all 4 of these games with and with Dosbox Staging's CRT filter and they all have had black lines obscuring the screen. Not having it enabled, on the other hand, the games looked like these screenshots.