this post was submitted on 21 Dec 2024
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Up to a certain point in the early to mid 2000s, virtually all home console and PC games were designed for CRT displays. I'm not sure where you're getting the idea from that the type of display that was used by 99% of gamers on these systems was somehow not influencing the art design and technology of games.
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.
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.