Monkey Island: Why Not HGR?

Why an Apple II+?

In my projects I like to target a 48k Apple II+ from 1979. Why?

Well, why not HGR? The II+ can do HGR.

There are various reasons not to use HGR.

Weren't there SCUMM games for Apple II?

Won't the graphics look a lot better with HGR?


HGR and DHGR graphics examples

Some examples showing the difficulties going to higher resolution. These were auto-converted with Bill Buckels' bmp2hdr utility from the VGA version of the game.

You'd probably argue these would be a lot better if someone manually touched them up. This is true, but making good-looking HGR graphics is a very difficult and obscure skillset.

Yes I know my Scumm Bar example is not an exact match, I don't have the actual one in the demo yet.

My hand-updated lores (40x48, 15 color) Versions (1k)
Auto-converted HGR (140x192, 6 color) Versions (8k)
Auto-converted Double-HGR [needs Apple IIe/IIc/IIgs w/ 128k RAM] (140x192, 15 color) Versions (16k)

Conversion of EGA and CGA graphics

You might also argue we should start with the CGA or EGA graphics for better results. Below is a quick example output for those:
HGR conversion of CGA graphics
HGR conversion of EGA graphics
HGR conversion of EGA graphics (dithered)

What about Double-Lores?

Double Lo-res is a pain to get going (possibly worse than double-hires). I don't really have the tools for it either.

Autoconversion to this mode wouldn't really look great.

If you hand-drew a conversion, it would look better than lo-res. It would also be a lot of work.
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