Re: Double Hi-Res

[jaw@seas.smu.edu (Jason Wells)]

Rubywand writes:
>     What's kind of weird about Sierra's stuff is that the graphics are
> at double-hires resolution even when they're in super-res on the IIgs.
> Evidently, Sierra just converted their double-hires artwork.

I think the reason for that was for the portability of Sierra's games.
Like Infocom, Sierra had a common interpreter called Adventure Game
Interpreter (AGI) and later came up with one called Sierra's Creative
Interpreter (SCI) which debuted with King's Quest IV, I believe.

AGI would simply keep the graphics steady for each platform (Apple II,
IBM, Commodore, etc) and display them on a 192x200 (I think) graphics
screen that had roughly 16 colors.  So, the graphics and character
scripts could stay the same, and only the engine had to be ported to
a new platform (like Atari) and the whole slew of games was ready to
be repackaged.

It's a lot like the Infocom Z-machine, but more heavily graphical, so
I imagine the porting process was a little bit more involved.  

	Jason