[the_af]

Wow, they really messed up Loom in the EGA to VGA conversion. The EGA graphics were a work of art, very moody.

It's interesting how the VGA version manages to be way less nuanced, plus it destroys that beautiful "blue" look of the night scenes.

[Subdivide8452]

This sounds so snobby. VGA Loom was absolutely stunning. I can understand that you may appreciate EGA more, but "messed up" sounds hyperbolic imo.

[the_af]

I won't go over the details, but if you look at the website mentioned in the other thread from 2021, you'll see I'm not being hyperbolic.

EGA Loom is a work of art. VGA Loom misread the style and completely obliterated it, in its eagerness to deploy that early VGA "pillow shadow" style so typical of games of that era. (I love the term "pillow shadow", so apt now that I've learned it!).

Every nightly blue gone, light sources broken, every shadow gone, ominous deep-black tree shadows converted into gray/brownish things, etc.

To be clear, I think this is less a limitation of VGA and more a case of the conversion done lazily and/or by an inferior artist.

[the_af]

Addendum: Brian Moriarty, Loom's author, also thinks the 256 color version is inferior. See here (~46:30): https://gdcvault.com/play/1021862/Classic-Game-Postmortem

[whywhywhywhy]

It's bad, but what they did to Loom was way way worse, they obliterated the style, chiaroscuro and nuance.

[the_af]

I indeed meant Loom!