Which would have made for a different book, I think.
I never knew that there is a LOTR RPG from the 90s. This looks pretty nice, with a relatively modern interface for 1990 and I was personally expecting the graphics to be worse.
Curious about modding capabilities for this.
Now play the text (mostly?) C64 version!
Edit: what would you mod?
AI upscaling, fonts and UI. I haven’t seen too many UI mods for DOS games, I don’t even know if it’s a thing. But I honestly prefer Windows variants for games that were released on both DOS and Windows (e.g. SimCity 2000, XCOM).
I am assuming you can configure some DOSbox variant to run ML upscaling, or even build out an ML upscale hook of some sort for the DOSbox output.
Do you think an upscaling of the post (this posts image) image would have some value to it? It looks fine to me.
Well for a screenshot in an article I would want something without modifications.
I meant more about playing the game.
It’s a CGA game so 320 x 200 resolution. A x2 ML upscale would be 640 x 400 which is going to make a world of a difference on a 32" 1440p monitor. The 1990 sprite graphics should work well for x2 ML upscale, unless there is something specific to that game (I don’t believe this to be the case based on the screenshots, looks pretty standard for a game from that era).
If the game had a native 640 x 400 mode, why would you not use it and stick to 320 x 200?
I generally struggle to play games before 1995 or so (with some exceptions), primarily because of the resolution and bad UI/UX. ML upscaling is a good solution for resolution issues and it does not impact the aesthetic elements in any way.
Then you arent really experiencing that game but some modern abomination.
You’re mistaken. This is not DLSS5 or whatever. The principles are similar, but the goals are not. The 1990 limited colour palette sprite graphics and pixelart stay as they are.
Note that this an image upscaler, I haven’t played the game yet, so it’s only a baseline comparison:
CGA:
Upscale:
CGA:
Upscale:
CGA:
Upscale:
One could argue we are seeing some unneeded changes in the third screenshot in the line where the grass meets the mud. This is a screenshot upscale, you can configure a proper ML upscale mod to avoid doing such “detail recovery” and act more as a filter.
I would leave the movie as is. Basically, you need someone to package a mod to focus on an authentic experience.
One could argue we are seeing some unneeded changes in the third screenshot in the line where the grass meets the mud.
There’s also smearing in the lettering. The title screen doesn’t look too bad, but I guess I’m a bit of a purist…I just don’t really like the upscale results. Personal preference obviously.
Fair point! Thanks for the examples!
I’ve played the SNES version of this and it was VERY hard. The first thing they do is ask you to find the Gaffer’s missing spectacles, and leaving town to look for them almost invariably results in all the hobbits getting eaten by wolves. Despite several attempts, I never really got much further than that.
This was a good game actually. I had forgotten about this gem.
There was also a text adventure game that was awesome.
War In Middle-Earth - 1988 (PC)
I’ve got the box set of this I think.
Ah yes, wandering the barrow downs and scraping walls for moss, endlessly lost. Memories.
