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DOS game "Sailing"?

vwestlife

vwestlife

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Does anyone remember an old DOS CGA game called "Sailing"? I can't find it on any classic/DOS gaming web site. It used an optimized CGA palette and background to get a surprisingly nice combination of colors on the screen -- I'm pretty sure it had blue water and green land, which you couldn't say about a lot of CGA games.

It presented a top-down view of the land and sea, but your boat appeared as a side view. Dangers included storms, randomly appearing and disappearing vortexes, and running into land -- including the edge of the sea; its "world" didn't wrap around. You got extra points for rescuing people lost at sea.

I had a copy of it on a 5¼" floppy which unfortunately became unreadable years ago. IIRC, the file used to load the game was something like "SAIL" or "SAIL1", not "SAILING".
 
frozenfire75i said:
Would this be it?

Sailing ...An Adventure in The Bermuda Triangle (1983)(Dynetron Company) [Action]

Here is a link!

http://ibmpcbbs.dyndns.org/games/Game%20Collection%202%2081-89/1983/
Click to expand...
Unfortunately the download on that site doesn't work, but it is the game I remember! Thanks!

sailing.png


I found it here:

http://free-game-downloads.mosw.com...ing_an_adventure_in_the_bermuda_triangle.html

Edit: D'oh! That site wants you to pay to download. But at least now I know the full title and company, so I can try to track it down.
 
Last edited:
vwestlife said:
Does anyone remember an old DOS CGA game called "Sailing"? I can't find it on any classic/DOS gaming web site. It used an optimized CGA palette and background to get a surprisingly nice combination of colors on the screen -- I'm pretty sure it had blue water and green land, which you couldn't say about a lot of CGA games.
Click to expand...

Some CGA palette combinations (eg. the red-green-yellow on blue this game uses) were better looking than others. However, cyan-magenta-white on black are the default colors upon switching into 320x200x4 mode, and so they seem to have gotten the most use.
 
Fallo said:
Some CGA palette combinations (eg. the red-green-yellow on blue this game uses) were better looking than others. However, cyan-magenta-white on black are the default colors upon switching into 320x200x4 mode, and so they seem to have gotten the most use.
Click to expand...
For a 1983 game, the graphics of "Sailing" are quite respectable. A lot of early DOS games also used shading and artifacting to create additional colors on a composite color monitor or TV set, since IBM didn't introduce their official 5153 RGB color monitor until 1983, and the aftermarket RGB monitors that did exist back then were very expensive.

Eventually, cheap RGB monitors were introduced and became common, but they had huge, grainy dot pitch (up to 0.64 mm was common) and no anti-glare coating on the screen. Still, even a cheap RGB monitor gives a better image than any composite color monitor, except when a game is programmed for a composite display and you miss out on the extra colors.
 
vwestlife said:
For a 1983 game, the graphics of "Sailing" are quite respectable. A lot of early DOS games also used shading and artifacting to create additional colors on a composite color monitor or TV set, since IBM didn't introduce their official 5153 RGB color monitor until 1983, and the aftermarket RGB monitors that did exist back then were very expensive.
Click to expand...

Not only were they expensive, but they often lacked an intensity pin and thus could only display eight colors.

vwestlife said:
Eventually, cheap RGB monitors were introduced and became common, but they had huge, grainy dot pitch (up to 0.64 mm was common) and no anti-glare coating on the screen. Still, even a cheap RGB monitor gives a better image than any composite color monitor, except when a game is programmed for a composite display and you miss out on the extra colors.
Click to expand...

Any game will produce artifact colors in 320x200x4 mode, although the colors may look weird if it wasn't specifically optimized for composite displays (serrated graphics usually indicate that a game is composite-optimized). The only exception would be games that use the cyan-red-white palette, which appears in grayscale on a composite monitor.
 
I remember that one or a similar one, but I thot it was called Regatta where you could race a sailboat. You saw a top down view of the race course and contestants, but side views of both text and grafix showing the wind, your tack and sail, rudder angle, speed, etc.

There was another one called Valdez where you piloted an oil tanker thru the straights. It was entirely scrolling text based, so you had to have a vivid imagination. You entered some parameters and hit enter to see small variations in the ship's course and speed. It was difficult and gave you an understanding of the massive physics involved. When piloting a tanker you don't steer with "here and now" thinking; instead, you must think about what happens 10 to 20 minutes from now. It's too bad Exxon didn't use this one as a training course, as it was years before the accident.
 
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