Universe

256 colour graphics on Amiga

Amiga 500/600 equipped with OCS/ECS chipset was able to use at once only 32 colours on a screen or 64 colours on a screen in an extra half bright mode using 32 colours and their 32 shades. Developers of Universe managed to obtain 256 colours on A500/600 using custom made mode called S.P.A.C. - Super Pre-Adjusted Colours. In some way it was a trick. Rolf Mohr airbrushed the pictures and then scanned them into a PC at 256 colours. Gary Antcliffe came up with a method where he could use the Copper co-processor to change up to 16 colours every raster line so there could be up to 256 colours on a standard A500. The game ran in extra half-brite mode so those 16 colour changes actually gave you 32 colours due to how half-brite mode worked. There were some issues as you’d lose some details in places and developers had to have some fixed colours for the main character and background animations. However, none of the screens consisted of 256 different colours. The largest number was close to around 240. (source: Arcade Attack)

The name of the mode was invented by Rolf Mohr. It was explained in The One magazine (January 1994 issue):

Because the Amiga version of Universe has up to 256 colors on screen, I (programmer) had to develop an utility that allowed you to do this. The only problem is that the Amiga doesn't have 256 shades, so when you take the screen from the PC and convert it to the standard Amiga you lose some of those shades. Our artist kept saying that it kept 'spacing' our pictures, hence it was christened SPAC mode. Rolf Mohr (Background GFX artist) did come up with an acronym for it: Super Pre-Adjusted Colour. It was nothing to do with me, though, I just wrote the program.

PC conversion hidden messages

In the installer program code of the PC CD conversion, there are some remains of the test tools, plus a message from the programmer, seemingly getting very tired of this work.

Quote:

YET ANOTHER SCROLLER FROM THAT WONDERFUL PERSON NEIL BERESFORD, SO HOLD ON TO YOUR HATS. MANY MANY THANKS GO TO THE FOLLOWING PEOPLE ....

ME ( COZ I WROTE THIS WORK OF ART, YOU KNOW, FROM THE ASHES OF THE AMIGA AND ALL THAT ) , MARTIN 'WHO LOVES YE BABY !!' COOK, MARK ' STOP USING LALA AS A LABEL !!' STAMPS, PAUL 'CAN WE GO TO THE BANK TODAY ?' BLYTH .... OH THE LIST GOES ON AND ON, SOD THE LOT OF YOU

STORY TIME .... IT ALL HAPPENED WHEN I WAS 8, YOU KNOW, EVEN THEN I HAD AN IQ OF OVER 200, WELL THATS ANOTHER STORY. WELL, BACK TO THE PLOT.. OH DID I TELL YOU THIS IS A TRUE STORY, NO.. OH WELL IT IS ... OH YEA, WELL WITH AN IQ OF OVER 500, I HAD LOTS OF PROBLEMS MIXING WITH PEOPLE MY AGE, SO I MADE THIS VOID, WHERE NOTHING HAPPENED, AND I SAT IN IT. THE NEXT THING I KNOW, I HAVE AGED TO 29, AND SOME THIEVING B**TARD TOOK MY FUCKING IQ, AND HE ONLY LEFT ME WITH 10 IQ BITS, SO THATS WHY I AM PROGRAMING UNIVERSE, BECAUSE NO OTHER F**KER WILL DO IT ! END OF STORY .... WASN'T THAT SAD !!! NO, WELL F**K YOU THEN !!

MILKY MILKY [ PS .. GET A LIFE, THIS IS THE PITS ...]

End quote.

Version differences

For DOS, there are no differences between the CD and the floppy version, but you can play the game directly from the CD-ROM without installing the game on your hard disk.

Awards

• Amiga Joker
  • Issue 02/1995 – #3 Best Adventure in 1994 (Readers' Vote)