- Docs
- DOS file formats
- .PIK — pictures
.PIK — pictures
35 full-screen and strip pictures, each a MADSPACK file of two or three entries: a size, raw pixels, and a palette the game never reads.
| Entry | Contents |
|---|---|
| 0 | 8 bytes: WORD height, WORD width, WORD 0, WORD UNKNOWN |
| 1 | height × width bytes, one colour index a pixel, rows top down |
| 2 | in 34 of the 35 files, 0x300 bytes of 6-bit VGA RGB |
Evidence #
load_picture (file 0x76aec) reads the 8-byte header, takes its first two
words as height and width, and reads height × width bytes of entry 1 straight
into a port. It never reads entry 2, so the palette is only a way of looking
at the picture; the colours the game shows come from the palette it has loaded
at the time.
The last two header words are carried: the third is 0 in every file, the fourth varies between 8110 and 9540 with no reader found.
Sizes #
Most pictures are 320 × 200, a full mode-13h screen. COLONY.PIK is 320 × 72
and is the one with no palette; OPENING.PIK is 960 × 132.
Compared with Windows #
The Windows release's full-screen art is the CVPC
canvas: LZW-compressed, at 640 × 480, with a palette the game does use.