why is dig dug hose different color if launched up/down vs left right?

[bohoki]

its always bugged me but i never bothered to ask anyone

[+Cafeman]

That is interesting, I don't think I ever noticed before. It looks like it is brighter when launched vertically, a pink hue,  and it is a darker red when launched horizontally.  No idea why the programmer didn't keep it consistent. If I had to guess, the vertical pump line was made brighter so you could see it more clearly,  and then the programmer never bothered to make the same adjustment for the horizontal line. Or maybe it was just a typo.

[+MrFish]

19 hours ago, bohoki said:

its always bugged me but i never bothered to ask anyone

 

Always bugged me too, that's why it's changed in the hack i did for the 8-bit computers: Dig Dug (1983) - Graphic Improvements

 

I'm not sure exactly why they did it that way. Technically, the pump's hose is a P/M graphic when launched vertically, and a playfield bitmap when launched horizontally; and it shares the same playfield bitmap color with Fygar's flame when horizontal -- which is a darker shade of red than the P/M graphic. They may have initially wanted Fygar's flame and the bicycle pump hose to be different colors, possibly using quad-width P/M graphics for the horizontal version of the hose, had it as such for a time during development, then decided they didn't like how the quad-width P/M looked and switched it to a bitmap, but never changed the colors to match after doing so. They then may have decided it looked good enough that way, retaining extra color for the overall display (P/M is used for the little arrow end of it that Dig Dug carries around when not using the pump) and hardly being noticeable, since Dig Dug was only either using one or the other element at a given time. They may also have just never noticed the issue themselves, because of it not being so noticeable (at least to some eyes).

 

[+x=usr(1536)]

Blood flow.