This is a followup to my earlier post from 6 months ago.

There I announced two open-source articles on a specification and minimap APIs for pre-2000 computer graphics that a new video game or graphics engine can adopt that wishes to run with very low resource requirements (say, 64 million bytes of memory or less). They are at:

• https://peteroupc.github.io/graphics.html#Graphics_Challenge_for_Classic_Style_Games (Specification where I seek to characterize pre-2000 computer graphics).
• https://peteroupc.github.io/graphicsapi.html (Suggestions on a minimal API for pre-2000 graphics)

I have since updated the articles to refine them and add much more guidance. A notable addition to the specification is a convenient list of things to be decided by games that choose to follow the specification. (This list can also be used to evaluate the features of existing pre-2000 video games.)

The list includes the following things decided by the application (for details, see the specification):

1. The screen resolution, no more than 307,200 total pixels.
2. If 3-D is supported, the maximum texture size and number of primitives shown per frame or second. (This is no more than 12,800 per frame for 640 × 480, but a smaller limit is encouraged in general.)
3. If 3-D is supported, which 3-D features are supported (such as Gouraud shading, perspective correction, or texture blending).
4. The number of 2-D layers, up to four.
5. The width and height of tiles and sprites.
6. The maximum number of sprites displayed at a time.
7. Whether larger screen resolutions are supported in addition to the primary screen resolution.

Other notable pieces of guidance include:

• The definition of "rendering in software", which includes software renderers that implement a subset of OpenGL 1.1 or OpenGL ES 1.1.
• A note that pre-2000 computer graphics in scope include graphics found in learning toys and videotex protocols (in addition to the graphics of video games for home computers, game consoles, and arcade machines).
• Information on the graphics in arcade video games.

Comments on any aspect of these documents are welcome (see, for instance, the first article's "Seeking Comments" section). But as in the previous post, it is useful to comment on examples of modern video games (e.g., McPixel3) that implement the specification or examples of lightweight game engines devoted to making such modern video games.