Ask HN: How were video games from the 90s so efficient?

#1

Post by eezurr » Sat, Nov 06, 2021, 2:53 AM UTC

Title says it all. I am interested in discovering how games like roller coaster tycoon, sim city 2000, warcraft II, and descent (blown away by this one) managed to be created and function on computers that had 500 MB HDD, 300 MHz CPU, and 4 MB RAM.

I'd even broaden the question and ask how did windows 95 stay so small?

Is it possible to recreate this level of efficiency on modern systems? Im curious because I'm interested in creating simulation video games. Dwarf Fortress and Rimworld eventually both suffer from the same problem: CPU death.

If I create a window with C++ and SFML, 60 MB of RAM is used (not impressive at all). If I put 3,000,000 tiles on the screen (using Vertex Arrays), 1 GB of RAM is used (admittedly, that is impressive) and I can pan all the tiles around smoothly.

What other tricks are available?

Re: Ask HN: How were video games from the 90s so efficient?

#2

Post by PaulHoule » Sat, Nov 06, 2021, 3:04 AM UTC

Low resolution screens, 1 byte pixels, …

Re: Ask HN: How were video games from the 90s so efficient?

#3

Post by zapstar » Sat, Nov 06, 2021, 3:10 AM UTC

There was no other alternative. They had to be efficient. These were the only resources they had to work with.

Reading about the tricks that were used to make the most out of the limited resources is fascinating to me as well! We should not take our current hardware for granted!

Re: Ask HN: How were video games from the 90s so efficient?

#4

Post by _crgg » Sat, Nov 06, 2021, 3:11 AM UTC

A lot of the gameplay, AI, etc was far more simplistic. Descent for instance is quite barren.

Re: Ask HN: How were video games from the 90s so efficient?

#5

Post by jimbob45 » Sat, Nov 06, 2021, 3:12 AM UTC

https://www.quora.com/Why-was-Roller-Coaster-Tycoon-written-...

Funny you should mention Rollercoaster Tycoon because it was actually written in Assembly for performance reasons.

Re: Ask HN: How were video games from the 90s so efficient?

#6

Post by georgewsinger » Sat, Nov 06, 2021, 3:15 AM UTC

I recommend watching this: https://youtu.be/izxXGuVL21o

Naughty Dog Co-founder Andy Gavin discusses various hacks that were used on the Playstation to get Crash Bandicoot to run smoothly. The fuller version is also worth watching.

Re: Ask HN: How were video games from the 90s so efficient?

#7

Post by joeld42 » Sat, Nov 06, 2021, 3:16 AM UTC

Look into the 64k demoscene, lots of tricks and tips that still work today.

Re: Ask HN: How were video games from the 90s so efficient?

#8

Post by yuppie_scum » Sat, Nov 06, 2021, 3:17 AM UTC

My thoughts:

- The difference between 8 or 16 bit graphics at 320x200 30 fps and modern hdr 2k at 120 fps is orders of magnitude less data to manage.

- Software developers were not abstracted as far away from the hardware as they are today.

- Most games ran on DOS which was basically “bare metal” vs windows/multitasking/background processes..

- And you HAD to make efficient use of the compute and ram when dealing with limited resources, which honed the skills of serious game devs.

Re: Ask HN: How were video games from the 90s so efficient?

#9

Post by makeavish » Sat, Nov 06, 2021, 3:18 AM UTC

The games were of low resolution and low details which meant that games could render with limited resources.

Re: Ask HN: How were video games from the 90s so efficient?

#10

Post by arp242 » Sat, Nov 06, 2021, 3:20 AM UTC

A game like RimWorld is also a lot more complex; the "AI" for your park's visitors in Rollercoaster Tycoon was quite simple; the AI of your RimWorld colonists is much more complex. Add to this the "time speedup" which is quite resource intensive (events happen faster → more CPU needed).

I'm sure RimWorld can be made more efficient; but it actually runs fairly well on my cheap laptop. There is, essentially, no real need. And any time spent on making the game run faster is taken away from all other development tasks (fixing bugs, adding features, etc.)