See also Elite in 22KB
Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38707095
The 1987 game “The Last Ninja” was 40 kilobytes
31–40 of 199 posts
Re: The 1987 game “The Last Ninja” was 40 kilobytes
#32I was looking at a production service we run that was using a few GBs of memory. When I add up all the actual data needed in a naive compact representation I end up with a few MBs. So much waste. That's before thinking of clever ways to compress, or de-duplicate or rearrange that data. Back in the day getting the 16KB expansion pack for my 1KB RAM ZX81 was a big deal. And I also wrote code for PIC microcontrollers th…
Sure, if you don’t count safety features like memory management, crash handling, automatic bounds checks and encryption cyphers; as anything useful.
I do completely agree that there is a lot of waste in modern software. But equally there is also a lot more that has to be included in modern software that wasn’t ever a concern in the 80s.
Networking stacks, safety checks, encryption stacks, etc all contribute massively to software “bloat”.
You can see how this quickly adds up if you write a “hello world” CLI in assembly and compare that to the equivalent in any modern language that imports all these features into its runtime.
And this is all before you take into account that modern graphics and audio is bitmap / PCM and running at resolutions literally orders of magnitude greater than anything supported by 80s micro computers.
Re: The 1987 game “The Last Ninja” was 40 kilobytes
#33I was looking at a production service we run that was using a few GBs of memory. When I add up all the actual data needed in a naive compact representation I end up with a few MBs. So much waste. That's before thinking of clever ways to compress, or de-duplicate or rearrange that data. Back in the day getting the 16KB expansion pack for my 1KB RAM ZX81 was a big deal. And I also wrote code for PIC microcontrollers th…
Sure, if you don’t count safety features like memory management, crash handling, automatic bounds checks and encryption cyphers; as anything useful. I do completely agree that there is a lot of waste in modern software. But equally there is also a lot more that has to be included in modern software that wasn’t ever a concern in the 80s. Networking stacks, safety checks, encryption stacks, etc all contribute massively…
Yes, but this doesn't prevent you from being mindful and selecting the right tools with smaller memory footprint while providing the features you need.
Go's "GC disadvantage" is turned on its head by developing "Zero Allocation" libraries which run blazingly fast with fixed memory footprints. Similarly, rolling your own high performance/efficient code where it matters can save tremendous amounts of memory where it matters.
Of course more features and safety nets will consume memory, but we don't have to waste it like there are no other things running on the system, no?
> And this is all before you take into account that modern graphics and audio is bitmap / PCM and running at resolutions literally orders of magnitude greater than anything supported by 80s micro computers.
This demo [0] is a 4kB executable. 4096 bytes. A single file. All assets, graphics, music and whatnot, and can run at high resolutions with real time rendering.
This is [1] 64kB and this [2] is 177kB. This game from the same group is 96kB with full 3D graphics [3].
[0]: https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=52938
[1]: https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=1221
Re: The 1987 game “The Last Ninja” was 40 kilobytes
#34Most games back then where small. An C64 only had 64k and most game didn't use all of it. An Atari 800 had max 48k. It wasn't until the 1200 that it went up. Both systems are cartridge based games, many of which were 8k. Honestly though, I don't read much into the sizes. Sure they were small games and had lots of game play for some defintion of game play. I enjoyed them immensely. But it's hard to go back to just a f…
The modern classic, Animal Well, is only 35mb in size!
Re: The 1987 game “The Last Ninja” was 40 kilobytes
#35Oh man the tape loading time. I dreamed about being able to afford a disk drive.
The loading music is exceptional and I enjoyed listening to it while waiting.
I still occasionally listen to it.
Re: The 1987 game “The Last Ninja” was 40 kilobytes
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
X264 supports a lossless mode without chroma subsampling, which produces very good compression for raw emulator captures of retro game footage. It is much better than other codecs like HuffYuv, etc. But for some reason, Firefox refuses to play back those kinds of files.
But for some reason, Firefox refuses to play back those kinds of files. And that reason is because x264 is a free and open source implementation of the H.264 codec, and you still need to pay a license to use the patented technology regardless of how you do that. Using a free implementation of the code doesn't get you a free license for the codec.
Haven't those patents expired by now?
Re: The 1987 game “The Last Ninja” was 40 kilobytes
#37Some Pokémon Crystal ROMs pack a huge amount of gaming in very few MB. Z80-ish ASM, KB's of RAM.
The ZMachine games, ditto. A few kb's and an impressive simulated environment will run even under 8bit machines running a virtual machine. Of course z3 machine games will have less features for parsing/obj interaction than z8 machine games, but from a 16 bit machine and up (nothing today, a DOS PC would count) will run z8 games and get pretty complex text adventures. Compare Tristam Island or the first Zork I-III to Spiritwrak, where a subway it's simulated, or Anchorhead.
And you can code the games with Inform6 and Inform6lib with maybe a 286 with DOS or 386 and any text editor. Check Inform Beginner's Guide and DM4.pdf And not just DOS, Windows, Linux, BSD, Macs... even Android under Termux. And the games will run either Frotz for Termux or Lectrote, or Fabularium. Under iOS, too.
Nethack/lashem weights MB's and has tons of replayability. Written in C. It will even run under a 68020 System 7 based Mac... emulated under 9front with an 720 CPU as the host. It will fly from a 486 CPU and up.
Meanwhile, Cataclysm DDA uses C++ and it needs a huge chunk of RAM and a fastly CPU to compile it today. Some high end Pentium4 with 512MB of RAM will run it well enough, but you need to cross compile it.
If I had the skills I would rewrite (no AI/LLM's please) CDDA:BN into Golang. The compiling times would plummet down and the CPU usage would be nearly the same. OFC the GC would shine here prunning tons of unused code and data from generated worlds.
Re: The 1987 game “The Last Ninja” was 40 kilobytes
#38I was looking at a production service we run that was using a few GBs of memory. When I add up all the actual data needed in a naive compact representation I end up with a few MBs. So much waste. That's before thinking of clever ways to compress, or de-duplicate or rearrange that data. Back in the day getting the 16KB expansion pack for my 1KB RAM ZX81 was a big deal. And I also wrote code for PIC microcontrollers th…
Sure, if you don’t count safety features like memory management, crash handling, automatic bounds checks and encryption cyphers; as anything useful. I do completely agree that there is a lot of waste in modern software. But equally there is also a lot more that has to be included in modern software that wasn’t ever a concern in the 80s. Networking stacks, safety checks, encryption stacks, etc all contribute massively…
>Sure, if you don’t count safety features like memory management, crash handling, automatic bounds checks and encryption cyphers; as anything useful.
>Networking stacks, safety checks, encryption stacks, etc all contribute massively to software “bloat”.
They had most of this stuff in the 1980s, and even earlier really. Not on your little 8-bit microcomputer that cost $299 that might have had as a kid, but they certainly did exist on large time-sharing systems used in universities and industry and government. And those systems had only a tiny fraction of the memory that a typical x86-64 laptop has now.
Re: The 1987 game “The Last Ninja” was 40 kilobytes
#39Is this even correct? It was a two-sided disk, and each side was 174 KB.
Re: The 1987 game “The Last Ninja” was 40 kilobytes
#40Most games back then where small. An C64 only had 64k and most game didn't use all of it. An Atari 800 had max 48k. It wasn't until the 1200 that it went up. Both systems are cartridge based games, many of which were 8k. Honestly though, I don't read much into the sizes. Sure they were small games and had lots of game play for some defintion of game play. I enjoyed them immensely. But it's hard to go back to just a f…
>But it's hard to go back to just a few colors, low-res graphics, often no way to save, etc... for me at least, the modern affordances mean something.
All those old games have a way to save now, if you run them in an emulator as is commonly done these days. That's how I played through Metroid and finally beat the mother brain in just a day or two during the pandemic.