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Memories – 256 bytes demo winner of Revision 2020

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Re: Memories – 256 bytes demo winner of Revision 2020

#91

Post by HellMood »

7777fps wrote: post #88
KMnO4 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We already allow arbitrary code to execute by clicking a link, in the form of JavaScript. You may argue that JS is sandboxed, but so is DOSBox. At least DOSBox can’t easily connect to remote servers over the internet.

Correct me if I'm wrong, I haven't used DOSBOX for a decade but doesn't it have the ability to access hard drives and mount them? Given that, it's not much of a sandbox. Or does that require intervention from the host system rather than auto-mounting home and similar?

I would clearly prefer a web browser with a dosbox to the "real" dosbox when it comes to safety...

Re: Memories – 256 bytes demo winner of Revision 2020

#92

Post by HellMood »

zokier wrote: post #57
imtringued wrote: post #52

Since these are so small I don't see why we couldn't have a "demoscene launcher" with a "mailto:" style protocol handler and just let people click on base64 encoded links to start the demo.

http://dosify.me should be fairly easy to modify to read the binary from url fragment instead of zip file

(author here) I didn't know about that one. I use http://twt86.co/ (no music there too, sadly) On both websites the performance is rather bad, but that is something that time will solve for us :D

Re: Memories – 256 bytes demo winner of Revision 2020

#93

Post by HellMood »

ajxs wrote: post #6

This is amazing! Here's another awesome 256b demo that I love: http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=66372

That one is really amazing! I still don't understand how this didn't win the "Meteoriks" award (my "hypnoteye" did https://www.pouet.net/awards.php#2015tiny-intro ) Sadly, Baudsurfer has not been "around" for quite a while now ...

Re: Memories – 256 bytes demo winner of Revision 2020

#94

Post by HellMood »

smabie wrote: post #19

I've always thought the demo scene looked cool. Problem is, I don't really care about graphics and sound and am not an especially creative person. Are there are competitions that are purely objective? As in, the objective criteria is quantitative?

You can always challenge yourself to create "something" in 32 bytes or 16 bytes. That is soo small, that sounds and graphics are rather abstract and it comes downto: does it produce something not random, noticable. For example, here is a paint program in 16 bytes : https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=62025 (the objective would be : create a program that allows painting on a canvas with the mouse) There have been ASM competitions with clear objectives in the past (http://www.hugi.scene.org/compo/) but these are long gone and seem to be replace with something like https://codegolf.stackexchange.com/ now

Re: Memories – 256 bytes demo winner of Revision 2020

#95

Post by HellMood »

GuB-42 wrote: post #53
iszomer wrote: post #9

Tiny binaries probably relied heavily on the native OS's system libraries.

A common complaint on tiny demos. Here the OS is only used for setting graphics mode and setting up a timer. Plus all the boot code of course. Not much really, with 512 bytes you can probably do it on the bare metal, if someone didn't already. There is even more debate in 4k. After all, most rely on graphics drivers that take hundreds of megabytes. But the thing to understand is that in any case, the intro ships all…

(author here) Not quite, a 256 bytes PC intro CAN have decent non MIDI music as showcased here https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=79281 (won the "outstanding technical achievment" award) I did some intros in 32 bytes and 16 bytes having that "horrible buzzer", looks like some ASCII effects and a dutch gabber bassline is the maximum you can get in this category :D ( https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=76093)

Re: Memories – 256 bytes demo winner of Revision 2020

#96

Post by HellMood »

exikyut wrote: post #87
londons_explore wrote: post #10

Normally these demos are filled with all kinds of 'tricks' to make things smaller. Things like self modifying code, using bits of the bios or video ROM in ways they weren't intended by jumping into the middle of them, saving space by using code as data or vice versa, tiny packers which compress or uncompress the code, massive pregenerated buffers to do runtime lookups to generate data in one order but use it in anoth…

May I please have a list of demos that do all those things? That sounds really cool. - Jumping into the middle of video ROM and/or the BIOS - Using substantial amounts of code as data - Pregenerated buffers and data reordering oooooo.

(author here) Well, he is not entirely wrong. There is "m8trix", an 8 byte program (later optimized to seven bytes), that does - jump into the middle of it's own instructions - using 2 of that 7 bytes again as DATA - using FLAG register content as COLOR See : http://www.sizecoding.org/wiki/M8trix_8b

But all that doesn't really cut the space down in something as "big" as 256 bytes, it's the approach and the algorithms that do =)

Re: Memories – 256 bytes demo winner of Revision 2020

#97

Post by thr0w__4w4y »

LocalH wrote: post #60
spiritplumber wrote: post #58

256 bytes is in the "let's try every combination" range, I think. So, write a program that tries all of them and determines if any do something interesting enough to forward to a human for review.

Wouldn’t that be 256^256? That’s certainly a hell of a haystack

Yes that's correct.

I think of it just slightly differently -- 256 bytes, 2048 bits -- so 2^2048 (same result as your 256^256).

To give people (who don't spend time with these numbers all the time, I do b/c of cryptography): 2 ^ 256 is on the order of the /number of atoms in the entire universe/ -- every star, moon, comet, black hole, galaxy, etc. across the entire known universe)

Now consider this: 2^512 -- take every single atom in the universe, and imagine that that atom //contains a universe of atoms//. Congratulations, you're only at 2 ^ 512.

Imagine how large 2 ^ 2048 is!

Re: Memories – 256 bytes demo winner of Revision 2020

#98

Post by z0r »

HellMood wrote: post #93
ajxs wrote: post #6

This is amazing! Here's another awesome 256b demo that I love: http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=66372

That one is really amazing! I still don't understand how this didn't win the "Meteoriks" award (my "hypnoteye" did https://www.pouet.net/awards.php#2015tiny-intro ) Sadly, Baudsurfer has not been "around" for quite a while now ...

Memories is... going into the memory bank for greatest 256 byte demos for me, right above the one you linked and immediate railways. Dang dude

Re: Memories – 256 bytes demo winner of Revision 2020

#99

Post by mateuszf »

rwmj wrote: post #47

The best demo I've found, also 256 bytes, is Pyrit by Řrřola (Jan Kadlec, a Czech developer). It's frankly incredible, something I wouldn't have believed was possible: https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=78045 I ported it to a boot sector so you can run it with a single (rather long!) Linux command line in qemu: https://rwmj.wordpress.com/2019/12/08/pyrit-by-rrrola-incred... The source code for Pyrit is worth readin…

Video on youtube: https://youtu.be/eYNoaVERfR4

Re: Memories – 256 bytes demo winner of Revision 2020

#100

Post by 7777fps »

HellMood wrote: post #91
7777fps wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct me if I'm wrong, I haven't used DOSBOX for a decade but doesn't it have the ability to access hard drives and mount them? Given that, it's not much of a sandbox. Or does that require intervention from the host system rather than auto-mounting home and similar?

I would clearly prefer a web browser with a dosbox to the "real" dosbox when it comes to safety...

Then I agree completely, and must have misunderstood what was proposed by a handler. Typically a handler will launch an external application such as mailto, ftp, magnet, etc.

If we want to run code in browser there is WASM.

So is the proposal that it would it be beneficial to have a DOS-like OS or x86 emulator in WASM for running COM files?

Yes, that would be better and more sandboxed than dosbox running outside the browser.

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