Comment by 🗡️ The_Jackal
Re: "Yesterday was the MAR10 DAY"
Speaking of this, I wish the developers of these billions of dollars companies or even a lot of the indie/AA crowd would try optimizing their games and utilizing the resources of modern hardware like ID Software did with the original Doom.
Mar 11 · 8 weeks ago
10 Later Comments ↓
I love everything about this game. To me it is the high point of gaming. Later consoles traded 3D and too many movi g objects for clean game design.
Small code is still possible today. SpellBinding game server is under 40Kb. [SSL an libc are substantially larger]
🚀 lars_the_bear · Mar 12 at 08:17:
While small code is still possible, I suspect that only enthusiasts try to write it. I still write stuff in assembly for 8-bit retro systems. In business, there's usually no financial incentive to reduce your resource usage -- it means hiring more skilled people, and taking more time.
🗡️ The_Jackal [Weapons dealer, possibly mutant killer] · Mar 12 at 15:12:
@lars_the_bear I don't only mean reducing resource usage, but using tricks to do impressive things as well. One indie game I wish had taken more time and did this is half sword. Simple premise. You fight other men with swords in the middle ages in arenas, and progress through different tiers with more armor and different weapons, maybe buy some weapons, maybe make a custom one, or hire some muscle, and maybe fight your way out of the afterlife for one last chance if you die. The playtest ran surprisingly well for unfortunately using UE5, and then early access hits and it runs like shit. Hotfixes have slowed majorly, and it still looks like it has a long ways to go. It's quite a shame.
🚀 lars_the_bear · Mar 12 at 15:16:
@The_Jackal : I understand but, back in the days when you only had 1kB of RAM, _everything_ was a trick of some sort.
🗡️ The_Jackal [Weapons dealer, possibly mutant killer] · Mar 12 at 15:21:
@lars_the_bear Oh, obviously. I guess I'm just really curious to see what leaps and bounds a game could make if it did that with 16 or 32gb of RAM and 8gb or 16gb of VRAM.
☯️ leoperbo [OP] · Mar 12 at 15:48:
@lars_the_bear: In business, there's usually no financial incentive to reduce your resource usage.
The paradigm of AI industry smashing the AI as science.
Cloud compute charges are tax-deductible in the US. But for some reason, you can't deduct programmer salaries for original code -- you have to depreciate the expense over some years.
Therefore resource bloat is cheaper than small code, the thinking goes. Although in my experience, small code is easier to finish, debug and maintain.
But cheap programmers don't know how to do trivial things and wind up using giant libraries for simple datastructures.
🚀 lars_the_bear · Mar 12 at 17:02:
@stack : I don't think overuse of libraries is limited to cheap programmers. The time pressure is such that even experienced, senior developers are bullied into it.
I was on call for my products when the Log4J security flaw broke. It was a bad day. There was no good reason ever to use that bloated monstrosity, just to write some log lines to a file. And yet everybody did -- and still does. Using it saves maybe a day of programmer time. Until it blows up, and then it costs everybody millions of dollars and a slump in the stock price.
Not saying libraries are evil or not helpful, and in some cases (ssl libraries) they are necessary. But I have seen people use them as crutches, because adding a link pointer is considered by some to be too difficult without a proper library written by ´wizards´.
☯️ leoperbo [OP] · Mar 13 at 01:36:
They program "disastructures"...
Original Post
Yesterday was the MAR10 DAY — It’s remarkable, and goes well here in gemini, that Super Mario Bros. (1985) used just 40 KB of ROM, less than many WhatsApp stickers today! The entire game (32 levels, enemies, music, and graphics) fit within this tiny space. How? Extreme optimization. Developers reused visual elements: clouds and bushes shared the same graphic, only changing color palettes. Enemies like Goombas used just two animation frames. Led by Shigeru Miyamoto, Nintendo’s team worked within...
💬 12 comments · 5 likes · Mar 11 · 8 weeks ago · #efficiency #nes