Why old games are so compact? (NES, SNES..)

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Started by ynm February 14, 2013 08:40 AM

21 comments, last by Khatharr 11 years, 2 months ago

5,995

February 14, 2013 11:03 AM

The 4k demo guys' main compression was in size. I'm not sure if that's what you were implying - but the 4k demo is very cpu heavy and would not run on any older consoles - I had trouble running one of those demos a few years back. There's always some sort of minimum tradeoff with any sort of optimization.

Its about getting as much fun as possible into the available space. Same as with an old console (or a new one...)

Yes, my point was that these techniques could not be done on old hardware, meaning it's possible to make even more "compact" (as in resources/size-ratio and functionality/size-ratio) programs today.

You could fit 64 of those 4k demos into a NES cartridge.

I'm personally totally blown away by what these guys do with 4096 bytes... when you start thinking about how little code this really is, it's pretty amazing to see a 5 min flyby in a fully textured and lighted 3d environment, including nice music!

4096 bytes is the size of one (1!) 32x32 sprite in rgba color.

PurpleAmethyst

335

February 14, 2013 11:40 AM

Nowadays, space is cheap, and the machines don't have as many restrictions. So use as much space as you need. :-)

Programming attitudes like this makes me cringe.

I've seen horrid things happen when people take a casual attitude towards using memory and CPU efficiently - It leads to ugly botched code. I could name games but I'd probably get a legal letter.

frob

46,221

February 14, 2013 11:58 AM

It isn't just a matter of specific games.

Instead it strikes at a core issue of Computer Science.

The Size/Space/Speed tradeoff is a fundamental issue that will always be with us.

Most major games do an incredible amount of work. Decisions are often made during development to trade off one resource for another. They can implement dynamically reloading assets at a cost of a few nanoseconds per frame, but with the benefit of shortening development by 3 months. They can implement and use scripting languages that add a few nanoseconds per frame, but also dramatically improve the gameplay and reduce the development cycle by months. They can implement more complex AI behavior, networked game logic, and other transformative technology in exchange for a tiny bit of CPU usage per frame.

They can choose to use higher quality, larger, more colorful images in exchange for more disk space and loading time. They can choose to use high quality audio rather than midi's extremely tiny beeps and blips, or heavily compressed tin-sounding audio. They can choose to include complex and beautiful particle systems with miniature 3D movies rather than cheesy static images.

Personally I find it is easier to upgrade my hardware every few years. While I don't like the extra cost, I do love the extra quality that can be stuffed into programs for the relatively small cost difference.

Daaark

3,556

February 14, 2013 12:03 PM

Nowadays, space is cheap, and the machines don't have as many restrictions. So use as much space as you need. :-)
Programming attitudes like this makes me cringe. I've seen horrid things happen when people take a casual attitude towards using memory and CPU efficiently - It leads to ugly botched code. I could name games but I'd probably get a legal letter.

I didn't say anything about memory, processing, or programming style.

When I was first learning to code, I was using QBasic and kept using it well into 2000. So I write all my code and allocate all my resources with a minimalistic attitude, because when I was learning, I had no choice!

But we are talking about file size in this thread. We don't have to worry about using every trick in the book to desperately try and cram anything in. Even mobile games are clocking in at 1gb in some cases.

So use what you need.

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PurpleAmethyst

335

February 14, 2013 12:39 PM

I guess I was learning on limited resources too, which probably explains my attitude. I still think wasting space and energy is a bad idea

Even mobile games are clocking in at 1gb in some cases.

I doubt a producer, publisher or carrier would tolerate that size of binary - 180MB is pushing it in my experience and usually leads to office arguments.

Mobile dev is exactly the reason I have problems with the "Use everything you can!" attitude.

Wilhelm van Huyssteen

1,232

February 14, 2013 12:41 PM

Programming attitudes like this makes me cringe.

Same here. As a business programmer I see some truly horrible things nowadays. For example. When I was tracking a memory leak/slowdown through a piece of spaghetti mess I found a Boolean array list that always gets added to but never removed from. It wouldn't take long for its size to be in the millions. The only thing is... It wasn't a Boolean arraylist it was a String arraylist where every element was a String that stored either "True" or "False" written out... But hey since we have lots of CPU power who cares if we loop through 12 million Strings comparing them to "True" every time the user clicks a button and since we have lots of ram who cares if the simple inventory management application needs 4 GB of RAM if you want to use it for 30 minutes before the memory leak kills it.

And thats just an one example...

Some new technologies (Im looking at you Oracle) require state of the art servers to server a couple hundred users. 10 years ago similar solutions existed that could manage more users with much much less resources.

Empire Rising

Buster2000

4,310

February 14, 2013 12:48 PM

I doubt a producer, publisher or carrier would tolerate that size of binary - 180MB is pushing it in my experience and usually leads to office arguments

Baldurs gate is 1.8 GB
Infinity Blade 2 is 1.10

I think as long as the game is guarenteed to be a big hit then the publisher isn't going to mind the size

Daaark

3,556

February 14, 2013 01:03 PM

I guess I was learning on limited resources too, which probably explains my attitude. I still think wasting space and energy is a bad idea

Even mobile games are clocking in at 1gb in some cases.

I doubt a producer, publisher or carrier would tolerate that size of binary - 180MB is pushing it in my experience and usually leads to office arguments.

Mobile dev is exactly the reason I have problems with the "Use everything you can!" attitude.

I said use what you need, not what you can. There is a world of difference between those statements.

What do you have to doubt? Go take a look around. A gig is a normal, expected size for a lot of the better mobile games I have. The GTA games clock in that big. FF3 is a few hundered megs. Several games, like TDKR are 1.8 gigs. Wild Blood, gameloft's new UDK game is 720m.

Several of these games even offer HUGE downloads of high resolution asset packs if your high end phone or tablet supports it.

Even 3DS carts are 8GB, which is overkill, but there is no reason why they can't come in at 16, or 32 gb soon.

We are over the storage space hump in games.

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PurpleAmethyst

335

February 14, 2013 01:13 PM

@Daaark - I was just sharing my experience of things, yours is obviously different. My experience has mostly been at the casual end of the market, so file size may be more of an issue. I can't imagine downloading 1GB OTA, and we were packaging for OTA downloads.

Daaark

3,556

February 14, 2013 06:18 PM

@Daaark - I was just sharing my experience of things, yours is obviously different. My experience has mostly been at the casual end of the market, so file size may be more of an issue. I can't imagine downloading 1GB OTA, and we were packaging for OTA downloads.

Typically, you'd turn on wifi for that. A lot of apps use a small download for the program itself and have you get the content file later in a big download, urging you to do it with Wifi only. Google Play will now do this automatically. I believe the maximum file size is now 4096 MB. Yes, 4 gigs. I'm sure when San Andreas hits that will be a big 4gb download!

Maybe things are different where you live, but here, people do all kinds of big downloads OTA. On the bus every night there are always tons of people pulling out tablets and streaming 720p videos. netflix, youtube, video chat, etc...

It's also not hard to get free wifi access here just for buying a 2 dollar cup of coffee.

(This has gone highly off topic!)

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