This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
On another forum, I was complaining about how Microsoft was planning to remove WordPad from Win11. I was advised that installing OpenOffice or LibreOffice was an appropriate replacement. I replied that WordPad was only 3 megs large, as opposed to the recommended replacements, which are decidedly larger.
I guess not everybody appreciates tight code, but I surely do. Things like this are amazingly impressive.
Appreciates tight code
Runs Windows 11
Pick a lane, son.
Appreciates tight code
Proceed to run a 13KB Javascript game in a browser.
Brother, look up kolibri os, then you'll see some TIGHT code
AmigaOS 1.3 or bust.
I will die on this hill.
Menuet OS it is for me
Anyway don't install OpenOffice for any reason, just pick libreoffice or onlyoffice. OpenOffice doesn't get a functional/security/compatibility update since 2014.
I don't particularly care about code size as a user or as a programmer.
Hard drive space is the cheapest thing you've got on a computer.
You could always run gentoo and use -Os ... that can make things a lot smaller but also slower.
Hard drive space is the cheapest thing you’ve got on a computer.
I hate this "storage is cheap" mentality, it's a cop out for being wasteful without a reason. "Gas is cheap" was common up to the early 1970s, until it wasn't anymore. "Freshwater is cheap", until it isn't anymore.
Sometimes a program is slow to start up because it's so boated that just loading it from the disk takes multiple seconds. Wasting a few kB doesn't hurt anything, but if you're doing it thousands of times in one program, your users are gonna have a bad time.
I just looked at how big LibreOffice Writer is, 210 MB as a portable app... Wow...
AbiWord Portable is probably the smallest and even that is 15 MB installed...
Reminds me of kkreiger, an fps with impressive graphics and sound for the time, that weighed in at 96KB.
A long time ago I came across a game that was part of a 1mb challenge. It's called A New Zero. I played it quite a lot, just flying around and dive bombing boats was entertaining enough for me.
I was impressed with 1mb but 13kb and 96kb is pretty amazing. I really enjoy seeing stuff like this.
Nice I have been thinking about doing a either an 8mb or 5mb gamejam challenge but I wasn't sure if 5mb would be to low but if there are 1mb challenges I guess it does not seem to impractical. Also I am going to test that game out in wine it looks interesting.
kkreiger is more impressive to me, because it creates itself on execution time. While this 13kB game is willfully ignoring the fact that the average web browser today is already a 2GB behemoth. While kkeiger is pure C++ and it does the whole thing, including the game engine and sound processor and everything else.
Is definitely not pure c++. It's making use of direct x and even fonts available in Windows to create textures.
kKrieger was always kind of amazing to see. Even understanding a little bit about how the game works, it's still kind of mind-boggling
This is crazy!
I have so many questions, but lack the technical know how of how to ask them.
Instead of actually storing images, sound files, maps, etc, whole program relies on algorithms computed at runtime. Level generated automatically, sound follows a set math pattern with randomization, etc etc
Benefits of less file size but more processor requirements
Oh yeah. I can remember back in the day it could take quite a bit to compile and start these things, especially if you were running at higher resolution and detail values.
Basically it's all procedurally generated assets. It takes a long time to start to because it has to make all it's textures and sound effects.
Check this video out by Nostalgia Nerd
How much of that is third-party libraries, and/or third-party hosted? Obviously the assets (images and music) aren’t being counted.
The whole page transferred about 7kB and shows 18.2kB of ressources according to the debug tools.
The game also requires a renderer (browser) to play.
I think what they did is impressive but the claim about the size feels like taking source code and saying "look how small on disk it is"
This is amazing for only 13KB.
And I was blown away the ps1 game Vagrant Story turned Into 90mb file as a chd.
That said one of the games I enjoyed most even when I had an Amiga was a 48k ZX Spectrum game called Chaos.
I did not know that I needed loderunner-quake in my life.
Thanks for posting.
To everyone scoffing: welcome to sizecoding! Yes, they really fit the textures and models and music in that limit. No, we don't care what the browser or hardware does for free. If you want tighter technical limits, contests go as low as you can imagine.
Here's a 256-byte raymarching demo for MS-DOS.
Here's an MS-DOS clone of Descent, in 4 KB.
Images are procedurally generated. It doesn't mean random; it means rules were followed. Music is generally MIDI-ish, with a synthesizer also built into the code. Instrument samples can also be procedurally generated, and effects like echo and stretching are commonplace. Models in this game are... well you can see why they don't take much space. But other projects get smooth and detailed objects using tesselation (remember that from 2007?), constructive solid geometry (cube with cylinder cut out), or signed distance fields (you are on your own).
The most useful tool is cheating your ass off. This game does not have doors. Everything's rectilinear. But it's based on levels you already recognize, so your brain hand-waves the missing parts and focuses on what looks like you expect. Contrast it with that Descent demo, which is dead-on. Seriously, that thing is from 1997, and they even nailed the sparkles in the healing chamber. If a bare Pentium with VGA isn't bare-metal enough for you, I'll try to find something tiny and mindblowing on ZX Spectrum, which had to be coerced into doing any damn thing.
