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EloKa

GSP
Verified
Oct 25, 2017
1,906
I don't understand this. I always thought 64K demos are actually 64kB in size, where is this "technically 256 (of what)" larger than the OP demo?
Seriously curious.
Those demos are 64 kilobytes in filesize while the demo in the OP is just 256 bytes in size. Thats 256 times smaller.

Its worth pointing out the difference in filesize because while the 64kb demos tend to look and sound stunning - the amazing thing about the 256 bytes demo is the fact that its actually running while beeing incredibly tiny in size. I doubt that you can go smaller than that.
 

Knurek

Member
Oct 26, 2017
4,335
Its worth pointing out the difference in filesize because while the 64kb demos tend to look and sound stunning - the amazing thing about the 256 bytes demo is the fact that its actually running while beeing incredibly tiny in size. I doubt that you can go smaller than that.
Sure you can - a single routine from that intro should be way smaller than the whole package.
 

Accoun

Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,905
Even the synthwave ?
Music in demos these days is done with integrated synthesizers (used to be tracker modules with very basic waveforms or just MIDI IIRC). For example Tunefish, by Brain Control
Tunefish is a very tiny virtual analog synthesizer. It is developed to fit into about 10kb of compressed machine code while still producing an audio quality that can compete with commercial synthesizers. This site was created to make the VST/AU version of it available to the public. This plugin, unlike the version of TF which is used in 64k intros of our group Brain Control is of course larger, mainly because it has a UI and uses the excellent Juce framework for C++.

Home


or V2 by Farbrausch
www.kvraudio.com

V2 by farbrausch - Synth (Analogue / Subtractive) Plugin VST

Features: 3 oscillators with sync - Osc1 (Saw/Tri, Pulse, Sin, Noise), Osc2&3: Tri, Pulse, Sine, Noise, FM, Ring Modulation. 2 filters -...
 

Subhero

Member
Nov 18, 2018
166
Those demos are 64 kilobytes in filesize while the demo in the OP is just 256 bytes in size. Thats 256 times smaller.
Ahhh, yes indeed, that makes it clearer.
And +1 about how impressive this feat of an 256B executable is that actually displays animated graphics and plays sound!
 

Dussck

Member
Oct 27, 2017
2,136
The Netherlands
I remember the times when i had 4MB memory in my 486 PC
I think that was pretty rare, no? Most 486 had 8MB.

I remember games coming out that required 8MB, but my parents had a 386 with 4MB. That sucked! You could still run the executable and the game most of the time, but it would just crash after a short while.

Also the same machine had a 'Turbo' button on the case that allowed me to beat MK2, by disabling it and cutting the processor speed in half (making Kintaro go slow-motion, haha)
 

Blackpuppy

Member
Oct 28, 2017
4,199
This is what I really hate these days. Devs simply throw around with gigabxtes instead of compressing them in a orderly manner.
Ask the n64 devs how they got their games on the cartridges. And the biggest mystery of all time= how the flying fuck was capcom able to pull resident evil 2 on a n64-cart?
2discs each 650mb...

Like others have said, RE2 was supposed to fit on one CD, but they overestimated how much space the audio would take and ended up having to put each campaign on a different disc. Anyone who's played the game can tell you that like 80-90% of the assets in each campaign are identical.

(source:https://www.denofgeek.com/games/resident-evil-2-accidentally-two-disc-game/)

If you're curious how the team pulled off fitting re2 on a cartridge, there's a great article you can read here:

www.gamasutra.com

news

news
 

KeRaSh

I left my heart on Atropos
Member
Oct 26, 2017
10,254
Damn, I think I went down the rabbit hole that is the demoscene like ten years ago...
Absolutely amazing stuff!
 

Hayeya

Member
Oct 29, 2017
3,807
Canada
I think that was pretty rare, no? Most 486 had 8MB.

I remember games coming out that required 8MB, but my parents had a 386 with 4MB. That sucked! You could still run the executable and the game most of the time, but it would just crash after a short while.

Also the same machine had a 'Turbo' button on the case that allowed me to beat MK2, by disabling it and cutting the processor speed in half (making Kintaro go slow-motion, haha)
You are correct, i had 8 MB not 4.
The power button was magic.
 

E.Balboa

Member
Oct 30, 2017
2,453
FlorianĂłpolis, Brazil
Music in demos these days is done with integrated synthesizers (used to be tracker modules with very basic waveforms or just MIDI IIRC). For example Tunefish, by Brain Control

Home


or V2 by Farbrausch
www.kvraudio.com

V2 by farbrausch - Synth (Analogue / Subtractive) Plugin VST

Features: 3 oscillators with sync - Osc1 (Saw/Tri, Pulse, Sin, Noise), Osc2&3: Tri, Pulse, Sine, Noise, FM, Ring Modulation. 2 filters -...

Mind blown
 

FirewalkR

Member
Oct 27, 2017
695
London
For those who were into demos, in case you missed it, the holly grail was released some times back, the source code for Second Reality by Future Crew
github.com

GitHub - mtuomi/SecondReality: Source code and data of Second Reality by Future Crew in 1993

Source code and data of Second Reality by Future Crew in 1993 - mtuomi/SecondReality

And in case you don't know about this, here's Fabien Sanglard's excellent and detailed analysis of the source code: http://fabiensanglard.net/second_reality/index.php

I recommend his whole site.
 

Smash-It Stan

Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,274
i remember downloading a video from this scene I think, it was super duper small but it was a music video sort've thing with lasers coming out of a mountain and it was all in 3D, not that realistic looking but it was less than a megabyte! Wish I could find it again
 

Weltall Zero

Game Developer
Banned
Oct 26, 2017
19,343
Madrid


What the everloving hell. Holy fucking shit, I cannot express enough how insanely impressive this. 256 bytes. Not even a damn kilobyte.

Check this out:



EVXDu32XkAEBNDa


EVXD_nfXQAE0Zau


This program, that simply calls main and exits and does nothing else, is 36 times bigger than this demo.

I legitimately think it's a miracle that 4K demos get made. It's hard as hell to get a demo down to 4k. 256 bytes is another level. A couple of years ago, I wrote a PC Booter application from scratch, a micro kernel to teach myself how to boot my own code from the boot strap. My loader alone was like 10 KB.

Unbelievable.


How about this frame of reference for people to get how small this is: the maximum length of a single tweet is 280 characters, so you could fit the compiled code of the entire demo in a single Tweet.

(in fact, depending on what encoding Twitter uses, you may be able to fit it twice).
 
Last edited:
Dec 20, 2017
175
Some would say I'm biased, as it's the first microprocessor language I learned and most people tend to be extremely in love with their first language, but I legitimately think the 68000 is the greatest microprocessor created for people learning microprocessor assembly. Its instruction set is very, very easy to pick up, it's super relaxed about conversion rules (depending on assembler), there are mountains of resources for learning it, and most importantly: It's got fat registers, lots of them. Eight 32-bit data registers and seven 32-bit address registers. The more work you do with microprocessors, the more you realize having a lot of really thick registers is a godsend, as those are essentially your "hardware variables" as I like to call them.

The 6502 is basically the opposite concept. It's extremely basic, giving you only a couple of registers essentially. The idea is after each operation, you'll want to move your data out of the register back into memory. The 6502 is built on every operation being extremely simple, at the expense of performance. The 68000 is the opposite, you have so many registers that you can just leave data in them and do all the work you need. So like, if you need to update multiple variables, instead of having to put them into registers on the 6502, do your operation, then take them out, then load the next data, put it into the register, do your operation, then take it back out, etc, on the 68000 you can just load up all the data you want at once and do all your calculations. You have so many registers, each of which can be thought of as one 32-bit register, or two 16-bit registers, or four 8-bit registers... just so useful.

I think 68000 assembler is probably one of the most vital things someone serious about software engineering can pick up. It'll teach you things about other microprocessors in the process. When I work with modern GPUs, I use lots of things I learned way back when I was picking up 68000 assembly.

I couldn't agree more. My assembly class was on the 68k and writing code for it is so clean compared to x86. The 6502 isn't bad either, but like you said, especially when dealing with the nes variant, you've only two registers and an accumulator, which can be difficult to work around for beginners. Start with a 68k, not only is the code nice and clean, but the documentation is phenomenal for a processor that came out in the 70s.
 

Mg.

Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,977
How about this frame of reference for people to get how small this is: the maximum length of a single tweet is 280 characters, so you could fit the assembly code of the entire demo in a single Tweet.

(in fact, depending on what encoding Twitter uses, you may be able to fit it twice).
You mean the binary? The compiled binary is 256 bytes. The assembly code, even with comments removed, is larger than that.
 

Weltall Zero

Game Developer
Banned
Oct 26, 2017
19,343
Madrid
You mean the binary? The compiled binary is 256 bytes. The assembly code, even with comments removed, is larger than that.

Yeah, I meant the binary, sorry. I didn't know how to get across "binary code" without people thinking of a tweet made of 0s and 1s in actual text, but I made it worse. :D
 

test_account

Member
Oct 25, 2017
4,645
That is pretty amazing for sure!


I think that was pretty rare, no? Most 486 had 8MB.

I remember games coming out that required 8MB, but my parents had a 386 with 4MB. That sucked! You could still run the executable and the game most of the time, but it would just crash after a short while.

Also the same machine had a 'Turbo' button on the case that allowed me to beat MK2, by disabling it and cutting the processor speed in half (making Kintaro go slow-motion, haha)
I actually have no idea if it was rare or not, i never checked into that, but our 486 DX2 66MHz came with 4MB of RAM. That was back in 1994. Many games at that time did run fine with 4MB of RAM.

Hehe, i also remember when games started to require 8MB of RAM. I specifically remember wanting to play Destruction Derby from a demo CD that i had. I (or my family rather) got 8MB RAM extra one christmas. I think it was like $220 or something, and that was more money back then than what it is now. Totally worth it though hehe =)
 
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sweetmini

Member
Jun 12, 2019
3,921
That is pretty amazing for sure!



I actually have no idea if it was rare or not, i never checked into that, but our 486 DX2 66MHz came with 4MB of RAM. That was back in 1994. Many games at that time did run fine with 4MB of RAM.

Hehe, i also remember when games started to require 8MB of RAM. I specifically remember wanting to play Destruction Derby from a demo CD that i had. I (or my family rather) got 8MB RAM extra one christmas. I think it was like $220 or something, and that was more money back then than what it is now. Totally worth it though hehe =)

Yeah 4MB was common even for a DX2 in 1993, so that's what you inherited in 94 :) ... but damn Strike Commander recommended 8MB... i skipped the 486, jumping from the 386 to the pentium 75 (what a jump) but i suffered until i got it.
Funny, i made a lot of demos on my old 386 that were going slow (specially 3D) ... but with the side effect they ran "butter-smooth" on the 486.

By the way, question to those who coded back in the days...
I was a Turbo Assembler devout, anyone else preferred it to MASM ?
 
Last edited:

ghibli99

Member
Oct 27, 2017
17,768
Always loved the demoscene mentality of making hardware do what was previously thought impossible, fitting tons of content into highly optimized code, using tricks and sleight-of-hand to persuade viewers into seeing more than they were, the competitiveness that brought out the best and most creative work between rivals, etc. The quality of art and music were just staggering too. Some of Peachy's work is seared into my brain, like this one...

O1LKcG9.jpg


...as are the tunes of so many .mod composers. Damn, time to dust off my old collection!
 

test_account

Member
Oct 25, 2017
4,645
Yeah 4MB was common even for a DX2 in 1993, so that's what you inherited in 94 :) ... but damn Strike Commander recommended 8MB... i skipped the 486, jumping from the 386 to the pentium 75 (what a jump) but i suffered until i got it.
Funny, i made a lot of demos on my old 386 that were going slow (specially 3D) ... but with the side effect they ran "butter-smooth" on the 486.

By the way, question to those who coded back in the days...
I was a Turbo Assembler devout, anyone else preferred it to MASM ?
Good times :) I went from the 486 DX2 66MHz to a 200MMX.
 

Skyfireblaze

Member
Oct 25, 2017
11,257
This is seriously awesome I can't say much more really, KKrieger was already something but this, wow o.o

And seeing all the old PC talk makes me remember the good old Win95 clouds and:



Nothing about nostalgia overload in the morning :P

We used to have a Pentium 100mhz PC with I think 32mb RAM, a 100-500mb HDD and a CirrusLogic 3D Accelerator and a Sound Blaster 16, the details are a bit blurry in my memory but I remember being mind-blown as a kid when my brother installed Windows 95 for the first time after I only knew DOS back then.