Garrulous Glaahk Vexivero Posted November 29, 2015 Share Posted November 29, 2015 Anybody else heard of / like that game? You can get it here: http://www.digger.org The one I'm using is windig on the d/l page because it lets you play without an emulator, but I haven't figured out a way to change the controls. I used to play it as a kid but recently found it again and I've been addicted to it the past several days. So far my best score is 232,250 and I've gotten to level 5 (only once), but that game gets insane! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Easygoing Eyebeast keira Posted November 29, 2015 Share Posted November 29, 2015 It also has many new features, including: * Exit button Ah, the 80s. A simpler time for a more innocent world. Tyranicus 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Unflappable Drayk ĐªгŦĦ Єяŋϊε Posted November 29, 2015 Share Posted November 29, 2015 "640K ought to be enough for anybody." -Bill Gates on RAM Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Magnificent Ornk Aran Posted November 29, 2015 Share Posted November 29, 2015 This reminds me of a DOS game I saw in the early 90s, called . (Which itself is apparently based on a C64 game called ). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Garrulous Glaahk Vexivero Posted November 29, 2015 Author Share Posted November 29, 2015 Ah, the 80s. A simpler time for a more innocent world. Haha I missed that one XD "640K ought to be enough for anybody." -Bill Gates on RAM Lol..even the most successful people can't predict the future This reminds me of a DOS game I saw in the early 90s, called . (Which itself is apparently based on a C64 game called ). Looks like a lesser version of Subterra Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rotghroth Rhapsody Thaluikhain Posted November 30, 2015 Share Posted November 30, 2015 "640K ought to be enough for anybody." -Bill Gates on RAM I had heard that he'd not actually said that phrase, even if the sentiment was there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Unflappable Drayk ĐªгŦĦ Єяŋϊε Posted November 30, 2015 Share Posted November 30, 2015 According to snopes, there's no evidence that he actually said it and he's even denied it in more than one interview. They believe that the reason it still comes up is because it fits the attitude If the 80's. And yes, I did know that when I posted it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Easygoing Eyebeast keira Posted November 30, 2015 Share Posted November 30, 2015 (edited) On a serious note, really, developers have gotten away with a lot of wasteful allocation of ram, mostly because we have so much of the damn stuff, it's no big deal. It's an even worse case for disk usage. Nowadays a movie might take up 5-10 GiB, which is no biggie, but that means we look the other way at some ridiculous data waste. If I paste the string "640K ought to be enough for anybody." into MS word and save it as a word document, the resulting file is 11,302 bytes. For a string that is only 36 chars in length! You could fit 312 more "640K ought to be enough for anybody." into that file, and still have a few bytes to spare! it's wasteful as hell. But sylae, you say, surely advances in lossless file compression we've had since the 90s could make that file much smaller? .docx files are glorified zip archives containing XML. It's already been compressed. The actual data stored is even more than 11,302 bytes. One file, styles.xml, is 28 KiB uncompressed! For the default styles that MS word uses, that I didn't touch, that I didn't even use (except for the default Calibri whatever pt). Data that should not be shipped because it's the default, already stored somewhere with the program. But sylae, you say, you're being a pedantic ass. Who cares about a couple kibibytes when disk storage is so cheap and widely available? That bloated Word document isn't going to push me over the edge. Google drive has 240 million active users, according to some article. Given that they throw storage at you like it's free candy (albeit just so they can crawl your files and sell your habits to advertisers) We can assume a lot of those users have buttloads of documents uploaded to "the cloud", whatever that is. We can't know the exact figures without better numbers, but I'd bet google is dumping millions of dollars into disk space for MS Office to waste. Byt sylae, you say, you're still being a pedantic ass. I'm 16 and don't use MS Word except for school stuff. Most of my time is spent gaming, so how much space MS Word uses doesn't really matter for me. Does Crusader Kings II really need 100 MiB save files? No, no it doesn't. The best game in the world, Rocket League, saves replays by essentially copy-pasting the network stream into a file. Is there a better, more efficient way to do that? Yes, yes there is (although a 5 minute match still only adds up to ~182 KiB using this method, which isn't too bad (~621 b/s if my math is right)). There was a great article someone linked, I dunno if it was here or somewhere else, about ~~~back in the day~~~ sending an image to a monitor using the very limited technology of the time. It had a lot of stupid programming tricks that you don't really see today (probably because they were a huge pain). It'd be interesting to see examples of that happening today, but I think programmers have gotten a lot lazier (I know I have, my code is variable spam everywhere). Edited November 30, 2015 by sylae rant, by sylae Slawbug and nikki. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hatchling Cockatrice Randomizer Posted November 30, 2015 Share Posted November 30, 2015 I knew a programmer 25 years ago who tweaked his code down to 12 KB so there would be room to update it in the 16 KB memory he was allocated. Then he found out the hardware group accidentally wired in 64 KB memory chip instead for the product. There no longer is an incentive to do things efficiently unless you are sending data to outer space with a low transmission rate. Back during the tech bubble, too much fiber optic cable was laid for the internet, but now it's getting filled with videos and sending things to the cloud. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Easygoing Eyebeast Dintiradan Posted November 30, 2015 Share Posted November 30, 2015 As a counterpoint to SylaeRant: Yes, it's a bit silly that metadata like styles and fonts are included in Word saves. That said, I'm willing to bet that multiple work years have been saved, both on the end user side and on the tech support side, because you're not required to have the same version of Word installed as the one which created the save file. Efficient disk usage is nice, as is efficient processor usage, but it's not nearly as important as efficient programmer usage and efficient tech support usage. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Magnificent Ornk Aran Posted November 30, 2015 Share Posted November 30, 2015 It's an even worse case for disk usage. Nowadays a movie might take up 5-10 GiB, which is no biggie, but that means we look the other way at some ridiculous data waste. As far as that goes, I guess it's a pretty unavoidable side effect of increasing image definition and framerate. (Same about the docx, where including default style data is good if systems use different defaults, and well worth the ~100kB.) (I think the RAM usage bit is spot on, though. It could probably be way lower if developers were more careful about lazy-loading stuff or unloading it when it was done being used.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Easygoing Eyebeast keira Posted November 30, 2015 Share Posted November 30, 2015 On a serious note, really, developers have gotten away with a lot of wasteful allocation of ram, mostly because we have so much of the damn stuff, it's no big deal. It's an even worse case for disk usage. Nowadays a movie might take up 5-10 GiB, which is no biggie, but that means we look the other way at some ridiculous data waste. If I paste the string "640K ought to be enough for anybody." into MS word and save it as a word document, the resulting file is 11,302 bytes. For a string that is only 36 chars in length! You could fit 312 more "640K ought to be enough for anybody." into that file, and still have a few bytes to spare! it's wasteful as hell. But sylae, you say, surely advances in lossless file compression we've had since the 90s could make that file much smaller? .docx files are glorified zip archives containing XML. It's already been compressed. The actual data stored is even more than 11,302 bytes. One file, styles.xml, is 28 KiB uncompressed! For the default styles that MS word uses, that I didn't touch, that I didn't even use (except for the default Calibri whatever pt). Data that should not be shipped because it's the default, already stored somewhere with the program. But sylae, you say, you're being a pedantic ass. Who cares about a couple kibibytes when disk storage is so cheap and widely available? That bloated Word document isn't going to push me over the edge. Google drive has 240 million active users, according to some article. Given that they throw storage at you like it's free candy (albeit just so they can crawl your files and sell your habits to advertisers) We can assume a lot of those users have buttloads of documents uploaded to "the cloud", whatever that is. We can't know the exact figures without better numbers, but I'd bet google is dumping millions of dollars into disk space for MS Office to waste. Byt sylae, you say, you're still being a pedantic ass. I'm 16 and don't use MS Word except for school stuff. Most of my time is spent gaming, so how much space MS Word uses doesn't really matter for me. Does Crusader Kings II really need 100 MiB save files? No, no it doesn't. The best game in the world, Rocket League, saves replays by essentially copy-pasting the network stream into a file. Is there a better, more efficient way to do that? Yes, yes there is (although a 5 minute match still only adds up to ~182 KiB using this method, which isn't too bad (~621 b/s if my math is right)). There was a great article someone linked, I dunno if it was here or somewhere else, about ~~~back in the day~~~ sending an image to a monitor using the very limited technology of the time. It had a lot of stupid programming tricks that you don't really see today (probably because they were a huge pain). It'd be interesting to see examples of that happening today, but I think programmers have gotten a lot lazier (I know I have, my code is variable spam everywhere). and why the hell is team fortress 2 15.7 GiB??? Are you kidding me? No amount of hats can justify that amount of disk usage! Portal 2 is almost 12 GiB! What is this??? And not to jump on Valve in particular. ARK has __27__ GiB of disk usage. I would love to hear a justification for that. Fallout 4 is massive as well, but at least they have graphics to justify it. but sylae, you pedantic ass, those are all first-person shooters which tend to have high graphical demands. XCOM, a Jeff game with slightly better graphics, uses 18.5 GiB. Dota 2, which is Warcraft III with a facelift, uses 16 GiB. This is just what's on my hard disk right now, I'm not exactly a gamer either. Someone with ***Many Games*** probably has to use a spare hard disk just because people can't be bothered to optimize anything! And it's not just "AAA" games either, I see several "indie"/hipster/whatever games that are MASSIVE as well. nikki. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Unflappable Drayk ĐªгŦĦ Єяŋϊε Posted November 30, 2015 Share Posted November 30, 2015 I remember when my parents upgraded their computer with a 7 gig hard drive to a new desktop with a 70 gig hard drive. The first time I used it I couldn't believe how much memory I had. "What am going to do with all this space!" Mind you, on my old computer I needed to delete things in order to install new stuff on it. I was thrilled to have more space....but wow! 70 gig! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hatchling Cockatrice Randomizer Posted November 30, 2015 Share Posted November 30, 2015 I remember coming back from winter break and being told that a lab computer wouldn't save any more data. They had filled up a 40 MB hard drive and my first job after the vacation was backing up to floppy discs and deleting files to free up space. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Unflappable Drayk Edgwyn Posted December 1, 2015 Share Posted December 1, 2015 My first computer had 64K RAM and two 143K floppy drives and yet it managed to run a GUI word processor that has 90+% of the features that I use in MS Word on a regular basis. I agree with Sylae's rant as to how lazy and bloated current programmers and programmers are able to be, plus the ridiculous feature creep to justify purchase decisions of the latest version of Word (or Excel or Powerpoint, etc) when 99% of the users do not use most of the features in the previous four versions. I keep thinking that Moore's law will stop and people will have to be efficient again, but so far there does not seem to be any reason to be efficient. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Understated Ur-Drakon The Almighty Doer of Stuff Posted December 1, 2015 Share Posted December 1, 2015 I wonder, how much of the non-optimization can be chalked up to efficiency vs. production time? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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