You can play it in your browser here.

  • Lodra
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    7 months ago

    Ok that is an impressive number but it feels a little disingenuous. You still need to something on your machine to interpret the js code, right? Is that included in the 13k? How much storage does that take?

    EDIT: Well this is by far my most negative comment here. That’s almost entertaining. I’ll share a few more of my thoughts here rather than respond to individual comments. Maybe the context will make this more palatable.

    First, I expect that the js language is doing most of the work here. Which makes sense. But having a browser installed as a prerequisite is an enormous dependency.

    How would that stack up against other languages? Can I build a 13k binary using C? How about C#? I think Go is maybe the most interesting because the binary is entirely self contained by default. No external dependencies aside from the OS. I don’t think this or a similar game is viable with only 13k. Which is fine! I just that I find 13k is disingenuous.

    That brings up the question of whether or not we should include the OS in the storage size. I would think not. But that’s only because the OS is (usually) the least common denominator when we talk about developing software. It’s generally assumed by default. But if someone wants to compare with a game that interfaces with hardware directly, then yes, we should absolutely include the OS as a dependency.

    Now that I’m giving this more thought, I suspect that the devs wrote 13k of code + assets to make the game functional. Still impressive. But the more I think about this, the more meaningless that number gets. Does pre or post compiling matter more? What if we compress the thing as tarball? There’s just too many ways to manipulate this number.

    • Godort@lemm.ee
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      7 months ago

      Should the machine’s operating system be calculated in the storage too?

      • Lodra
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        7 months ago

        Potentially. See my edit shove

      • just another dev@lemmy.my-box.dev
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        7 months ago

        Sure, but important to put into perspective when you compare it to .kkrieger and other old school demos - the browser does a lot of heavy lifting here.

        Having said that, this is a majorly impressive feat. I love it that this is still a thing.

          • Saik0@lemmy.saik0.com
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            7 months ago

            in the case of kkreiger, absolutely… Uninstall the wrong font in windows and you actually break kkreiger. So it’s not even fully self-contained and relies on static windows assets to function.

            • I Cast Fist
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              7 months ago

              It also needs DirectX, which is another 70-100MB depending on the version.

          • just another dev@lemmy.my-box.dev
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            7 months ago

            No argument here, it clearly does. But I don’t know of any bootloader games that have a comparable level of features. I suppose with DOS games and demos the amount of native code vs OS libraries would be almost negligible as well.

    • I Cast Fist
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      7 months ago

      Depending on how “pure” you want to get, you’d have to look into games that play from boot, so not unlike stuff you’d get from the SNES and older consoles.

      • Lodra
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        7 months ago

        deleted by creator

      • Lodra
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        7 months ago

        Thanks for pointing this out. I keep looking back at this thread as new people grow annoyed at my comments 🙂.

        At the time I writing this, there are currently 15 upvotes and 28 downvotes on my original comment. That’s clearly negative and that’s ok. But that also makes it the third most voted on and the 4th most upvoted comment in the entire post. Seems there’s a very split opinion in the community here. This is now officially entertaining!

      • Lodra
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        7 months ago

        Thanks for the happy comment. But it’s all good. People are allowed to not like my comment. I’m not exactly swayed by the downvotes but maybe I could be just wrong here.