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DOS Game - Galactic Conquest v9.00 test ( off topic) (Announce)

posted by Arjay, 11.12.2009, 17:27

> (Of course compressing all data together probably makes an actual
> difference.)
 Correct. e.g. In the case of actual disk storage you have default allocation (minimum) units, e.g. 512 bytes in size. Thus if you have a file of 10 bytes it will from the file systems perspective take up 512 bytes of space [if 512 bytes is the default allocation unit]. So if in this case you have 2 files of 10 bytes each then separately they are taking up 1024 bytes (1k) of space.
If you combine them together they instead only take up 512 bytes; which is still enough space for several DOS games certainly even large 256 sized ones.
This doesn't matter so much on older systems but if you get really low-level it still matters a lot and it matters a lot if your still using 1980's kit.

> Site seems to be down / replaced by vicious ads.
It is a great shame 256b.com is down - I'll remove it from my homepage :-(

> I'm not that long into DOS fandom. That's either sad or good ;-)
 Well it either means you are several years younger than many of us or you weren't as sad as we were in getting involved with computers when things like playing computer games were very unfashionable. Indeed I pointed out to someone the other day that the concepts of storing/ripping music electronically are not exactly new even if most people think they are... Still I digress/get off my lawn and all that!

> But fitting something into 256 bytes is an interesting task.
> See MBR and boot sectors for actual applications of that.
 Oh great fun, particularly when in a competition you quickly learn that the target ends up being a LOT lower, like about a quarter of 256 bytes (or less) well that is the target if you want to stand a chance of winning that is.

Indeed in the dark days before most of the world even discovered the Internet some weird folks even having discussions about having boot sector demo competitions. I mean who are those type of people.... Oh never mind...

> Spending some more bytes than necessary there isn't going to kill the system
 Depends on the system.... :)

> but I'd rather keep the resident parts small.
 Indeed. These days I like the whole system to myself. So remind me what is a TSR again? heh

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