Browse the web like its 1999

Re:Browse the web like its 1999 by marginalia_nu on Thursday December 30, 2021 @05:40AM (#29735562)

It's basically Parkinson's law. If someone is given NASA's resources to move a piece of paper across the room, they will find a way to use a space shuttle to do it and call you oldfashioned for doing it by hand.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Browse the web like its 1999 by majani on Thursday December 30, 2021 @09:09AM (#29736797)

Yup. This is also happening in gaming, where 2D pixel art platformers are now above 1GB in size

https://store.steampowered.com/app/504230/Celeste/

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/castlevania-grimoire-of-souls/...

When the hardware was restricted, such games used to be squeezed onto a 48MB SNES cartridge

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Browse the web like its 1999 by dmitriid on Thursday December 30, 2021 @09:18AM (#29736864)

It's a bit unfair because modern pixel art games are literally nothing like old pixel art games.

For one, the resolution has gone from 400x300 to ~3000x1500 and more, and the number of color went from 8 to millions. All those pixels in high-res pixel art have to still be stored somewhere.

Even though I still agree that some games do not deserve to be as fat as they are.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Browse the web like its 1999 by Minor49er on Thursday December 30, 2021 @11:27AM (#29738044)

Not to mention the other liberties taken with modern pixel games, like non-pixelated particles and effects, character portraits, etc. These modern games don't look retro so much as they look simplified

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Browse the web like its 1999 by iamstupidsimple on Thursday December 30, 2021 @11:02AM (#29737802)

At the same time, we're talking about bitmaps here, not 4K textures.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Browse the web like its 1999 by thejohnconway on Thursday December 30, 2021 @01:17PM (#29739499)

4K textures are bitmaps aren’t they?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Browse the web like its 1999 by jcelerier on Thursday December 30, 2021 @11:55AM (#29738352)

The entire Chrono Trigger SNES rom fits in a 1024x1024 PNG image though

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Browse the web like its 1999 by dmitriid on Thursday December 30, 2021 @04:57PM (#29741961)

It was also 256×224 resolution, 8 bpp colors, max 128 sprites at max 64x64 resolution. And 8-bit music with 8 voices.

Whereas just the light texture for Celeste's dynamic lighting is bigger than the entire Chrono Trigger ROM :) https://medium.com/@NoelFB/remaking-celestes-lighting-3478d6...

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Browse the web like its 1999 by tokai on Thursday December 30, 2021 @09:21AM (#29736886)

I don't see that as a good equivalent. Highres art assets takes up space, there's no beating that. Old snes games and modern 2d'ers are not on the same lvl regarding fidelity.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Browse the web like its 1999 by philistine on Thursday December 30, 2021 @05:26PM (#29742267)

Your two examples are horrible examples. Celeste is truly a pixel game. It uses pixels as an art style, but spending any time with the game reveals its complexity.

- The resolution of the game is detached from the pixels, allowing them to be squished and squashed. - While it looks like they’re reusing assets, they really aren’t that much. A ton of areas have unique pixel tiles. - The code is complicated and complex; the physics and control are astoundingly advanced. - It has beautiful high resolution drawings of characters and cutscenes. - The music and sound is full fidelity. - Celeste is running on Unity, which is probably the biggest reason for its large size.

That Castlevania game has a 3D main character, with Retina quality textures. Since it’s made for Apple Arcade, it has to support a 4K resolution for Apple TV, meaning all the game’s assets have to look reasonable on a screen at that resolution. The main character alone must weigh a couple megabytes.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Browse the web like its 1999 by AnIdiotOnTheNet on Thursday December 30, 2021 @10:03AM (#29737238)

48MB? That's ridiculous for an SNES cart. Even at 48Mb that's the size of the largest SNES cart IIRC.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Browse the web like its 1999 by majani on Thursday December 30, 2021 @03:24PM (#29741016)

Yes, only a few super ambitious games hit the 48MB max allowed. Most SNES games were under 10MB

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Browse the web like its 1999 by SilasX on Thursday December 30, 2021 @10:22AM (#29737413)

Yep. Ticket to Ride is a board game and its video game version on Steam is hundreds of megabytes, yet all it has is 2D images with some scaling and translation effects.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Browse the web like its 1999 by vikingerik on Thursday December 30, 2021 @04:38PM (#29741755)

It also has music. I'm not sure how much, but that could account for a couple hundred megabytes if it's many tracks at a fairly high bit rate.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Browse the web like its 1999 by SilasX on Thursday December 30, 2021 @05:49PM (#29742492)

Good point, but it has very little of that as well. Some victory/loss event music and sound effects, and a few short musical tracks.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Browse the web like its 1999 by kingcharles on Wednesday January 05, 2022 @03:15PM (#29814314)

That's actually 48Megabits, not Megabytes, so it's 1/8th, so only 6MB.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Browse the web like its 1999 by vaylian on Thursday December 30, 2021 @10:42AM (#29737614)

I'd like to argue that we also have Jevon's paradox at work here, which was discussed recently on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29720260

Basically, more resources mean that people will use more of these resources. And therefore any optimizations that go resource effectiveness (in this case browser efficiency) will be negated.

[ Parent | on HN ]