Demo (computer programming): Difference between revisions

Revision as of 20:56, 20 April 2006

Revision as of 20:58, 20 April 2006

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Small file sizes have been an integral feature of certain types of demos from the very beginning, when [[Software cracking|software crackers]] needed to squeeze a crack intro into a very small leftover area of a [[floppy disk]] or [[Random Access Memory|RAM]]. It was also important for [[Bulletin Board System|BBS]] advertisement intros to be relatively small, since they were typically included in every file downloaded from the BBS.

Sometimes even the platform itself dictated some size restrictions: the size of the [[boot blocksector]] of a [[floppy disk]] (generally 512 to 4096 bytes) was also the maximum size of a boot block demo. The common 64-kilobyte size limit for intros, on the other hand, was the segment size in the 16-bit X86 architecture and also the maximum size of an MS-DOS-based .COM executable.

In later times, the practical need for very small demos had diminished, but the willingness to compete in squeezing much into little space had not disappeared. It was therefore necessary to introduce artificial size restrictions in order to challenge the authors. In modern demoscene events, there are ''demo competitions'' with relatively loose size restrictions, and ''intro competitions'' with quite strict limits of 64 kilobytes or less.