Content deleted Content added
mNo edit summary |
|||
Line 21:
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 block]] of a [[floppy disk]] (generally 1024 to 4096 bytes) or in [[DOS]], the 64KB limit of a segment would also be the upper limit for the size of a boot block demo.
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.
| |||