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In a way, the limitations of those machines made the data representation so cool. These days everything is a flat raster buffer with every pixel being independ
by qsort 4y ago
In a way, the limitations of those machines made the data representation so cool.
These days everything is a flat raster buffer with every pixel being independently settable. It's incomparably more convenient but also more "boring".
Same thing with music and audio, we have enough RAM to waste to let Nyquist-Shannon take care of the problem.
I guess the lesson is boring = better?
- henriquecm8 4y agoI think at the time they were considered boring too, but now they are considered novel/unusual, which is more fun.
- Aardwolf 4y agoYes, imposing restrictions can result in awesome and creative art! E.g. using a small (e.g. 16-color) color palette for pixel art, making art using semi-graphics block characters, music with mod trackers, ...
- Cthulhu_ 4y agoI've had a lot of fun fiddling with pico-8 (https://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php https://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php), a virtual console with its own code, graphics and music/sound editor - heavily restricted (in terms of e.g. amount of code and graphics, it's designed so that games fit in an image file), maybe a bit more advanced than a Gameboy. But being restricted like that made it feel more free. Don't need to think about function or variable names too much since only two dozen characters fit on screen. Graphics, just click some pixels until it looks like something. But it's powerful enough to make games like Celeste (https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=2145 https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=2145) or even 3D games and demoscene things.
- hackernewds 4y ago> we have enough RAM to waste to let Nyquist-Shannon take care of the problem. sorry what is this?
- gostsamo 4y agoNyquist theorem Shannon's theorem -> noise sampling + information encoding. Overall if I understand correctly GP says that audio is recorded without any smart techniques besides the basics. Implies that this is bad because memory resources are wasted. Does not discuss how smart techniques might waste computational resources.
- qsort 4y agoI'm saying something else entirely. Back in the day, home computers did not have enough resources to play music like modern computers do. They instead relied on custom hardware to make noise. An example is the MOS SID 6581, which was on the original C64. Once you have enough resources this is unnecessary, because you can just make a giant sample of the entire song you want to play, and that's going to sound at least as good as analog recording (and possibly better, depending on what technology you are using to make the analog record).
- spc476 4y agoThe Tandy Color Computer did not have such a chip, but it did have a 6-bit DAC (Digital/Analog Converter) that could be used to both sample and play back sound. Yes, it was CPU intensive, but you could get some pretty impressive results (I recall sampling songs, and even playing music with 4-part harmony).
- the_af 4y agoWatching The 8-Bit Guy's youtube channel I'm convinced the Tandy was probably the best DOS computer ever. A shame I never owned one; I went from an XT clone with monochrome graphics (the Hercules card had a charm of its own!) to an AT with a VGA videocard. I understand that the EGA emulation the VGA was capable of was similar but not exactly the same as Tandy color graphics.
- spc476 4y agoIt may seem weird, but the Tandy 1000 copied the graphics modes from the IBM PCjr, not the EGA standard. That included a 320x200 16 color mode, as well as 640x200 four color mode that the original CGA couldn't do (because it lacked memory). The IBM PCjr also included a sound synthesis chip (don't recall which one off the top of my head) that may also have been included in the Tandy 1000 (don't know, had the PCjr, not the Tandy).
- JohnFen 4y agoArt is creativity expressed under constraints.