Programming - 256 Byte Games

Programming

256 Byte Games

  Here are some tiny little games I wrote in my spare time for competitions on the internet. What makes them interesting, is that they are only 256 bytes long.

  That's just 256 numbers, or 256 letters, or, for example, the following number of zeros....

0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

  I think you will agree that this is does not constitute a very large program! - Especially in these days of Mega-Downloads. They are presented here for you as a demonstration of the power of machine code over high level languages. I believe that whatever you can code in C, you can code smaller or faster in machine code.

  The programs have been heavily worked upon to squeeze every last ounce of functionality from the code. However, despite the seemingly never ending rounds of optimization, the programming was still an excersise in frustration, with many features having to be dropped for lack of space. For example, just three more free bytes in the invaders program would have allowed some degree of animation of the invaders sprites.

  The programs have benefited from any and all understanding I have of the PC architecture. Most obviously they utilise text mode, which serves its purpose as an early form of hardware graphics acceleration well.

  NOTE:  The programs should all be run from a DOS command line, on a 386 or better processor. If you intend to run the programs from Windows, do so in full screen mode.

  INV  A tiny version of the classic arcade game, 'invaders'.

  BD3  Boulder Dash.

  TET  A miniture version of one of my favourites: TETRIS.

A page from James David Chapman's website. Located at: http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~jchap/ Site mirrored here at: http://www.j.chap.btinternet.co.uk
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