oddly specific

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Shout out to Castlevania II, where you can hold anywhere from 0 to 256 laurels. Yes, you read that right -- 256, not 255. I inspected RAM to double check. It's a 16-bit word on an 8-bit system with a maximum value of 0x100. They could have used 8 bits instead of 16. But no, they really did choose this arbitrary number.
- "I inspected RAM to double check."
  That's an unhinged level of commitment. Respect — I dig it
- I hate this. I love this.
  If I ever make a game I might put stuff like this in it.
  
  Having made a few games back in the day, this isn't something you add on purpose, this is something that you screwed up, are going to "fix later", then realize it's too much hassle to rewrite 45% of your code and you just raise the minimum spec requirements a bit to compensate.
- Maybe they keep some other data in the same space using bitmask?
  
  plausible, but my experience from dissecting these kinds of games is that they tend not to be as space efficient as you'd think they could be if they were the kaze emanuar type. The fact that they opted to have 257 distinct values for the laurels suggests to me that they weren't prioritizing space efficiency.
  My best (wildly speculative) guess is that a designer, knowing 256 is a common limit, wasn't thinking carefully and said the maximum value should be 256 (instead of 255), and then an overly pedantic coder implemented this to the letter while rolling their eyes.
  
  Currently in the industry - it's exactly this. It's a communication issue between the programming team and other teams, where designers freely speak for design, artists freely speak for art, etc. but it's much harder for programmers to speak for implementation since it's usually in reference to somebody else's work, and when designers get offended or defensive or dismissive of the non-designer requesting 256 be changed to 255, then it stops being worth it.
  For example, we made an absolutely mint UI backend, it was data driven with editors so anyone could whip up a new UI for the next feature without needing programmers. The design team were like "damn, I hear how complicated this thing was to build, so let's make the programmers lives easier by not using it and only asking for simple bespoke stuff". Telling them "the investment has already been paid for so please use it" was tantamount to telling them how to do their job while being ungrateful they had considered us, furthering the communication breakdown.
  Yes I'm bitter and tired. It's easier to use a short for 256 instead of arguing to have my opinion considered
  
  Even if true, 256 would be a waste of the range. 255 would make sense if trying to stay in one byte, using a whole different data type to get one extra bit just to hold 256 instead of saying "screw it, let's go to 511" even while using other bits.
  It's just a very weird thing to do to pick 256 as a value limit back in those days (also oddly specific now, but for different reasons)
- It also has the second best NES soundtrack, after The Guardian Legend.
  
  In the top ten, with Blaster Master, and Batman.
  
  I've never given TGL a proper listen, though I have the game for NES. Thanks for the recommendation!
- Read it in the (old) avgn voice...
- how can you hold 0 laurels? that's different from not having laurels?
  
  the number of laurels in your inventory is stored as an integer from 0 to 256.

186 comments