Comment by mlekoszek

Comment by mlekoszek 11 days ago

53 replies

View on Hacker News

"Some might say "just get a better computer". This is why getting a better computer is bad:

1. Affordance: A lot of people, especially from 3rd world countries are very poor and can't afford to buy hardware to run Turbobloat.

2. e-Waste: Producing computer chips is very bad on the environment. If modern software wasn't Turbobloated you would buy new hardware only when the previous hardware broke and wasn't repairable.

3. Not putting up with Turbobloat: Why spend money on another computer if you already have one that works perfectly fine? Just because of someone else's turbobloat? You could buy 1000 cans of Dr. Pepper instead."

Took the words from my mouth. What a great project. Please keep posting your progress.

lukan 11 days ago

"Screen resolutions from 320x200 to 800x600."

Still, higher resolutions were not just invented because of Turbobloat.

Reply View 42 replies
  • lukan 10 days ago

    Important:

    This was just a joke from the site, I actually took serious!

    There is no 800x600 limit.

    Reply View 0 replies
  • plussed_reader 11 days ago

    But also a convenient excuse to sell more ramm and disk space 'for the textures'.

    Reply View 37 replies
    • shermantanktop 11 days ago

      Hard to know how to respond to that. This could be applied to virtually all technology changes that benefit users but also make money for someone else.

      I assume you use a refrigerator and not a hole in the ground with ice. Have you been manipulated into giving money to Big Appliance?

      Reply View 22 replies
      • technothrasher 10 days ago

        Somebody in rural Africa once told me, "one advantage you have living in a colder area is that you don't have to run your fridge for half the year!" I honestly didn't have any good answer for him as to why I do anyway.

        Reply View 7 replies
      • dclowd9901 11 days ago

        I would argue refrigerators provide a lot more utility for most people than high poly counts.

        Reply View 2 replies
    • Delk 10 days ago

      A higher rendering resolution doesn't require higher resolution textures, and a higher source resolution for textures is what would require more storage and more RAM. (I think a higher rendering resolution does require more video RAM though.)

      Of course after some point a higher rendering resolution starts giving diminishing returns if the resolution for the source material isn't also increased.

      Reply View 0 replies
    • Suppafly 11 days ago

      >But also a convenient excuse to sell more ramm and disk space 'for the textures'.

      Except different companies sell different things. This is like the conspiracy that women's pants don't have pockets to sell more purses.

      Reply View 7 replies
      • lukan 11 days ago

        "This is like the conspiracy that women's pants don't have pockets to sell more purses."

        Oh my god, this explains everything!

        (btw. I recently learned, that the 9/11 inside job conspiracy evolved. Nowdays the standard theory is, that there were not even planes in the first place, just bombs and smoke)

        Reply View 6 replies
  • pandemic_region 11 days ago

    Is that a hard wired limit? I know nothing about game engines, so I'm a bit in the dark why it would only support up to that resolution. Is this about optimized code in terms of cpu cache aligned instruction pipelines etc?

    Reply View 2 replies
    • lukan 11 days ago

      "Is this about optimized code in terms of cpu cache aligned instruction pipelines etc?"

      That is what I would assume, but so far I did not found a reason explaining the limit. Might also just be like it, because the author likes it like it.

      Reply View 1 reply
Narishma 11 days ago

They say that but the engine seems to require an OpenGL 4 GPU while the graphics look like something that could be done on a Voodoo card.

Reply View 3 replies
  • lupusreal 10 days ago

    Requires a 15 year old card (so, 2010.) Six years after Half Life 2 but looks like Half Life 1, which shipped with a software renderer (no GPU needed at all!)

    I fear the turbobloat is still with us.

    Reply View 2 replies
    • vanderZwan 10 days ago

      Ok, so one the one hand we have one of the most universally acclaimed PC games in history, with a team of amazing programmers and artists behind it and a 40 million dollar development budget, and which represented the cutting edge of what was possible at the time in terms of squeezing every bit of performance out of a machine. On the other we have a one-person hobbyist project that is trying to make a statement about consumerist expectations for more, more, more.

      If you're sincere about that comparison then I think you're missing the point.

      Being able to run something on fifteen year old machines is still plenty anti-turbobloat. And I suspect the 2010 requirement has more to do with the fact that it's pretty difficult to debug software for 1990s hardware that you don't have (or lack proper emulation for).

      And if you go back far enough one reaches a tipping point where supporting old hardware can get in the way of something running on new hardware, especially if we're talking about games, unless we're really careful about what we're doing and test on real hardware all the time. Not very realistic for a one-person side project.

      Reply View 1 reply
      • lupusreal 10 days ago

        That six year gap between HL2 and 2010 is considerable, so I don't think I'm being terribly unfair. Also, the article invited the Half Life comparison.

        Reply View 0 replies
jameshart 11 days ago

What is ‘turbobloat’?

From context, I interpret it to be ‘graphics tech I don’t like’, but I’m not sure what counts as turbobloat.

Reply View 2 replies
  • taberiand 11 days ago

    The whole post in tongue in cheek, it just means "features the game you're making doesn't need (like modern graphics with advanced shaders and super high resolution requiring the latest graphics cards)".

    If you're making a game that needs those features, obviously you'll need to bloat up. If you're not, maybe this SDK will be enough and be fast and small as well.

    Reply View 0 replies
  • [removed] 11 days ago
    [deleted]
    Reply View 0 replies
speedgoose 10 days ago

Manufacturing and shipping a new computer can be worth it long term. Improvements in performance and energy consumption can offset the environmental impact after some time.

Of course for entertainment it’s difficult to judge, especially when you may have more fun on an old gameboy than a brand new 1000W gaming PC.

Reply View 2 replies
  • vanderZwan 10 days ago

    > after some time.

    This is doing a lot of heavy lifting in this sentence.

    What you're talking about is called the embodied energy of a product[0]. In the case of electronic hardware it is pretty staggeringly high if I'm not mistaken.

    [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embodied_energy

    Reply View 1 reply
    • speedgoose 10 days ago

      Yes it can be. Last time I did the maths for one of my use cases. It was a matter of a few years, when replacing a few old amd64 boxes by a single Mac mini.

      Reply View 0 replies