I remember thinking something similar when I was a kid modding Starcraft. Max levels/ranks in researching was 256 and I always wondered why such a weirdly specific number.
this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2025
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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.
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.
It also has the second best NES soundtrack, after The Guardian Legend.
I've never given TGL a proper listen, though I have the game for NES. Thanks for the recommendation!
That's a super old article as well.
They got rightfully roasted in the comments for not knowing even the most basic things about computing.
Still odd, I very much doubt they use a 8bit variable to set this limit. What would this bring ?
Still odd
Actually, it's even.
Numbers guy here, I can confirm 256 is an evenly specific number, and not an oddly specific number.
Oh you are the numbers guy ? Name every number
0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9
Oh yeah well if you're some sort of numbers guy, answer me this: I think you're name is super cool, and makes me wonder, is there a largest prime you can make listing digits of pi starting from the beginning. There's gotta be infinite right?
nerd
What's app starting from 1 the scrubs
Depends on how they handle groups with 0 members, if they just get deleted once the last person leaves, you shouldn't run into issues
Like memory in bits maybe, so 64 128 256 512 1024 2028
Since people are binary like the great Orange says, they have to use a power of 2?
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