A real technical challenge, the QUOD project is a nod to those games that take up dozens of gigabytes, sometimes without much reason.
Today's video games compete with each other in terms of graphic effects and textures, each more detailed and cumbersome than the last. A high-profile production can easily exceed 100 GB in storage space and, as an example, Call of Duty Black Ops 7, launched last autumn, requires a whopping 116 GB... at launch. Over time, its weight will increase with updates and other additional content. And yet, no, the title of our news item does not refer to a typeface: the game designed and developed by a certain Daivuk does not monopolize 64 MB or even 6.4 MB or 640 KB, but 64 KB!
QUOD is an O.V.N.I. in today's gaming landscape © Daivuk
Called QUOD and available on the itch.io platform, the project is in this sense quite similar to the .kkrieger concept - older players will remember it - published in 2004. The difference is that, at the time, the project had to be squeezed into 96 Kb - at this level, that's a huge difference - and it wasn't a full game, but a technology demo. QUOD, on the other hand, is a real game, loosely based on the famous Quake by John Carmack/id Software, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year. QUOD features three complete levels, a fourth in the form of a single boss arena, four weapons and four enemy types.
In an interesting video lasting almost 30 minutes, Daivuk talks about the creation of the QUOD project and the techniques used to reduce the amount of space occupied to such an extent. We learn, for example, that there is no question of storing the slightest texture as an image file, or the slightest sound effects or music. In fact, Daivuk's technology takes care of recreating everything when the game loads, using the simplest possible data. Another trick is that the 3D models of the various creatures are not complete: Daivuk has only modeled half of them and then uses symmetry to further minimize QUOD's footprint. That said, all these tricks come at a price, and even though QUOD is relatively basic, it still requires a good deal of computing power: Daivuk mentions an Intel Core i5 processor or equivalent, 8 GB RAM and an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770 graphics card or equivalent... you might even call it a monster, given what's displayed on screen.
