8 Letters

psychokind · Posted: Thu Jun 26, 2008 7:01 pm Post subject: 8 Letters

I'm having a discussion in the StudiVZ-Terranigma-Group (the german facebook) right now about the names of places only having 8 letters. is this just coincidence? does somebody know a name with more than 8 letters?

i'd appreciate useful information.

EverPhoenix · Posted: Fri Jun 27, 2008 6:33 am Post subject:

i think it would have something to do with the memory required to store it. just a guess. i mean terranigma is a huge game, and they didnt use the expansion available for the snes cart. maybe more than 8 characters per place would take up a lot of memory (lots of places, hehe). also explains the misspelling of ayers rock, 'airsrock' in aust.

im sure there is a better explanation, but this is what first comes to mind.

chicken · Posted: Fri Jun 27, 2008 9:12 am Post subject:

yeah, 8 bit - 8 letters... somebody else see any resemblance?

psychokind · Posted: Fri Jun 27, 2008 11:06 am Post subject:

chicken wrote:yeah, 8 bit - 8 letters... somebody else see any resemblance?

oh my god

problem is, why can they use long words in the chatting, and only 8 letters for the names of places?

chicken · Posted: Fri Jun 27, 2008 11:46 am Post subject:

maybe its the wordchain that makes it complicated... the amount of 0s and 1s in a chain reach their max in an 8-letter-word? actually, i dunno, just trying to be a wise guy

i never was into programming that much, but this is kinda interessting... but it would also mean that there must not be any 8-letter-word in the entire SNES game series... t-e-r-r-a-n-i-g-m-a makes 10 letters to me and there is a passage in neo tokyo where you talk to a programmer and he tells you that he works on a new project called "terranigma" so ... well you get my point, dont you?

psychokind · Posted: Fri Jun 27, 2008 1:19 pm Post subject:

chicken wrote:but it would also mean that there must not be any 8-letter-word in the entire SNES game series...

that's why i meant

the names of places

like Storkolm, Liberita, Antiques, Polynese...

Freedan · Posted: Fri Jun 27, 2008 2:48 pm Post subject:

It's not just Terranigma. If I'm not mistaken, most SNES games limit things to 8 letters; one notable example being your character's name in games where you can name yourself. I'm pretty sure it's because of memory restrictions. Data coding often limits names to 8 spaces.

Names, places, character skills, etc. usually have a hard limit of 8 characters. It's still a step up from some NES games that limited it to 4 (the first Final Fantasy comes to mind - you end up with spells like AMUT, AFIR, and HRM3). Though some NES games also allowed 8 characters (Dragon Warrior).