It means that games download fast and don't need a separate thumbnail. It's the most strenuous limitation but it makes sense in terms of being able to host content cheaply.
I totally agree. The vendors that made stuff like that later made memory expansions for that exact reason. Even great embedded demos like QNX came on a floppy (1+MB). My 28.8kbps connection handled that download fine. Plus, SymbOS already showed us how much more interesting things get with more memory/storage:
The unexpanded ZX81 had 1kB of RAM, of which 672 bytes were usable (and you had to fit your video framebuffer and program storage in there; no ROM cartridges here!).
It doesn't need to do that, though. It's an interesting set of visual limitations, but the size limit is an arbitrary pain in the ass if your program gets too big. Nobody's hosting is going to break at 256kb.
I agree. Those limits including the 32k code limit really focus what to aim for. Google online game editors and there's plenty with few limits and ... No one is using them. To
me it's kind of one of the reasons minecraft has done so well. The limit style frees people from feeling like they need mad skillz
Also note pico-8 limits the number of instructions executed per frame. So a faster CPU will not increase what you can do. The goal is to make sure all games run even on the least powered hardware.
You certainly make a good point. There aren't really any real constraints that make the size so small.
At the same time, I feel the size limit is intended to have the same spirit as the audiovisual ones. Or, if one really wanted the PICO-8's features, but with more space, she could easily recreate the same functionality with another game framework pretty quickly. Perhaps it's almost like a tribute to stuff seen in the C64 demoscene.
Oh for sure it's about "staying on theme" but it's arbitrary. Based on some of the amazing stuff people are doing with Pico-8 it seems reasonable that more space could make it even more interesting. The fact that processing speed isn't a limitation reveals that even such a truncated screen can communicate beautiful things.
As a programmer who's not good at compressing stuff, it would be annoying to have to spend time bashing code to fit an arbitrary limit.
