To achieve QUOD’s remarkably small footprint, the developer had to engineer an entirely new programming language.
Developer daivuk recently unveiled QUOD, a project that might have been dismissed as just another Quake-inspired “boomer shooter” if not for its impressive technical foundation.
Despite being only 64 kilobytes in size, QUOD delivers a complete 3D gaming experience. The project features three distinct levels, a climactic boss encounter, four unique enemy types, an arsenal of four weapons, and various power-ups.
According to daivuk, the decision to build a custom virtual machine and a bespoke programming language was driven specifically by the need to minimize file size.
QUOD is entirely self-contained and requires no external assets. Within the 64KB limit, the developer managed to pack all necessary textures, audio, music, level geometry, animations, models, and core logic.
Interestingly, the system requirements specify 8GB of RAM. This high overhead is due to the fact that many assets are procedurally generated on the fly and then stored in system memory during execution.
Source: iXBT.games