[TheZenPsycho]

33k sounds like a lot. I should think a game like this today would be more like 3k, or maybe 10k at most + engine code + content.

Nowadays you see, it's wasteful to write an engine from scratch for a game like this. It was needed then, but it's a solved problem now. If you wrote 33k for a commander keen clone I'd wonder what you were doing.

[jenscow]

In this case, the 33k loc includes the engine. I think that is the point.

[TheZenPsycho]

This is a philosophical problem. What is the difference really between:

1. a prewritten engine, and

2. some hypothetical language

each where you write commander keen with 3k loc. Where the hypothetical language has all the same stuff as the engine, it's just locked away behind a level of abstraction.

if you could write commander keen in 3k of javascript (with the aid of all the stuff that's in a browser) How is that different from writing 3k of C with nothing but this entire commander keen engine already written and ready to go?

What's are we calling an "advance", exactly?

[jenscow]

I do see your point. The advancement is: You don't need to make/test your engine, and we have a lot more graphics cards and platforms, too.