Can you build a recognizable World Map in under 500 bytes?
a day ago
- #JS1k competition
- #compression optimization
- #ASCII world map
- The author built a JS1k competition entry years ago: a world map using ASCII characters, aiming for under 1KB.
- They later tried using AI (Codex) to reduce size further; AI initially suggested SVG but it failed due to complexity, leading back to ASCII format.
- Optimizations included removing water dots, cropping margins, and using land-only characters, which improved compression due to repeated runs.
- The final compressed map data was 445 bytes, with the HTML under 1KB, highlighting the importance of compression-friendly representation.
- The author challenges others to beat this with different approaches or create a more realistic 1KB version.