In a world increasingly dominated by artificial intelligence, where convenience often trumps creativity, YouTuber DocJade has embarked on a project that embraces complexity for its own sake. His latest endeavor involves running the popular construction and management simulation game, Factorio, not on a conventional hard drive, but on an astonishing 1,000 3.5-inch floppy disks. This whimsical challenge raises the question: is there a certain satisfaction in complicating the straightforward?
The Challenge of Floppy Disks
DocJade’s approach to gaming is anything but ordinary. While the straightforward method would involve creating floppy-sized files to be opened in a virtual machine, he dismisses this as “cheating.” Instead, he opts for a more labor-intensive route, which showcases his commitment to the physical medium. The alternative—using a massive RAID array—would require a staggering investment of over ,000 and present its own logistical challenges, particularly with the limitations of USB devices on Windows systems.
So how does one run a game from floppy disks, given that only one disk can be accessed at a time? The answer lies in the creation of a custom file system, aptly named Fluster, which DocJade developed using the RUST programming language. This innovative system divides each floppy disk into 512-byte blocks, allowing for a total of 2,880 blocks per disk. Although Fluster’s design limits it to approximately 65,000 disks, this still amounts to a generous 90 GB of storage—more than sufficient for the needs of Factorio.
Technical Triumphs
For many modern games, such a method would be a recipe for disaster, as they often rely on seamless texture streaming and quick access to non-contiguous data. However, Factorio is uniquely suited to this challenge, as it loads the majority of its content before even reaching the title screen. This characteristic gives DocJade confidence that his ambitious project will succeed.
Fluster has been fully open-sourced and is available on DocJade’s GitHub, allowing anyone intrigued by this quirky undertaking to explore the intricacies of his file system without needing to reinvent the wheel. While some may view this as an overly complicated venture, it undoubtedly highlights the creativity and ingenuity that can emerge when one chooses to embrace the old-school charm of floppy disks in a digital age.
