Why does EA consistently limit yards/score
It doesn't matter if it's rushing yards, passing yards, or receiving yards; in every Madden to come out in the last 10 years (or longer) the limit, per game, has been 1023 yards per category. Now, I don't know about the rest of you, but for me I do that before half-time with my Franchise HB; crushing records while playing 15 minute quarters. If the AI Quarterback would pass to me, my recieving yards would be maxed as well, but that's another story. Also, the max score in Madden is 256. Why? Why have a max score? Why have a max amount of yards you can gain? And if there is a valid reason, why can't it be higher than 1023/256. My brother once had a crash occur on his game where he had scored so many touchdowns past the 256 limit that the game reset his score to 0 and it wouldn't increase any further past that point (I watched him score another 10 touchdowns, the number never increased) and he lost, ruining a 6 year win streak (preseasons, regular seasons, playoffs, pro-bowls, and superbowls were undefeated for 6 years straight). So, to sum up my questions: Limits on yards/points gained- why are the numbers so low?
Now that I have finished the season, I just noticed something: my seasonal yards are maxed at 8191, even though I have played 16 games, racking up 1023 rushing every game, which mathmatics tells us that would be 16368. Apparently this maximum limit is everywhere, because even my "career" yards are maxed out at 16366, yet I maxed my yards in every game. EA, please stop with this horrible record keeping, and stop limiting our progress as players in our respective franchises.
The answer to this is a lot more practical in nature than it might seem. It's not a limit imposed by the creators at EA, but one that occurs as a result of the fact that the score is saved in an 8-bit number binary number. This implies that there are 2^8 possibilities of numbers that can be constructed out of an 8 bit number (0-255 in base ten). That's why the score stops at 255. The yardage stops at 1023 for a similar reason. 2^10 is 1024, which implies 0-1023 in base ten. The reason the game is written this way is that, in data storage, 8 "bits" is one "byte." This means that each score only takes one byte of data to store, and the developers probably didn't think it was really necessary to waste a whole extra byte, just to keep the score going past 256, which is quite a ridiculous score.
