Why is 255 the magic number?

[backguard]

??????

[modest9797]

Could you explain a little more?

[Amos]

Because it's the largest number that can be stored in a single byte.

[udisi]

Because it's the largest number that can be stored in a single byte.

we have a winner.

[Flack]

In base 2, 255 = 11111111.

Per Wikipedia: This number occurs especially frequently in video games when a small number is needed, such as in the original The Legend of Zelda for the Nintendo Entertainment System where the maximum number of Rupees (the currency of the game) is 255. In Metroid Prime, for the Nintendo Gamecube, 255 is the maximum number of missiles Samus Aran can hold. In the Madden NFL series, the maximum points you can score is 255. If more points are scored, the game score remains at 255 regardless. In Starcraft, the maximum number of kills shown for a unit is 255. In Square Enix's Final Fantasy series, it is often the maximum value for any given stat. In Pac-Man, the highest level you can reach is 255, The game glitches from that point on. In World of Warcraft although the game level cap is only 70, the engine supports up to 255. The usage of 8 bits for storage in older videogames has had the consequence of it appearing as a hard limit in many videogames. It was often used for numbers where casual gameplay would not cause anyone to exceed the number. However in most situations it is reachable given enough time. This can cause many other peculiarities similar to the above listed to appear when the number wraps back to 0.

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[blue lander]

255 is the largest number you can put in a single byte unless you're using two's compliments to represent negatives. In that case, 11111111 actually is -1 and the largest number you can have is 127 which is 01111111.

[majinbuu]

Like the other guys said, a single byte can hold 256 values, from 0 to 255. Since a byte equals 8 bits, this works particularly well on 8 bit machines.

Visually: A byte looks like this xxxxxxxx, where x is a 0 or a 1 and each x represents 1 bit. So you can have 01010101, 11111111, 00110011 and so on. Doing the math, since each bit can be in one of two states, and there are 8 of them, 2^8=256.

I hope that made sense

Sam

[acem77]

dont forget hexadecimal ff=255
you will see hex used in many cheat deviced aka action replay, cheats ending in 63hex = 99 dec for 99 lives or ff used for maxed life.

In mathematics and computer science, hexadecimal (also base-16, hexa, or hex) is a numeral system with a radix, or base, of 16. It uses sixteen distinct symbols, most often the symbols 0–9 to represent values zero to nine, and A, B, C, D, E, F (or a through f) to represent values ten to fifteen.

Its primary use is as a human friendly representation of binary coded values, so it is often used in digital electronics and computer engineering. Since each hexadecimal digit represents four binary digits (bits)—also called a nibble—it is a compact and easily translated shorthand to express values in base two.