RE: Space Wars Demo

I was thinking along the lines of a multi-slot system.

The biggest hurdle I see with this is how to handle the vector ROMs
I can come up with 4 possible solutions

1) 2 cartridges for each game. One with the game code and the other for the
vector ROMs

2) I can build a universal vector ROM that contains things that would be
used by most games (i.e.- characters), and all cartridge games would use
that ROM. This would mean that all other shapes would have to be copied to,
or built in, vector RAM. (that's how I'm doing space wars, the ship shapes
are in normal program ROM space)

3) Run a cable from the VROM socket to the cartridge so the vector generator
would be accessing the vector ROMs on the cartridge. (this might not work
because of delay)

4) Have a static RAM chip in the daughter card and copy the appropriate data
down when the game is selected. There's a couple ways to do this, but the
easiest would be for each game to copy the data down during initialization.
This option also might be cool because it would allow shapes to be altered
in what was previously only static data.

If we could get option 4 to work, we could do a hybrid between 2 and 4 by
having 2 memory locations that toggle either the universal VROM or a VRAM
which the game would be responsible to populate.

-jeff

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I've been thinking something like a cartridge system with multiple slots for
several games onboard at once. Sort of like an "N-slot" NeoGeo for
SpaceDuel where "N" is something like 8 or so. I'm also thinking something
like 72pin SIMM sockets for the "carts". Relatively cheap, small, and I can
get them around here easily from surplus from the motherboard
manufacturers... We want to have the ability for each cart to do something
"special" if so-desired. Maybe tap into the audio section so a cart could
include a new sound chip or something for more variety.

In order to foster a more prolific developer community we'll need to make a
system that will allow authors to *sell* software though and not worry too
much about the EPROMs just getting passed around. Not everyone will want to
write a game for several months and just give it away. Most of us here
would probably be happy to pay for a new game, but I'm not so sure about
everyone else...
Received on Sat Oct 30 13:34:04 1999