microcat - The ultimative ARM based handheld game console

[Dream of Omnimaga]

I see now. Will Claw support be preserved?

[adekto]

I see now. Will Claw support be preserved?

for the moment yes claw will be preserved with a bit adjustments since the memory format change

this has been a though one to sudenly drop a feature but it seems to be an improvment overal

[DarkestEx]

I think we will either go back to the old SD card way or have flash as modules so that it can be replaced or upgraded. Like having a high speed board to board interconnect and having another PCB stacked (we have the space) and the flash chip(s) soldered on that. Then the flash could be replaced or upgraded by buying a new module (which would be reasonably cheap).

[DarkestEx]

Please vote!
It's very, very important for the future of the microcat!

[Dream of Omnimaga]

I voted. (first option)

While I would be ok if you were forced to switch to option 2, 16 MB of RAM means that we will only be able to have about 16 games at a time on the Microcat, which won't be convenient. Option 3 would be an alternative, but the price would get a bit too high I think and I'm unsure if I am a fan of having to buy upgrades to get more memory.

[DarkestEx]

I voted. (first option)

While I would be ok if you were forced to switch to option 2, 16 MB of RAM means that we will only be able to have about 16 games at a time on the Microcat, which won't be convenient. Option 3 would be an alternative, but the price would get a bit too high I think and I'm unsure if I am a fan of having to buy upgrades to get more memory.

Erm its 16 MB flash. And no we aren't forced to use it if people say the old approach was better and they don't care that much about C support. I just found a new, fourth solution.
Anyways to your question, no, games have different sizes. If your games tend to be 1MB in size each, then yes, you can only fit 16 of them unless you upgrade to 32 MB.
But I doubt any game will reach more than 512KB so you can fit about 32 by default or 64 when upgraded.

[Dream of Omnimaga]

Oh right, my bad. Flash I mean. And yeah I meant even if it would have been the final decision I would have been ok with it. I prefer option 1, though.

As for game size I was taking in account moderately sized games with a significant OST (about 7 minutes of music each in average)

[DarkestEx]

Oh right, my bad. Flash I mean. And yeah I meant even if it would have been the final decision I would have been ok with it. I prefer option 1, though.

As for game size I was taking in account moderately sized games with a significant OST (about 7 minutes of music each in average)

Ah I see. Well that is why I prefer Claw as it has no limits for music or game code at all. And SD cards of up to 32GB allow for a lot of games.

[semiprocoder]

I'm confused about the fourth option. What do you mean? Is it allowing both sd and flash, because I'm confused. If the fourth option weren't there, I would probably go with flash, due to c support, but why doesn't the sd card support c as much?

[DarkestEx]

I'm confused about the fourth option. What do you mean? Is it allowing both sd and flash, because I'm confused. If the fourth option weren't there, I would probably go with flash, due to c support, but why doesn't the sd card support c as much?

The console would be entirely different in options 2-4. Option 4 is just a mix of option 2 and 3 that is cheaper overall.

[DarkestEx]

So if official!
We will be keeping the cheaper, SD based solution as it really was a lot better that the flash based one.
C games will be possible but restricted to a maximum size of 52KB.

[Dream of Omnimaga]

I like the idea. While this might bee a bit more constraining for C games, keeep in mind that 52 KB includes the code, not the audio nor the sprite data. I hope to see Microcat come to fruition at one point.

[novenary]

Audio can be partially buffered into memory but the sprites need to be kept in ram for performance. You don't need to load all the sprites at once though.

[DarkestEx]

Audio can be partially buffered into memory but the sprites need to be kept in ram for performance. You don't need to load all the sprites at once though.

Yes we planned it exactly like this.

[Dream of Omnimaga]

Audio can be partially buffered into memory but the sprites need to be kept in ram for performance. You don't need to load all the sprites at once though.

Yeah that was my guess for sprites in particular. For audio it's best to buffer it, else every game OST will be like Hong Kong 97.

For sprites, if memory is really a serious concern, people can simply create multiple sprite sheets and make sure that sprites for walls and floor have the same layout for each set, then simply switch sprite sheet when switching dungeons. That way they could even re-use the same dungeon multiple times with different sprite sheets.

That's of course if sprite sheets ever gets supported (I think it might be better than having 120 small 8x8 images, because loading 120 images one by one into memory would be tedious x.x