Re: [stella] Gameline

Subject: Re: [stella] Gameline
From: "Glenn Saunders" <cybpunks@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 22 Aug 2001 14:50:06 -0700
That's true. I've been wondering lately if the difference in price between the
Cuttle and a SuperCharger was worth it... what do you guys think? Is there any
really great difference, besides the > 6k cartridge loading (and, of course,
the support of Chad's wonderful work)?

That really depends on whether you want to run/develop larger games or not.


The biggest advantage that I can see, when running Starpath games, is if you wanted to write a multiload game that progressed in a nonlinear fashion, you could, because Chad's modified Supercharger ROM shows the requested load number on the screen.

If I were writing a game that big, I would want to go one step further and hook up a null-modem cable through port two and somehow get the PC to respond to signals automatically from the VCS when a new load is requested. That would result in the first ever "hands free" file-server for the VCS, like the way modular floppy disk games used to work on 8-bit home computers (ala the floppy version of games like Lode Runner that loaded levels from disk when needed). If someone didn't have the cable, they could still manually pick the right load so it would at least be backwards compatible as long as you had a Cuttle Cart.

It would probably be possible also to create a switcher device for port 2 that would allow a joystick to stay plugged in.

That's what I'd really like to see. Although I'm not qualified to make something like that, if I finish Death Race, my second game would most likely be an attempt at a levels-based multiloader game.



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