BTW: I wasn't trying to critisize the Cuttle Cart in any way.
In fact I'm very happy that it can easily be rendered unusable
by pure software manipulation.
You should be happy about that too, since I think you built
it for developers or for people wanting to play games that
aren't for sale anymore. But Homebrews are, so it's good
to be able to give our games a little protection against piracy.
Well, I also built it as a means to allow people to distribute new games
cheaply, without the hassles or expense of making carts.
I think relying on the state the carry bit comes up in is a little risky
myself. You don't know how much hardware will have a problem running it,
both now and in the future. (Like the 7800 BIOS for example.) But
obviously it's your call. I think by putting such a mechanism in place,
you're just creating another cart that will annoy people in the
future. "Oh, don't forget to support this mode for that silly Gunfight
game. What was he thinking?" Or, "Oh yea, Gunfight won't work on that new
portably 2600, something strange about that cart." But it's your game, so
you can do what you like.
I think what others have said regarding copy protection already is
correct. There's nothing you can do to stop it, other than complaining to
the people who do it. Most of the people who would buy your game in
cartridge format will do so because they want to support homebrew games,
and this includes the majority of the Cuttle Cart owners. The casual fans
will just use your ROM in an emulator anyway. Try offering the ROM in
Cuttle Cart compatible format for whatever royalty you ask from Hozer. I
believe you would get people willing to pay it.
As for how it works on the Cuttle Cart, I'm not concerned. If you wish to
disable it there, that's fine with me. There are other methods you could
use for that purpose as well, as the Cuttle Cart starts a game in a known
state to be compatible with the Supercharger. You could look for these
patterns and go to town. Worst it would do for me is generate a few emails
saying Gunfight doesn't work on the Cuttle Cart, to which I simply answer -
Yes, the author intentionally disabled it from working.
Chad
============================================
Chad Schell
gamer@xxxxxxxxxxx
Like the Atari 2600? Check out the Cuttle Cart.
http://www.schells.com/cuttlecart.shtml
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