>But I think we might all agree that the IMPORTANT thing is the gameplay and
>the person who will be experiencing it. From this pov, IMHO, there's no
>comparison. Who wants to wait for a multiload game? Or even a single load
>game, if they have a choice?
Most people with Superchargers and SC Frogger never look at a PB Frogger
again. It works with Dragonstomper, though it is a bit "on rails". Since
the proposed game is not, maybe the Supercharger wouldn't be such a good
idea because the player would have to rewind the tape and/or muck about
with the CD player constantly.
A game that might be better suited for the Supercharger would be the Space
Taxi game I talked about in an earlier post that went to the poster instead
of the list. (FYI, it was implying that Troutman's rescue game has become
slightly similar to Space Taxi in that you can land on the guys and crush
them).
You may be saying, Space Taxi is an action game! Certainly it's LESS suited
for the Supercharger than an RPG. Well, you would think so, but the beauty
of using different loads for different sections is that you can put more
than just another 2K of level data and some new enemy graphics in there.
You can make phases of a game completely different, sacrificing code not
needed for one level to make room for new features in another. This
applies to RPGs as well.
Suppose you want a level where instead of gravity, there's a black hole
you're getting sucked into, another level where little artillery cannons
are shooting at you, and another level where the platforms are moving
around all the time. Those are all really cool features and I'm pretty
sure each of them is in the real Space Taxi. Perhaps you could fit it
all in 16K, but it would be a mess to organize it to make the most of that
16k. But with the Supercharger, you can put the black hole gravity in
one load, the cannons in another load, and moving platforms in yet another
load. And all three levels might be coded by different programmers without
any fear whatsoever of stepping on each other's toes.
In RPG's, this could be used to create puzzles and advanced-level monsters.
RPG's lose the advantage Space Taxi has because in Space Taxi, levels are
played one at a time sequentially*, while in an RPG it'd be nice to move
around. It also gains something in that in 16K, there might not be room
for both code AND text, if text is going to be a part of this. And
the Dragonstomper approach worked for most people.
* the Commodore 64 version had a "random play" mode, but if the loads
are "flexible" enough, a CD player in random mode might have the same
effect.
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