SD Cards as OpenPandora "cartridges"

[peacelovefleshbones]

/>
/>/>


The main thing that makes games big (in terms of disk space) is artwork: music, graphics, movies. Especially if you use no or poor compression.


It's easy to make a game look bigger by replacing story stuff that could be rendered in realtime with bulky pre-rendered cutscenes. Or by storing all game data uncompressed.

Well, yeah that's true but I thought maybe that disk space could also go towards a ludicrous number of levels or maybe more complex game mechanics or a longer story arch or some such things, along with more posh graphics and music.

P.S. honestly, I'm just throwing ideas out there that might not be relevant to anyone. But maybe the SD card could have empty storage space for people to put content on for interactive purposes (especially in the cases of people that use one of the card slots permanently to boot off of). Content like mp3s for a music/rhythm game, or pictures for a game that plasters custom backgrounds into it (or something equally gimmicky like putting your bosses face on an enemy in a fighting game). That could be a neat function that a physical SD card would facilitate.

 

[peacelovefleshbones]

I'm just thinking out loud but I think that dedicating an SD card to one game could be a really good idea if enough thought was put into it. And people that just don't want a physical card could potentially just download it if it were put online.


If I'm rambling at this point then feel free to ignore me. Hope I'm not getting in the way here.


The launcher.pnd that I mentioned could maybe be open as a platform for other devs to make games? I don't know what goes into doing this but maybe it could be a platform for both 2d and 3d gaming. I know that some brave devs tried to make 3d games for the pandora before, so I think some people are open to the idea. But honestly i would be more interested to see what 2d games people could come up with, especially if it had funding, on a beefier platform. Assuming it would be beefier. I don't know. I also don't know if this is the kind of thing that this thread is talking about.


Edit: okay, looking back this is not at all what this thread is talking about. But I still think it's a cool idea...

 

[_wb_]

/> />/>


The main thing that makes games big (in terms of disk space) is artwork: music, graphics, movies. Especially if you use no or poor compression.


It's easy to make a game look bigger by replacing story stuff that could be rendered in realtime with bulky pre-rendered cutscenes. Or by storing all game data uncompressed.

Well, yeah that's true but I thought maybe that disk space could also go towards a ludicrous number of levels or maybe more complex game mechanics or a longer story arch or some such things, along with more posh graphics and music.

Level layouts and game mechanics are things that require kilobytes, not megabytes or gigabytes.

Graphics, music and video are the only things that really take up space. If you want to use that space in a meaningful way, you need talented artists who put lots of hours of work into this. You'll need lots of funding for that if you want to pay those artists.

Anyway, I personally don't think a game needs to be big in terms of disk space to be fun. And it's not a big deal to have a 1 GB SD card with a 100MB game on it - that's like a CD with only a single track on it.

 

[Binky]

And it's not a big deal to have a 1 GB SD card with a 100MB game on it - that's like a CD with only a single track on it.

I'd say that would be pretty much like using one tenth of the available storage space

 

[CyberLeo]

Kinda reminds me of one of the ideas for the lib-ray project: creating an open dvd/bluray-esque format whose recommended storage device is an MMC/SD card. The concept is not without merit, for sizeable assets.

 

[TrashyMG]

One thing I loved about AOL floppy disks was that I could reuse them for better things, perhaps not totally a bad marketing idea. Can buy a game and get another SD card to add more things to.

 

[trix]

One thing I loved about AOL floppy disks was that I could reuse them for better things, perhaps not totally a bad marketing idea. Can buy a game and get another SD card to add more things to.

Lol, kids in my neighborhood used to collect the CD's by the dozens, from anyone they could get AOL CD's from, and try to build massive collections of them.

Then, they'd fling the CD's at each other in the streets like ninja stars.  Some days you'd see parents outside making their kids spend a couple hours sweeping up tons of broken CD pieces out of streets driveways and sidewalks.  I even got hit with a few of them myself, but in those days I carried a Super Soaker 9000 with 5 extra gallons of water in the tank strapped to my back... CDs were for the poor kids =P