Important-platforms SRB2 will never appear on

[Lostgame]

I'm getting really sick of the unintelligent posts here like the following.

"OMG SRB2 DS! ME WANTS!!!!one1!"

Reasons why SRB2 will never make it to the DS:

1) Lack of processing power.

The DS has one ARM9 processor running at (I believe) ~80 MHz. It also has a hard-to-combine ARM7 processor running at less than 80 MHz. This is not an x86 set of processors and SRB2 was not written to use dual-processors.

2) Lack of RAM

What RAM? 16 MB? Heh. Funny.

3) The difficulty of getting it on to the system. (should be self-explanitory)

Well, that's it. Please, intelligent ones, add platforms that SRB2 will never appear on for obvious reasons so we can stop this n00bfest!

 

[Shadow Hog]

Frankly, if the DS can handle games that are MORE advanced than SRB2, then somehow or another, I'd say it'd be possible. Anything but probable, certainly, but if you completely rewrote the entire game, nixed Software mode and stuck with OpenGL mode, and were, like, some kind of expert at DS coding, it could be doable...

Of course, the question that needs asking is, why the hell would you need to, anyway? The PC version's good enough, even if it isn't portable.

 

[BlazeHedgehog]

But you have to remember the difference between professional coders with official Nitro devkits and homebrewers.

Take the Dreamcast. Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament run on the Dreamcast just fine, right? But those are commercial releases. Homebrewers can barely even get Quake 1 running at 30fps - Quake 2 will boot at 15fps, but eventually crashes because the Dreamcast doesn't have enough RAM. Yet, professional coders got Quake 3, UT, and Half-Life operating just fine.

Just because Mario 64 DS is more complex than SRB2 does not automatically mean a homebrewer is going to be able to port SRB2 to the platform. And considering the speed of the Dreamcast port, SRB2 on the DS is extremely unlikely, I'd say.

 

[LoganA]

2) Lack of RAM

What RAM? 16 MB? Heh. Funny.

3) The difficulty of getting it on to the system. (should be self-explanitory)

16MB? the DS only has 4MB of RAM (SRB2 needs 5.5MB to get to the title screen, >7MB while in a level)

oh, and difficulty of running of running homebrew code on the DS?

it is a bit hard, but i've been using a M3 Adapter to run homebrew code on my DS, and other things

 

[fox.dx2]

Will it make it on the PSP?

 

[Shuffle]

I think Omega already said it works on the PSP if you have Windows 95 for it..

 

[Omega the Hedgehog]

It goes about as slow as SRB2DC Beta one. Not too good, but then again, not HORRIBLE.

 

[akirahedgehog]

I think the Saturn would be a neat platform for Srb2.

 

[Omega the Hedgehog]

Okay, even with massive degrading that'd be a major stretch. Don't count on it.

 

[Blitzzo]

Stop thinking we have to degrade stuff. Sure, there's the memory problem, but the graphics can stay.

 

[Prime 2.0]

2) Lack of RAM

What RAM? 16 MB? Heh. Funny.

3) The difficulty of getting it on to the system. (should be self-explanitory)

16MB? the DS only has 4MB of RAM (SRB2 needs 5.5MB to get to the title screen, >7MB while in a level)

oh, and difficulty of running of running homebrew code on the DS?

it is a bit hard, but i've been using a M3 Adapter to run homebrew code on my DS, and other things

I heard that there is going to be a RAM cart for the DS that you can put in the gameboy advance slot. That might solve that problem. Then again, we don't know how much RAM the cartridge is adding, so I'll guess we'll just have to wait and see. But yeah, at the moment SRB2 doesn't look like it would port to the DS all that well, even though it would be incredibly awesome(wifi; you could actually use it for netgames!).

 

[Blitzzo]

Save RAM or memory?

 

[Prime 2.0]

I dunno. I just heard about it on IRC(in #srb2fun), they didn't say which.

 

[LoganA]

I heard that there is going to be a RAM cart for the DS that you can put in the gameboy advance slot. That might solve that problem. Then again, we don't know how much RAM the cartridge is adding, so I'll guess we'll just have to wait and see. But yeah, at the moment SRB2 doesn't look like it would port to the DS all that well, even though it would be incredibly awesome(wifi; you could actually use it for netgames!).

the addon RAM cart is more like a block device, it goes much slower then the RAM inside the DS, because of the speed of GBA slot, you need to page it in and out in blocks of 16K or some other size, and can only read and/or write to it in blocks of 16 bits per the clock timing of the GBA slot as set in the WAIT_CR (it sets wich CPU have the right of way to differt parts of the DS's memory), this add-on is more like a limted slow speed ram drive, with a paging system (if's bigger then 32MB)

 

[Omega the Hedgehog]

You and Alam are going to need to eventually realize there are going to be people on the MB who have absolutely no clue what you're talking about. I mean, I do, but then there's people like [No.] out there, too =P

 

[Hyper Tails]

You and Alam are going to need to eventually realize there are going to be people on the MB who have absolutely no clue what you're talking about. I mean, I do, but then there's people like [No.] out there, too =P

Such as me. Although I don't think SRB2 will make the DS any time soon.

 

[Omega the Hedgehog]

You could always take advantage of that 1GB HDD coming out soon and use it's file space as virtual RAM and thus turn the DS into some huge amazing handheld powerhouse that has more RAM than we'd ever need >_>

Theoretically, of course.

 

[Shuffle]

Of course, using the HDD as virtual RAM would probably be INCREDIBLY slow, as compared to real RAM..

 

[LoganA]

ok, soo let me get this straight?

a dual CPU system that can't do any floating point math, with only 4MB of RAM, and a 1/8 speed, X sized "swap file/ram", and you can only see 32MB of it at any one time, and only read/write in blocks of 16-bit, unlike the normal RAM, where you can read/write a bit at a time.

Then it runs off a GBA flash cart, but to run the game in DS mode, the player has to FlashMe the DS's Firmware, or use a PassMeKeyv1/v2, depending what version the non-Flashed DS is running. But wait! we want to use the GBA slot for the Opera Ram cart also, no good!

soo let use the MAX Media Player for DS, soo we could load the program from the HD into the RAM, but now we have less free RAM, but we use the use the HD as a swap file.

Of course, using the HDD as virtual RAM would probably be INCREDIBLY slow, as compared to real RAM..

oh, and code that writes back to the HD, WITHOUT messing up the other files, and filesystem, and after all this, we still need code to keep track of what is not needed at this time, where to place it in the swap file, and to restore code and data back from the HD before we need it.

I'm just going to tell you, I don't like these odds

 

[SSNTails]

Don't worry. By the time 1.1 comes out, the next generation of handhelds will be here, and they will have more than enough power and memory to run SRB2.