#26574 - Eclipse - Mon Sep 20, 2004 3:51 am
I went to linker4u which seems the cheapest, i read the reviews and found that EZFA seems to be the best and was thinking of getting the 256Mbit kit to start out with. But I only saw them selling 1Gbit carts....Now I know the start kit comes with a cart, but what if I want more? You know to give a few to friends or family to test or have? I didn't see any more sale and can't find any :-\. Can anyone point me in the correct direction?
Also i am realivily new to this whole scene (obviously) so i might be like asking the stupidest question ever. Either way i was planning on making a game or 2 with a friend of mine and i wanted to have a few copies and pass them around, so thats why i was wondering. Are flash carts what i should be using for that? or are there carts that are like one time write and cheaper?
Anyway I hope i make some sense, any help would be appricated, thanks.
#26587 - nmcconnell - Mon Sep 20, 2004 3:47 pm
Hey Eclipse.
I can't comment on any retailer, as I haven't used any of them, but Jandaman may be slightly cheaper, and is based in the United States, which may help you out on shipping/taxes.
One thing you may want to consider, both for development and sharing the games, is just to use an emulator such as visualboy advance. It's free, and it's great for development. You should still do hardware testing at some point, but VBA is an excellent development tool.
As for sharing with friends, well, if you have 1000 friends you want to share with, you can apparently get your carts printed for aprx $14 each (this info courtesy of the current compo). Basically, there's no option I know of for cheap printing of small batches. If your friends buy flash carts for themselves, however, then you can just send them your finished ROM.
Seriously, though, emulators are awesome for homebrew development.
--Neil
PS - for homebrew development, you will probably never need 1Gb. In my opinion, carts of this size are primarily useful for -ahem- backing up games that you already own. . . I think that 256Mb is the most that you can even address at one time, so more than that is only useful for having multiple games on a single flashcart. Maybe someone else can confirm this last bit of info.
#26595 - SimonB - Mon Sep 20, 2004 7:47 pm
I checked Linker4U and they carry the 128Mbit (and 256...) version of the EZFA. The price is 69$usd, which isnt too terrible. Jandaman.com seems to have the same price, so if you live in the US and are planning on only buying 1-4 carts you should probably go with that company.
However, if you need 5-10+ flash carts, EZFA or otherwise, please PM me and I will try to sort you out with a good deal. This of course goes for anyone else who might be interested too...
Unless you need more than 20 cartridges I think you should stick to flash carts. Its an interesting topic though as it would be very easy for someone to buy 500 cartridges and let developers pay to have a few made, of course it would only be the cartridge, but compared to flash carts it would be A LOT cheaper...
The ~14$usd nmcconnell mentioned is for a finished product with printed manual, printed box, cartridge sticker, cartridge AND shipping to your house, and should not be mistaken as the price that you would pay for just an empty cartridge. Also, just for clarification, that price was for 500 (32mbit + SRAM) cartridges and not 1000.
Simon
#26597 - Eclipse - Mon Sep 20, 2004 10:24 pm
| SimonB wrote: |
The ~14$usd nmcconnell mentioned is for a finished product with printed manual, printed box, cartridge sticker, cartridge AND shipping to your house, and should not be mistaken as the price that you would pay for just an empty cartridge. Also, just for clarification, that price was for 500 (32mbit + SRAM) cartridges and not 1000.
Simon |
This tidbit is the part i'm intrested in, basiclly publishing like 2 games that look like a finished product and are that cheap. Where can I this type of thing done (for future referance of course).
Thanks sooooooooo much again, you guys are a big help ^^.