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DS development > General Questions

#28444 - wombatman - Sun Oct 31, 2004 2:00 pm

I haven't seen these questions asked much and I really think there answers are important. I did ask some of them on dsdev efnet earlier
but I would like to hear some other peeps ideas. Will the ds be capable of using more than 1024 tiles in tilebased modes and are there any rough estimates how many more? Is it true each screen will have access to it's own vram and if so can both screens use tile based modes or do I need write a tile engine for the normally 3d screen? What is the average cart size? What is the difference in price for an average cart to a max capacity 128mB cart?

#28466 - mymateo - Sun Oct 31, 2004 11:51 pm

I think Nintendo will keep 1024 tiles, but they will be 16 bit instead of 4 or 8 bit.

I believe that the DS will have its 656 KB of VRam split into two, giving each screen its own RAM, and that each screen can have 2D at any time. Of course, only 1 can have 3D at a time.

The price will probably follow a similar formula that computers follow. So smaller carts in the 128 to 512 Mb range will probably be close to the same price, but once you start going over 1 Gb, there's going to be major price increases, as in more than double the price for only double the size.

I don't think 128 MB is the max, that's just the biggest available right now. I bet there'll be 512 MB carts within a year or two.

#28469 - dagamer34 - Mon Nov 01, 2004 12:04 am

mymateo wrote:
I think Nintendo will keep 1024 tiles, but they will be 16 bit instead of 4 or 8 bit.

I believe that the DS will have its 656 KB of VRam split into two, giving each screen its own RAM, and that each screen can have 2D at any time. Of course, only 1 can have 3D at a time.

The price will probably follow a similar formula that computers follow. So smaller carts in the 128 to 512 Mb range will probably be close to the same price, but once you start going over 1 Gb, there's going to be major price increases, as in more than double the price for only double the size.

I don't think 128 MB is the max, that's just the biggest available right now. I bet there'll be 512 MB carts within a year or two.


My thoughts exactly.
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