sumez wrote:
RAM can definitely help out a lot, but I'd agree it's not necessary.
It seems the sum is something like this: Work RAM makes the design and programming a lot more convenient/easier as a wider band of approaches become available, but there are applications and techniques within the rather broad term "procedural generation" where the 2kB:s of internal, volatile RAM is (more than) enough.
The question of volatile and non-volatile RAM is something i've pondered about just recently. In the commercial
"making of" video for Solstice which rainwarrior linked to in another recent thread, they boast of a game experience "totally unique to the Nintendo Entertainment System", seemingly on the basis of it offering a world where "[...] the player can do whatever he likes, he can manipulate things within the game [...]". This is true in the sense that there's no correct path and you can go wherever you want, perhaps even more so than in for example metroid. But in terms of world manipulation, the game is actually strictly choreobraphed, with the potion system layered on top. This is pretty common for NES (and other console-) games, which i'd attribute to the expense of battery backed work RAM, or just work RAM in the case of a game design like Solstice.
Not that solstice has anything to do with procedural generation, but i think the parallel is valid when hypothesizing how a procedurally generated dungeon explorer/adventure game would work - how to keep track of chests, loot, opened doors, links between levels and anything else in that fashion.