tepples wrote:
The mapper supports WRAM in the same way as the iNES version of discrete mappers, equivalent to a 7420 decoding $6000-$7FFF. But it doesn't offer any way to isolate one game's WRAM from another. There are a few ways that could be addressed:
- Run two outer bank bits to A14-A13 of the WRAM. Allow only three games to save, and have all other games use WRAM bank 0.
- Run two outer bank bits to A14-A13 of the WRAM. Run all games in WRAM banks 1-3, and add a library that copies data (smaller than 8K) in and out of WRAM bank 0.
- Add 8K of non-bankable WRAM and make the first few sectors of the ROM self-flashable, with a library that copies files in and out of a log-structured file system.
- If possible, fit your campaign's state into 32 bits or less, which is small enough to make a practical password system.
What all state do you want to save in your game?
I want to save a scoreboard. I want 3 characters for a name + 6 digit score (20 bits ~ 3 bytes). If I use 32 characters for the name entries, I'll have 15 bits ~ 2 bytes per name, or 3 bytes for more characters. 6 bytes per entry, 30 for a table with 5 entries.
Not having saved WRAM is no big deal for me since almost every arcade style game doesn't have a battery backed WRAM to save scores anyway. For me it's more of a luxury than a necessity.