30th March 2004, 9:06 PM
The oldest of RPGs remembered conversations the way you say. It's simply a flag. Yes, I know you mean more complicated things like them acting specific ways, but that's all in programming, not in how much data is stored, and RPGs you don't play do that as well. The only one I can think of to REALLY take it to the next level is ther upcoming Fable. Of course, that one goes beyond just remembering what you've said to actually having that person interact with OTHER people and develop dynamically themselves, requiring saved data for all this development, which I think considering this is world wide will be far beyond an 8MB card's capabilities. However, remembering precise strategy data (it would have to be very intricatly designed to determine what data is relevant, and at that, how to interpret said data) is indeed an amazing thing. Certainly something lots of games have tried for. Memory card size isn't the issue (except on Gamecube), so much as the difficulty in making adaptive AI. Adaptivity is a VERY hard thing to program.
Anyway, while all the things that Fable has to remember fit on an 8MB card would be VERY hard (well, I dunno, MAYBE it's possible... probably not...), a much more advanced Animal Crossing type thing would certainly be helped by the larger space.
Ya know, this is the sort of thing that makes MS's inclusion of a hard drive so very nice. It's the only real innovation that the current generation of consoles even has. One could point to the Xbox Live service, but that's software rather than hardware mostly. Even then, PC did the hard drive thing first, obviously, so MS can only claim to be the first to put it in a console. So very useful a thing, it's a shame that it hasn't been taken full advantage of by many games yet.
Anyway, while all the things that Fable has to remember fit on an 8MB card would be VERY hard (well, I dunno, MAYBE it's possible... probably not...), a much more advanced Animal Crossing type thing would certainly be helped by the larger space.
Ya know, this is the sort of thing that makes MS's inclusion of a hard drive so very nice. It's the only real innovation that the current generation of consoles even has. One could point to the Xbox Live service, but that's software rather than hardware mostly. Even then, PC did the hard drive thing first, obviously, so MS can only claim to be the first to put it in a console. So very useful a thing, it's a shame that it hasn't been taken full advantage of by many games yet.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)