crafterpaula

retired_potter00

First of all, sorry about the slight bit of thread necromancy.

Secondly, of course it would be possible to port a FM game to the DS, but the concern is what would this game actually look like? Would SI be able to include enough features for them to put their name to such a product? It's doubtful, although technically possible.

With regard to the memory expansion cart, I believe this is only compatible with the DS lite. If such a game was developed, and the expansion pack was required, this would mean that:

A) The (already fairly small) auidence for the game was reduced further
B) That profit margins are reduced by the need to include the expansion pack.

While the DS touch screen does offer interesting possibilities for a FM-style game, and I would be first in the queue for such a game if it was available, I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be worth SI's while to produce.

Having said that, I feel that, if the (inferior, and you all know it) PSP is worthy of a conversion, why not the DS?

retired_nrkhanin

Doesn't FHM PSP load from the UMD and then put everything into the ram and play from there? I think I read that somewhere so the games loading times are a lot faster. Maybe thats why it hasn't been 'ported' to the ds.

Although, cartridges are a lot lot faster than the UMD so instead of the game being ran from the ram, it could all be on the cart with the same speeds.

Also the carts can hold a fair bit on them. I believe some DS games are over 200MB.

retired_potter00

If it's just dumping the data from the UMD straight into RAM, then a cartridge is certainly much faster, but I doubt thats whats actually happening. I'd assume it's a dump of a quickstart-style game.

As part of the cartridge capacity, you have to consider how much a save game will take up - I believe this is probably the biggest limitation with a DS FM incarnation.

retired_hamed

Mark, you're forgetting all the run time data which isn't (and can't) be stored on the DS's carts nor the UMD. That, and the processing power to manage it all and still remain playable.

FM Handheld is cut down enough as it is, on a 222MHz machine with 32MiB of RAM.

Thinking about it on a machine that's over three times slower and with only an eighth of the memory capacity makes my brain cry.

retired_potter00

I'm not forgetting about it at all, it's a vey obvious stumbling block! Having said that, a (very) slimline FM port is still technically possible, even with the limited power of the DS.

I have to admit I haven't played FM on PSP, so can't really suggest what could be in and what could be left out of a potential DS port.

retired_hamed

We're talking so slimline as to be barely worth playing.

I can't see how the game could feasibly have any more than one league, without some serious dumbing down. It does have the luck of being able to read static data from the card instead of needing everything in memory but that would only get it so far.

retired_nrkhanin

all in all, it would probably be poor game on the ds. That makes me think, maybe someone should give eidos and BGM a ring. They could produce a rubbish champ man for it.

retired_annieb58

I thought this thread was dead and buried long ago...
Theres no point even discussing FM on DS. The PSP version is already basic enough, a DS version would be so simplified that no-one would want to buy it (or even make it in the first place). I think this thread should just be deleted

retired_nrkhanin

are you a mod or an admin? No your not. People may still want to discuss this, if you dont, then don't come into the thread.