Custom Bootloader

[awesome101]

Hi everyone.
I'm new to the ESP32 and have a question about another game system I am creating. 4MB of flash is plenty for me, but I want to know if I can switch games via an sd card. So the sd card holds HEX files and then the ESP32 rerwites these hex files to the program flash so games can be switched. Is this possible with the ESP32?

[kolban]

Think of the ESP32 as having a 4MByte flash address space where there is a user program contained within that is given control when the ESP32 starts. It would be possible to write such an application that reads data from an SD card and re-writes the flash memory with content contained in the card. When done, control can then be branched to that address and what every application was compiled to run there will "just run".

I'm not seeing any obvious reasons why this wouldn't work. I'm not sure if this would be called a "custom bootloader" as the "bootloader" phrase is already used to describe how the ESP32 starts up to begin with. Your own "game launcher" application would then always be given control when the ESP32 starts and could present the user with a menu which might include the game already in flash or a list of games contained on SD that are available to be copied into flash.