forums.ps2dev.org

2BeyondTheGrave · Joined: 12 Feb 2004 Posts: 11 Location: MaryLand

Well im not really very new to playstation 2 development but before I wanted to start I wanted to know alot of C/C++ and Visual Basics.I was wondering if it is possible to make a full game using all these homebrew ps2 dev stuff. Also i wanted to know if you used a program like Maya or Softimage XSI if development would be more fluent(i wanna say Easy but i know developing isnt Easy) Thanks for anyone who resopnds to this....
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I Finally Started makeing a Game..it took forever to get started stupid school

Raizor · Joined: 18 Jan 2004 Posts: 60 Location: out there

It's certainly possible to write a game using the homebrew dev stuff. It'd be quite a big job making something to rival a commercially produced game though.

You don't need to know a lot of C/C++ before developing anything on for PS2, but some experience is always useful. Spare time and patience are the main things needed. You won't be able to code for the PS2 with Visual Basic, but the concepts you've learned in VB may be of some use...

Experience with Maya or Softimage won't be much help with the programming side of PS2 development (unless you've been coding Maya plugins or something).

I'd suggest writing a few small things first, some graphical demos maybe. Also taking a look at capturing pad input with the control pads too. You should be able to make a simple pong game in just a couple of weeks :)

Best of luck to you,

raizor

emoon · Joined: 18 Jan 2004 Posts: 91 Location: Stockholm, Sweden

I Razior say, you dont need loots of C/C++ experiense, but I really do recommend that you know the language well enough to write "the code you want".

As on PS2 debugging is limited, and it takes a while to get the grip of how the machine works etc, and the last thing you want to do is to deal with language related problems.

.emoon

mrbrown · Joined: 17 Jan 2004 Posts: 1536

How exactly is debugging "limited"? :)

emoon · Joined: 18 Jan 2004 Posts: 91 Location: Stockholm, Sweden

its not just like setting a breakpoint in visual studio, or get a nice callstack once stuff crashes :)

.emoon

mrbrown · Joined: 17 Jan 2004 Posts: 1536

Er ... ever heard of GDB? There's a minimal EE stub for it in ps2dev CVS.

emoon · Joined: 18 Jan 2004 Posts: 91 Location: Stockholm, Sweden

Have you ever noticed that it takes over 3sec to do a single step in your code with it?

mrbrown · Joined: 17 Jan 2004 Posts: 1536

SIO to the rescue!!!!!

2BeyondTheGrave · Joined: 12 Feb 2004 Posts: 11 Location: MaryLand

"Experience with Maya or Softimage won't be much help with the programming side of PS2 development (unless you've been coding Maya plugins or something). "

The game im making right now i dont want it to be like ground breaking or anything but i want to work on high level Big 3d things for the game.

I wanted to make environments and characters with these programs(maya,softimage), also are you saying that creating plugins for makeing the stuff i make work on the ps2 is going to be hard.... :?:

oh yea thanks again for anyone who responds to this :)
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I Finally Started makeing a Game..it took forever to get started stupid school

blackdroid · Joined: 17 Jan 2004 Posts: 564 Location: Sweden

I think what he means is that having plugin experience will aid you in the development process, since writing the data from maya in a fashion that would be suitable for the ps2 is something you probably want at the end of the day, also the .obj or .anim formats doesnt carry skinning info and its a bitch to parse .mb files.
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Kung VU

mharris · Joined: 25 Jan 2004 Posts: 155 Location: Annapolis, MD, USA

Maya, etc. won't necessarily help you be a better developer (but it won't hurt). But people who know how to use Maya well are always in demand. A decent game requires a lot more than programmers -- artists, level designers, audio, etc. Not to mention project management (wince).

If there was a suitably generic open-source game engine available, you wouldn't need to know how to program (much). Maybe something like Torque, although it's not free-as-in-free-beer, and it doesn't support the ps2 (yet). Havok is another example of a game engine; it supports the ps2, but it's definitely not free in any sense of the word, and you've got to be a licensed Sony developer, bla bla bla.

m

2BeyondTheGrave · Joined: 12 Feb 2004 Posts: 11 Location: MaryLand

Oh yea i had completely forgotten about game engines :oops:
but can you name any other game engines that you know of so that i can look into them and see which one would be the one that would be good for me i already knew about the havok engine and also the unreal engine.

As usual i'll close with saying
Thanks for anyone who responds to this.
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I Finally Started makeing a Game..it took forever to get started stupid school