Path: chuka.playstation.co.uk!news From: Steven Osman Newsgroups: scee.yaroze.freetalk.english Subject: Re: Yarozing, PS2Linux, PSP and the Industry Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2003 23:36:35 -0500 Organization: PlayStation Net Yaroze (SCEE) Lines: 158 Message-ID: <3gl5sv0p6q679vb6dq1jf0nb4dju3v8o5f@4ax.com> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: dsl093-172-136.pit1.dsl.speakeasy.net Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 1.91/32.564 Hi Andrew, Even though I wouldn't really want to speculate much on the effectiveness of your distribution channel, I'd like to throw in at least a couple of comments. First off, I think that there are more parties than Sony and the consumer to keep in mind. I could be completely making this up, but I have a feeling that the fact that there _is_ a barrier of entry into the PS2 game development market makes for a bit of a competitive advantage for those who are in. It takes time, plans, and money. Sure, it takes Sony's approval as well, but I think that given a well designed plan and the money to back it up they aren't the bottleneck. In any case, having a flood of cheapie games may detract business from companies who do go ahead and invest the millions of dollars it takes to make what the modern day gamer has grown to expect (and, incidentally, my wife and I just lost lots of hours recently playing free little web-based games on Yahoo games and had a lot of fun. No millions of dollars there or superpowered consoles). Sony does have a responsibility to them, so it could be a fly in the ointment that is your plan. As far as the state of PS2Linux, I too have been a little bit frustrated by it. On the one hand, the fact that the PS2 can run Linux is a curse in itself. Sure it makes the kit more appealing to loads of people, and many have found interesting uses for their kits, but it also makes the number of developers in the sea of Linux users dwarf in comparison to the number of developers here (because this is purely a developer community). Another problem is that some people who probably would end up developing are getting distracted using and customizing linux that they don't ever get around to any major programming. My personal frustration is that many of the people who do end up developing are busy working on technical demonstrations. Sure, it's really exciting to know that you can render 50,000 lit, shaded and textured polygons per frame with only 5% CPU usage or whatever, but it's also really neat if someone comes up with something people can play with. I must confess that I myself have fallen short in this -- but at least I feel that the tools I have developed when the kit came out and since will help many people develop, and, in fact, it appears to have. Then there's the obsession to do everything oneself. Considering the hundreds and hundreds of pages of documentation we get with the kit -- as opposed to the small booklets we got with the net yaroze -- doing things by oneself ends up being very tedius and difficult. Perhaps there's a bit of a feeling that using existing tools is "cheating" (somehow, I feel that our friend Rikki on this board may suffer that misconception) and so people feel the need to start from scratch. As a digression -- I say the hell with that, take the simple API that will clear the screen for you and swap buffers when the time comes, and either write a game, or write some really fancy bump mapping and shadow generation techniques to show off what you can do. There's no reason to try and do what has already been done, esp. if it's not the world's most useful thing to learn. (once you know a good bumpmapping technique, you can probably apply that to other consoles -- the same can't be said for screen initialization routines). I have conversations with most of the people who develop for the linux kit, from pro developers to aspiring game developers to university professors. There are a couple of initiatives on tutorial writing, a number of people working on renderers, conversion utilities, and other tools, but only two groups working on games that I can think of. One -- just an individual -- came on IRC and asked us a bunch of questions about sps2 and ps2 programming then disappeared for a while. He came back later to share a large movie of his work in progress which seems really cool. He's once again disappeared since then, so it's hard to think of that video as other than vaporware until we see something usable. The other group is a couple of smart yet inexperienced younger guys. They've certainly got their hearts in the right place but just get distracted a little too easily. I keep trying to get them to focus on getting _anything_ out the door, and building up on it instead of working on a master plan that will never make it to completion and see the light of day. As I said, I too am a bit frustrated by the PS2 development scene, however I'd like to say the following. First, as a platform, the PS2 does have many more interesting aspects to explore than the Net Yaroze does. This means that there's much more room for interesting non-interactive demos than there was with NY. Second, the PS2 Linux Kit allows for much more relevant PS2 programming experience, and game development companies probably appreciate that it takes more than the individual to make a game. I don't think time spent on learning to do some of the more mundane things on the PS2 and then working on a tech. demo is a waste of time at all career wise. Third, there seems to be a very very slow but steady increase in development-related discussions. They do come in waves, with a large number bunching up at once, but I think that the regular "down-time" number of questions is rising. Fourth, there is a bunch of good learning material in the works. This could be a great introduction for folks who finally decide to shut down the MP3 player and open up emacs to start programming. That's my 2 cents... Sauce On Thu, 3 July 2003 18:50:00 +0100, "Andrew Langstaff (Majik-ZX)" wrote: >Hi guys, nice to see the group still ticking along. > >I've been a bit inactive in the gamedev scene for a while now - A new job, 3rd and 4th year OU Physics degree, new baby and another none-game project that's been on the back burner for far too long has meant that I haven't actually used my Yaroze or PS2Linux kit for a year now (I haven't even used my UK PS2Linux kit!). > >But, I do still have some ideas floating around, and with any luck I'll be able to get to work on them in the autumn (after my 'finals') But I've been thinking about the games industry as a whole during this time, and I'd like to share some thoughts. > >I think that we can all agree that Net Yaroze has been an outstanding success. > >But, as has been noted before, the PS2Linux 'scene' isn't the same as the Yaroze scene; frankly no-one seems to be writing any games for it[1], and if they are, they're either keeping them quiet, or I'm just not looking hard enough. > >Now I don't think this is because it's hard to code the PS2, even if it was there's plenty of sample code, libraries, tools, etc. This brings me to my main thoughts about PS2 game development as a whole; Player expectation is way beyond the scope of 1 or 2 man part time development teams. Perhaps would-be developers are put off by the shear magnitude of what can be done on PS2, in terms of graphics and audio capabilities. > >Think about it - it's hard to conceive of a viable game concept that you'd want to do in a 6 or even 12 month timeframe, that couldn't be adequately explored or implemented on Yaroze[2]. Sure, you could add in some flashy effects, have huge game maps, and even have the killer-app of network gaming, but the central game mechanics would be unchanged. > >So what could be done? We could all be given off-the-shelf game engines and concentrate on our game, spending time with [insert favourite sprite editor/3D modeller/music composer] making it look and sound how we imagine it, but I feel that that would lead the homebrew scene to the same generic hell that is the current state of the industry - How many more 3rd person adventure games where you lead [insert licensed character] through 30 levels of finding secret keys, solving trivial puzzles, fighting hordes of bad guys, the odd really big bad guy that comes back for more, sneaking past guards, using [insert special move/power/character trait], *yaawwwnn* does the world _really_ need? >No, what I think is required is some motivation[3]. > >And this leads me to what I had hoped we'd see with PS2Linux; not just the same range and depth of games that appeared on the Yaroze, with the flashier effects, and network gaming, etc. but also a distribution medium to take these games to a wider audience, kindof like an online version of the OPSM coverdisk. Think how much impetus the chance of having your Yaroze game as an OPSM demo gave you, Think how much kudos could be had if everyone with a PS2 + Network Adapter could download and play your game... > >So, perhaps what I've wrote so far is over-critical, possibly inaccurate, and unclear, I'll try and explain where I'm trying to go with this, before moving on. I want to discuss the reasons why Yaroze produced so many zany little games, that are of a high quality, and very playable[4], and what could be done to nurture such development on PS2. > >And this then brings me to the PSP, I'm sure all of us here were excited by the 'launch' of this new toy, and I'm equally sure, as was shown in a recent thread, that we all thought the same thing 'can we get homebrew devkits?' > >But another thing about the initial announcements that excited me was SCE's new pricing models, and specifically for the PSP, it's medium-free download kiosk distribution model. I fully agree with the assesment given by Ken Kutaragi, that hand-held games need to be impulse buys. And I've even heard (can't find source) that SCE are bringing a cheap game pricing model to PS2, ie new games that cost a tenner. So perhaps this impulse-buy model might work for PS2 aswell... > >And this brings in the possibility of following the business models being pursued by games companies in the mobile phone market, ie a pay-to-download model. Can you see where this is leading yet? > >SCE could explore the business potential of joining the output of small, independant homebrew outfits, with the mass market, small fee to download from a server (most of which would be taken by SCE to cover hosting, Product Qualification, etc) or download onto UMD distrubution channels. > >This, in my mind, would encourage developers, which would in turn create the opportunity to explore non mainstream game genres, and it would be another area in the games industry where SCE has no equivalent from the current alternative platforms, like actually having official homebrew devkits in the first place. It would also give many more people that all inportant first released game that would give them extra lee-way at interview time. > >Now, I'm sure there are plenty of reasons that can be given as to why this just wouldn't/couldn't possibly work, IPR issues, legal minefields, etc. but some of these will have to have been ironed out in getting Yaroze games on OPSM discs. > >So, what do people think about this then? What is the fatal flaw that I've overlooked? Is Joe Public doomed forever to playing bland, big budget third person adventures on his PS2? Does it really matter if he is? > >Just my $.02 worth, which given the size of this post is a bargain. Thanks for listening. > >A. > >[1] Not that there's anything wrong with non game use of PS2Linux, EE makes a fine platform for image processing applications. > >[2] There are of course exceptions to this, but in general I think this rule applies. > >[3] It may seem a bit hipocritical of me to start with 'I have no time..' and move on to complain 'there are no games..' but I'd like to think that at least some of the people who got PS2Linux are actually using it. > >[4] Even now, my partner and 'mother-in-law' still force there way onto the PS2 to play Rocks 'n' Gems