Path: chuka.playstation.co.uk!news From: James Burns Newsgroups: scee.yaroze.freetalk.english Subject: Re: 3rd Year Project Reseach - please help!!! Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 12:08:17 +0000 Organization: PlayStation Net Yaroze (SCEE) Lines: 71 Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: jamesb2.tg.scee.sony.co.uk Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.12) Gecko/20050923 Thunderbird/1.0.7 Mnenhy/0.7 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en In-Reply-To: Hi Chris, I think most developers abstract the game mechanics from the specific platform mechanics. So parts of the renderer are similar and other parts; lower level are written independantly for the target platform. The problem is more than just the code, as assets need to be optimised for the target platform. For example, the graphical capabilities on a technical level are different between Xbox, PS2 and PSP. Have a look at COLLADA (http://collada.org) for more information. Also with regard to target compilation, you maybe basing your question of "Do all consoles start with GCC?" from your Net Yaroze experience. If you think about that one a little bit more, Xbox and Xbox360 will both be using Direct X. For the other consoles, and in Sony's case, GCC is easy to begin with for a non-software company, as the toolchain is already available and can be tuned for the target platform. Microsoft have a head start as they are a software company with many years experience in developing IDE's, mature SDK's, other tools, etc. They suffer from the lack of being an full scale hardware development company, so they have to make the console from parts off other companies, such as ATI and IBM for Xbox360. However, there are third party middleware and tools vendors who do provide other compiler options. Metrowerks and SN Systems are the two biggest names in the business. SN Systems has been aquired by Sony to develop a compiler and tools for PS3. For final target development, this most likely comes down to the build systems employed by the developers. So when the team issues a compile the build farm will compile, link the exe for the target platform. Build systems can also be used to maintain an up to date build for all targets, ensuring that they always have a working version of the codebase. There is a lot of research that you can do, and surely people from a more game development background can add some more detail, maybe even correct some of my knowledge. Hope this helps you out! Regards, James Chris Wallace wrote: > Hey all, I'm working on my 3rd Year Project at uni now and its based on > computer science related stuff to do with games production. Sorry about the > nasty description, its been one of those days! > As a sort of 'carrier' for this I am making a 3d racing game made in the > style of Micromachines..... > so I guess you could call it a kind of Drum 'n' Race 2 realy! > > Anyway, for the research part of it I would like to know how real companies > go about doing stuff; > the main thing would be: How do companies go about creating code for more > than one platform? > Do all consols provide a version of GCC that makes porting easier? or is it > all macro based so you have different code for each? > > Any help on this would be realy realy appreciated! > > Other things im interested in would be: how comercial racing games define a > 'race track' in code. > Methods used in network code, client server, peer to peer etc. > Collision methods most commonly used in 3D games. > > For anyone interested in seeing the project as it progresses I will probably > be putting stuff online about it. > > Thanks > Chris > >