Path: chuka.playstation.co.uk!news From: colin adams Newsgroups: scee.yaroze.freetalk.english Subject: Net Yaroze: An "Early Adopters" Review v1.0 Date: Fri, 16 May 1997 21:02:41 -0700 Organization: Cobra Developments Lines: 144 Message-ID: <337D2DE1.F67@cobradev.demon.co.uk> NNTP-Posting-Host: cobradev.demon.co.uk Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.01 (Win95; I; 16bit) I am a Hobbyist programmer, I have had my Yaroze System For a Month + Now & I have Devoted All of My Programming Efforts in its Direction. As an "Early Adopter" I Submit a Personal review of the System & Tools from a Users point of view. I stress that the Review is My True Personal Experience & No Malice or Untoward Intentions are Expressed or Implied. If you are a from-: A> Yaroze Tech Support look upon this as Feedback from a Users point of view & How Things can be improved. B> If you are a Coder Look upon this as 1 Early Adopters Experience. This Review is not meant to Discourage you from purchasing the Kit. OK Lets Go!! My-Self: I Have Been Coding for About 5 Years i.e. Amiga & PC, Using Assembler & C/C++ Doing 2D stuff. During the last 8 months I have been finishing off an isometric view top down shooter rather like "Loaded" & studying The underlying principles Behind 3D Game programming. I have also been doing some basic primitives in LightWave 4.0, so I guess I meet Sony's criteria. I was about to make the Quantum Leap into 3D programming Using Direct X, But When I heard about this Kit I decided to Go the Console Way via this Fantastic Machine. (WHAT!!! The Great Sony are releasing a DevKit? I'm Gonna Get One of Those!!). Out-of- Box-Experience. I Received My £652.49 Worth of Kit Mid April which consisted of Yaroze + CodeWarrior. Along with the Kit came 3 Manuals, A CD full of convertion Tools and Extra Demo Disk With many cool Programs. I was very Impressed with the package & set up the machine with almost no problems. 8/10 The Manuals: The Yaroze Manuals consist of 3 Books & I must admit to being more than a little supprised how thin they were-: 1. START UP GUIDE. Is informative & Explains How to set-up & get Started. Connection of Yaroze Was a breeze as I had already added 2 new COM ports to My PC. It took me approximately an hour to get everything sorted out. Installation of Tools Was Easy Too. 8/10 There is also some Code to Get You Compiling & Running programs. But I Was puzzled as to why this Code Was strictly a 2D affair!! No Pointers to 3d Yet Then! 5/10 (3 points Deducted). 2. USER GUIDE. Contains information on how to develop for Yaroze & includes Sections on Graphics, Sound, Tools, ect. This is where things start to go Downhill as the Complete Manual is Only 205 pages in Total!! The Sections pertaining to Graphics are only 27 pages & Not very Informative at all. There is also No Example Code to back up the Extremely Brief & Vague Information. The Manual is also Riddled with Spelling Mistakes & Poor Grammar, ratio-: at least 1 per Page!! There could be Many reasons for this i.e a) Bad Translation from Japanese Manuals. b) Rushing to Get the Manuals to Press Either Way they are Very Poor. AT this point I must say that I own Many Development Manuals for various Machines Including "Amiga Hardware Reference" by Addison/Wesley & "FastGraph 4.5" (PC) by Ted Gruber. In comparison the Yaroze Manual is Comical. If the purpose of Yaroze is to bring the Hobbyist Scene back to Life as in the days of the Amiga (Yes I was there!!). they won't do it with uninformative Manuals like this. 4/10 3. LIBRARY REFERENCE. Contains information on the Library & Structures Used to Control this powerful Console. This is a good Book & The Descriptions are good. But Without a decent Manual Explaining How to utilise some of the complex stuff its Not Very Easy to Work from. 7/10. Summary: The Concept, Tools & Kit are Good but the Manual is Very Poor, In Order to Address the Problem with the Manual I suggest the following-: 1> Completely Rewrite the Manual. 2> Supplement The Manual with a *.PDF or *.HTML Doc showing how to do a simple 3D game from the ground up. This Would Make the Yaroze much Better & Easier to use. ------------------------------------- OK With That off my Chest I delve into the "NET" part of Net Yaroze NET YAROZE: Access To Technical Support is via Sony's WebSite. To log into this site you have to Supply Both a "User Name" & a "Pass Word". When you Apply for Yaroze You Specify Your chosen "User Name". A Week or So after you receive your Kit Sony Promise to send You conformation of Both via letter, I am Still Waiting for my Letter!! To gain access to the Site I had to Phone the Yaroze Teams HQ who after checking my credentials gave me the password via phone. The Site is Very Good & Easy to Navigate. There are many Sections Including NewsGroups, Demos (including Source Code). I took a look at the NewsGroups & found that many other Users Were Experiencing the same problems as I was. Time & Time again the same Questions arose. I also downloaded some demos/code to see if they would clear up my confusion. Most of the code and Demos will not run directly On Yaroze & needs much modification to get it running. The reason for this is-: On Yaroze the Boot disk Uses certain regions of Memory in the PSX so you cannot Load Programs into this Memory. Most of the Demos I downloaded crashed because the were trying to access this memory. Which makes me believe that they were not written on Yaroze as Sony would have us believe!! The code is also Very Poorly documented BTW. So there you have it. Summary: Yaroze Will be a Failure & have a Negative Effect if Sony Does Not Address these Problems. At the Moment it is a Complete Mess. Development Systems Like Direct X Don't Need great Documentation because, you can buy Many Third Party Books in your local Book Store if the Official Documentation is not to your liking. (I know I have two). With Yaroze this is not the case. We Are Dependant on The official Stuff. This posting will first be mailed on the Sony Site as to get a official response from Yaroze Team After 1 week I will post it to the outside world. I would be grateful for any response To be sent to My IP address As Well as the Newsgroup. --- Colin Adams Cobra Developments