Path: chuka.playstation.co.uk!news From: Ira Rainey Newsgroups: scee.yaroze.freetalk.english Subject: Re: Net Yaroze: An "Early Adopters" Review v1.0 Date: Sat, 17 May 1997 00:29:28 +0100 Organization: shadow developments Lines: 140 Message-ID: <337CEDD1.6E2@netcomuk.co.uk> References: <337D2DE1.F67@cobradev.demon.co.uk> NNTP-Posting-Host: dialup-08-02.netcomuk.co.uk Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.0Gold (Macintosh; I; PPC) In comment to colin: colin adams wrote: > > 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. > I've had mine for around a month now, but haven't had a whole load of time to devote to it (been averaging a couple of nights a week). > My-Self: > I Have Been Coding for About 5 Years i.e. Amiga & PC, Using Assembler > & C/C++ Doing 2D stuff. Started coding about 10 years ago, 8-bit assembler, games & utils on spectrum & C64, dropped it all for about 6 years and picked it up about 2 years ago, learnt C and got a job as a C developer. >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!!). Me too! > 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 A few more problems with my Mac than I would of liked , but otherwise ok, I can resort to my PC laptop or my PC at work if needed. > The Manuals: > The Yaroze Manuals consist of 3 Books & I must admit to being more than > a little supprised how thin they were-: Snap. > 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!! I agree, it would have been nice to have it in a more structured order, all the relevant functions grouped together. > 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. I fondly remember my C64 programmers reference guide and my Z80 programmers manual, neither of which could hold any more info. They were ace. > 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. Agree again. > 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. 2d as well. I agree 3d is more the current vain, and is obviously the natural progression for the gaming industry, but good 2d games are just as good. Remember, the game is in the playablilty and adictivness not just the graphics (I've still got my Atari VCS 2600 and some of those games are so playable even if they only take up 8K). > 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 Web site isn't too bad, but sometimes I find the server a bit slow. (I connect at 33.6K) > The Site is Very Good & Easy to Navigate. Agreed. > 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!! I thought the very thing! > 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. It depends on what is classed a failure. It's still early days her in Europe, but Japan seems to be rolling, if SCE's figures are anything to go by. > (I know I have two). With Yaroze this is not the case. We Are Dependant > on The > official Stuff. I think that is the problem. We have the official line, which isn't that clear, and the unofficial/hobby/hacker line, which isn't always accurate. In general I am happy with my Yaroze, even though I am making slow progress with it - but hey, someone has to bring up the rear. The documentation is pretty poor and sometimes hard to follow, even though I would consider myself a fairly good and ambitious C coder. I hope that maybe SCEE take note from these readings and try to produce some better documentation. I know that nothing is easy, hey that's the fun of programming, but is it just me? Ira. -- "Never take life too seriously, 'cause you know you're not getting out of it alive." - Bugs Bunny