Path: chuka.playstation.co.uk!news From: Developer Support Newsgroups: scee.yaroze.freetalk.english Subject: Re: Net Yaroze: An "Early Adopters" Review v1.0 Date: Mon, 19 May 1997 09:05:11 +0100 Organization: Sony Computer Entertainment Europe Lines: 223 Message-ID: <338009B7.73F8@interactive.sony.com> References: <337D2DE1.F67@cobradev.demon.co.uk> Reply-To: N/A-Use-Newsgroup NNTP-Posting-Host: 194.203.13.10 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.01 (Win95; I) To: colin adams Hi Colin, Thanks for this - we always appreciate feedback, so that we can improve the site and information available as much as possible. I few of comments are below... -Paul > > 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 Great! > > 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). We'd attempted to put a lot more sample code on the CD, but a few last minute issues prevented us. (Everything for the CD had to be finalized last year). > > 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. Fair comments. Actually the Manuals have already been heavily revised, and complemented with more .HTML documents. The "how to..." idea is good, and we'll look at that. Firstly, have you seen http://www.playstation.co.uk/yaroze/manuals ? To give you an insight into the way things worked: * The manuals were translated from the Japanese originals * Each manual was split into sections, and reviewed by one of our experts in that area (the group here supports both Yaroze and Professional developers). The emphasis was on technical accuracy, rather than grammar. [The docs were updated by our own programming team..] * Each section was then reviewed again by another person, before being put together into WORD, and convereted into acrobat. * The electronic forms of the manuals were sent on CD to our three "beta" sites. (One at the University Middlesex, one in Northern Ireland, one in Sweden). Any comments were addressed. * These versions were sent off for inclusion on the CD and to be printed in Japan. * Since then, our colleagues in the U.S. have been through a similar process, and we've been publishing more information every few weeks on this site. * A new revision of the Manuals will be on the site shortly. In summary. much of your concerns are already being addressed - (to all) what is your all time favourite manual for programming on a specific platform ? [We'll look again at Colin's suggestion]. Also are there any particular chapters of the manuals you'd like us to work on ? > > 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. Hmm. Yes, our use of Courier has been much more sucessful than our use of "snail mail" services, and most people seem to have received their systems within a couple of weeks of their order being placed. (FYI: The hardware is shipped directly from our warehouse by courier upon confirmation of payement, and the same day an account is set up on this Web site, and a letter sent out from our office in London). One suggestion (half in jest) was to delay the sending out of the hardware by a week to let the Post Office have a fair chance ;-) Seriously, we'll look into it, and I'll discuss some ideas internally. > > 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. I think we address the questions we see (except the ones asking for "hardware information" and "protocol information"). Areas such as information on TMD, RSD and GDB took a little time to document, but have all been addressed. Please let us know of any outstanding - incidentally its also worth looking at the American Newsgroups as well these days. > 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. Could you point out specific demos with which you saw problems, and a description of the problem ? As a background, all of Stuart and Lewis' code was written on a Yaroze (albeit using the Japanese version initially, which was interesting whilst we had no documents). The exceptions are some demos such as "dino", which were ported from the "professional" environment. As a check, we also had two work experience chaps with us, who downloaded and checked the samples on Mac and PC. (Hence some of the rather odd descriptions of code from the Japanese site). > > 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 Well, it appears that a number of Magazines (in particular the excellent Spanish "Superjuegos") have run excellent articles on "How to program" Yaroze, so I suppose its only a matter of time before "the book" is written. In the mean time, if you point out specific areas that could be improved, we will work on them.