Path: chuka.playstation.co.uk!news From: Web Master Newsgroups: scee.yaroze.programming.libraries Subject: Re: Why only LibGS? Date: Thu, 20 Mar 1997 09:26:12 +0000 Organization: SCEE Lines: 46 Message-ID: <333102B4.3846@interactive.sony.com> References: <01bc34be$10f12140$b756dec2@algorithm> NNTP-Posting-Host: chuka.playstation.co.uk Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 2.02 (X11; I; SunOS 5.5.1 sun4u) To: Russ Williams Russ Williams wrote: > > Why does the Yaroze only include a libgs derivative, when the developer > community acknowledges that it libgs slower than libgpu/libgte? And why no > inline GTE macros? > > I can understand the Yaroze being aimed at inexperienced developers, but > would it be *that* difficult to make the higher performance libraries > available for those that want them? > > --- > Russ Good question. The first point is that libgs (aka most of the functions in libps with the Gs prefix) routines have become highly tuned over the years - and are now mostly written in assembler/in-line GTE calls themselves. It would take a lot of time and effort to write more robust/efficient functions yourself ... and in fact a number of "professional" games are now written with these functions - take a look at some of the effects of the "Demo Disc" menu that you received with your system. The advantage of Gs calls over some of the lower level functions in the "professional" libraries is that you can efficiently create a 3D world very quickly and then see if it "works". (In fact we now tend to prototype wiith Gs calls, and then fine tune in tyhe latter stages of games creation). Personally, I think the most important issue is to take a look at what can be done with Yaroze, and compare them with a "professional" title. For example, look in detail at FTPTEST (in Demos:SCEI) and the explosion effects - personally I think they're some of the nicest seen on PlayStation, and would put quite a few games which have access to the professional libraries to shame. Some of the reasons maybe that many games are designed to be easily ported to PC or Saturn, and don't make the best use of the libraries provided. My final comment is that the Yaroze libraries are being extended ... for example http://www.playstation.co.uk/yaroze/ftplibraries/update1/.... Paul