I know many people around these forums go about purchasing various console development kits via eBay or other sources. Those may include XBOX or Gamecube development kits. I was just wondering what most of you guys do with your development kits? Do you buy only to keep in a gaming collection, or do you all develop on them? Anyone have any work-in-progress projects? Me, I mostly collect as a "museum" for my site. I plan on developing when time permits.
Both. :nod: Work: http://mouse.pouncingkitten.com/office/office-desk.jpg Play: http://mouse.pouncingkitten.com/arcade/new-machine-finished-internal.jpg Just the one...:icon_bigg
Well, actually I buyed a Ultra64 dev kit (for the N64), mainly for the fact that I am very intresting in experiencing a dev kit and of course collecting it. Sadly, my time is way too short to permit me to investigate on it too long so no projects are planned for now :/
i actually do work on them, allthough i did not spend too much time finishing something on the dreamcast. still working on a ps2 demo and some psp game.
I'm not using an official devkit per se, but a Doctor V64 for testing my code on the real thing. I got the devkit from a member here. :icon_bigg I'm working on a N64 remake of Alley Cat (was originally CGA for DOS) That is the tool I wrote in VB to help me edit vertex colors
Interesting! To be honest I thought the Doctor V64 and etc were only made to backup carts to ROMs and nothing else! I guess we learn everyday!
Well, that's actually pretty much correct. The Doctor can backup/play back roms either from a computer via parallel, or read from a CD. It also plays Video CDs (precursor to DVD, apparently popular in Asia). I use it for testing framebuffer effects and other things that emulators don't work with well. I want to make sure my stuff runs on both emulators and the real N64, so I test using Project64 and the V64. The V64 doesn't actually do any development work, the compiler I use (PsyQ) produces a .bin binary file which I have to then append a header, pad to nearest megabit size, byteswap, and then CRC. Getting the DOS compilers and sound tools to work under XP is a pain. The 8.3 filename restrictions are still there (ick).
Specifically on gamecube devkits, GDEVs (unmodded) arent bad for doing some Wii games basic things, apart from the new controller interface. Anyone who got a GDEV, could be said to own a lower clock speed Wii devkit for a reasonable price. Even Virtual Console developers could benefit from secretly owning a GDEV to my understanding.
I've always used copiers/cheat devices to do console development. Sporting Clays was developed using Action Replay on the PSX and Saturn and a V64jr on the N64. The Defender of the Crown demo for the Gameboy Color was done with a Gameboy flash cart. Most of my early Genesis/SNES development was done with a romulator ISA board. I usually like to use an official SDK, if I can find one. (I've only used them on the PSX, Saturn, and N-64).
i think earlier assembler was the way to go later c or c++ dont know how far .net and such thing got on the gaming front ms made some huge noise on there xna around the xbox 360 release
in modern consoles (heavy) asm only comes in when you want to do something very unique. Companies provide tools to make the programming as friendly as possible (except for nintendo maybe ) Every console developer has to have some basic technical knowledge above and beyond your standard programming (algorithm)skills. But beyond handling I/O and sequences etc, programming is always programming. That said, obviously C is a robust and suggested language for most platforms. C++ and the other variations have also been adopted lately.
