The easiest to develop console

Just as the title says: which one is the easier to code for?

The Dreamcast?

The X360?

The Snes?

The PSX?

Another one?

I'm not talking about complexity here, but actual work using the official (or at the time) development tools each console had.

 

XBOX I would guess (if you use the XDK).
XBOX360 I havn't had the luck to play with yet so no idea on that one..

If you like ASM then the SNES is pretty nice too.. except for the SPC700 that can take some time to understand how it works (at least I thought that until I found some decent docs)

 

This is a highly subjective topic and easiness is relative.

The newer the console, the less low level you need to go. If you're comfortable with low level, you may enjoy SNES. If you can only think in objects, 360 is probably the way to go.

What do you mean by actual work? Lines of code? That's also subjective. Official tools in SNES days, unless you worked for Nintendo, meant making your own.

 

I'd say go with Dreamcast. Good compromise between OOP and low-level hardware control, IMHO. Also, all you need is a DC coder cable and some free toolchains.

 

I say start with PC + SDL, get something working and then start thinking about finishing it on a console. There's no better platform to prototype on than a PC, which you'll be using for an IDE anyway.

 

Nah I'm not trying to get into console development...

The thing is, I was discussing with this guy about the possibilities of ressurecting the dreamcast architecture for a portable since it could take advantage of its extensive catalog of games and freeware.

But then theres some news stuff on the portable horizon: UMPCs are getting smaller (sony's UX for example) and then you have the totally new technologies like the Cortex A-9 which is groundbreaking.

Therefore, wheres the point in using cheap yet old technology? well, for once UMPCs are mostly Windows PCs and we all know not everybody has the patience to use a PC for gaming, and while Cortex A-9 could be the next big thing, who knows how good it may be for games and game developers?.

So basically, my point is to find out if the DC tech is still worty of being used, or if theres something better out there.

 

Dreamcast architecture is well understood and well documented. But you have to ask, is there enough of a user base to cover what you want? If you're looking only to hit a hardcore gaming crowd, then you can safely code something in KallistiOS, push it out for the Dreamcast and watch your ISO get flung around the torrent sites for centuries. If you're looking to get your game into more hands, you have to go with a platform that's distributed and supported more broadly.

Portable considerations aside, I'd have to suggest checking out the XNA developer platform. Xbox Live is turning out to be surprisingly fertile ground for new and unusual titles. Traditional publishing is dominated by slothful, repetitive companies like Electronic Arts who won't take a chance on smaller projects. And XNA titles have the potential to be seen on other platforms, if the Windows and Zune runtime environments ever get off the ground. It's also easy to find help with Win32 and DirectX if you need extra hands with the coding or the quality checking.

 

XNA is pretty cool...

 

Nothing is more simple than developing for gameboy or megadrive!
When i mean "developing", it means, from scratch, no lib nor sdk, just a simple C compiler/assembler , an emulator, the documentation and a blank .s or .c file... That's a lot more fun!!!

 

What about atari 2600 or something? Should be simple enough i suppose (i never looked at it).

 

Not only develop but build your own console, I don't think it gets any easier then this:

http://www.xgamestation.com/

 

Is assembly hard to grasp? This is what a lot of old games are, right?

 

Most console games of the nes/snes/sms/genesis era were written in assembly language.

It is not particularly hard to grasp, it's a much more daunting task though than writing in a high level language.

6502 assembly is the easiest, you have an accumulator that you can add/subtract values to/from. Two index registers x,y. A stack pointer and some flags

lda #$00 ; load accumulator with the value 0
lda $00 ; load accumulator with the value stored at memory location 0.
lda $0,x ; load accumulator with the value stored at memory location 0 + x

then you can:
adc #$2 ; add 2 to the accumulator
adc $2 ; add the value stored at memory location 2 to the accumulator
adc $2,x ; add the value stored at memory location 2 + x to the accumulator

followed by:
sta $d000 ; store the accumulator to the memory location $d000
sta $d000,x ; store the accumulator to the memory location $d000 + x

The next time you watch the film the terminator, when they show what he sees. You'll see commented 6502 assembly flash up, they obviously thought it looked technical. No wonder he wanted to kill people

 

Go GBA man. Nice and simple Plus what you learn helps if you want to move up to the NDS later.

 

Do you have the brand/model number?

It was just one of those rants, not like the guy was an investor and did like my idea...

 

That would probably be either the Compaq Aero 8000 or the Hitachi ePlate. They're not really handhelds; the first is sort of a subnotebook with an embedded OS, the other is a tablet with a touchscreen. As far as I know, neither one has an OpenGL-compliant graphics chipset, which would make porting Dreamcast code an order of magnitude more difficult. Having the same processor doesn't automatically make the code portable in any way.

 

BTW just checked the compaq, and well not only it lacks the GPU part (obviously) but the SH4 runs slower than the DC's.

Plus is not that portable, being almost as big as a Macbook and way more than a UMPC.

And the battery is a bit crap too, so whatever, I'll rather get a Treamcast and convert it to handheld to help prove if I'm right or wrong.

 

PSP is quite easy to develop for, also theres lots of support if you need it on ps2dev and irc etc.