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Games Entertainment

Developing for the XBox and Gamecube? 25

Posted by Cliff from the latest-entries-in-the-console-wars dept.
An Anonymous Coward asks this timely question: "My first impression when seeing the new consoles was: Hey, the GPUs in those things alone are more expensive than the whole thing! Thinking some cool demos/ports (SDL on the XBox???) might show, I started to search the net for developer info. The XBox appears that it could easily run any Win32/DirectX program, however the executables appear to have to be signed by Microsoft (many other devices that requite programs to be signed often accept developer keys, where either the programs are locked to one machine, or a warning is shown before they are executed. I wonder if this will occur)... The GameCube on the other hand, is described by many and on Nintendo's overview as being extremely easy to develop for. I start to drool when I see the legendary PPC/ATI combination, but have found no developer information at all. Anyone have experience with either of these? (Also,I assume other OSs could easily run on the XBox, but a loader must be written, and somehow signed first.)" Which of the later generation consoles (PS2 included) would be easiest for a hobbiest to start developing for?
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Developing for the XBox and Gamecube? More

Developing for the XBox and Gamecube?

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  • Signing (Score:2, Interesting)

    by MindStalker ( 22827 )
    Well obviously, as Misrosoft gets licensing money from anyone who develops games for the XBox. Only Microsoft signed apps would work. Of couse the boxes that MS sells to developers would be able to run developer apps, cause well, how would the developer be able to run them! :) Good luck gettins one :)

  • Hacking (Score:3, Informative)

    by JMZero ( 449047 ) on Monday November 19, 2001 @07:30PM (#2587055) Homepage
    Avoiding hackers seems to pretty much be stated goal for all 3 of these platforms.

    Their logic makes sense. On a platform like the PS one, piracy was rampant. Even if a game checked for the CD somehow, the game binary could be edited to skip the check. With signed binaries, this becomes 4 steps more difficult for the hacker, and saves the developer the work of doing counter-piracy themselves.

    To get a sense of how persistent hackers are (and how they're dealt with), check out the article on Gamasutra about the anti-piracy work in Spyro for PS one.

    http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20011017/dodd_ 01 .htm (login may be required, I don't remember)
    • I don't know how, but I managed to include a space before .htm in the link above. Oops.

      PS: Good luck on getting a machine to write the goofy little disks that the GameCube uses. I'm afraid all of these consoles have significant buy-in. Too bad.

      Hopefully someone writes a signed x-box executable that will run arbitrary code off the hard disk or Internet.

      Thank goodness it's MS in charge of the security, or I'd say it's impossible :)
  • Can't say much for the game cube, but developing for the xbox is REALLY easy if you know directX. The SDK includes pretty much everything as an interface to directX (directinput, etc), with some minor changes for HW optimization.
    • Since you seem to have access to development hardware, perhaps you'll know. Or someone will..

      Does MS give developers their own key (ie, let them sign exe's willy-nilly for use on off-the-shelf boxes), or does it sign them itself? What are the odds of a rogue developer helping in the hack effort?

  • Pray for PS2 Linux... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by djohnsto ( 133220 ) <dan.e.johnston@gm[ ].com ['ail' in gap]> on Monday November 19, 2001 @08:14PM (#2587202) Homepage
    Note: I don't develop on any of these consoles, but I'm a fairly rabid gamer and develop 3D software for the PC...

    If you want to develop 3D software for one of these consoles, pray that Sony releases the HD/Linux add-on for the PS2. The official development kits for all of these run several thousand dollars. The hardware required to develop on the consoles typically comes with additional functionality that the retail systems lack (PC connectivity is the obvious one!).

    As for ease of porting, the Xbox uses a modified version of DX8, the PS2 gives you an assembly manual (although I hear the Linux they released has an OpenGL implementation), and the Gamecube is unknown to me (although I would guess an OpenGL-like proprietary library). My guess would be that software developed on the PS2 version of linux would NOT run on a regualar PS2. This is similar to the PS1 based Net-Yarozee (sp?).

    All three console manufacturers make money by software licensing sales. Making it easy for any developer to write and sell software without paying any to them would definately not be in their best interest!

    • there was an artical at CNET if I recall correctly back in October saying that Sony was releasing the Linux kit in the US in time for Christmas. It was on /. and little has been said since then anywhere. I'm still wating to see if they go for the $209 that CNET estimated them to go for.

  • It seems to me that when piracy is rampant, a system (or game) flourishes. Examples: Playstation 1 was easier to coax into playing burned games than its competitors, and it won the market. Quake II had almost no copy protection software and it was *very* popular.. even after better games (such as HalfLife) came out. Record CD sales have been observed despite "evilz of mp3z". And finally, IBM-compatible computer beat out the technically supperior Macs..

    • Re:Playstation 1 was popular because it was hackab (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      that's not specifically true dreamcast was
      very easy to hack, diagnosis: dead.

      if you pirate, you are stealing... what
      is the use of being wildly popular when
      nobody pays you for it?

      yeah, I admit that I've pirated software
      ... but i've never tried to fool myself
      into thinking i was doing someone a favor.
  • ...for the hobbyist. Use a windoze98 or better PC with a 650 MHZ PIII, a GForce3 accelerator, a HammerHead dual-stick controller, MSVisual C++, and DX8. This is roughly the setup that most developers were prototyping on before the dev-kits were widely available.

  • Dreamcast (Score:3, Interesting)

    by phaze3000 ( 204500 ) on Tuesday November 20, 2001 @05:24AM (#2588323) Homepage
    As well as being the cheapest to purchase, the Dreamcast is the best next-gen console to program for. There's plenty of programming info out there, here's a few links.

    http://mc.pp.se/dc/ [mc.pp.se]
    http://dcdev.allusion.net/ [allusion.net]
    http://www.boob.co.uk [boob.co.uk]

    The GameBoy Advance is also rather lovely to code [gbadev.org] for, although it does require special hardware to get started..

    • The problem with coding for the DC is that, yes, you can buy a new machine for a hundred bucks, but if you want to run code on it you'll have to:

      1) build a special serial link that'll run you something like $20-30 (slow)

      2) burn a CD every time you want to test your code

      3) shell out another $100-150 to buy the broadband adaptor (ie an ethernet card) from ebay.

      Not to diss the DC as something to work on, as that was my original intention, but I had some cash-flow problems during the month where the BBAs actually sold at retail price. At least I have Soulcalibur, Shenmue and THPS2. +)

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