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Sorry to bother, but I was wondering some of the major differences and similarities between programming on a PC for PC games, or for Game console systems like PS2,GC, and the XBOX.
Like what langauges would be used for consoles, and things that you could do to help learn things and such If u wer to want to program on a console.
Thanx
I use C and an unfortunate amount of assembler. The consoles you have listed here use very watered down OS's, except for XBOX which uses one microsofts already watered down OS's :)
There are laws as far as making games for any console. I suggest you start communicating with the respective companies. Sony is very nice (expensive). Nintendo can be a little more expensive plus they can be a pain in the neck to deal with. I don't know about M$. I'd assume that they are easy to go with because I have heard that they are in constant search of developers.
im not speaking from any experience or anything but i know a lot of console programming is done w/machine code like master said, and usually it isnt a universal thing like c or c++ it specific to the system
dP munky is right on. I am only truly experienced with the Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance (which are way different from the consoles you listed). They don't have an OS so everything you write is actually going to compile into machine code which is a double edged sword. You have complete freedom over the machine but you are burdened with not having any of the conveniences of an operating system. As far as I know video game consoles use more of a beefed up BIOS and simplified kernel system rather than an actual OS. I could be wrong, I haven't made any games or other software on PS2, GC, or XBox.
To my knowledge, some of them use non standard c++. Basically, their own language, but it heavily resembles c++.
If you had to write them in machine code, couldn;t you (on your computer) write like a little conversion prog where created your own language and you convert this language into the machine code equivelants? Thats what id try to do.Quote:
Originally posted by master5001
dP munky is right on. I am only truly experienced with the Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance (which are way different from the consoles you listed). They don't have an OS so everything you write is actually going to compile into machine code which is a double edged sword. You have complete freedom over the machine but you are burdened with not having any of the conveniences of an operating system. As far as I know video game consoles use more of a beefed up BIOS and simplified kernel system rather than an actual OS. I could be wrong, I haven't made any games or other software on PS2, GC, or XBox.
i guess you could do that, but in order to do so you would have to know a lot about the system you wanna program for, because each console has its own "language" and memory map. You would have to know all of the information about the specific systems machine code to do that, and usually joe shmo programmer doesnt have access to that.Quote:
Originally posted by face_master
If you had to write them in machine code, couldn;t you (on your computer) write like a little conversion prog ....
i know for a fact that nintendo keeps a tight lid on their stuff. we have gba dev kits at school and we're not supposed to be able to use them until our third year. One of the freshman got a hold of the machine code from a third year student, and would have been able to make games n stuff, but he went around telling people and admin found out, and ripped him a new one.
but i guess you could do a conversion if you had the right info? :)
Hey guys! I do Palm, gameboy, ps, and some Nintendo programming. Here's the info you are looking for!
Gameboy has no os which is true. However the Ps2, Ps GC, and Xbox all have their own Os.
ALL of these consoles can be coded in C/C++. You need to either find a publisher who find your work promising or buy a license from a game company to get a working compiler SOME code is done in ASM but not a whole lot. C++ takes the main handle with the Os's API. The Compiler comes with full documentation. Gameboy however is an exception, half code in C, another half codes in ASM. There you go. Hope that helps!!
Well the C compiler I use for gba uses standard C. Thanks FwyWice for the clarification on the OS thing as far as ps and Nintendo(not sure which one but i'd venture to say n64 and on). I have done a little dreamcast programming and it does have an OS. It uses a stripped down version of Windows CE.
As for the machine code thing I am not fluent enough with the machine code that gbc or gba understands to write code using a hex editor. But to answer face_master's question, such tools do exist. In fact one of the first gba compilers I used was based on GCC. But to be honest who wants to write their own language (other than a newbie programmer)?