I was wondering how you would develop games for consoles such as n64, playstation, ps2, game cube, x box etc. Do they develop the code on computers first then copy it over to consoles? If so how? I know this is a basic question but I have been looking for the answer. Thanks.

Hi,

This is one I definately can help on. My company are licensed PSX and GBA developers.

Basically for both I use VC++ 6.0 to write the code. For the PSX I use a version of GCC to compile and then it has to be uploaded to the dev console to run and test (you can use emulators, but they are not 100% accurate).

For the GBA it''s all done in VC++, it also has some great resource tools for Bitmaps and BG creation, again then it gets uploaded into the dev console to test.


Ultimately, you do need the libs and access to the dev sites for any console work, unless you want to try and go down the hacker route, which really isn''t a great way to do it! (I do know this too :-) )


A lot of people at the moment are making GBA games using PC code, then hoping to send the demos to publishers and then get the dev kits when the game gets signed.
This isn''t a bad route to go down as a start, but you should find out as much as you can about the GBA before doing this (so the game is represented accurately). Oh and you''ll need to lose a lot of your demo code before converting.




Hope this helps!




Marc Lambert

marc@darkhex.com