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Developing for the Playstation 2?
Kentai asks: "Im thinking of building my final year CS project around developing a piece of software for the Playstation 2 and I am wondering what various pitfalls I should expect. Bringing our own software to the living room on nice hardware seems like a whole new computer medium that would be fun to exploit. Problems I am expecting so far include: issues like obtaining a compiler (pretty important), the whole Playstation 2 CDR issue and legal issues. What compilers can one use to develop PS2 software, and how much does each solution cost? Also, has anyone had any luck or placed any hope on a Java VM for this platform?"
You might want to keep an eye on www.javagaming.org . A few of the Sun Guys Frequent that site, and will sometimes post little bits of information.
Less Talk, More Beer.
Python has been used for commercial games on the PlayStation 2. I don't think that the development tools are on the Web because of Sony licensing. But if you know who to talk to and where to look, you can probably find them.
The dreamcast has an EXCELLENT community built up around homebrew.
There is an awesome library/miniOS called KOS which gives you hooks into everything, you compile with an SH4/ARM crosscompiled gcc, and it's easy to do once you're set up.
http://dcdev.allusion.net/
The PS2 homebrew crowd is JUST STARTING to get off the ground, but there's still problems of having to hack your ps2 with a soldering iron to get it to boot a cdr/etc, as well as very weak library support.
Homebrew console programming is very fun, but go for dreamcast, ESPECIALLY with how cheap dc's are right now.
There's even ways to get a serial cable hooked up, so you get debug info and can upload your program without burning a disc every revision.
Better support will not be found!
That would be me :)
The main thing to expect from the PS2 is that you have minimal to no library support. If you want to get polygons or bitmaps on the screen, you have to manage video memory yourself, you have to talk to the graphics hardware directly, and so on. If you want to really get performance, then you have to write custom assembly code for the vector processors.
The bottom lines are: (A) the learning curve is very steep; and (B) expect to do very embedded-systems type of work, and not be able to rely on fancy C++, Java, or the like.