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PSP Programming Tutorials
A Reader writes "Since its inception, the PSP Homebrew Community has been hacking away at their little jem of a portable console. Its valiant efforts in the fight for open hardware have not been well received by Sony. Regardless, Yeldarb, a homebrew programmer, has released a PSP Programming Tutorial Series. It covers everything from setting up the development environment to writing your first program to sprucing up your programs with a little graphics programming. The tutorial series is a must read for anyone interested in joining the PSP hacking community."
It's interesting how we get all those stories about PSP hacking, PSP homebrew, etc, etc yet I don't recall a single story about the DS homebrew scene (which is a bit larger as the device has weaker DRM systems and accepts readily available homebrew material like flash cartridges without complaining) and not nearly as much about GBA homebrew. Are people more interested in the PSP because it's harder to use for homebrew, because there's something important about the PSP that the DS doesn't provide or are they just more interested because the PSP is getting few games lately?
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Jem of the year? Hahahaha. Good one. Next article, please.
I doubt Sony are all that bothered about people describing how to setup a MAKE file, or how to increment an integer by one...
The DS has only 4MB of RAM, hardly enough for complex homebrew applications, compared to the 32MB found in the PSP. You could also have 1GB+ of storage space in your PSP with readily available parts. Basically you just need to keep throwing money at it and it doesn't require hardware mods. Can't say the same for the DS, most of the time you need to mod it or buy hard-to-get equipment to hack it.
Furthermore, most of the libraries needed to run the PSP are already included in the firmware stored in that big NVRAM, so they're readily available to applications, even homebrew. The DS has a very simple firmware and all the libraries need to be extracted or reverse-engineered from the cartridges that contain them, and so far there aren't many games that use Wi-Fi, for example.
That's not to say the DS doesn't have its own advantages, though. The cartridges' memory is directly addressable from the CPU, so it has a very good potential for expansion. The touchscreen, mic and Wi-Fi/Ni-Fi features make it better than the PSP in things like Internet browsing, VoIP and chatting.
It's just that the DS architecture doesn't lend itself to hacking that easily. I hope the Play-Yan gets released in the US and someone hacks it so to make the SD Card accessible to homebrew applications. A non-mod firmware hack would help, too.
- Otaku no naka no otaku, otaking da!!!
It's nice to see this information collected like this, instead of making prospective developers trawl through the ps2dev forums (where the toolchain development takes place, but it's not really saying much. Framebuffer graphics techniques and libpng aren't PSP specific, and if you can't do that stuff already you're probably going to have trouble getting much further. Take the pspdev FAQ and just look through the samples, that should be more than enough to get you started. And you'll be able to draw stuff the fast way, using the GU, instead of just writing directly to VRAM.
Also, Shine's lua player is an easier way to get into psp dev... but please, please don't go and write another shell.
-ReK
md5sum -c reality.md5
reality: FAILED
md5sum: WARNING: 1 of 1 computed checksum did NOT match
All I bought for the DS was a so-called PassMe and a GBA flash memory cart.
Nintendo DS: $130. PassMe2: $25. Compatible genuine Nintendo DS Game Card: $30. GBA flash memory card: $70. Now the DS is already more expensive than a PSP.
I believe the PSP has better controls
O rly? Would you rather play a real-time sim such as Starcraft on a tablet PC or on a ThinkPad?
Furthermore, most of the libraries needed to run the PSP are already included in the firmware stored in that big NVRAM
Including the ability to run unsigned binaries on PSP firmware 2.50 or newer? In PSP terms, the Nintendo DS firmware is still at 2.00 and has a very stable downgrader to 1.50, and games will never upgrade your firmware.
Programming for the PSP seems like a real waste of time and money when you compare it to the GP2X.
Find me a U.S. retail chain that sells GP2X units and I'll believe you. The target markets for a lot of these homebrew efforts are 1. people whose parents won't let them order a $200 video game system online, especially if there are no AAA commercial titles for it, and 2. people looking to break into the professional video game development industry, where experience on platforms that the company has previously developed on is preferred to experience on "foreign" platforms.
I just got my GP2X a couple weeks ago, and the machine is beautiful. For just under $200, you have a very powerful console (sans hardware 3D, sadly...but the 2D hardware is great ;) running on a fully open platform--linux kernel, GNU operating system, SDL libs, and everything. The development scene is vibrant, and some homebrew projects were completed before the device was even released to the public. It's the best development toy I've ever owned, and it's basically grab-and-go.
Sure, you can waste time hacking away at the PSP, but think of all that energy you could otherwise be spending on software development. Now, if what you like best is circumventing DRM, then I salute you, but I for one don't want the hassle.
Have doubts? Take a look at the wiki.
Is the battery life greater than 15 minutes on your GP2X yet?
I assume you mean a big-box store like Best Buy or Circuit City
Or even a specialty chain such as EBGames. Or even smaller regional stores. The point of this exercise is that the reseller has to be brick-and-mortar, not pure dot-com, because a lot of people won't buy video game hardware until they can touch it.
The device that can still be made to run homebrew but requires additional stuff
If "additional stuff" is not available brick-and-mortar, then to many people, it's not available period.
or the device that will no longer run homebrew but did back then without additional stuff?
It might still be relatively easy to find a used PSP with <= 2.00 firmware at a brick-and-mortar pawn shop, especially once you realize that you've played the notable PSP UMD games before on the PS2 or on a GBA emulator.
Wow, and only two years after the first DS coding tutorials came out. Pre-emptive strike to those who point out that the system's only a year and a half old: I know. We had tutorials, largely correct, as well as a toolchain and nearly-functional binaries, almost six months before the hardware actually came to market.
The PSP homebrew scene? Meh.
StoneCypher is Full of BS
The PSP is a pretty cool gizmo. but it would be better if you could, without hacking, make your own content for it. when u look at it compared to the DS it has ready connectivity to a computer with no aditional items needed, it can do soo much with media, and its a pretty decent pwered handheld device with internet and i kick ass screen :P i think it beats a DS any day :P