From: Jeff <jeff@pc-4374.bc.rogers.wave.ca>
  To  : ggi-develop@eskimo.com
  Date: 03 Aug 1998 22:57:55 -0700

Re: Linux GameDev IRC meeting (fwd)

Emmanuel Marty <core@suntech.fr> writes:

> Jeff wrote:
> 
> > > * The commercial people will be interested most in *portable* APIs/SDKs/...
> > > Itīs easier to convince them to use some new library if this lib
> > > supports Win32 *and* Playstation *and* MacOS *and* Linux in a portable
> > > way instead of *only* Linux.
> >
> > it is folly to try to support cross-platform to the PSX...I am a
> > professional game developer (most of what I do is on the PSX, been
> > doing that platform for about 2.5 years now) and it is so proprietary
> > that it would be a large waste of memory and speed (which is sorely
> > needed on a 2 meg 33MHz machine) to try to put a layer in between the
> > game and the hardware API (which, given, sucks, but it's more in how
> > it's laid out more than it's speed).  Concentrate more on going
> > linux/win32/mac/un*x than trying to port to a console as well (never
> > mind the NDA issues)...
> >
> 
> I can't claim to have as much PSX development experience as you do, I
> only wrote one game on it, but I would agree with you. The programmer is
> already trying to cache what (s)he can in the 2 MB of memory (the 33 mhz
> speed didn't really bother me at the time, except to get around the bugs
> of the GPU, but I suppose that now it start to show its limits.. the CPU speed
> of the playstation is more measured in joules than mhz anyway :).
> 
> Maybe we'll have to devise some cross-compile-time method of natively
> converting libggi calls to sony API calls.. The only other option I can think
> of would be to put libggi support in psy-q and the sony libs or so, and that's
> science-fiction :)


hehehehhee, uh ya, :)  although from what i hear PSYQ is coming out
with or has already come out with a psylib/psylink that deals with ELF
obj files instead of their stupid proprietary PSYQ-obj format...so in
theory one could cross-compile/link sony stuff in linux with gcc/ld :)
that is if sony ever catches up and releases libs (they are up to 4.3
now btw) in ELF format, which i doubt will ever happen...they are a
tad...well, slow...

btw: now that we are in 'late generation' sony games, i am starting
to feel the cpu limit (mostly transform wise, memory bandwidth
problems getting stuff to/from the GTE...simply too little of it for the
amount of polygons i would 'like' to push).  GPU is still as buggy as
ever although the later revisions of the GPU do MUCH better gouraud
shading, you can see a huge diff b/t psx's from a few years ago as
opposed to new ones...anyways, im horribly off topic here.

basically i think you summed it up nicely, GGI->psx would either
require someone NDA'd to work on a libggi compile-time way of
replacing ggi calls with GTE/GPU calls...(since you simply push
polygons, there is really no effective way to pixel-render on the
psx), or put support in sony libs/psyq (you have a better chance of
flying to the moon using your arms as wings and methane-output as
jet-propulsion).  Since there is no way to pixel render, you HAVE to
push polygons, so it would sort of be a ggi->mesa type interace, but i
CANT see how GGI could take advantage of GTE/CPU pipelining (replacing
nop's with register loads etc), GPU feeding (of the order table,
etc... for the general case that a lib like GGI needs to provide


late night babbling


jeff