Shigsy: Revolution development possible on GameCube dev kits

[Schpickles]

Now this is interesting... from Eurogamer (http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=61139) ...

The one advantage we have in this area is that the Revolution development can actually be done on the GameCube development environment.

says Miyamoto himself.

I wonder if that supports my belief that the revolution won't significantly up the specs over the Cube (G4 CPU, more RAM, evolition of the Flipper GPU).

If this statement is true then it really does raise some interesting questions, not least of the way Nintendo will offer development packages to developers. There's the potential there to offer "entry level" revolution dev kits for example, with the required software, and using GameCube dev kits as platform hardware.

Very interesting...

[Shazman]

ok.........................

[Schpickles]

ok.........................
what? Surely this is a pretty massive piece of news, given what it could mean for the revolution launch line up?

[Konfucius]

I'm not really surprised, they said development would be similar to the GC quite some time ago and the MP3 Video at E3 was also rendered on GC hardware.

[gorrit]

I think it basically means that the Rev uses more or less the same APIs etc as the Cube, therefore porting Cube tools, software, code etc is very easy.

[Stoof]

He means that developing for the GCN will be similar to that of the Rev. That's programming and what not.

[Maxi678]

Interesting news. Would have thought that the Rev would have it's own dev kits. Oh well.

[kav82]

hmmmm, eurogamer keeps crashing everytime i try and open it!

sorry to stray off topic there! ha ha!

[Sooj]

Interesting news. Would have thought that the Rev would have it's own dev kits. Oh well.
The Rev will have its own dev kit. He is just stating that you can start developing for the REV in the Gamecube development environment

[zoramon089]

HE SAID GAMECUBE DEV ENVIROMENT!!!!
He means the dev kits are similar, the same way Xbox and PC dev kits are. This in no way means the Rev isn't that much stronger than the GC or anything like that

[gaggle64]

This is good. Of all the current Gen machines, the Gamecube was considered the machine with the best set of dev tools, resulting in some great system performances early on in it's life (Rouge Leader, Luigis Manshion, Super Smash Bros. all still some of the best looking console games around). After positive comments from developers on the DS about it's dev kits, I was hoping that Nintendo would continue it's steadily-building good track-record for relative development ease. If the tools really are similar to the GC, this is good for games and developers.

[Schpickles]

HE SAID GAMECUBE DEV ENVIROMENT!!!!
He means the dev kits are similar, the same way Xbox and PC dev kits are. This in no way means the Rev isn't that much stronger than the GC or anything like that

You don't need a dev kit to develop for a PC... Xbox uses existing Microsoft tools, but its SDK and dev kits are unique.

It's unheard of to use the dev kit from one console to start work on a new generation console's work. In order for the two to be that close together, it means that there can't be any generational jumps in technology... I'm thinking multi-threading for example.

Fundamentally I'm guessing there isn't anything new architecture-wise - just higher specs

Even if the hardware is different, I think its very encouraging that there's the possibility of working on it with the GC dev kit. For starters that means that you could be making console-targetted software, rather than working on a PC and then porting everything. It also means, as I said before, that there's a chance long term for "lite" dev kits that don't need to provide the full range of hardware specs to developers who aren't using the full power - e.g. smaller / indy developers making simpler kinds of games. That would be a very, very exciting prospect.

[system_error]

Now this is interesting... from Eurogamer (http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=61139) ...

says Miyamoto himself.

I wonder if that supports my belief that the revolution won't significantly up the specs over the Cube (G4 CPU, more RAM, evolition of the Flipper GPU).




I believe it is not an indicator for next-gen performance because the XBOX360 and PS3 development kits also ranged from alpha to final which resulted in some quite "disturbing" images for the fanboys. I remember both companies showing unfinished products on unfinished hardware and quotes like "It looks so bad because it is only 30% power of the final hardware" have been the rule not the exception of their strategy.

Furthermore it is a fact that developers code on hardware which does not represent the final power because games and applications need years to finish. So why not start on Gamecube development kit (maybe you are already used to it) and concentrate on gameplay and design first. Beefing up graphics is quite simple and I think that the Revolution will still take some time to show up - so why not use the already purchased hardware to save money.
Concerning the hardware architecture I think Nintendo will (and that is an indicator of the Gamecube development kits) have a very similar layout. I tend to believe that its like the step from a Pentium with SSE instructions to a Pentium with both SSE and SSE2 (including clock rate increase/more cache). So developers can already start working on older hardware which gives the more time for the important things.

[Smalldude76]

I think he might mean that the things inside are kind of toned down versions but are similar. Kind of like how the Xbox 360 alpha kits were quite toned down compared to the actual console. Example they can start getting everything ready, then once the new dev kits arrive they're going to be able to make some upgrades and get started on their next game.

[Mercurial]

Lets hope it speeds development up then. The flip side of this could it mean a prolonged life cycle for the Gamecube? And also if the oft rumoured new Gameboy is a deformed Cube then Nintendos development tools/enviroment are going to be extremely similar across all platforms, ease of development ahoy!

[Sooj]

Lets hope it speeds development up then. The flip side of this could it mean a prolonged life cycle for the Gamecube? And also if the oft rumoured new Gameboy is a deformed Cube then Nintendos development tools/enviroment are going to be extremely similar across all platforms, ease of development ahoy!
Well Nintendo did say that they are hopefully planning on supporting the gamecube years into the Revolution's life.

Also, the next Gameboy is said to be able to play Gamecube-like disks if not gamecube disks themselves. :)

[Schpickles]

I remember EDGE saying that a portable Cube already existed at Nintendo HQ... can't remember where they based that on though.

Yeah - it could support these ideas of the Cube not dying out, and it could also serve as a great way of getting more support for their consoles if they have an affordable and cost effective development solution

[system_error]

Yeah currently the support for the GC sooo good that they could even push the Revolution into 2008 ... I am sorry but the Cube is dead except for a very few first party titles and the ports from third party developers.

Nintendo can't even support one console at time and now they want to keep the Cube alive plus a new console? I think that means even less quality games for both.

[Schpickles]

I think the point is that, regardless of current support, there are a lot of publishers and developers with GameCube kits and licenses, meaning that from day one, there's far more people ready to make Revolution games (if this is indeed accurate). If publishers could get "2 games for the price of 1" effectively, because they could support a Cube and a Revolution release, it might be a worthwhile business proposition.

As you say, it seems rather unlikely given that the GC will probably be hard to even find in the shops after Xmas

[system_error]

A Gamecube development kit costs about 20.000$ - I am not quite sure what is included or if that is the basic price or if you get a space station for that aswell but it is 20.000$ you can save for each developer in the alpha/beta stages of game development.

I am sure Nintendo will deliever new development kits aswell with better specs - more final hardware, WiFi controller ports, the controller itself. But in the meantime a developer can save much money with a already purchased Gamecube development kit especially because developers CAN use the new controller with those too :)

[DCK]

You can develop on things that are similar to the platform you're developing for. Some Xbox 360 games were started with on Apple PowerMacs just because they both use IBM CPUs (and the early 360 devkits sucked). The Rev will have roughly the same hardware architecture as the Cube, so it won't be a problem. Also, Miyamoto said environment, so it's probably the compiler, IDE etc. they can reuse.

[dazzybee]

Cynical ;)

Yeah this doesnt say anything about the power of the cube or that Nintendo are going to continue the support of Cube after Zelda, which they wont! All this is is good news, that games will have better preparation from those out of the elite few who can have proper kits this early on.

Now then, where are them games........

[system_error]

The difference between CPUs can be actually quite big in terms of power. The Gamecube CPU Gekko which based on the PowerPC750CXe had about 40 custom instructions added by IBM/Nintendo. If you compare that to the instructions of Intels SSE3 its big - SSE3 consists of 11 instructions.

[NeoBlizz]

All developers already have 3-4 years of experiens programing for gamecube platform and Rev-platform uses same API.. thats great.

Hopefulle we get a kick-start in games then, everyone start at Re4 "quality" when beginning games ;p

[Syxoed]

Yeah, I doubt that actually.

[Schpickles]

A Gamecube development kit costs about 20.000$ - I am not quite sure what is included or if that is the basic price or if you get a space station for that aswell but it is 20.000$ you can save for each developer in the alpha/beta stages of game development.
The T-DEV kits were much cheaper than that, but unfortunately SN Systems [who make them] have been bought by Sony to make tools exclusively for PlayStation3 now. I can't really go into the details of what is / isn't in a dev kit or I might get into trouble ;P

The difference between CPUs can be actually quite big in terms of power. The Gamecube CPU Gekko which based on the PowerPC750CXe had about 40 custom instructions added by IBM/Nintendo. If you compare that to the instructions of Intels SSE3 its big - SSE3 consists of 11 instructions.
Yeah definitely - and I wouldn't consider a jump of G3 to G4 a small performance jump whatsoever - I think that would be pretty sizable, and quite a potent system to work with. It just wouldn't be the kind of power people seem to be expecting of the revolution.

You can develop on things that are similar to the platform you're developing for. Some Xbox 360 games were started with on Apple PowerMacs just because they both use IBM CPUs (and the early 360 devkits sucked). The Rev will have roughly the same hardware architecture as the Cube, so it won't be a problem. Also, Miyamoto said environment, so it's probably the compiler, IDE etc. they can reuse.
The PowerMacs were the closest hardware MS could find (dual PowerPC G5s as opposed to the 3-cores-on-one-chip Xbox chip, which is PowerPC G5-based. Those developers would have been using the official XDK though, and would have expected that software to work as their dev kits were updated. This is the crucial thing - they were working on software that was nigh-on compatible with the X360 before the final hardware was available. Most next-gen work (including most of the non-first party X360 launch titles) is PC-based tech ported to the X360. Instantly that means that it wasn't designed with multithreading in mind, nor the unique memory architecture of the X360 and so on. When they finally got hold of dev kits, they would have been porting code, making it fit what they found with the X360 dev kit software. What Miyamoto is saying here is that the GameCube development environment can be used to make Revolution software - implying there is no porting required. That must imply a certain degree of architecture similarity, unless Nintendo have done a truely remarkable job of making the existing GameCube libraries work without any change on the new hardware, which is pretty much impossible to do. It sounds as if developers can use software libraries they download from the Nintendo developer site, and use the GameCube as a hardware emulator of sorts.

Ironically, the compiler and the IDE wouldn't be the issue here - its the software support, tools and build process which "make" a dev kit - the GCC compiler (which everyone bar Microsoft use) is free, and there are a number of great, free IDEs as well, if push came to shove. (SN make their own).

[Hellfire]

We already knew this for quite some time. This can be a great advantage for Revo, because it can attract 3rd parties.

[system_error]

I think GCC is overrated and as far as I remember there have been some serious problems in the last few releases. Nintendo offers development kits at www.warioworld.com (yeah funny link for something like that) and all I could see is that development kits cost about 10.000 - 20.000$ which might be lower/higher for other plattforms like the GBA, N64, etc. but since I am not a registered developer I can't tell whats all offered on this website. Furthermore I don't know the difference between the SDKs from Nintendo, SN Systems Schpickles noted or Metrowerks CodeWarrior for the Gamecube. I think GCLIB is good for smaller companies or personal software but for bigger projects it lacks the neccessary development environment.

I am still curious what specifications Nintendo will reveal and not because it is important for me concerning power but the architecture is interesting. Consoles mostly are designed for one purpose and it is interesting to see how companies solve problems differently!

[Schpickles]

Yeah, I'm the same - I love this stage of the process, where new architectures are designed for different approaches to games making.

I have got access to that site through my company, but I really can't comment on the specifics and so on due to NDAs and the like.

All games consoles bar the Xbox use GCC as the compiler - its the standard development compiler for everything other than MS-specific stuff really. Even SN's stuff is based on GCC. There's a variety of development kits of different jobs - if developers are able to get going from the outset, that will be fantastic for early Revolution support.

[system_error]

How unfair is that you are just one lucky guy hehe!! I wish I could just check out what Nintendo offers for third/second party development.

The good thing about GCC is that it is very good on errors and warnings and it really looks wether you use ANSI C or some sloppy "will surely work on with VisualStudio". At university we only used GCC until we switched to Visual Studio becomes MS offered a good deal for Visual Studio + Visio. I normally prefer Bloodshed DevCPP for all my coding - it is just some nice IDE for GCC because I still don't like to work with Cygwin or directly with Linux.

[DCK]

So, as a 360 developer you're obliged to work with something Visual Studio-like? That sucks. Everything I've seen of Visual Studio seems so slow and annoying to work with.

[system_error]

As a XBOX360 developer you also have to use at least 720p resolution and 2 times AntiAliasing.

[Kurtle Squad]

Well anyway...If it's environmet, it doesn't matter!! The Gamecube is supposed to be FAR easier to develop for than the PS2. meaning it will still be easy enough for developers.

[Meo]

The T-DEV kits were much cheaper than that, but unfortunately SN Systems [who make them] have been bought by Sony to make tools exclusively for PlayStation3 now. I can't really go into the details of what is / isn't in a dev kit or I might get into trouble ;P


Well, I guess the Gamecube SDK brings a testing, QA & Lot check section, a sdk-drivers section, and a misc section, where lies stuff like characters pipeline SDK section and a pc gcn emu... Of course this only speculation... :)

[system_error]

I seriously doubt there is a PC GC emulator from Nintendo when they have the development hardware which consists of a Gamecube with more RAM and I think ZIP storage instead of Mini-DVD.

But I think I remember there is a Nintendo DS emulator from Nintendo - I am not 100% sure but I think there is one. (Maybe just a rumour from some site)

[Haakon]

I still think Revo graphics will just be a little update from GC graphics, look how inferior DS graphics looks compared to PSP graphics, I think I'll be the same case, and it's good that the development is easy, but the easy development of the GC didn't help versus the hard development of the PS2.