[ReaperXL07]

I wish PS Certified minimum spec requirement was much higher so we could have got much more power hungry games that use more of the Vita's power.

Except it has to work on a wide range of hardware, including stuff like phones, tablets, etc. If I had to guess it's why it's limited, because they want to have a larger amount of content that is easily accessible from a bunch of different types of hardware.

[Glorious Ownage]

Start the PSS app on your PC Find the samples folder on your PC and load a file Go to Run on the top options tree - then hit run in PS Suite emulator (something like that). Anytime during this process just plug in your Vita, forget the content manager. This is nothing to do with that. Your Vita should should up in the little pulldown tab that says Playstation Suite Emulator and say Playstation Vita with a bunch of unique numbers to identify your unit. Now that you know your PC is seeing your Vita, go to the run part after you've started to run it in emulation mode and then choose to run it on your Vita, give it some time as bigger files take a little longer to load. The little command box will tell you what's happening. Hit me up on Steam or SteamGAF chat if you want me to walk you through it.

Right, I can see my PS Vita with the numbers in the drop down box and under the run tab. The problem is as soon as I boot into the Playstation Developer Assistant app on the Vita itself it disconnects. My computer makes the audible noise as if the usb is being unplugged and my Vita disappears from the drop down box. As soon as I exit the application it reappears.

I'll look for you on steam

[Alchemy]

Damn it, want to go home and play with this thing. Curse you work!

[KAL2006]

Except it has to work on a wide range of hardware, including stuff like phones, tablets, etc. If I had to guess it's why it's limited, because they want to have a larger amount of content that is easily accessible from a bunch of different types of hardware.

True, if in the future they can always raise the minimum spec require, just call it PSCertified 2.0. Also if there is a ambitious game that requires more power I am sure it will end up as a PSN game anyway. PS Suite will probably be more similar to the AppStore of course the games that usually use virtual buttons will be much better.

[MrPliskin]

I think it's safe to say this is entirely the reason PSOne emulation hasn't yet happened on Vita, and since this is only in "Open Beta" that pretty much means we can pack it up, PS One Emulation just got "PS Home'd".

Edit: Disregard, this is confusion on my part. The two are not related (as pointed out below). Thanks guys :)

[androvsky]

I think it's safe to say this is entirely the reason PSOne emulation hasn't yet happened on Vita, and since this is only in "Open Beta" that pretty much means we can pack it up, PS One Emulation just got "PS Home'd".

Why? What's the connection between a C# SDK and a PS1 emulator? The devices that are PS Certified that have PS1 games already managed to do it entirely without PS Suite.

I'd imagine that if anything, the unusually early announcement of Legend of Dragoon coming to PSN in May is more of a hint...

[neptunes]

I think it's safe to say this is entirely the reason PSOne emulation hasn't yet happened on Vita, and since this is only in "Open Beta" that pretty much means we can pack it up, PS One Emulation just got "PS Home'd".

uhhh..what? PSOne emulation and PS Suite are entirely different

[Hex]

I think it's safe to say this is entirely the reason PSOne emulation hasn't yet happened on Vita, and since this is only in "Open Beta" that pretty much means we can pack it up, PS One Emulation just got "PS Home'd".

I think that it is safe to say that I do not think you have any idea what you are talking about.

[androvsky]

uhhh..what? PSOne emulation and PS Suite are entirely different

To be fair, I know why people get them confused. PS Suite was originally announced at the same time as PS1 games coming to non-Sony devices, such as Android phones and tablets. At the beginning, the homebrew C# SDK plus marketplace and PS1 games coming to new hardware were both referred to as PS Suite, iirc.

As time went on, PS1 (and some PSP) games did come to Android phones and tablets, and they're now referred to as PS Certified devices. They even have the PSN Store integration now, and this is all well before the PS Suite SDK was even in closed beta.

Since the Vita is a Playstation, there shouldn't have been any confusion even in the beginning. It's not like bringing PS1 games to a Playstation product needs a new directive from Sony...

[MrPliskin]

Why? What's the connection between a C# SDK and a PS1 emulator? The devices that are PS Certified that have PS1 games already managed to do it entirely without PS Suite. I'd imagine that if anything, the unusually early announcement of Legend of Dragoon coming to PSN in May is more of a hint...

Ah, I thought the two were related. I haven't necessarily kept up with PS Suite, though my interest has piqued now that the SDK is available. I was largely assuming based on an ancient presentation (the first reveal) and someone's image earlier in this thread (though looking through the SDK that was likely just an image on the UI editor).

Sorry for the misunderstanding :)

I think that it is safe to say that I do not think you have any idea what you are talking about.

I think it's safe to say you take GAF (or maybe just Sony stuff) way too seriously ;)

[LiquidMetal14]

Right, I can see my PS Vita with the numbers in the drop down box and under the run tab. The problem is as soon as I boot into the Playstation Developer Assistant app on the Vita itself it disconnects. My computer makes the audible noise as if the usb is being unplugged and my Vita disappears from the drop down box. As soon as I exit the application it reappears. I'll look for you on steam

On now.

[Zee-Row]

How user friendly would these tools be for someone like me that's never programmed anything before?

[Bollocks]

How user friendly would these tools be for someone like me that's never programmed anything before?

Why would you want to?
It's for developers, there are no free games or anything to gain for regular users.
Unless you want to get into programming, if that's what you want you're better of with traditional programming environments like plain regular visual studio with c/c#

[Alchemy]

How user friendly would these tools be for someone like me that's never programmed anything before?

C# isn't hard to pick up, but you'll want to learn some basic programming logic first. Pick up some C/Java tutorials first.

[BigNastyCurve]

I haven't really heard about this but have a Vita. This seems like this could keep the Vita alive and very healthy.

[ReaperXL07]

So for those of you with programming experience and sometime with the beta, how impressive/or not does the SDK seem to you at this stage? I went through the samples, and while they were obviously very rough I was actually kind of impress with some of them. The RPG demo for instance, show a pretty large area to be explored which gives me some hope about how open world games could turn out on the Vita, not to mention that I found the colors to be pretty impressive but that might be from the OLED.

As i've said previously, I'm really just starting to learn some of this stuff, just curious what other more experienced folks are thinking of it.

[anddo0]

I like what I see so far.. Lot's of potential here. The demos are a nice start.

[Laguna X]

Somebody needs to remake M.U.L.E.

[RelentlessRolento]

If GameMaker had an output right now for exporting to VITA i'd be set... but I gotta wait till GM Studio gets that in it :(

[MTMBStudios]

I am going to be trying to port this over the next couple days to take a break from what I was doing prior.
I coded it pretty poorly when I wrote it way back when but it really shouldn't be too hard.

http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/Pr...5-d802585506cd

I don't have a VITA to test it out on though! Figure it will work pretty great on the VITA, with those twin sticks and all.

[LiquidMetal14]

I am going to be trying to port this over the next couple days to take a break from what I was doing prior. I coded it pretty poorly when I wrote it way back when but it really shouldn't be too hard. http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/Pr...5-d802585506cd I don't have a VITA to test it out on though!

Let us know. Would love to test as many solid ideas as possible.

[24FrameDaVinci]

Instant iphone 50mil+ download megahit.

[MTMBStudios]

Let us know. Would love to test as many solid ideas as possible.

If I can get it to a point where I can release it on their theoretical marketplace, I need to get someone to redo the music though because it... wasn't so great (I will keep a toggle though).

Their UI Editor seemed pretty neat but I will probably be making some custom tools for menus anyway.

[frAntic_Frog]

i echo the same sentiments of a poster above who said sony should've had this ready waay before the Vita launch, but i now understand that sony needed to get Vitas into gamers and consumers hands before they can expect amateur developers and hobbyists to start churning out these apps.....

[Dwayne]

i echo the same sentiments of a poster above who said sony should've had this ready waay before the Vita launch, but i now understand that sony needed to get Vitas into gamers and consumers hands before they can expect amateur developers and hobbyists to start churning out these apps.....

It's still incredibly early in the system's life span. I don't think a bunch of amateur game efforts will really shift stock at this point, they just need more titles on the shelf for consumers to buy/want to buy the system for.

[Why would you do that?]

Right now, I'm porting my simple little game framework from Java to C#. It's my first real foray into C#, so it's kind of weird...

I really dislike this IDE, though. I wish there were some way to use Eclipse, but I don't feel like figuring it out right now. I guess the future Visual Studio support will be my best bet.

[neptunes]

i echo the same sentiments of a poster above who said sony should've had this ready waay before the Vita launch, but i now understand that sony needed to get Vitas into gamers and consumers hands before they can expect amateur developers and hobbyists to start churning out these apps.....

I think they just need to convince the iOS developers that are making some of the higher budget ips games to at least port theron game ideas.

[frAntic_Frog]

It's still incredibly early in the system's life span. I don't think a bunch of amateur game efforts will really shift stock at this point, they just need more titles on the shelf for consumers to buy/want to buy the system for.

but i think this is a hot opportunity that sony can capitalize and distinguish itself from 3ds or other mobile devices....embracing user made apps on a portable with console-caliber graphics and dual analog and rear touch pad....all for cheap prices on the PSN.....can you imagine the potential?

[Maastricht]

After playing aroundwith this a bit, I think PS Suite is actually an excellent environment to start learning programming with. Take a look at the Input/Touch example code - it is very elegant and simple and a great start.

[kassatsu]

Instant iphone 50mil+ download megahit.

I made it make a fart noise. Putting it on the PSN store asap.

[Chris_C]

Instant iphone 50mil+ download megahit.

I realize you're half-joking, but the reality is it could be.

It might be cool if, like the Half Life 2 elevator mod, different things happened randomly each time you pressed it. Some of them super-simple and amusing, some of them bizarre and far out.

Hit me up, kassatsu, I got ideas, we'll make a game of it yet!

[toddhunter]

So for those of you with programming experience and sometime with the beta, how impressive/or not does the SDK seem to you at this stage? I went through the samples, and while they were obviously very rough I was actually kind of impress with some of them. The RPG demo for instance, show a pretty large area to be explored which gives me some hope about how open world games could turn out on the Vita, not to mention that I found the colors to be pretty impressive but that might be from the OLED. As i've said previously, I'm really just starting to learn some of this stuff, just curious what other more experienced folks are thinking of it.

It is very basic. It has the tools you would want, but only just. I have also hit a few bugs working around in it.

The upcoming IDE support would be a must for anything serious. As it stands, it is probably suitable for playing around or doing a port of something you already know pretty much works. For example I have ported over a NES emulator just because I thought it would be interesting. It doesn't quite run properly though after starting. Once I did the seemingly required changes, I'm really struggling to debug it properly using the tools provided to find out why. I'll keep at it for a bit longer tonight to see what the catch is that I'm missing (something in the SDL lib I think).

If you don't know how to program, this is not the place to start at all. Even if you wanted to make games, I would recommend spending your time learning how to draw and make assets, let somebody else code up the game engine and libraries and then piece it all together after they are done. Programming is a tough gig, and game programming from scratch is even harder and often not particularly fun. You'll achieve a lot more being creative.

Having said that I'm old and jaded and it is still time well spent stuffing around.

[ReaperXL07]

It is very basic. It has the tools you would want, but only just. I have also hit a few bugs working around in it. The upcoming IDE support would be a must for anything serious. As it stands, it is probably suitable for playing around or doing a port of something you already know pretty much works. For example I have ported over a NES emulator just because I thought it would be interesting. It doesn't quite run properly though. Once I did the seemingly required changes, I'm really struggling to debug it properly using the tools provided to find out why. I'll keep at it for a bit longer tonight to see what the catch is that I'm missing (something in the SDL lib I think). If you don't know how to program, this is not the place to start at all. Even if you wanted to make games, I would recommend spending your time learning how to draw and make assets, let somebody else code up the game engine and libraries and then piece it all together after they are done. You'll achieve a lot more.

Well my strengths have always been on the music side, and I already have knowledge on that front. I've just always been alittle curious in getting my toes wet with the programming side so I have at least a basic understanding of how it works on that angle.

I could imagine Sony will be taking suggestions from developers seriously, they have a suggestions section on their forums, and I read on those forums that they might even start up a blog for suite development stuff. Really hope Sony captializes on this because it could be great for the Vita, and I think the Android gaming space in general.

[toddhunter]

Well my strengths have always been on the music side, and I already have knowledge on that front. I've just always been alittle curious in getting my toes wet with the programming side so I have at least a basic understanding of how it works on that angle. I could imagine Sony will be taking suggestions from developers seriously, they have a suggestions section on their forums, and I read on those forums that they might even start up a blog for suite development stuff. Really hope Sony captializes on this because it could be great for the Vita, and I think the Android gaming space in general.

Yeah I think people often miss that if they learn to program they can make games. Unfortunately you also need to know how to make the game art, plus the music, plus how to test, perhaps write network code (which can be specialised) and then some other bits as well.

Being good enough in all those areas to get it done yourself? Can be done, but it sure isn't easy. Personally for my own non-work projects, I would always get a beautiful engine down that was ready to go but then anything I tried to create looked like shit so it never amounted to anything. Really needs a team effort. Good music people should be quite valuable in this context.

[gofreak]

Vid of a Android->Suite port, Meltdown Moon, 6 hours work:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9QgqynMMPA

I wonder how good the motion sensor data is. Interesting to note that the docs state that not all devices will necessarily have gyro data. I wonder if you can make a game that depends on gyro data or would Sony reject it?

[Gaspode_T]

Pretty light on details in the FAQ...PSN feature is a maybe?

These marketplaces involve waaaaaaaaay more backend work than anyone could believe, and even more if it is not a relatively hands off system like Xbox Indie Games

i hope they have trophies because it would put pressure on Xbox team to be more open

[Nerfgun]

So - can someone with some programming chops tell us what sort of impact this suite might have for dual iOS/PS Suite development?

It seems to me that the whole point is to steal some iOS thunder, and give it to Android/Vita. Which it looks like it could very well do. But I don't know enough about the latest state of iOS programming (I assume they are allowing more than Obj-C/X-Code development now?). But if it is easy to have devs make both an iOS and PS Suite version of a game then this really could be a big deal.

[phosphor112]

So - can someone with some programming chops tell us what sort of impact this suite might have for dual iOS/PS Suite development? It seems to me that the whole point is to steal some iOS thunder, and give it to Android/Vita. Which it looks like it could very well do. But I don't know enough about the latest state of iOS programming (I assume they are allowing more than Obj-C/X-Code development now?). But if it is easy to have devs make both an iOS and PS Suite version of a game then this really could be a big deal.

Their policy for no free products is a huge turn off. They allow freemium, but nothing like free + ad support, which is big for some developers. So far android games should be easy ports.. not sure about iOS.

[Figboy79]

I'm curious as to how easy it would be to make an ebook reader app? I'd love one of those!

I'm really excited by the potential of the PS Suite, and I'll more than likely try my hand at a simple game, with my extremely low, low level programming skills.

[androvsky]

I'm curious as to how easy it would be to make an ebook reader app? I'd love one of those! I'm really excited by the potential of the PS Suite, and I'll more than likely try my hand at a simple game, with my extremely low, low level programming skills.

Actually, depending on what formats you want to support, an ebook reader app might be really easy. I don't use them much, so I don't know what it'd have to support. Is just txt and pdfs okay, or are there others that are important?

[charsace]

Can you compile an executable that will run on pc?

[yurinka]

Can you compile an executable that will run on pc?

The SDK has a PVita / PSSuite simulator for PC, so you can run in your PC the demos or your app / game.
Not exactly an executable, but factually is the same, it works flawlessly.

Their policy for no free products is a huge turn off. They allow freemium, but nothing like free + ad support, which is big for some developers. So far android games should be easy ports.. not sure about iOS.

As an experieced mobile phone developer with several hits, I can say that the free demo + paid full game doesn't work due to piracy in both systems, and the free+ad support doesn't give you enough money unless you have Angry Birds. What it really work is freemiun, a free game with microtransaction properly designed to let the user pay as much money as he wants. Most people won't pay, some will pay a really low amount, but there is a small portion of user who spends insane amounts of money, covering the others.

So - can someone with some programming chops tell us what sort of impact this suite might have for dual iOS/PS Suite development?

Just checked ot a bit, but it's really easy to use, has tons of example and FREE. This means you can learn really fast without needing to pay a fee, to buy a MAC etc.
Right now it's C#(a really popular language that every game coder knows to program for), runs in a virtual machine. This means it will be really easy, fast and cheap to port it to other PS Suite devices but you won't take advantage of the hardware like the dedicated games. So maybe isn't good for high-end games (not needed since you have Vita retail games), but it's perfect for small, indie, casual games.

They're different beasts, but considering it from the start of the game the dual (multiplatform) development it wouldn't be a problem. And PSSuite / Android it's easier but if you'll have both stores in the same deviceI don't know if it makes sense.

So for those of you with programming experience and sometime with the beta, how impressive/or not does the SDK seem to you at this stage? I went through the samples, and while they were obviously very rough I was actually kind of impress with some of them. The RPG demo for instance, show a pretty large area to be explored which gives me some hope about how open world games could turn out on the Vita, not to mention that I found the colors to be pretty impressive but that might be from the OLED. As i've said previously, I'm really just starting to learn some of this stuff, just curious what other more experienced folks are thinking of it.

For experienced people, it's a great start to make small, phone like games. Free of all the typical dumb stuff that prevents small, indie devs to start programming for consoles, the best approach a 1st party ever did (the beta, let's see how is to publish a game, revenue share for the dev etc in the future). It's just a beta, so it will be improved for sure. But won't be for high end games because you have Vita retail/PSN games for this and this should run in other less powerful devices like phones and tablets with other specs. Don't expect a GTA here, but it's great for Cut the rope, Angy Birds etc like games.

There are examples for everything. If you have some minimal knowledge of game programming is really easy to use. But if not it may hard to start like in any other platform. Well, maybe a bit easier if you have some programming skills. But a game also needs game design, art, music, testing and to understand the market and its size to make a budget considering it. Don't expect 3M copies at launch.

How user friendly would these tools be for someone like me that's never programmed anything before?

Near 0, avoid it.

[DiscoJer]

Actually, depending on what formats you want to support, an ebook reader app might be really easy. I don't use them much, so I don't know what it'd have to support. Is just txt and pdfs okay, or are there others that are important?

Epub and mobi are the important ones.

Text doesn't have formatting or any sort of structure. PDFs are designed to replicate a printed page and generally don't re-flow to fit the screen of the device, so aren't very good on smaller e-readers with screens less than the size of the paper the PDF was created to replicate.

Considering that Sony has a line of e-readers and a book store, an e-reader app should have been a no-brainer for the Vita (or PSP even). That it's not represents why they are losing so much money - they can't work toegether.

[mr_toa]

Actually, depending on what formats you want to support, an ebook reader app might be really easy. I don't use them much, so I don't know what it'd have to support. Is just txt and pdfs okay, or are there others that are important?

epub, txt and pdf would get you a long way judging from e.g. the supported formats in Stanza.

[Figboy79]

Actually, depending on what formats you want to support, an ebook reader app might be really easy. I don't use them much, so I don't know what it'd have to support. Is just txt and pdfs okay, or are there others that are important?

I'd be happy with just a PDF reader. I have a few files in PDF form that I'd love to take with me and read on the Vita screen. Some short stories and what not, things my wife wrote, comics, etc.

[Brad Grenz]

Vid of a Android->Suite port, Meltdown Moon, 6 hours work: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9QgqynMMPA I wonder how good the motion sensor data is. Interesting to note that the docs state that not all devices will necessarily have gyro data. I wonder if you can make a game that depends on gyro data or would Sony reject it?

Certifying devices to maintain a level of hardware capabilities was supposedly going to be a part of this whole initiative. Maybe they've abandoned that idea, or maybe they'll require Gyros in the release version.

Their policy for no free products is a huge turn off. They allow freemium, but nothing like free + ad support, which is big for some developers. So far android games should be easy ports.. not sure about iOS.

I welcome the policy. "Free" apps that run like dog shit because they're constantly trying to load new ads are the bane of my iPhone 3G. Seems like a good point of differentiation for the platform and it's good for minimizing battery use.

[Maastricht]

I figured out why the RSS Reader doesn't work. There's something wonky with reading Xml documents from a file/stream in the Vita libraries. So I wrote a quick and dirty simple xml parser that only does just about enough to parse the included offline RSS xml files and that works. This only works with filestreams though, so I still have to make something that picks up RSS feeds from the web, but for me personally I was interested because I have used System.Xml.XmlDocument a tonne in my own applications and so wanted to know what was up.

I'll post the code in the beta forum if anyone needs it, though I'm sure there are better examples to be had on the web - I just couldn't find any quickly.

[gofreak]

I modified the shadercatalog sample to use a first person 'gyro'/vr camera...left stick for movement on the x and z axes, gyro for orientation.



I think Vita in particular (vs the other mobiles) could be cool for this thanks to the stick i.e. unobstructed view into the virtual.

The gyro data is super clean, on vita anyway. I've heard people complaining about gyro data on other devices, that you get drift etc. even when it's not moving, but this is fine out of the box. I'm ignoring the accelerometers though, they are as noisy as you'd expect.

Weirdly, though, my analog stick is noisy. Reports movement when there is none. Had to clamp to avoid my camera drifting all over the place.

[androvsky]

Weirdly, though, my analog stick is noisy. Reports movement when there is none. Had to clamp to avoid my camera drifting all over the place.

I noticed that too with the RPG demo especially.

Also, an eReader app might take a little work. Okay, so the libraries I need are there, but they might be missing parts. I knew I should've just checked the additional build dependencies before posting, but I was sure System.web was missing...

[gofreak]

Got an answer about the analog stick on the dev forums - it's normal inaccuracy that a game's 'dead zone' is meant to compensate for. Makes sense I guess!