[gofreak]

Something potentially surprising, for people who weren't in the closed beta anyway - chit-chat around the dev forums suggests that you may have access to varying levels of processing power depending on the device. On Vita, querying the environment shows multiple CPU cores, for example. The memory cap and the API limits seem to perhaps be designed to ensure an application will at a minimum execute on any Suite device, but depending on what your app is doing, performance can vary across devices depending on processing resources available. Not sure if this extends to the GPU also.

So that's kind of double-edged. On the one hand you may have access to a lot more of Vita's processing power than originally thought, on the other though, it places more of a burden on developers to ensure their app runs on lower powered devices...if that's what they want, of course.

On a different note, I think the MSAA problems on Vita at the moment are a bug. Or maybe they just don't want Suite developers showing up certain native Vita devs :P ;)

[Brad Grenz]

That's not that different than what happens with older hardware on iOS. Sony can't enforce a hard limit that's going to be laughably inadequate 2-3 years down the road. Devs that assume their users all have the fastest hardware do so at their own peril.

[DangerousDave]

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?

6 hours? That will mean that the cost for porting an Android/iOS game will be so easy that we'll be getting a lot of games. Even if they're Android/iOS ports... it may give all those good games but with unprecise virtual analog controls a good run.

[Maastricht]

I am overall quite surprised by the PS Suite SDK. I can basically develop something in C# (e.g. the XmlReader implementation that I wrote to parse (sections or selections of) xml into an XmlDocument as a test, and I could just write and test that in Visual Studio and then just dump it into my class in the SDK. This will make development quite easy for me.

[Mondriaan]

So, I want to install PS Suite, but first I need to install Windows or get a PC.

I'm considering going with VMWare or Boot Camp and Windows 7 on my Macbook Pro, but maybe it will be less of a headache just to buy a cheap PC?

[bumpkin]

So, I want to install PS Suite, but first I need to install Windows or get a PC. I'm considering going with VMWare or Boot Camp and Windows 7 on my Macbook Pro, but maybe it will be less of a headache just to buy a cheap PC?

Are you on a Mac? I went with VMware Fusion 4 because they offer a 30-day trial on their website; the software costs $49 to buy. At least that way if it didn't work, it didn't cost me anything. Thankfully this wasn't the case as I installed XP into a virtual machine (had the disc lying around from my old Dell laptop) and the PS Suite ran just fine. My rig is an iMac, 2.66GHz Core 2 Duo with 4GB of RAM.

https://my.vmware.com/web/vmware/eva...vmware-fusion4

[neptunes]

Are you on a Mac? I went with VMware Fusion 4 because they offer a 30-day trial on their website; the software costs $49 to buy. At least that way if it didn't work, it didn't cost me anything. Thankfully this wasn't the case as I installed XP into a virtual machine (had the disc lying around from my old Dell laptop) and the PS Suite ran just fine. My rig is an iMac, 2.66GHz Core 2 Duo with 4GB of RAM. https://my.vmware.com/web/vmware/eva...vmware-fusion4

Running the Vita Virtual Machine within a Virtual Machine? are you sure it runs fine?

[DangerousDave]

That IDE is great. I'm checking a sample game and the API and the code (in C#) seems quite simple.

Making small puzzle and 2D games has to be very affordable for anyone with very few programming knowledge.

And I want a full Sir Awesomealot game!

[bumpkin]

Running the Vita Virtual Machine within a Virtual Machine? are you sure it runs fine?

Yeah, I compiled and ran several of the demo/examples included in the SDK. They all played fine.

[Callibretto]

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.

how will you put pdf/text file to Vita? since you can't easily access Vita folder in Windows like PSP.

[neptunes]

how will you put pdf/text file to Vita? since you can't easily access Vita folder in Windows like PSP.

I guess through an ftp / webserver?

[androvsky]

how will you put pdf/text file to Vita? since you can't easily access Vita folder in Windows like PSP.

I suspect that's going to be changed eventually; since the open beta we had to add an Application directory to access files in our project directory, and there's now a Documents directory also. I'm guessing that by the time the beta is over and the storefront is open, there will probably be an option to drop files into the Documents directory through the media manager.

[Maastricht]

I suspect that's going to be changed eventually; since the open beta we had to add an Application directory to access files in our project directory, and there's now a Documents directory also. I'm guessing that by the time the beta is over and the storefront is open, there will probably be an option to drop files into the Documents directory through the media manager.

I hope so. For now they're recommending getting the documents from the web/cloud on the forums iirc.

[Panajev2001a]

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.

Cool little tweak ;).

[gofreak]

Cool little tweak ;).

I can send you the code if you want to play with it. The camera's translation movement is a little messed up so there's even an exercise for the reader! ;)

[Panajev2001a]

I can send you the code if you want to play with it. The camera's translation movement is a little messed up so there's even an exercise for the reader! ;)

Hehe, really appreciated :).

[gofreak]

Hehe, really appreciated :).

Here you go: http://gofreak-ie.appspot.com/files/...alogSample.zip

You may want to clear the bin/debug folder... the camera file is new, and the shadercatalog.cs file has some input related changes. When it's running you can hold L to have the camera ignore the gyro, if your Vita gets in an awkward position and you need to 're-center'.

[Maastricht]

I'm currently developing a new version of my dynamic UI to it, hoping to allow for very fast building of UIs for settings, forms and so on. I built something like that a few times on PC and may make this public for all to use if I can get it good enough and people see a use for it. It completely abstracts the UI logic to xml and builds the interface dynamically, so you can easily swap out controls and styles, and don't have to worry about resolutions and such. I got an initial version running tonight that serializes the logic from Xml and renders various types of controls to a PagesPanel and that seems to work really well so far. Next up is getting info into and out of it, conditions and events, and then support for dynamic control libraries / plugins (if possible)

EDIT: some rough first shots


2012-04-26-094744 by niwrA, on Flickr


2012-04-26-094750 by niwrA, on Flickr


2012-04-26-094755 by niwrA, on Flickr

[androvsky]

I'm currently developing a new version of my dynamic UI to it, hoping to allow for very fast building of UIs for settings, forms and so on. I built something like that a few times on PC and may make this public for all to use if I can get it good enough and people see a use for it. It completely abstracts the UI logic to xml and builds the interface dynamically, so you can easily swap out controls and styles, and don't have to worry about resolutions and such. I got an initial version running tonight that serializes the logic from Xml and renders various types of controls to a PagesPanel and that seems to work really well so far. Next up is getting info into and out of it, conditions and events, and then support for dynamic control libraries / plugins (if possible) EDIT: some rough first shots

Looking forward to it, looks good so far. :)

[Mondriaan]

Are you on a Mac? I went with VMware Fusion 4 because they offer a 30-day trial on their website; the software costs $49 to buy. At least that way if it didn't work, it didn't cost me anything. Thankfully this wasn't the case as I installed XP into a virtual machine (had the disc lying around from my old Dell laptop) and the PS Suite ran just fine. My rig is an iMac, 2.66GHz Core 2 Duo with 4GB of RAM. https://my.vmware.com/web/vmware/eva...vmware-fusion4

Thanks, your post was a huge help.

It sounds like our machines are similar. I have a 2.66 GHz Core 2 Duo with 4 GB as well, running 10.6.8.

I also found my XP disc lying around and decided to try to out vmware. It's pretty slick. Not sure if anyone else will care about trying to do the same, but trying to install ps suite is annoying when going with a fresh XP install.

I had to install windows installer version 3.1, then install .net framework 2.0, then 32 bit windows imaging component (WIC) how am I supposed to know it's wic_x86_enu.exe that I want without trying to run all of them?, and then .net framework 4.0 full setup before the ps suite installer would run successfully.

I tried out two sample projects. I can kind of see myself playing that puzzle game a bunch, lol.

[Turfster]

I had to install windows installer version 3.1, then install .net framework 2.0, then 32 bit windows imaging component (WIC) how am I supposed to know it's wic_x86_enu.exe that I want without trying to run all of them?, and then .net framework 4.0 full setup before the ps suite installer would run successfully.

Did you install SP3 after your XP install? That should have taken care of most of those iirc (except .net 4.0)

[Bollocks]

Is code completion working for you guys?
Mine doesn't show shit, it's really annoying cause I'm learning the API and when something doesn't show up I always think I'm wrong and double check the docs.
So used to VS

[Mondriaan]

Did you install SP3 after your XP install? That should have taken care of most of those iirc (except .net 4.0)

The install disc is probably SP2. That it wasn't SP3 didn't occur to me.

[desu]

Is code completion working for you guys? Mine doesn't show shit, it's really annoying cause I'm learning the API and when something doesn't show up I always think I'm wrong and double check the docs. So used to VS

Works, did you check in the options if its disabled for whatever reason (Tools->Options->Text Editor->General)? Does manual intellisense work with crtl+space?

[Bollocks]

Works, did you check in the options if its disabled for whatever reason (Tools->Options->Text Editor->General)? Does manual intellisense work with crtl+space?

For example I created a scene in the UI Composer, imported it into my project and now I want to set up the evenhandlers but it's rather cumbersome because it doesn't show me anything.
All it shows is the private UI Widgets but that's it (Button_1) if I do Button_1. nothing appears I have to manually write Button_1.ButtonAction += ... to set an event handler :/
Even after it compiled fine and continued to set event handlers for additional buttons it refuses to show me anyhting.

[Maastricht]

Some progress:


2012-04-28-013945 by niwrA, on Flickr


2012-04-28-013953 by niwrA, on Flickr


2012-04-28-013958 by niwrA, on Flickr

Played around with fonts, cleaned up some stuff, hooked up events so changes come back to the wizard element objects and save and reload any changes the user made. Lots of work to do still but at least I manage to get most things done without too much of a hassle so far.

[Panajev2001a]

I'm currently developing a new version of my dynamic UI to it, hoping to allow for very fast building of UIs for settings, forms and so on. I built something like that a few times on PC and may make this public for all to use if I can get it good enough and people see a use for it. It completely abstracts the UI logic to xml and builds the interface dynamically, so you can easily swap out controls and styles, and don't have to worry about resolutions and such. I got an initial version running tonight that serializes the logic from Xml and renders various types of controls to a PagesPanel and that seems to work really well so far. Next up is getting info into and out of it, conditions and events, and then support for dynamic control libraries / plugins (if possible) EDIT: some rough first shots 2012-04-26-094744 by niwrA, on Flickr 2012-04-26-094750 by niwrA, on Flickr 2012-04-26-094755 by niwrA, on Flickr

How would you lay out the UI elements? Would it be for laying the UI out only programmatically? Does it integrate with the UI composer? Is there a layout preview tool for it?

It would be like building the UI from code or by hand editing the XML like you do on Android too?

[Panajev2001a]

BTW, toyed around with the various samples and I have to say that I am really impressed by the GL abstraction libraries they have implemented... I hope they are fast and they seem to be more than fast enough for a lot of cool things, but they abstract away a lot of painful details (painful when you do at least some of these abstractions yourself by scratch the first time... it shows that people involved in game development went at this and they know what programmers need... seeing a shader manager object, the ability to find uniforms by name, etc... looks very neat :). I wonder if they cache uniform updates and GL state changes already... you can save a lot of redundant calls that way... although it would be weird if they did not, when they have built such an abstraction system it looks like a "trivial" addition to that).

I am really, really impressed by what I am seeing.

[gofreak]

Another nice experiment - controlling a robot with a Vita with video feedback:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgtAQG1a2Aw

[Oni Jazar]

Oh good idea. The vita would be a much better device to control these kinds of things (cars, choppers, etc) then smart phones due to the sticks.

[Maastricht]

How would you lay out the UI elements? Would it be for laying the UI out only programmatically? Does it integrate with the UI composer? Is there a layout preview tool for it? It would be like building the UI from code or by hand editing the XML like you do on Android too?

The idea is much more abstracted. You basically don't need to know anything at all about how the PS Suite UI library works. In fact, the idea is that you can put different layout rendering engines behind it and swap them out at any level on any platform, without the programmer ever seeing a difference in behaviour from the implementation side. The UI handling becomes a black box. Currently there is almost no system out there that separates the UI logic from the UI rendering / controls, but this system does that 100% so you have no choice. ;) You can set style preferences (like font) but they are optional.

At the core level, all you do is make a list of questions you want to ask the user, and what type of questions they are (choose an option, input text), and the system takes care of everything else.

[bumpkin]

Thanks, your post was a huge help. It sounds like our machines are similar. I have a 2.66 GHz Core 2 Duo with 4 GB as well, running 10.6.8. I also found my XP disc lying around and decided to try to out vmware. It's pretty slick. Not sure if anyone else will care about trying to do the same, but trying to install ps suite is annoying when going with a fresh XP install. I had to install windows installer version 3.1, then install .net framework 2.0, then 32 bit windows imaging component (WIC) how am I supposed to know it's wic_x86_enu.exe that I want without trying to run all of them?, and then .net framework 4.0 full setup before the ps suite installer would run successfully. I tried out two sample projects. I can kind of see myself playing that puzzle game a bunch, lol.

No problem! Yeah, the only snag I ran into was the installer for #gtk wanting .NET Framework 2.0 even though 4.0 was installed; you'd think the later version would have everything contained in the previous releases. I actually mentioned this catch 22 in my earlier post a few pages back and how I got around it. In short, when I got though the PS Suite install (following the gtk error) and it didn't run, I ended up uninstalling the PS Suite and the .NET Framework 4.0, going to Microsoft's site to download and install .NET Framework 2.0, then re-ran the PS Suite installer. Everything went smoothly from there.

[Maastricht]

Status update:

Moved all the test code to a Widget now, cleaned some stuff up and added automatic scrolling for when stuff drops off the screen. Everything is still pretty much resolution independent (except at the moment the font sizes, but I want to make an option that increases or decreases the size according to your own prefs)


2012-04-29-034945 by niwrA, on Flickr


2012-04-29-034446 by niwrA, on Flickr

I'm probably boring people to shits here with these posts ... :D

[ThoughtsOfSpeaking]

Quick question. Outside of emulators, which are too much of a grey area to be allowed, this basically removes the function of home brew on the vita entirely?

And in theory, via the beta, if someone did want to make a emu, they could but just not publish it via psn?

[DangerousDave]

Quick question. Outside of emulators, which are too much of a grey area to be allowed, this basically removes the function of home brew on the vita entirely? And in theory, via the beta, if someone did want to make a emu, they could but just not publish it via psn?

Well... if you want to use it in your Vita, of course. If not, you'll have to make the application and ask to be approved. Is much easier than with PSP, more or less as easy as with iPhone, but this didn't avoid the jailbreaking and the homebrew creation on iPhone.

[Why would you do that?]

I'm a little ashamed to admit, but I actively play the Zero Gravity (shooter) and Sir Awesome (gameengine2d) samples because I think they're legitimately good. :p


As for the development side of things, I keep getting memory leaks for some reason... I'm using the Sony-made Spriterenderer class, and it's annoying because I can't figure out where it's leaking from. Plus, I don't know if it's my unfamiliarity of C# coming from Java, or a mistake in Sony's code.

I wish I were more familiar with OpenGL so I can write a sprite batcher/renderer or port one of my own.

[Panajev2001a]

Status update: Moved all the test code to a Widget now, cleaned some stuff up and added automatic scrolling for when stuff drops off the screen. Everything is still pretty much resolution independent (except at the moment the font sizes, but I want to make an option that increases or decreases the size according to your own prefs) 2012-04-29-034945 by niwrA, on Flickr 2012-04-29-034446 by niwrA, on Flickr I'm probably boring people to shits here with these posts ... :D

You are not boring people with this :), not at all (at least you are not boring me hehe).

[2+2=5]

I'm trying to make a first person dungeon crawler, don't look at the textures, they are only for testing sake.

[Bollocks]

And in theory, via the beta, if someone did want to make a emu, they could but just not publish it via psn?

Well, as of now you don't even have Vita file access, so you can't even make an MP3 player.
So theoretically you'd have to bundle the games with the app or download it via http.

[ThoughtsOfSpeaking]

Well, as of now you don't even have Vita file access, so you can't even make an MP3 player. So theoretically you'd have to bundle the games with the app or download it via http.

but isn't their a trick with vita save files that the recent psp emu hack uses, to load snes emu roms?


In any case, gotcha. Let's see what these homebrew devs come up with now they have 100% legit way to get stuff on the vita.

[Darknight]

Another nice experiment - controlling a robot with a Vita with video feedback: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgtAQG1a2Aw

Wow that's amazing!

[sajj316]

Now imagine the Vita control of the wifibot with some augmented reality!

[2+2=5]

This is how my game looks like with light and really good textures(taken from crytek forum, credits to the_grim, but i won't use them in the final version)

[desu]

Better than most other vita games :D. Looking forward to more of that.

[2+2=5]

Better than most other vita games :D. Looking forward to more of that.

Thanks :D , but i'm making it in the free time so i don't know if i'll be able to finish it.
I have altered the light, now it's more realistic, but i have problem with the camera intersecting walls

[Maastricht]

You are not boring people with this :), not at all (at least you are not boring me hehe).

Thanks! Progressed again nicely today. Still lots to do but I think I'm not too far from reaching a point where others coukd start using it for most stuff.

[Fezan]

Another nice experiment - controlling a robot with a Vita with video feedback: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgtAQG1a2Aw

ok man this is amazing :D

your own spy car :D

[Why would you do that?]

I'm having extremely weird problems with the PS Suite emulator. Basically, unless I minimize the window, memory usage will keep going up and up until it crashes the application.

For quite a long time, I thought I had a memory leak in my code, but in reality, whenever the garbage collector frees memory, that memory isn't freed to the OS until I minimize the emulator window.

In short, it's really buggy for me, for no real reason.

[RelentlessRolento]

I still wish I could get GameMaker going on this right now easily... I'd be throwing stuff up on this quickly.

[Maastricht]

I'm having extremely weird problems with the PS Suite emulator. Basically, unless I minimize the window, memory usage will keep going up and up until it crashes the application. For quite a long time, I thought I had a memory leak in my code, but in reality, whenever the garbage collector frees memory, that memory isn't freed to the OS until I minimize the emulator window. In short, it's really buggy for me, for no real reason.

I've never actually tried maximising that window, wanting to keep it at the same size as the Vita as much as possible. Will see if I have the same issue.