Interview with PSP Developer Doug Beck

Those who are fans of Bust’Em and RocketElite will know this guy. After two killer games, he strikes again with another great game Motocross Stunt Racer. For a guy whoÂ’s got so many degrees in EE, itÂ’s hard to believe he created all those beautiful graphics in his games. But then again, why are we surprised at any overwhelming talent this guy has? Just look at his games! I like the way this guy thinks and he seems to know what he’s doing. Let’s just hope his games turn out as good as Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror or Daxter, and not total crap like Rengoku: The Tower of Purgatory, but let’s pretend that game never happened. In the interview with Scott Hanselman, they compare several platforms Doug worked on such as mobile phones, Palm Pilots, and now the PSP. About half way through the interview they finally start cracking on the PSP and let’s us know what’s really under it’s hood. He didn’t mention a specific game he was developing but I think the game he will be making will use all of the PSP’s bells and whistles to look, sound, and feel great.  Here is a snippit of the interview with them talking about the PSP.

“Scott: What’s the OS for the PSP?

Doug: It’s running Sony’s ever-updating OS.  In just over a year Sony has updated the OS via firmware updates (required to play the latest games) approximately 5 times.

Scott: What kind of stuff are they changing? The public thinks they are chasing security stuff, but what’s it mean for the dev? Do functions change?

Doug: The PSP itself is a remarkable piece of equipment.  Not only does it have an amazing screen, and optical DVD drive, Playstation 2-like graphics hardware, and 802.11 wireless networking, it’s sexy to boot! They are addressing security issues and updating the main component apps (photo, video, music, games) of the device in the patches, but they are also making major additions to the platform.  They’ve added a web browser, RSS feeds, a ‘sling-box’ like client that allows you to stream live or recorded TV from home.  They’ve also added support for more video formats and general user interface improvements.  But the unannounced improvements that are coming to the PSP platform are the most impressive.  By next year at this time, everyone’s PSPs will be transforming to much more than they are now through firmware updates.
As the firmware updates there are a few growing pains for developers but it’s generally minor changes to support the latest firmware. When they jumped to the 2.0 firmware they made some particularly large changes to certain systems that required studios like ours to invest a fair amount of time getting everything working.

Scott: Example?

Doug: Releasing titles on the latest firmware is one of the requirements of releasing software on the platform. An example of a change that was required when migrating was a major change to the way the network modules were dynamically loaded during run-time.  Ultimately the new implementation was much easier and robust than the previous but during the time I was working on the migration the pressure was on to get multiplayer functionality restored so production could continue.”

Those who are fans of Bust’Em and RocketElite will know this guy. After two killer games, he strikes again with another great game Motocross Stunt Racer. For a guy whoÂ’s got so many degrees in EE, itÂ’s hard to believe he created all those beautiful graphics in his games. But then again, why are we surprised at any overwhelming talent this guy has? Just look at his games! I like the way this guy thinks and he seems to know what he’s doing. Let’s just hope his games turn out as good as Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror or Daxter, and not total crap like Rengoku: The Tower of Purgatory, but let’s pretend that game never happened. In the interview with Scott Hanselman, they compare several platforms Doug worked on such as mobile phones, Palm Pilots, and now the PSP. About half way through the interview they finally start cracking on the PSP and let’s us know what’s really under it’s hood. He didn’t mention a specific game he was developing but I think the game he will be making will use all of the PSP’s bells and whistles to look, sound, and feel great.  Here is a snippit of the interview with them talking about the PSP.

“Scott: What’s the OS for the PSP?

Doug: It’s running Sony’s ever-updating OS.  In just over a year Sony has updated the OS via firmware updates (required to play the latest games) approximately 5 times.

Scott: What kind of stuff are they changing? The public thinks they are chasing security stuff, but what’s it mean for the dev? Do functions change?

Doug: The PSP itself is a remarkable piece of equipment.  Not only does it have an amazing screen, and optical DVD drive, Playstation 2-like graphics hardware, and 802.11 wireless networking, it’s sexy to boot! They are addressing security issues and updating the main component apps (photo, video, music, games) of the device in the patches, but they are also making major additions to the platform.  They’ve added a web browser, RSS feeds, a ‘sling-box’ like client that allows you to stream live or recorded TV from home.  They’ve also added support for more video formats and general user interface improvements.  But the unannounced improvements that are coming to the PSP platform are the most impressive.  By next year at this time, everyone’s PSPs will be transforming to much more than they are now through firmware updates.
As the firmware updates there are a few growing pains for developers but it’s generally minor changes to support the latest firmware. When they jumped to the 2.0 firmware they made some particularly large changes to certain systems that required studios like ours to invest a fair amount of time getting everything working.

Scott: Example?

Doug: Releasing titles on the latest firmware is one of the requirements of releasing software on the platform. An example of a change that was required when migrating was a major change to the way the network modules were dynamically loaded during run-time.  Ultimately the new implementation was much easier and robust than the previous but during the time I was working on the migration the pressure was on to get multiplayer functionality restored so production could continue.”