2. David Pevreal Dip App Sc, BIT. Lead Programmer on the Merkury Engine, Krome Studios. Titles: Stargunner, Sunny Garcia Surfing, The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron Boy Genius: Jet Fusion, King Arthur, TY the Tasmanian Tiger 1 & 2. Platforms: PC, Dreamcast, PS2, Xbox, Gamecube. Who The Hell Am I?

3. Who The Hell Are You? PC Developers coming to console development Single console developers considering moving over to multi-sku Killing time until the next presentation

4. From PC To Console: Console Manufacturer Requirements Just because you think your game is finished, that doesn’t mean the manufacturer will allow it to ship Guidelines like language and terminology, user interface, and memory card access are the most common failures Each platform is different, and sometimes platform requirements conflict!

5. From PC To Console: Concatenate Files Into A Single Archive You can’t dump hundreds or thousands of files into a directory like you can on a PC. There are file system limitations. How well you order the files inside the archive will have a big impact on your game’s load- speed performance There are load-time guidelines, so your game may not ship if it’s too slow to load!

6. From PC to Console: Differing Development Philosophies Hardware is consistent Audience is different Memory is limited Game design should have given thought to hardware limitations of consoles Inflexible ship dates: late games often have to wait for the next “window” for manufacturer testing. This costs money.

7. Console Differences Input devices – each platform has a different controller, different buttons Storage capacity, PS2/Xbox use DVD (up to 9GB), GameCube uses a 1.4GB proprietry disk Alignment and endianness TRC/TCR/LotCheck requirements differ

8. Casualties of Multiplatformism Memory management –Needs to be same on all platforms –PS2 has problems using its MMU –Needed to use a lowest common denominator approach Textures –Each platform has different display characteristics –PS2 needs indexed textures

9. Commercial Realities Making games costs a lot of money – on average between 5 and 7 million Some decisions are made based on making more money, not a better game PS2 will most often be the lead platform in a multi- platform game

10. Interface Design: A Little Thought Now or Cripple Your Next Platform Layer between hardware and game needs to be finely balanced Too thin and you’ll have problems porting Too thick and you’ll have performance problems The trick is to package up effects in ways that each platform can achieve the same result, but in different ways

11. Interface Design: Common Denominators Are Bad Avoid the temptation to expose common denominators among your platforms Keep interfaces high-level enough that platforms can implement the effect in a variety of different ways Avoid exposing limitations in interfaces if you can, instead try to hide the limitation artificially (if possible)

12. Asset Pipeline Time spent perfecting the asset pipeline is an investment Ensure your intermediate asset format doesn’t lose or change information From the intermediate format transform into a highly optimised and lightweight format specifically designed for each platform

13. Conclusion Even if you’re coding an engine for one platform, keep an open mind now so that you can port later on Keep engine interfaces high level Study the TRC/TCR/LotCheck documents Spend time refining the asset pipeline

14. Questions