How the Sony PlayStation Net Yaroze DevKit brought Indie Game Development to Consoles | MVG

[Music] in 1983 a large-scale recession was about to hit the video game industry 3.2 billion dollars of revenue was snuffed out - just 100 million by 1985 the crash was attributed to over saturation of consoles and poor games with little to no quality control but this crash only really existed in North America over in the UK the video game industry was thriving thanks to home computing the crash didn't exist game consoles like the Atari VCS weren't popular in the UK at all instead it was the ZX Spectrum the Commodore 64 the BBC micro an Amstrad with the CPC line home computers have one major advantage over game consoles they are an open platform by simply turning one on you are greeted with a blinking cursor the machine was yours to explore and write code on and with an assembler or a machine code monitor you could hit the hardware directly get access to the chips the registers peek and poke memory see what the machine was capable of doing maybe even write your own games in the comfort of your own bedroom you didn't need to have a formal computer science degree or work for a large computing company you could do it yourself mini computer magazines at the time would provide listings of source code for small games painstakingly you'd type them out save them to cassette and then play the game you'd get bored of it after a few minutes and maybe modify the game to add some cool sound effects or graphics you'd be learning to code without even knowing at the time publishers such as ocean software code masters and master tronic would pay good money for games the bedroom coder is part of the fabric that made 80s home computing in the UK many industry legends got their start from the magazines and coding out of their bedroom grassroots homebrew development would push the industry and drive innovation in games back then programming was accessible and making games was fun but eventually 8 and 16-bit home computers had phased out and the landscape shifted to game consoles the bedroom coder no longer existed companies like Nintendo and Sega had very strict publishing restrictions and meant at game consoles were a closed platform the price of development kits also ran into tens of thousands of dollars [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] in 1997 three years after the launch of the PlayStation Sony introduced the net euros II and aimed to bring back the bedroom in decoder but this time it would be on a console the net euros a allowed amateur developers a chance to code android games on the hottest game console around on PlayStation hardware the same system that ran Ridge Racer and Final Fantasy 7 the word euros a means let's do it together and the idea for a consumer-grade development kit came from the father of the playstation himself ken Kutaragi the idea was to bring back the bedroom coder the hobbyist the two friends were working out of their garage and come up with something innovative and cool in some ways Sony's ties to indie development can be attributed to the home computing era in the UK popular games developers signo suspicions by Sony known for Wipeout lemmings colony Wars and the Formula One series signo sustar Tadao tin 1986 making high quality games for the commodore amiga but the core group of coders in signo sirs all originated from imagined software a very well known British game developer that quickly rose to prominence but under mounting financial pressure closed its doors in 1984 although coulda raggy had approved the idea getting it off the ground took some time and it took the Japanese some convincing Paul Holman the current VP of R&D at Sony was in charge of the euros a UK division at the time laid out the foundation Paul grew up in the UK writing code on his BBC micro in his bedroom so his vision was to bring this to a 32-bit console generation and also a way to bring in fresh new talent into the industry Sony's net euros a kick-started homebrew and indie games development on consoles long before the original Xbox was modern and certainly before XNA appeared on the Xbox 360 the net euros a was a gateway to a new world and it was entirely legal the really interesting thing about the net euros a was it wasn't something that Sony had advertised as something that you could buy in a retail store it was something that was kind of talked about an ties in magazines at the time but it was something that was only available via mail order in order to get a hold of a net you Rosie and start writing code you'd need to spend some cash seven hundred and fifty US dollars or five hundred and fifty pounds in the UK to be exact but the net year rosie was not available in retail stores instead you'd fill out some paperwork and send a check to Sony Computer Entertainment from there you would get a response in a couple of weeks letting you know that your interest had been registered and your order was being processed and would be sent in the mail the money spent would allow you to become a net eros a member and access all the bits you needed to write your own games when your package finally arrived and you opened it up you would find a special net you wrote a PlayStation console two controllers an access key a communications cable and a power cord there was also a development kit to CDs and manuals the SDK uses GCC underdose of all things the communications cable was just a serial cable that interfaces with your PC and allows you to send code to the net you Rosi to debug test and run your code development on net euros a required you to be familiar with C at the time C++ wasn't an option taking a closer look at the console it looks exactly like a PlayStation 1 but in black and it looks absolutely gorgeous this was the big leagues now if we take a look at the back of the unit the only main difference between a retail PlayStation 1 is the serial connection port for debugging and internally it almost looks exactly the same as a PlayStation 1 motherboard albeit with some slight differences and modifications the net euros a also has different boot roms lacks regional lockout and has a different encryption scheme the access card is essentially a dongle and is placed into memory card port 1 its usage is to boot programs that will load from the PC if you don't have the access card then you can't load games from your PC to the net euros a while many people bought their own net euros a the hardware made its way into schools and universities in the UK teaching students about computer games technology and 3d graphics Holmen and Sony supported the move and even offered schools the hardware at discounted prices in one of the most famous stories the University of Abbott a Dundee in Scotland had its computer games technology course designed by members of DMA design well known for lemmings and GTA over in Japan net euros eight courses were offered as well and the hardware in that region also sold particularly well with many developers making interesting and exciting games for the system least popular was in the US but it certainly wasn't a failure sony was pushing the hardware in all three regions with numbers reaching several thousands but perhaps the culture of the 8-bit micro and holmen's influence and commitment in the region was what made the UK standout another membership perk was access to an exclusive user net forum for collaboration developers would share games tricks and tips and code with other developers including Sony employees when I spoke to Nicky Rose a developer Ben James who authored eight net euros a games he stated the following the net euros a Europe community was very small by today's standards but enthusiastic and committed to the platform we communicated via Usenet groups set up by SCA e especially for net gyros a developer's given the very limited options for distributing @ euros a games your main source of feedback was from other developers in these groups so 750 US dollars or 550 pounds in the UK gets you a PlayStation 1 development kit this is a piece of hardware that allows you to write games for the PlayStation 1 in the comfort of your own home with your personal computer that you had at the time and via a simple serial cable link-up method you are able to push code to the net euros a debug your code and write your game so what's the catch what is the major difference between the net euros a development kit and a PlayStation 1 traditional development kit that cost thousands of dollars more the net euros a hardware was a dev kit no question but it came with some limitations over traditional ps1 dev kits at the time for example it was missing libraries that would allow you to access the cd-rom drive there was only a very simple amount of debugging options using gdb and no access to Sony's main development support only the net euros they used in that groups as we mentioned before these groups were also restricted by region but perhaps the biggest and most widely known limitation was the RAM restriction the net euros each comes with two megabytes of RAM the same as a retail PlayStation one but by design he couldn't play burn CDs and the SDK has no way to access the cd-rom drive therefore the games developed were limited to fit into the two megabytes of RAM available and there was no simple way to stream assets from the CD this restriction only allowed for simple games and demos to be developed but even with the limitation in place there was still some impressive stuff that was being done so back in 1997 if you had a net euros a set up in your bedroom this is typically what it would look like obviously the flat screen panels weren't really a thing back then so just imagine this setup with two CRT monitors or displays but essentially your PC was where you'd be writing code on and then you would be transferring that via the serial cable over to the net euros ear there was a particular program called Co cons which would then just transfer your executable and your dat files over to the net euros a for debugging and testing purposes now as you can see it was a fairly rudimentary setup it was traditionally typical of development environments back in those days things were done with serial cables and parallel cables but this was essentially the kind of the bedroom style indie setup that you'd be using if you had a net euros a set up back in 1997 setting up the hardware to develop code on is pretty simple connect the serial cable into the back of the PlayStation and the other end into the PC plug in the access card into memory port one this allows you to load and play games from the PC to the ps1 install the STK onto your PC and then on the net euros they use the pootis that comes with the SDK this Green is waiting for the PC to push a game to it from here if you did everything correctly you can now compile code on your PC using the SDK this is a very simple hello wall program when we use the make command we can build the executable and then use the communications program to send it over the wire to the net your Jose but perhaps the biggest limitation of the net you Rosie is that there was no player software designed for it in other words if you wanted to play someone else's net euros a game you would need the entire net euros a development setup complete with PC to do so there was no easy way just to burn a CD and run it and there was no player software that came with the net euros a itself but in late 1987 as a way to promote the service net euros a games and demo started appearing on official UK PlayStation Magazine each month there would be some new games and because they were so small it was easier to fit three to six games on a disk each month finally there was a way for everyone to play the games without requiring a net euros a a development kit and a PC it's rude that there were thousands of games and demos made on the net you Rosie most of them weren't very good but there was some impressive standouts hover racing was inspired by f-zero and wipeout developed by start to tomokazu it's a fast game that runs at 60fps has nine tracks for vehicles and even two-player split-screen all this fits in two megabytes of RAM and in the popular game was terra incognita a Japanese RPG tech demo developed by team fatal led by Matsuura kameyama who later became the director of Final Fantasy crystal Chronicles for Square Enix can be Amazon saw an advertisement in a magazine and bought the hardware even though he couldn't afford to keep the electricity on in his home over in the UK thousands of bedroom coders and indie developers were working on their creations for me the best games include total soccer this is essentially a very similar game as sensible soccer or kick off on the Amiga the game was developed by Chris Chapman and the game player the graphics and the options really show the work that was put in Chris went on to run his own development studio first touch games and total soccer is a great showcase of what the net year Jose is capable of one very popular game was blue boy this one is a mix of alien syndrome gauntlet and Zombies Ate My Neighbors shoot the aliens and rescue the kids is the name of the game it's an impressive arcade shooter developed by Chris Chadwick the game went on to win the 1998 game developer UK competition and Chris pocketed a call $10,000 for his trouble so I can't buy Ben James is an obvious clone of Alien Breed on the Amiga but it's a fantastic shooter in its own right and definitely one of the better net heroes a games out there Ben's story goes all the way back to the AP computer generation with the Amstrad CPC writing basic programs Ben wanted to break into game development and figured getting hold of a net you Rosie would be the best way to do so Ben went on to develop eight games for the net euros a with four of them being featured on the official PlayStation Magnum o disks timeslip is another one of my favorites it's a platformer game where you must jump and shoot out enemies to reach the end of the level you must collect a certain amount of coins but what makes the game so interesting is the time warp mechanic for each passing minute in the game your previous movements are replayed this mechanic allows you to open doors and switches that you normally wouldn't be able to this gameplay mechanic allows you to progress through the level the game is not great graphically but it's damn addictive and one of the better net euros a games the game was developed by David Johnson who started coding on a BBC micro in his earlier years David developed several games for the net you rosy and later went on to develop some well known Xbox Live Arcade games over in the USA things rolled as well as popular there was no official PlayStation Magazine but there was the PlayStation underground CD which sometimes would contain videos and net euros a games a 3d graphic artist named John by Inc reached out to me to let me know about a game that he made called light cycle arena with two of his friends when they were in college in the late 90s John his roommate and programmer Kevin Davis who owned a net euros a all worked on the game together the programmer really wanted to challenge himself with the AI of the enemy bikes once the game was completed they sent the game to Sony for approval Sonia really liked the game and wanted to add it to the next PlayStation underground CD however Sony asked for quite a few changes to be added to the game something that the team wasn't keen on doing so the game never made it the developer was kind enough to share the game for me in this episode and to his knowledge the game has never been shown anywhere else before with that I'll leave a link to download it in the description below but if we're talking about success stories the biggest one undoubtably must be devil's dice this game began as a net euros a project but Sony Computer Entertainment picked up the game and developers shift went on to release a full retail version for the PlayStation 1 worldwide shift later went on to develop the God Eater series and more recently code vein in 2019 I heard other stories from developers that the net year rose' was what got them hide in the games industry and that's exactly what Sony was looking for Sony knew that these people were out there and the net euros a connected them with each other it forced developers to think outside the box to optimize code and come up with a cool demo to learn about the hardware and how to get the best out of it it prepared them for the industry and what was an important first step into a bigger world if you landed a demo on a magazine disc you would bring that disc as part of your job interview today the net euros a service has long been Sunset but its legacy lives on many games that started on the hardware now are available on iOS windows and Android Sony has never been afraid to experiment with their hardware and open it up to the hobbyist bedroom coder then that euros a was the first but a very important step to reach these people that's continued with the PlayStation 2 and 3 and even on the PlayStation Vita which we will cover in a future episode now before I go I want to give thanks to some of the net euros a developers that reached out to me and let me know their stories and gave some good insight as to how things were done back in the late 90s first of all John by Hank who was gracious enough to share the Tron game with me something that he believes has never been shown before and I'll have a link to that game in the description below as well as been James from the UK who let me know about his experiences with the net euros a I'll have a link to his channel as well in the description below there were some other developers that reached out that preferred to remain nameless and that's totally fine but I want to thank everyone that reached out to me in the Twitter DMS or email that let me know about the net euros a story it was so cool and fascinating to go back and revisit and tell the story of this consumer grade development kit that people literally in their bedrooms or in their garages in their homes we're writing games for the Sony Playstation in the hopes that they would get picked up by Sony or land themselves a job in the video game industry or even just tinkering around and messing around and getting familiar with 3d graphics and getting familiar with api's it's definitely a cool story to tell and one that I hope you guys really enjoyed well guys that will do it for this video I hope you enjoyed it let me know what you thought about it in the comments below as always don't forget to Like and subscribe and I'll catch you guys in the next video bye for now [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Modern Vintage Gamer

Views: 500,697

Rating: 4.962563 out of 5

Keywords: sony, playstation, net yaroze, indie game development, indie games, mvg, modern vintage gamer, game development, gcc, bedroom coder, indie gamedev, paul holman, ken kutaragi, devkit, development kit, gamedev, yaroze, ben james, psychon, terra incognita, team fatal, ps1, psx, homebrew

Id: rtE5hmlrcBo

Length: 19min 8sec (1148 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 24 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/nolok]

Net Yaroze was super cool for its time (I bought the official playstation magazine here in france and their CD always had a couple of those games on it). There is even one I really liked that I looked up years later to find it had been ported for free to pc and android by its dev: Gravitation.

But this is not what opened the gates of Indie to consoles for that we need give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, or in this case Microsoft: Xbox Live Arcade on Xbox360, along with their XNA framework. Braid and co invaded the plateform, made big waves, Steam and PSN followed suit in sometimes awkward ways (PSN having no idea how to deal with indie for a long while, Steam either being way too closed or now way too opened), and now Indie are a staple and pretty much rule niche and AA markets.

The biggest wall for indie to start ruling was not the developpement, it was access to the market at fair rates. That's why once Steam and co followed even pc indies exploded in numbers and popularity. Still a very hard business to be in, but much easier than it was in early 2000's after the shareware golden era ended.

[u/sherbetjutsu]

I remember playing 'Adventure Game' from one of the discs that got around from this alongside many other games, it was very cheap, pretty poorly balanced as a game, but the 4th wall breaking humour that references the developers' own laziness and the characters talking about the fact that they're in a video game makes it seem awfully like a lot of Flash games and small team indie games I've played

It's pretty cool that these small projects by people who didn't expect them to become popular or anything have had a similar feeling to them for so many years

[u/munki83]

I remember using these in uni to make some games. Was a lot of fun :) Also remmember it being super slow and complicated but that could of been my slow brain

[u/badsectoracula]

I always wondered why this needed an entire special unit of its own. Considering that it needed a boot CD anyway and a special cable, it should have been possible to make a boot CD for the regular PS1 that loaded the game in memory from a cable that connected the PC to the PS1 without the need for a special console. I think the need for a special unit and the much higher price really limited the audience this console could have.

[u/Maanberlin]

Really cool concept but Jesus, you could only make a 2MB game? I know that limitations inspires creativity, but I think that Sony should've at least thrown indie devs a bone with a memory expansion or something.