Ramblings

PSPLink is an excellent way to troubleshoot PSP issues, but causes issues with flickering screens, input, and exiting. I initially thought my rendering code was bad; but once I compiled to an EBOOT file all of the problems disappeared. This ate up a lot of time to figure this out, D’oh!

My favorite sound system, Hekkus Sound System (HSS), work nicely on the PSP when recompiled with the latest DevKitPro toolchain. I made one change to ensure the buffer size is correct: in the sceAudioChReserve function I wrapped the second function parameter with the PSP_AUDIO_SAMPLE_ALIGN() macro. HSS only supports a 44,100 playback frequency on the PSP.

PSP paths must be in the form “ms0:/PSP/GAME/GameName”, some of the code I saw used “ms0:PSP/GAME/GameName”. The second format seems to work fine with the SceIo functions, but fopen requires the first and SceIo has no problem with it.

Being that it’s been 9 years since my first Ludum Dare (this is my third), I figured I would compare the experiences.

Social experiences are big on the internet, but it still has a ways to go. The first Ludum Dare, I used Rhapsody as a music service. For this Ludum Dare, I have Spotify. I tried out the Ludum Dare Sound Drop music list. It’s interesting, but listening to a shared music list with a bunch of strangers isn’t the ‘killer app’ of social.

The first Ludum Dare, I used IRC to communication with the group. I got into IRC more during my second Ludum Dare. It’s pretty much the same for this one, except twitter provides short summaries of what’s going on.

Coding wise, I was using Visual Studio 6 and DirectDraw for my first one, and for this one I’m using a C compiler for the SNES. If I was targeting Windows, I would most likely use SDL and Hekkus Sound System with Visual Studio 2010. The available platforms has greatly increased, and many of the platforms are more accessible. Cross platform tools have also exploded. Tools like HaXE/NME, AGK, and Unity allow a single program to be deployed across various platforms with almost no concern for the platform being targeted. Anyone wanting to develop a game only has to invest a little time into learning the tools.

Graphically, I’m still using Photoshop 6. I’ve gained a few additional tools, and developed support tools for a few of the tools that I used to have. My selection of tools would be different if I wasn’t targeting the graphically limited SNES.

Welcome to the RasterSoft Retro Ramblings Blog. This will contain an insight into the RasterSoft game creation process and interesting tidbits discovered along the way. RasterSoft intends to release games for retro game systems, retro and current phone, tablets, and PDAs, and many operating systems.