I'm tinkering with a PlayStation homebrew (voxel space renderer) and development for fifth generation consoles has never been easier.
Modern toolchains, programming languages, dev cartridges and libraries from the community makes all the difference. Outside of some niceties like ICE (gotta write that GDB stub for target hardware at some point), it's not that different from what you'd experience with modern embedded work.
They had stuff, but it was all proprietary. The N64 was a stripped-down implementation of the technology used on (high-end) SGI graphics workstations of the time. SGI certainly had all the required tools.
Recompilation projects aren't bit perfect, only decomps. They use a recompiled version of the compilers for Linux so that they don't need to emulated with QEMU like they used to, though.
boricj · · focus · HN ↗
Modern toolchains, programming languages, dev cartridges and libraries from the community makes all the difference. Outside of some niceties like ICE (gotta write that GDB stub for target hardware at some point), it's not that different from what you'd experience with modern embedded work.
dottjt · · focus · HN ↗
inigyou · · focus · HN ↗
inigyou · · focus · HN ↗
Come to think of it, it must have, because the bit-perfect recompilation projects are using the exact compilers from the SDK.
skelpmargyar · · focus · HN ↗
Recompilation projects aren't bit perfect, only decomps. They use a recompiled version of the compilers for Linux so that they don't need to emulated with QEMU like they used to, though.