Using Tuner with "Resistance:Fall of Man" on the PLAYSTATION®3 was very useful in optimizing a number of higher-level systems - programmers across the board found it intuitive and were able to quickly identify performance bottlenecks.
Jonathan Garrett
Senior Engine Programmer
Insomniac Games
Free to all PlayStation® game title developers!
It slashes compile times by distributing your source code builds between cooperating PCs on your local area network
The following is a list of our answers to some of the commonly asked questions regarding ProDG for PlayStation®2. If you have a question that is not answered here, please call or email us and we will be happy to help. Contact information can be found by clicking here.
General
- Why use ProDG instead of the standard PlayStation®2 developer environment?
- Who is using ProDG at the moment? Do you have any success stories to tell?
- What advantages does ProDG have over other development middleware products?
- What types of support do you offer for developers?
- Who are SN Systems? How long have you been trading?
Sales & Licensing
- How much does ProDG for PlayStation®2 cost?
- Can I pay by credit card?
- Do your products have any copy protection? How does it work?
- Can I have several licenses on one machine?
- Can I evaluate or buy SN Systems products even though I'm not an officially licensed developer for Sony Computer Entertainment or Nintendo consoles?
- How do I prove I am a licensed Sony developer?
Technical
- What advantages does ProDG-generated code have?
- We use C++ and STL heavily. Are there any problems compiling the more advanced template features? How close to the C++ standard are your compilers?
- How efficient and compact is the code generated by the SN tools?
- When will the GCC 3.x compilers be available?
- What's included in your IDE, and what's required to be run from the command line?
- How advanced is your debugger?
- How well does your Visual Studio Integration work and what's accessible from it?
- Do you support VS.NET?
- Do you provide any profilers? What are they capable of?
Question: Why use ProDG instead of the standard PlayStation®2 developer environment?
Answer: Sony Computer Entertainment's tools are hosted on Linux and are almost entirely command-line based. ProDG is hosted on Windows, and is better supported. Support is major factor in SN's success and reputation as a tool producer since we listen and respond to developers. The directions for continuing development of our products is based largely on developer feedback.
Question: Who is using ProDG at the moment? Do you have any success stories to tell?
Answer: We have many of the top titles and development studios using ProDG to develop their games. While we can't single out particular games, may I suggest you take a look at our Showcase pages: http://www.snsys.com/Showcase/. Also, why not take a look at out customer reference section here: "http://www.snsys.com/Showcase/custref.htm", as this demonstrates just how well thought of we are in the industry as well as giving you a good idea of who is producing games using ProDG.
Question: What advantages does ProDG have over other development middleware products?
Answer:
Question: What types of support do you offer for developers?
Answer: When any customer purchases ProDG they have full access to our support team via telephone or e-mail. We also have an extensive online knowledge base, which contains the answers to some of the common problems. Any problems that can not be fixed instantly and require a bit of investigative work are dealt with on a priority basis in order of urgency.
We specifically allocate time during the working week for emergencies so that if a customer contacts us with a problem that is stopping them from working and deadlines are closing in then we are ready to help as best as we can. In regards to long term support we keep a very close eye on the newsgroups to ensure customers are satisfied with the products as well as a source of feedback helping to us to evolve ProDG in the direction that customers want.
Question: Who are SN Systems? How long have you been trading?
SN Systems is a Sony Computer Entertainment Group Company based in Bristol, UK, that produces the industry standard development tools used by console programmers worldwide.
Since 1988, SN Systems has been setting the standards for development tools within the console industry. As new platforms appear we are able to create our tools to work with the new target. Around the world, SN's tools have become the leading development system on all main console platforms and programmers throughout Europe, the USA and in Japan have been using them for many years.
Furthermore, as the ongoing development of our product is driven by the needs of our customers, we often add new features on request. SN Systems is closely involved with the developer community, regularly contributing to developer conferences and online support groups and providing software updates on our web site.
Question: How much does ProDG for PlayStation®2 cost?
Answer: Please click here to request a quotation, or contact sales@snsys.com for further information.
Question: Can I pay by credit card?
Answer: We do not accept credit card payments. You can pay by bank transfer or by cheque. Our terms are 30 days net (from receipt of invoice).
Question: Do your products have any copy protection? How does it work?
Answer: Each copy of ProDG for PlayStation®2 will only run on a single development PC. This works by linking the software to the unique MAC ID of the network card in a PC. For a more detailed description of how this works, please click here.
Question: Can I have several licenses on one machine?
Answer: You may have several ProDG licenses on the same machine as long as they are all for different platforms I.e. Nintendo GameCube™, Nintendo Game Boy® Advance or Sony PlayStation®2. It is not possible or advisable to have two ProDG for the same platform on the same machine.
Question: Can I evaluate or buy SN Systems products even though I'm not an officially licensed developer for Sony Computer Entertainment or Nintendo consoles?
Answer: If you are not licensed by Sony Computer Entertainment, then you cannot evaluate or purchase any of our PlayStation®2 tools. Accordingly, if you are not a licensed Nintendo developer we cannot provide you with our tools for Nintendo GameCube™ or Game Boy® Advance.
Question: How do I prove I am a licensed Sony Computer Entertainment developer?
Answer: In order for us to verify your status as a registered Sony developer please click on the URL below:
https://www.devnet.scea.com/tmw_auth.php?tmid=2408517
This will ask you for your Sony Computer Entertainment DevNet username and password. Once you have logged in successfully, it will send us a confirmation email.
Question: What advantages does ProDG-generated code have?
Answer: The main code generator is the GCC compiler but we have taken the original compiler source and have added a lot of tweaks to improve code generation, reduce the size of debug data, provide PlayStation®2 specific intrinsic functions, provide more control over your program layout etc. There are bigger advantages too from the use of the ProDG linker which besides being very much faster than alternative linkers also has facilities which the GCC linker does not eg. ProDG linker identifies unused code and data and removes it, and support for relocatable modules - both features that are very important for developers trying to shoe-horn their game into the consoles limited memory (31MB on PlayStation®2)
Question: We use C++ and STL heavily. Are there any problems compiling the more advanced template features? How close to the C++ standard are your compilers?
Answer: Our current base compiler version is v2.95.3, but also contains many SN Systems modifications over and above the base GNU version. The GNU tool chain is becoming progressively closer to the C++ standard, but v3.0 is too unstable at present to use on production code. As this situation changes we will of course change our base compiler to be the latest stable 3.x release.
Question: How efficient and compact is the code generated by the SN tools?
Answer: In general we produce faster and smaller code than our competitors, partly because our tool chain doesn't just consist of GNU ports but consists of our own linker and assemblers which are much better than the GNU equivalents.
Question: When will the GCC 3.x compilers be available?
Answer: Once GCC 3.x is stable we will ship a compatible version of the ProDG build tools. However there are no signs yet of a sufficiently stable version.
Question: What's included in your IDE, and what's required to be run from the command line?
Answer: We use Visual Studio as our IDE. This enables you to create DSW and DSP files for PlayStation®2, Nintendo GameCube™ and Game Boy® Advanced projects, as well as Win32. Our build tools are driven from Visual Studio and all the command-line switches can be added to the Project / Settings dialog as usual. You can generate your projects using custom App wizards, edit your code and compile and build all from within the familiar interface so that it is very much like working on a PC project.
Alternately you can drive your builds from the command line using ps2cc / makefiles. It's really just a matter of choice: if you are used to using Visual Studio then the integration is great, but if you prefer a stand-alone editor then the command line may feel more at home.
Question: How advanced is your debugger?
Answer: The debugger is one of ProDG's strongest assets. Each debugger is designed specifically for the target console and its main goal is to be as fast as possible.
The rate of feature input is also very fast, for instance in the PlayStation®2 debugger we were the first to have VU0 and VU1 source-level single-step debugging, IOP debugging, DMA chain debugging, and kernel views onto the EE and IOP.
Although you can get up and running very quickly, our debuggers also have lots of extra features which are of use to the expert games programmer.
Question: How well does your Visual Studio Integration work and what's accessible from it?
Answer: VSI makes writing game titles as easy as writing a PC title. You can even mix-and-match DSPs / configurations making multi-skew games much easier to manage from a source point of view. Working inside Visual Studio allows you to edit your code and build the ELF.
Any warnings or errors will be displayed in VS format and appear in the VS output window as usual. Each error/warning can be clicked on to jump to the source line in question. Once you have built your ELF you just hit F5 (Go) and the ProDG Debugger will fire up in front of Visual Studio, mirror any breakpoints you have set in VS and will be ready to debug.
Question: Do you support VS.NET?
Answer: Yes, we now have Visual Studio Integration .NET available as a free download for all ProDG for PlayStation®2 customers. The new version is a lot more user-friendly than VSI for Visual Studio 6.0, and streamlines development considerably whilst utilizing the new features of Visual Studio .NET.
Question: Do you provide any profilers? What are they capable of?
Answer: The ProDG Debuggers have limited built-in profiling (real time random sampling) that show which functions are currently being accessed in a running game. This is useful for quickly determining if any one function is hogging a significant part of the processor time.
A more powerful tool, Tuner, offers more in-depth profiling capabilities including the capture of DMA transfers, interrupts, detailed performance metrics (e.g. cache misses), VIF and GIF activity and function profiling (2-80Khz).
The Tuner is a frame-based profiling tool which means that the data is collected within a single frame (the game's V-Sync function is used to denote the end of the frame). Each frame can be displayed separately for detailed analysis with an overall summary view enabling easy spotting of suspect frames (e.g. >1/60th sec).
Unlike some other profiling tools, the Tuner does not require you to do special instrumented builds of your code. The data is captured in real time from a release build and sent back to the PC for analysis.
