Per Vognsen

RE: https://social.treehouse.systems/@endrift/116266194667097984

GBA was really special for homebrew development. I imported an Everdrive flash cart from Hong Kong (I might have used the Everdrive for more than just homebrew). The other enabler (especially before GBA emulators were around) is that the ARM7TDMI processor was a very C-friendly target and it was easy to do API-level emulation of your game's platform abstraction layer so you could compile and run the game on PC.

Mar 21 at 9:41amPhanpy
Show threadPer Vognsen3d ago
A lucky few got their hands on a Net Yaroze during the PS1 era but (at least among the people I knew) that was rarer than a white elephant and still relatively expensive; I also don't remember there being much of an online community around it. I guess the lesson is that the black market always wins when it comes to accessibility. The Dreamcast also ended up with an early homebrew scene on account of the Utopia Boot Disc being a software-only DRM hack.
Show threadSharlock933d ago
@pervognsen Net Yaroze was genuinely one of Sony's best idea along with the Other OS on the PS3. Imagine given that the PS3 now is obsolete. Imagine if Sony pushed the SDK into the open and a firmware that allowed people to just use their devices fully. Man it be so cool
Show threadMatt Mascarenhas3d ago

@Sharlock93 @pervognsen Yeah, totally! The Official PlayStation Magazine demo disc I got with Net Yaroze games on it is one of those landmark memories for me.

You know how some games could handle us swapping out the disc for an audio CD, to play our own music in-game? I vaguely recall seeing Net Yaroze as like that, but with everything – not only the music – opened right up.

Show threadMaciej Sinilo3d ago
@pervognsen homebrew GBA emulators were so good that even when working for a licensed developer I only pushed to kit if I absolutely had to check the accurate perf numbers. 98% of dev was done with emulators
Show threadslembcke3d ago
@pervognsen I’ve always meant to try GBA dev, but just haven’t gotten around to it… I even set up a toolchain/linker script for a hello world ROM and then just never made a game with it. I keep doing NES dev instead. >_<