Developer Kit Discussion

[BlueMonkey5]

Here's the one for Dreamcast

Does anyone know what this thing is or what it does?

[Falco Girgis]

That's the Katana - Sega's official Dreamcast devkit. They usually retail for about $400-500 a pop. That's what was used to create AAA titles like Sonic Adventure 1 and 2, Shenmue, and most every DC game.

The homebrew scene has an (illegal) rip of the software on the devkit, but it's unusable. We cannot compile/link to the libraries without the Katana devkit (for some reason). There is a chance that you could recompile them for distribution if you had a Katana, but unfortunately the hardcore DC developers don't own Katanas. It's the ignorant, rich video game collectors who do nothing more than play Sonic Adventure with them that have the devboxes. =/

[BlueMonkey5]

Got it. It's ashame that only collectors are gathering up all the Katanas, but if they aren't needed then I guess it's ok. It seems like developing with the Katana is just a $700 option. Also, I've noticed that every system has a developer kit just as the DC's Katana and I'm assuming that the same goes for the rest of them; the dev kit isn't necessary and can be done by PC. But maybe the Dreamcast is easier to develop for?

[MarauderIIC]

DC's easier to develop for especially since it can read CD-R's. I imagine that running homebrew on most other consoles involves a mod chip.

[Trask]

NDS is easy to develop for, especially using R4 to run it right off the device and since its a microSD card, there's virtually no waiting time if I have to copy a new file to the card.

I've used HAM's IDE for making GBA games, though I haven't tried their code at all, just used it to run asm/c code.