http://palgn.com.au/article.php?title=Naughty+Dog+Interview+Part+Two&id=9226
...
PALGN: Was it tough to make the transition from developing for the
PlayStation 2 to the PlayStation 3?
Evan Wells: It was extraordinarily difficult and I will be perfectly blunt and
honest. It was really really hard and I think a lot of that can be
attributed to the fact that on the PlayStation 2 we... I'm not trying to
make any commentary on the difficulty of development for the PlayStation 3
and I shouldn't be confused with that at all. On the PlayStation 2 we were
programming in our own unique language that we had developed at Naughty
Dog, it's called GOAL, Game Object Assembly Lisp. It was all lisp based and
the entire rest of the industry is working in C++, nobody I knew was
completely, off the wall doing this thing in Lisp. It was started with Andy
Gavin who was an MIT graduate, I'm probably showing too much of my geek
cred, MIT and Lisp are closely linked and that's where it all started from.
So we've been working in that language all through the PlayStation One and
the PlayStation Two, now coming to the PlayStation Three we realised these
projects are getting so much more complex and they just require so much
more effort that we realised across Sony that we'd have to start sharing
code. If we develop something we're going to have to make sure that Santa
Monica can borrow it if they want too or Insomniac or vice versa, things
should be interchangable. So we realised we'd have to put this behind us
and adopt C++ like everyone. That meant when we started on the PlayStation
3 we had no code, if we wanted to print text on the screen we had to write
a font renderer, these are the things you take for granted, so we had to
start from square one and so it was a long process of building up. We were
so used to working with this language GOAL which was very flexible and the
whole purpose of it was so you could have your game running, you could
compile your code and you could update your game right away without
restarting the system, it's a really good environment and I miss it, you
can tell. So then we went to no code, so we had to build up slowly but i'm
really really happy with the team and everybody pulled together and we
ended up accomplishing something we can all be proud of.
...
Rainer Joswig wrote:
> http://palgn.com.au/article.php?title=Naughty+Dog+Interview+Part+Two&id=9226
>
> ...
>
> PALGN: Was it tough to make the transition from developing for the
> PlayStation 2 to the PlayStation 3?
>
> Evan Wells: It was extraordinarily difficult and I will be perfectly blunt and
> honest. It was really really hard and I think a lot of that can be
> attributed to the fact that on the PlayStation 2 we... I'm not trying to
> make any commentary on the difficulty of development for the PlayStation 3
> and I shouldn't be confused with that at all. On the PlayStation 2 we were
> programming in our own unique language that we had developed at Naughty
> Dog, it's called GOAL, Game Object Assembly Lisp. It was all lisp based and
> the entire rest of the industry is working in C++, nobody I knew was
> completely, off the wall doing this thing in Lisp. It was started with Andy
> Gavin who was an MIT graduate, I'm probably showing too much of my geek
> cred, MIT and Lisp are closely linked and that's where it all started from.
> So we've been working in that language all through the PlayStation One and
> the PlayStation Two, now coming to the PlayStation Three we realised these
> projects are getting so much more complex and they just require so much
> more effort that we realised across Sony that we'd have to start sharing
> code. If we develop something we're going to have to make sure that Santa
> Monica can borrow it if they want too or Insomniac or vice versa, things
> should be interchangable. So we realised we'd have to...
"...teach other folks Lisp. One small hit while they got up to speed,
pretty much compensated for by the excitement of learning a new language
and the superiority of Lisp for development.
"We broached this idea to the team and it turned out we had more than a
few closet Lispers on board already, and others had been doing Python
and Ruby of course so they had a leg up on the process and had heard
about Lisp and were eager to try it anyway. Hearing about the ease of
development in GOAL just made them all the more interested.
"But then someone happened to check out comp.lang.lisp, seems there is
some guy called kenny and he is a total PITA, so we had to...
> ...put this behind us
> and adopt C++ like everyone. That meant when we started on the PlayStation
> 3 we had no code, if we wanted to print text on the screen we had to write
> a font renderer, these are the things you take for granted, so we had to
> start from square one and so it was a long process of building up. We were
> so used to working with this language GOAL which was very flexible and the
> whole purpose of it was so you could have your game running, you could
> compile your code and you could update your game right away without
> restarting the system, it's a really good environment and I miss it, you
> can tell. So then we went to no code, so we had to build up slowly but...
...my boss might end up reading this so...
>... i'm
> really really happy with the team and everybody pulled together and we
> ended up accomplishing something we can all be proud of.
>
> ...
Rainer Joswig wrote:
> Evan Wells: coming to the PlayStation Three we realised these
> projects are getting so much more complex and they just require so much
> more effort that we realised across Sony that we'd have to start sharing
> code [...] and adopt C++ like everyone. That meant when we started on the PlayStation
> 3 we had no code
On the face of it, sounds like a successful code sharing exercise ...
-dan
···@telent.net writes:
> Rainer Joswig wrote:
>> Evan Wells: coming to the PlayStation Three we realised these
>> projects are getting so much more complex and they just require so much
>> more effort that we realised across Sony that we'd have to start sharing
>> code [...] and adopt C++ like everyone. That meant when we started on the PlayStation
>> 3 we had no code
>
> On the face of it, sounds like a successful code sharing exercise ...
>
>
> -dan
No. Sounds more like not knowing how to manage a team of Lisp
coders. No, really, they made the right decision - business-wise.
I'm wondering why they couldn't use their existing environment for
PS3. It *did* work quite well on PS2, obviously.
Hey, that game Assassine really has some nice graphics on the PS3. First
time I really think about bying a gaming device like PS3...
Frank
--
Frank Goenninger
frgo(at)mac(dot)com
"Don't ask me! I haven't been reading comp.lang.lisp long enough to
really know ..."
In article <··············@pcsde001.de.goenninger.net>,
Frank Goenninger DG1SBG <·············@nomail.org> wrote:
> ···@telent.net writes:
>
> > Rainer Joswig wrote:
> >> Evan Wells: coming to the PlayStation Three we realised these
> >> projects are getting so much more complex and they just require so much
> >> more effort that we realised across Sony that we'd have to start sharing
> >> code [...] and adopt C++ like everyone. That meant when we started on the PlayStation
> >> 3 we had no code
> >
> > On the face of it, sounds like a successful code sharing exercise ...
> >
> >
> > -dan
>
> No. Sounds more like not knowing how to manage a team of Lisp
> coders. No, really, they made the right decision - business-wise.
>
> I'm wondering why they couldn't use their existing environment for
> PS3. It *did* work quite well on PS2, obviously.
The PS3 is a completely different machine. Different processor,
different libraries, different architecture, ...
> Hey, that game Assassine really has some nice graphics on the PS3. First
> time I really think about bying a gaming device like PS3...
>
> Frank
Rainer Joswig wrote:
> we realised across Sony that we'd have to
> start sharing code. If we develop something we're going to have to make
> sure that Santa Monica can borrow it if they want too or Insomniac or vice
> versa, things should be interchangable. So we realised we'd have to put
> this behind us and adopt C++ like everyone.
I'm having trouble pinning down exactly when they ditched Lisp: was it six
years ago?
--
Dr Jon D Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy Ltd.
http://www.ffconsultancy.com/products/?u