Development
Homebrew games for older systems are typically developed using emulators for convenience, since testing them requires no extra hardware on the part of the programmer. Development for newer systems typically involves actual hardware given the lack of accurate emulators. Efforts have been made to use actual console hardware for many older systems, though. Atari 2600 homebrew developers use various methods, for example, burning an EEPROM to plug into a custom cartridge board or audio transfer via the Starpath Supercharger. Game Boy Advance homebrew developers have several ways to use GBA flash cartridges in this regard.
Along with the Dreamcast, Game Boy Advance, and PlayStation Portable, the most frequently used platforms for homebrew development are older generations of consoles, among them the Atari 2600 and Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). The Atari 2600 and NES are particularly interesting because they use the 6502 instruction set, likely familiar to people who have programmed 8-bit home computers, such as the Commodore 64 or Apple II. Another factor in the popularity of older or portable systems for homebrew development, relative to modern consoles, is that their simplicity enables an individual or small group to develop acceptable games in a reasonable time frame.
All major sixth generation consoles enjoy some popularity with homebrew developers, but less so than earlier generations. This is mostly the case because software production requires more resources, accurate emulators do not exist yet, and the consoles themselves often employ rather complex systems to prevent the execution of unauthorized code. Homebrew developers must often exploit loopholes to enable their software to run.
Homebrewing is not only limited to games - there are numerous demos that have been released for most systems with a homebrew scene.
Read more about this topic: Homebrew (video Games)
Famous quotes containing the word development:
“Such condition of suspended judgment indeed, in its more genial development and under felicitous culture, is but the expectation, the receptivity, of the faithful scholar, determined not to foreclose what is still a question—the “philosophic temper,” in short, for which a survival of query will be still the salt of truth, even in the most absolutely ascertained knowledge.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)
“I could not undertake to form a nucleus of an institution for the development of infant minds, where none already existed. It would be too cruel.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The man, or the boy, in his development is psychologically deterred from incorporating serving characteristics by an easily observable fact: there are already people around who are clearly meant to serve and they are girls and women. To perform the activities these people are doing is to risk being, and being thought of, and thinking of oneself, as a woman. This has been made a terrifying prospect and has been made to constitute a major threat to masculine identity.”
—Jean Baker Miller (20th century)