Renderware for PS2

I would hope you actually told your future employer that you had not used Renderware before, and that they understood this and will give you time to get acquainted with it.

Besides, if you've got enough experience that someone's hiring you for PS2 programming, you should have your core principles down enough that Renderware will be "just another API".

If you were honest with your future employer, they would not expect you to have any expereince of RenderWare. If they do, they should have given you seom reasources to work from.

The only place your gonna find official info on renderware is www.RenderWare.com.

Spree

Well they haven't asked me how much I know and I haven't told them. I would be comfortable in saying that I am fairly strong with OpenGL and Java3D. Having said this would you say that I should be able to jump into Renderware without too much difficulty?

Would most of what I already know be able to be applied to Renderware? Is there anything about it that is completely different from what I would already have covered? They aren't going to give me a copy to play around with in the time I have between now and when the work experience starts, so how else should I prepare?

Jonathan

They hired you on for programming a PS2 - an intrinsically low level bare-metal optomized device - and didn't ask you what your skillset was?

I'd ask for some more specifics about what you'll be doing, and what relevant skills you'll need - to make sure what you need to bone up on. Better to ask your future employer about Renderware reference materials *now*, than to just get a copy of it stuck in your face later and look the fool for not preparing.

First of all, a disclaimer: I wrote the user guide for RW 3.2, so my knowledge of it dates back to 2000-2001. I doubt if it's changed too much since then, although the v4.0 I don't know anything about.

It's a C API, with a core feature set that's extended using plugins.

Renderware isn't all that hard to pick up. If you know OpenGL, most of it will just fall into place after a couple of days. The only stuff that might make you scratch your head is some of the terminology, which is the only thing to survive from older versions of RW.

--
Sean Timarco Baggaley

RenderWare is nice for some things and convoluted for other things. It uses a plugin architechture and a lot of things use callback functions. For instance, if you want to iterate over all Grapes in the Fruit plugin, you'd call RwFruitForAllGrapes and pass it a callback function. It gets a little old after a while and the C API is kinda annoying, but RenderWare's documentation is sometimes pretty decent. OpenExport is terrible, so avoid it if you can.

It's not hard to pick up Renderware if you're skilled enough to work in the game industry. By the way, you'll probably be asked to learn new APIs for a good portion of your career. It's just the way things work; if you can't pick up a new API easily you should probably be working at McDonald's instead. That's probably a little harsh, but seriously, learning new APIs shouldn't scare you if you want to work in the game industry.

maybe not McDonalds, but I agree picking up new emerging technologies (be it APIs or whatever) is an essential skill of any developer.

ANd be nice. If dude does wind up working at McDonalds, maybe he'll recognise you one day. I once served a hamburger with a wadded up grill towel instead of meat. The wierd part is, it never came back. :-\

TIP : The guys at Renderware are REALLY nice.
Just e-mail them, tell them your story, and it is very likely that they will give you an evaluation account on their server. Then, you can download the latest SDK, and check everything out for yourself.

Cheers,
Adi.

Well if he doesn't know anything about Renderware and he going to use it he is not going to be able to use his full potential because he is not used to the program. Ummm... I see a possible "your fired", or "Your on another project", and that project is going to lose the company alot of money because it sucked and you guys spent way to much money on it. The Game Development world for consoles is alot harder and if you don't know what your doing, not fun.

I hope you know what you got yourself into.

I would be more worried about having to program on a PS2 if you haven't
before :) At least now lots of the best ways of doing stuff is known, when
the Dev kits first came out it was a nightmare.

Heh. Yeah. I recall a line - "The PS2 doesn't have enough texture memory to render a decent picture of my ass."

Quote:

Original post by jonathan_obrien I have managed to get work experience with the possibility of a job later next year.

give the guy a break hes only a student I am guessing and is not being employed so I guess they know what they are getting.

as suggested already I would contact renderware I am sure they will be happy to help.

Quote:

Original post by andrewk3652 Heh. Yeah. I recall a line - "The PS2 doesn't have enough texture memory to render a decent picture of my ass."

Where in the world did you see that?

Take a look at Killzone buddy, these textures probly look better that your ass.

I just said I recalled the line, not that it was true.

OK well sorry.

My company is using renderwar for upcoming ps2 game. I think it's a fine choice, and don't think it would be particularly hard to understand for a newbie. (for newbie, i mean someone who hasn't used renderware before.) But, ps2 programming might be a litte tricky. I admit that I'm an 'entry' level ps2 programmer. However, it hasn't been difficult to program in ps2 dev. env. so far... largely because most of foundations of a games is already finished.

well, if you participated at the beginning of a project, then it might be a different story. I suggest that you read some of the ps2 harware manuals for a starter.

After a bit of searching I have found the API manual for Renderware V2.1 but that version is ancient. Does anyone know where I could get a more recent manual? If not would there be any point reading the old version, or is Renderware completely different now?

As stimarco said, the only thing to survive from previous versions of RW is some terminology, so there's probably not a lot to gain by reading the manual for a version you're not going to use - you won't really have any idea which bits are still valid and which bits are just misleading.

If you're after the proper manual for RW 3.7 (I'm guessing it's RW 3.7 you want, although there's some chance your employer is using RW 4, which is quite different - perhaps you should ask them, if you don't know already) then, as adiash suggested, contacting Criterion directly may be your best bet:

http://www.renderware.com/contactus.asp

You might want to call them after you've emailed them - the phone's harder to ignore :o) (not that I expect them to ignore you, but if you're keen...)

Dont listen to the CLUMPS that are telling you that "oh ps2..difficult to program!!", "oh ps2...."....blah blah blah

Renderware is just a wrapper for multiple platforms, with a shite load of things bolted on.

For instance:

DirectX provides a framework for things like animation and gui's etc... Renderware is like that but with difference function calls.

You can load in 3d objects using one function call and then render them using another....

You'll probably be put on an existing project and lots of the code will be done already, so it will just be like learning a new API..and you will have do minimal ( if any ) PS2 specific stuff, which IF you do, there will already be enough people there that can give you a hand...remember your joining a TEAM! there is no I in TEAM!

Terminology is the thing with Renderware, once you get your head round that ( which will take prob a day or maybe two ), you will get it. Oh yeah and make sure your up on callback functions, that'll help too, like someone else said here.