If you've ever wondered what goes on in the process of making a PSP video game, the second issue of the free HGZIne magazine has a short interview with Sumo Digital's Steve Lycett. Simply put, it's just like working with any other console platform. Only on a smaller scale.

For example, Steve reveals that devs have 24MB out of the total 32MB system memory to play with, with 8MB taken up by the XMB. There's visual detail to scale, audio to compress, code to streamline and write (or reuse), and so on... Of course, this is speaking from experience, with Sumo Digital slaving (or having slaved) on TOCA Race Driver 3 Challenge and Virtua Tennis 3.

That's more or less it, although if you want the article unabridged - and the rest of HGZine's stories and features - you can always hit the Read link below. Oh, and there is one other thing Steve neglected to mention about PSP development. You do need a PSP devkit to begin with.

 

In reply to commenter, whoelse (Unregistered), #28 in The PSP Show contains an interview with a Codemasters dev. In fact, it contains nothing BUT an interview with a Codemasters dev. No news, no reviews, no fuss.

Ewan Spence jumps straight to talking to Steve Lycett, veteran PSP title producer, who is currently busying himself with TOCA Race Driver 3 Challenge. (Actually, he's with Sumo Digital, but Codemasters is publishing TOCA, so he's not exactly a Codemasters dev, but he is devving something for them. Semantics. Maybe we should have changed the title of this article to "all Steve Lycett and TOCA Race Driver, all the time," then, but we didn't want to spoil the suspense.)

As game producer, Steve should be able to give some lowdown on "behind-the-game," especially working with the PSP. Continue on via the Via link to where you can hear about Steve, TOCA, PSP devving, and Ewan's desire to race to Fleetwood Mac MP3s. (Hey, only if I get to race to Billy Ray Cyrus MP3s. Let's see who gets to the finish line first.)