Sony Computer Entertainment are introducing more tools and middleware solutions for PlayStation 4 development, the company announced this morning.
SCE is partnering with middleware vendor YoYo games to bring their GameMaker Studio middleware to the PS3, PS4 and PS Vita. This version of GameMaker was jointly developed by SCE and YoYo, and is being used to port games like Hyper Light Drifter by Heart Machine and Samurai Gunn by Teknopants more efficiently from PC to PS4.
Additionally, MonoGame will be available for PlayStation 4 software development as well. MonoGame is a C#-based open sourced engine suite available for licensed developers, and is being used by Supergiant Games to bring Transistor to PS4.
Sony also mentioned that a “fully-integrated” solution for PS3 and PS Vita are available now from Unity, with a PS4 early access version planned for April. All three of these development tools are popular among both universities and independent game developers.
Finally, Sony have made one of their own game development tools, Authoring Tools Framework (ATF), available as a free, open source download from the GitHub hosting site. ATF has been used within Sony Computer Entertainment to facilitate the creation of games like Beyond: Two Souls and The Last of Us, as well as PSP and PS Vita games. The ATF is joined by Sony’s graphics-rendering PhyreEngine, which is also available to developers, and is used by developers like Gust and Falcom.
