zlacker

You must have worked on this earlier than me. I started with DX7 on Windows, before that I worked purely in OpenGL on workstations on high end visual simulation. Yes, in DX7 we used printf debugging and in full screen-only work, you dumped to a text file or as you say, MDA if necessary for interactive debugging, though we avoided that. DX9's visual debugger was great.

I don't remember console development fondly. This is 25 years ago, so memory is hazy, but the GameCube compiler and toolchain was awful to work with, while the PS2 TOOL compile/test cycle was extremely slow and the API's were hard to work with, but that was more hardware craziness than anything. XBox was the easiest when it came out. Dreamcast was on the way out, but I remember really enjoying being clever with the various SH4 math instructions. Anyhow, I think we're both right, just in different times. In the DX7 days, NVIDIA and ATI were shipping OpenGL libraries which were usable, but yes, by then, DX was the 800lb gorilla on windows. The only reason that OpenGL worked at all was due to professional applications and big companies pushing against Microsoft's restrictions.

>>opposi+(OP)
I don't recall any slowness on the PS2 development, I dreaded touching anything graphical on PC though as the graphics bugs tended to BSOD the whole machine and rebooting 20+ times a day was not speeding up anything (all the Windows took their sweet time to boot, not to mention restarting all the tools you needed and recovering your workspace) lol.