lucasmelor interview with Elias Daler about PS1 development

Recently, I gave an inteview to a Paraguayan YouTuber lucasmelor who made a great video about my PS1 game development work.

The video is in Spanish, but the English version is coming soon.

You can find the original inteview (originally done in English) below.

P.S. I wish I had more time to do writeups about my PS1 work. For now, I mostly post about it on Twitter!

lucasmelor (LM): What was the biggest challenge you had to overcome when developing for PS1 hardware?

Elias Daler (ED): The biggest challenge for me was the lack of asset tools. PS1 can’t deal with the modern image/model/audio formats.

So I needed to make my own 3D model/texture/sound exporters and tools. Writing a Blender exporter takes around 50-60% of development time for me. But what’s good about it is that I now use Blender not only as a model creation tool, but also as a level editor! The plugin is pretty powerful, so I can make entire levels in Blender, add collision data, triggers etc. and convert the .blend file to my custom level/mesh format.

LM: What was the hardest technical limitation to work around? (polygon count, texture memory, audio channels, etc.)

ED: So far, I struggled a lot with the RAM limitations.

PS1 has only 2MB of RAM. And it’s even worse than that, because those 2MB also contain your executable code (which can be around 300-500kb) and you need to pre-allocate a lot of the memory for rendering (around 500-700kb!). So, you’re actually left with around 1MB of RAM at the end. The good news is that you put all your textures in VRAM (1MB) and all your sounds into the SPU RAM (512kb), so you don’t need to keep them in RAM. But still, level/mesh/animation data can take up a lot of space, so I had to do a lot of optimizations on that front.

Once my game gets bigger, I’ll probably need to use the “overlay” system as well, which lets you load parts of your executable code dynamically so that you don’t have to keep it all in memory (many games do that for loading level-specific code, cutscene code or mini-game code, for example)

You can find a lot of info about PS1 limitations/specs here.

LM: What made you decide to develop a game for the PS1 in 2025? What drew you to this specific hardware?

ED: It all started as a learning experience just for fun. I was always interested in developing something for a retro console and at one point I found a pretty interesting course about PS1 by Pikuma. I was burned out from my current project, so I decided to study some PS1 to unwind. Well, it turned out to be more fun than expected and it had attracted like 100x more attention than I could ever anticipate…

ED: Now, about the PS1 itself. I like the platform because it’s 3D (I’m less interested about pixel art and 2D games lately…) and because it’s early 3D, which makes it all look unique and instantly identifiable as the PS1. If you make something for PS2, GameCube, Wii etc. you would probably get something that looks undistinguishable from the modern indie games. Plus, it feels like doing things for more “modern” platforms removes the challenge of optimization since they can easily run most indie games, unless they’re something computationally hard like Teardown or Minecraft.

ED Another thing I like about PS1 is that it’s a very simple platform. It doesn’t have multi-threading, it doesn’t have the complexity of a platform like PS2 (which has multiple rendering paths, e.g. see https://www.copetti.org/writings/consoles/playstation-2/) or Sega Saturn (with its many processors…).

I feel like developing for PS1 can be even easier than developing for PC at some points even. The GPU API is incredibly simple - you can even draw triangles with pure assembly in just a few lines of code! You can upload and control the RAM and VRAM manually… It’s a lot less complicated than modern rendering APIs like Vulkan or DirectX 12.

LM: What makes MTP well-suited for the PS1 specifically?

ED: I initially started developing Project MTP on PC with my custom engine I wrote from scratch. Once I started doing PS1 stuff, I started remaking the game on the PS1 to have a clear goal in mind - to make something comparable to what I already did on PC. There wasn’t much of a “game” there to begin with, to be honest - it was mostly a “concept” of a game that I was developing along with the engine to instantly see the result of my work (so that I didn’t fall into the trap of making a complex general purpose engine, and then after a few years of the development I could only show a couple of cubes and spheres floating around some generic scene).

LM: Do you have any plans to release your tools/engine as open source so others can create their own PS1 games more easily?

ED Right now I don’t have such plans. Supporting an open source engine and making it easy for others to use would take a lot of time and would grind the process of making my own games to a halt. And I’ll be honest, having a “secret sauce” that no one else has feels nice at this moment.

LM: Can you describe what Project MTP is about? What kind of experience are you trying to create?

ED: Right now I’m thinking of doing a mix of Animal Crossing and Silent Hill. A life simulator where you live in a creepy city and interact with the NPCs and help them solve their problems, but also a horror game where you sometimes go into the “dungeons” and fight some monsters/solve puzzles. I’m still not sure what the balance between life simulator and survival horror would be yet or how scary the game would be.

LM: Moving forward, will you focus more on Yume Nikki or Project MTP? Or do you have other PS1 projects in mind?

Going forward, I’ll focus more on Project MTP and will add new areas and effects to Yume Nikki PS when I have some free time.

I have created a small demo for Yume Nikki PS, a fan game which recreates Yume Nikki experience in 3D.

LM: What can we expect from you in the future? More PS1 projects, other platforms?

ED: As previously said, I want to focus more on Project MTP and figure out the scope, vibes and style of the game. I’d like to explore other older platforms in the future… For example, Nintendo DS and Dreamcast seem very interesting to me. And I also dream of making an NES game at some point.

LM: What optimization techniques did you find most useful?

I don’t think I’m doing anything extraordinary yet. Mostly, it’s just reducing the number of polygons on the screen or reducing the number of calculations/memory reads from RAM.

LM: Any advice or message for aspiring developers who want to create games for retro hardware?

ED: It’s all about patience and learning the proper debug techniques. I’ve seen many people writing complex algorithms/code and trying to debug 100s of lines of code at once and getting stuck. I feel like it’s better to split a complex/hard task into a bunch of smaller ones and then making sure that each small thing really works. Otherwise it’s easy to think that something is broken and try to rewrite it, but in reality it was something else and your effort was wasted.

LM: You’ve mentioned plans for a physical release. Beyond the nostalgia factor, what makes a physical PS1 release appealing to you in 2025?

ED: I don’t think it’s nostalgia for me… Having physical things is just cool - you can make a pretty cover, you can make a beautiful manual. You can display it on the shelf, and when you insert a disk into a PlayStation, it just feels more interesting than simply launching a game on a PC by clicking on a file.

LM: Do you feel the PS1’s limitations forced you to be more creative?

ED: Of course. It made me appreciate the vertex colors a lot more, for example. You can’t do dynamic lighting on PS1, it’s too expensive… so I paint all the lighting manually. You also can’t put too many things/characters in the scene and can’t make levels that are too big. I haven’t make any “real”/finished levels yet, so I’ll have to figure out how to make convincing cities with the extremely limited hardware of PS1.

LM: Did you have to cut any features or ideas because the hardware couldn’t handle them?

ED: Not yet. I have to reduce the scope/detail of my levels/models and sometimes I have to separate a single scene into a bunch of scenes. But from the gameplay perspective, I don’t think that hardware is a limiting factor since you can do a lot on PS1. For example, the storage is certainly not a limitation since you can put 700MB of data on a CD and even do multi-CD games.

LM: Is there anything you wish more people understood about PS1 development that most people don’t realize?

ED: I wish more people understood how limited PS1 really is. 2MB of RAM, 2500-3500 polygons on the screen max, no dynamic lighting… A lot of people play PS1-like games and base their “feeling” of PS1 on them. I wish people played more PS1 classics to understand how limited PS1 really was and how creative the developers had to be to make their games fit into this limited platform.

LM: Have you connected with other developers creating new PS1 games? Is there a growing community around this?

The PS1 homebrew community is extremely small. There’s less than a dozen people actively working on PS1 games at any given point. I chat with other PS1 developers on Discord, especially often with Nicolas Noble, the developer behind psyqo (the PS1 SDK I’m using) and PCSX-Redux PS1 emulator. Connor McLaughlin aka “Stenzek” (the DuckStation PS1 emulator developer) has also helped me figure out how many things on PS1 work.

LM: Do you think more developers will start creating for “dead” consoles like PS1, or is this just a niche trend?

ED: Homebrew development has always been a niche and unless someone makes something like GBStudio for other platforms, it’ll still remain very niche. I don’t feel like there’s a huge market for buying homebrew games either… I’d be happy to be proven wrong if my game releases and somehow sells extremely well on PS1, though!

LM: How has the reception been so far? Are people excited about new PS1 games?

ED: The reception and attention I have gotten so far has been 100x more than I could have ever anticipated.

When I announced my PS1 game, my Twitter account had only 3K followers and getting so much attention for it has been unbelievable. In just a year my follower count has grown from 3K to almost 18K followers and a lot of my posts are doing well. I’m always receiving many positive comments and it makes me happy.

When I started working on Yume Nikki PS, it also attracted a lot of people. Again, much more than I expected. I was afraid that it would look good in the videos/screenshots, but wouldn’t be fun to play. But once I released the demo, the reaction I got was unbelievable - everyone, even the most hardcore Yume Nikki fans absolutely loved it and wanted more. This has proven to me that I can make something playable, fun, polished and beautiful on PS1.

LM: What’s your release timeline? When can people expect to play it?

ED: I don’t have a release timeline since I don’t have the scope for the game yet. I’m still in the prototyping/experimentation zone and want to figure out the engine/tools/workflows first and also understand what game I want to make. Once I make the first “real” area/story arc I’ll be able to understand how much time it’s going to make.

LM: Do you think there’s something lost in modern game development that PS1 brings back?

ED: I feel like most things that aren’t that good about modern game development are mostly caused by the scope of the games themselves and not because of the platform/tools that people use. Many AAA games have too many people working on them and so a “design by committee” really shows. Another problem is that a lot of effort is spent on making games realistic and movie-like while gameplay and game aesthetics suffer as a result. I want more experimental/fun AA games from the PS1 and PS2 era and less of “blockbusters” that are safe, predictable and boring.

LM: Is there an advantage to developing a PS1 game in today’s era?

ED: The biggest advantage is getting more attention. I’m not sure my projects would get as much attention if they were “PS1-like”… I think that authenticity makes people a lot more interested. It’s also an interesting programming challenge, and I enjoy doing it, but I’m not sure everyone would enjoy it as much. Developing video games for PC using an engine like Unreal, Unity or Godot is just much easier and faster. And lastly, the biggest advantage for making stuff on PS1 for me is that it helps me reduce the scope and the effort required to make art for my game. I can’t spend too much time worrying about the small details or something that would take just a few pixels on the screen. You can make some models extremely fast and extremely low poly and it would look just right on the PS1.

LM: A lot of people watching this will think “this is insane” or “why would anyone do this?” What would you say to them?

ED: I’ll say “You can just do things”! If you miss something from the past decades or think that modern games aren’t as interesting/good as the ones from the past, just remember… It’s something that can be achieved again (or maybe even surpassed) if you try hard enough.

And also, don’t think that you need to be at a “genius” programmer level to do stuff for older consoles. A lot of the hard work has been already done by the people who reverse engineered the consoles themselves and unless you target some extremely old console like NES or SNES, you don’t need to write any assembly.