forums.ps2dev.org

Im curious, can images made on the computer be displayed on the screen and moved around by the ps2 controller buttons? Like is it possible to make an actual game yet? or only applications?

thanx

That's not all my friend. In the not-too-distant future, automatons powered by vast arrays of Cell (tm) chips will transform your living room into a digital playground, a silent cacophony able to display thousands of images per second controlled only by your thoughts.

Welcome. I'm glad to see you make it out of your time-warp intact, those things can be quite treacherous.

hmm, maybe Andrew was asking if this is possible using the ps2dev tools and libs???

There are some good demos at http://www.thethirdcreation.net/archive.php but any "games" I've seen so far are, hmm, rather primitive. The pieces are in place -- compliers and loaders, and libs to access the pad, video, sound, disk, net, etc. I guess it's safe to say this community is still primarily building tools. Putting them all together is left as an exercise for the diligent student ;-)

People are doing awesome things, but don't expect to see Ratchet and Clank anytime soon (or even Sonic the Hedgehog)

Impressive, Id like to start developing, im just waiting for PS2_FTPD so i can transfer my creations over easily. Id like to make a free mmorpg, dare to dream :D just with some basic SNES graphics ect. Plain old stuff :D doubt it will happen, but I can try.

You don't need ps2ftpd. When developing, you'll use ps2link to test with.
PS2LINK is software to run your hombrew on the PS2 from your computer.

And about your original question... There is everything in place to make commercial quality games right now, the only thing holding it back is.... It takes a lot of work to do something like that ;)

What do I need to run ps2link? I dont have a modchip but my swapmagic set it coming soon, I plan to use that to load PS2FTPD onto my memory card and such. My network adaptor should come soon so I can use my 120 GB maxtor, Can I copy files onto the HDD and run them from there? I know PS2FTPD is supposed to be able to do this.

Anywho yeah, Im a really focussed developer, Ive made a MMORPG or two in my day for PC and I know developing any kind of game is very hard and time consuming, but knowing Im developing a game for the PS2 would give me the extra push to keep going. So where do I start with all this stuff?

If you are wanting to do dev work and are using swapmagic (*shudders*) to set things up, what you'll probably want to do is put ps2link on a memory card and use the ps2-independence exploit to boot it. When you boot your ps2 into ps2link, it allows you to connect to your ps2 from your PC over the network, and execute your ELF from your PC to the PS2.
Now, you can use ps2ftpd copy your files to the HDD and then use ps2menu or altimit to run them from there, you will very quickly get tired of this and will hug and praise ps2link ;)

This is the official get started here page for ps2dev, although it needs a lot of work (if no one else does it by the time I have time, I'll work on it)
The best place to get the compiles is to use ooPo's toolchain script, available at http://www.oopo.net/consoledev/ . You'll have to either be using *nix or cygwin.

So can standard PC images be used? like .jpg and .gif ?? how about transparency and stuff like that. Is drawing a 2D image to the screen difficult at all? I mean when I think of PS2 Development I think putting in 0's and 1's and hoping for the best. But it seems it can be written in C which is good because I have a good understanding for C. Id like to see a sniplet of code for someone drawing an image to the screen .. see If i understand it..

p.s. whats up with the IRC channel? its like invite only or something..

Its not every day you see someone overestimate the difficulty of non-PC development. Weird. :)

Try taking a look at some of the tutorials I have on my site ( http://www.oopo.net.consoledev ) to get an idea of what the code looks like. If you know C, you should be ok... there's libraries for graphics like gslib and gskit, a jpeg library and other things that should help you on your way.

All you need is a compiler toolchain (see the autobuilding scripts on my site to build one of these), and a way to run the programs on the PS2. Typically we use ps2link ( http://www.thethirdcreation.net/tools/ps2link-v1.23.zip ) which lets you upload a program to the PS2 and run it automatically over the network adaptor.

As for the irc channel, msg someone on the channel and you should get invited.

Yes, you can program in C, although there are some parts of the PS2 you can't program in C (i.e. the vu's).

Yeah, you can load any type of image you want, it's YOUR software that loads the image from the file afterall ;)

If you are doing it from scratch it can be difficult to do graphics, especially at first. However there are currently a few gs libraries out there to help that makes things pretty easy IMO. gslib, libito, and gskit. gsKit is new and still in development (textures, so in turn sprites loaded from a file haven't been implemented yet, but neo has been working at a blistering pace and they should be soon) but I'd definatly recommend gskit.

Yeah, irc channel is currently invite only. If you want in you'll have to knock or ask someone who is in the channel to invite you.