Playstation 2 support?

[Kafu]

Hi,

does someone used/tested Ogre under Playstation 2?

As you know, recently Sony have opened to indies removing the acceptance phase. Porting some existing game could be very interesting.

[stoneCold]

Hi,

does someone used/tested Ogre under Playstation 2?

As you know, recently Sony have opened to indies removing the acceptance phase. Porting some existing game could be very interesting.

Ah, someone besides me has noticed.
Although actually the "opening of the PS2", as it is often referred to only means that you are not required to get the OK from sony to release your game and that you can get your game burnt and distributed yourself (somehow ).
Nonetheless you still need to sign plethoras of NDAs and buy the quite costly (at least for indies) official sony ps2 toolchain to get started.

BUT, this news inspired me to do some research and there is an open source community for ps2 development as well (http://ps2dev.org/).
The quite only limitation that you have got with it is that you need a ps2 with a modchip or with the PS2-Independence Exploit present, to be able to run homebrew software on it.
Since I already wanted to do some hobbiest console dev for some time (I even thought of picking up a dreamcast, since they are very cheap nowadays and quite completely open/free to the indie community), I yesterday went to the electronics shop of my trust and got myself the equipment to trigger the mentioned PS2-Independence Exploit (I don't want to modchip my PS2 since it seems to be more costly still and time consuming as well).

We'll see how far I can get with that.
Although I don't know how (not so lightweight) ogre will perform on the PS2's 300 Mhz processor.

[Noman]

Problem with the homebrew toolkit, is that I don't think it has any connection to the ps2's 3d engine. It just supports the basic stuff (writing text, drawing colored pixels etc). At least that was the status last time i was in there...

[stoneCold]

Problem with the homebrew toolkit, is that I don't think it has any connection to the ps2's 3d engine. It just supports the basic stuff (writing text, drawing colored pixels etc). At least that was the status last time i was in there...

Since there's a normal mapping tutorial available on the ps2dev site, a port of luaGL and several example demos that show how to draw triangles including textures, your info might be quite old/outdated
(I can't tell how performant it is though, but shouldn't be that bad compared to the official tools)

[stoneCold]

Just a little update...

Today I tried to get some homebrew software running on my unmodified Playstation2.
More precisely, I tried out one of the ps2dev sdk code samples, which I compiled myself.
I have to say I got it working faster and easier than I thought, thanks to some good tutorials about the named PS2 independence bug.

Here follows a short video which shows that 3D rendering/rasterization is possible (and fun!) with the ps2dev sdk



The next step for me, is to elaborate the C++ and STL compliance / compatibility of the ps2dev sdk,
to see if it's even worth trying to get ogre running on the PS2 with the help of it.

cheers folks

[Kafu]

Nice!

For porting, I don't know how much OpenGL have been implemented, but something seems to exists:
http://playstation2-linux.com/projects/openglstuff/
http://playstation2-linux.com/projects/ps2gl

Little OT: to distribute a PS2 game on non-modified consoles, now that the "market is open", how can be done? I think the copy protection system needs special optical supports and some signing key...so we need to pass always by Sony and no way to make a downloadable ISO. Is it right?

[stoneCold]

For porting, I don't know how much OpenGL have been implemented, but something seems to exists:
http://playstation2-linux.com/projects/openglstuff/
http://playstation2-linux.com/projects/ps2gl

... looks like these require PS2 Linux to be installed on the console to work (correct me if I'm wrong).
With the help of the ps2dev libs & compilers you are able to really run native PS2 code on your console, without any 3rd party operating system (e.g. linux).

Little OT: to distribute a PS2 game on non-modified consoles, now that the "market is open", how can be done? I think the copy protection system needs special optical supports and some signing key...so we need to pass always by Sony and no way to make a downloadable ISO. Is it right?

If I understood the sony news correctly, you are right with your saying.
As I said earlier, to run homebrew software on your PS2, you either need a modchip, or use some kind of disk swapping technique or use the PS2 independence exploit.
The process is the same as for running backups of your PS2 games.

cheers

[Kafu]

With the help of the ps2dev libs & compilers you are able to really run native PS2 code on your console, without any 3rd party operating system (e.g. linux).

I don't know the API exposed by ps2dev, but if you dont' have an OpenGL layer all Ogre rendering system should be re-implemented. A (too?) big work.

I think the copy protection system needs special optical supports and some signing key...so we need to pass always by Sony

If I understood the sony news correctly, you are right with your saying.

Very unfortunate... I think this will limits a lot independent developers.

[yoshi314]

you can use free MC boot project to run homebrew on unmodified console.

and as far homebrew development is concerned - nobody made such a big game/app that you would need to burn it to disk. for now, usb drives are good enough (or storing the apps on memory card usually is sufficient)

but there is also a way to run burned dvd disks on ps2, without modifying the console.

more info :
http://www.psx-scene.com/forums/freevas ... eases.html