forums.ps2dev.org

This is the "Ideas and Project Concepts" thread. The only posts to this thread are to be ideas. Responses to or discussions of these ideas are to be placed into their own seperate threads. Any messages to the "Ideas and Project Concepts" thread that are not ideas or project concepts will be deleted. Please ensure you read the welcome message before posting to this thread.

Oobles.

Idea: Modify ps2dev.org to use CSS so that making look and feel changes can happen easier.

Details: ps2dev.org is based on the old style HTML format with little CSS or Javascript. This design makes it difficult to change and skin with new looks and feels. By reworking the design and making it CSS based it will open the door for people to submit skins and hopefully make the site feel more fresh. For CSS ideas see http://www.csszengarden.com/

Benefits:
- It will make it easier to modify and change the look and feel of the web site.
- It will make the site more flexible to change.

Problems & Issues:
- The web site source code is not in subversion.
- A suitable open source license needs to assigned and the source code released if the project is going to get any help.

Time & People required:
- Project needs one person that can run up the site in tomcat.
- Request CSS and HTML experience.
- Requires maybe a couple of weeks part time to finish.

The problem with getting the source code into subversion and with a suitable license is the major stumbling block here. If anyone is interested in helping out with this project let me know. It might help push me into action and get the source into subversion.

Oobles.

Idea: Create a VMWare appliance with a full working ps2dev environment.

Details: Getting the ps2dev or pspdev toolchains running on a windows environment is full of difficulties. A VMWare appliance has the advantage of setting it up once and allowing people to get straight into developing in a short amount of time. As the VMWare player is free it doesn't cost anything to get started.

Benefits:
- It will make it easier for people to get started with ps2dev.
- The environment can be tweaked and improved and rereleased easily.

Problems & Issues:
- The download might be quite large with a full install.

Time & People required:
- Project needs one person to take ownership of the environment.
- A script may need to be developed which helps rebuild the environment from scratch.
- Requires maybe a few days to configure and setup and release.

This idea has been floating around for a while with no-one really with the motivation to do it. It would be a great addition to the community. A useful linux or bsd distribution would need to be selected with preferably a minimal install. A solution which allowed the users development drive to be mounted would allow new environments to be downloaded without effecting their code/projects repository. If anyone sets this up, let me know of the resulting distribution size and I'll try and setup a place for it.

Oobles.

Idea: Add comments functionality to ps2dev.org news and other pages.

Details: Most news sites have the ability to comment on news. A generic ability to comment on topics on ps2dev.org would allow people to suggest when topics should be fixed, etc. It would also add the generic ability to other sites that use the same software.

Benefits:
- Allow people to comment on news stories.
- Make the main site more interactive.

Problems & Issues:
- Don't want to turn the main site into a place that atracts people who feel the need to comment on everything.
- The web site source code is not in subversion.
- A suitable open source license needs to be assigned.
- Need to decide if comments are just another topic type or have their own table. Probably suggest their own table is better.

Time & People required:
- Requires database changes to the ps2dev.org software.
- Probably not a big change software wise.

Idea: Bring send0r back to life.

Details: Send0r provided a homebrew publishing application for the ps2. It allowed authors to publish their applications to one place which a special client application could search and download applications. Most of the work associated with this application is in the server and how authors manage publishing their work. A second go was tried at PSP Send0r by myself and Rekless early this year but failed to get finished. A lot of the java back end was finished, and some of the client was done. Other priorities by both of us ended with this being side lined.

Benefits:
- Provides a single location to publish homebrew software.
- Allow homebrew software to stay off the actual ps2dev.org site.
- Provide a location to build a community of users of homebrew software away from other ad ridden sites.

Problems & Issues:
- Not a small project. It needs quite a lot of dedication to see it throught to the end.
- Requires knowledge of java, database, file handling, communications and PSP programming to complete.
- Need to work out at which point version 2 is at and what needs to be completed.
- Requires send0r code to be released into open source.

Time & People requierd:
- Reasonably large project.
- Time required to complete would depend on knowledge of all aspects of technology used.

There's plenty of optional features that could go into this sort of application. A nice idea would be the ability to sign homebrew software using Sony's own encryption techniques. This way people would know where and when the application was published and by who.

If anyone is interested in looking into this further, let me know your skills and we can work out if its worth bringing back to life.

Idea: PS3 Toolchain analysis

Description: It might be too early to even look at this. However it would be nice to get some analysis done to know how easy it is going to be to get cross compilers working for the PS3 architecture.

Benefits:
- Get the PS3 toolchain understanding done early.

Problems & Issues:
- First part is really a study of what is available for the Cell architecture already and see how easy it will be to make available. Is it based on gcc and can it fit into the toolchain script methods used for ps2 and psp toolchains.

Time & People required:
- The initial part is really just a study of what is available and understanding what needs to be done.

Idea: Argot for PSP and Argot for LuaPlayer.

Description: Argot is my binary encoding library for communications. It makes it a lot easier to perform binary based communications between applications. Making it available for LuaPlayer would make it a lot easier to make multiplayer homebrew games and applications.

Benefits:
- Make it easy to do communications on Lua and other PSP apps.
- Allow multiplayer games to be created.
- Allow communication with servers to be created which are programmed in java or C#.

Problems & Issues:
- Wrapping the C library in Lua will need some forethought. While the library isn't large it is reasonably complex and a good understanding of Argot will be required.
- Some work might be required to get a better understanding of PSP communications that is seperate from wrapping Argot.
- The C version of the Argot library has been ported from Java. For this reason it is still a bit rough around the edges and might need some refactoring as part of this exercise.

Time & People Required:
- This is probably about two weeks of work for someone with some basic skills in Lua and C.

This has been on my todo list for a while now. It's something that I'd really like to get made available. Ideally, I would like the Lua version of Argot to be part of the Argot product set. For this reason I'd be willing to pay someone to do this work. If you're not asking full professional rates and want some extra money PM me and we can see if we can work something out. More info on Argot available at http://www.einet.com.au

Oobles.