More and more I start to feel the frustration of the time demanding task of doing homebrew which is unfortunately incompatible with my current life. This is intrinsic to C/C++ stuff, greatly amplified by the use of gcc based development tools with little debugging support. There were moments when I really wish for a RAD language + environment for the PS2… Nevertheless, it’s still more gratifying than doing everything quickly and with little effort.

About the ps2doom,

• I managed to improve the audio quality of the sound for Doom2 WAD (although unnoticeable)
• Discarted LIBSD requirement and adopted freesd-1.01 so older japanese models should able to play this and in theory, it should be more compatible with PS3 homebrew loading (don’t ask me anything about this, I don’t own a PS3 neither I’m interested in making it fully compatible, if it isn’t already)
• Digital pad buttons are now usable
• Added libconfig support (thanks misfire for the gift to the community) and this allowed me to add a simple way to make the controls completely reconfigurable without having to code boring GUI configs. The drawback is that you need to edit a config file or use a tool at PC side, this is not done at the PS2, sorry. This broke some things recently at the control system, nothing that a little debugging wouldn’t solve

So, after I finish the issue mentioned just above, it’s really for a new sparkling release.

I still have some plans regarding music (not to give details for now) and some other good stuff.
Although the sources are available through the assembla repository (see old post) I will sooner of later put everything into a google code project. I’d like to make the code compilable with current ps2sdk gsKit+SDL or with the minimal modifications first.

Wish me luck.

New features:

- Savegame handling for different WAD : Now savegames from doom1 and doom2 and other WADs can happy cohexist at the same memory card.

Important: This means that your previous saves needs to be renamed at the PS2DOOM memory card folder. Use uLaunchELF for that (copy the save files to a USB storage device for example, rename those at your computer – see below, delete those same files at the memory card and copy the renamed saves from the USB device back to the PS2DOOM memory card folder). Refer to uLaunchELF documentation for this operations (I won’t offer help at this subject).

Until now, the saves follows the scheme for all the WADs : doomsav0.dsg,  doomsav1.dsg, and so on. For now on, the saves reflect the WAD name:

For doom2.wad savegames, you should use the the naming scheme : doom2sav0.dsg,  doom2sav1.dsg, etc. Similarly for doom1.wad saves, this will be doom1sav0.dsg,  doom1sav1.dsg.

For doom.wad, the filenames should be doomsav0.dsg,  etc. You get the picture (sorry to explain this to detail, but I wanted to keep this clear).

Bug fixes:

- Should work with the doom2f.wad (I don’t own it). It should run with previous versions (memory requirements issue since sounds weren’t being downsampled)
- Previous/next weapon selection was buggy (some weapons weren’t selectable) – fixed
- Fixed a crash when a lump is not found (doom.wad at “menu slideshow”) – original sources bug?
- Save/load file handle fixed (no more trying to load/save from empty slots)

I also realised the the source files cosmitoFileIO.c and cosmitoFileIO.h weren’t being included at the distribution archives… Going to fix that.

Get it from here : ps2doom_v1041.zip

Well, almost a entire month has passed since the last update and I can assure you it was been a hell of a 4 weeks at the job. No spare time to do anything than work. No cinema, no walkings, no friends, no life. And yes, no ps2doom.

It took me only about 2-3 hours of quality free time on this week end to understand how strafe was implemented at lsdldoom and how key/button events are handled in Doom. So, implementing strafe for the right analog stick was almost a linear task and for better, it wasn’t necessary to change the code dramatically.

Now ps2doom plays beautifully with strafing If you never tried this feature on ps2 lsdldoom port, you don’t know what you’re missing now on ps2doom! It tooks the gameplay to another dimension completely. Actually, I feel the gameplay with a Dualshock PS2 controller surpasses by large keyboard gameplay at action time, not accounting for the extra functions you can quickly access though keyboard.

Have a try and lots of fun! Doom is incredibly addicting, even after you finished it over and over.

As usual, source is included with the pack:

ps2doom.v.1.0.4.0

This time, good news for people who want to run PS2Doom from memory cards:

Now the .WAD file is loaded from the same directory ps2doom.elf resides, so this avoid the mess of having files at the root of USB storage devices. As a consequence, the files can be entirely placed at memory cards. USB storage devices are still supported, of course.

Currently, HDD is not yet supported. To detect the device name and full path of ps2doom.elf I just parse the main’s argv[0] string. It seems that when launching from HDD using uLaunchELF, the device name appears as “host:”… So I’m not sure on how to detect when ps2doom is executed from HDD. Any help?

I believe HDD support will be added along with a config file where would be listed all the .WAD paths to feed a WAD selector.

Another feature added :
- The Quit option menu now boots back to the OSD PS2 Browser

Get it: ps2doom_v1030

Next stop: Strafe support.

Finally, it’s possible to save/load from memory card!

It was a matter applying some fixes I did for lsdldoomps2 into this port and initing memory card support by the book, using ps2sdk’s mc_example.c example as reference.

Enjoy it:
PS2Doom v1.0.2.2

For the many of you who have an Amiga gaming past, you may remember a classic named Cannon Fodder and, of course, its intro tune.

JammerPS2 is an example for the cosMix sound engine I cooked, and it works like a sound sample trigger, using the Dualshock controller buttons to fire up sounds.

I decided to pack it with samples from the Cannon Fodder intro song for you to have something ready to play with, but you can supply your own samples, as long they are mono or stereo WAV files rated at 48000Hz (you may use any other sample rate, like the more usual 44100Hz but the sounds pitch will be higher than normal).

Keep in mind the PS2 is not a computer with virtual memory (only if running linux), so the total space taken by the samples must be at most 32MB (a little less than this actually).

As feedback, I really would like to know from your creations. If you made any sound packs for JammerPS2, let me know and drop some links for downloading your packs.

Get the binaries here (source archive is included), unpack to a USB pen and run with uLaunchELF:
http://code.google.com/p/cosmix/downloads/list

The source repository for cosMix and JammerPS2 is located at GoogleCode (I began to drop Assembla service, at last):
http://code.google.com/p/cosmix/

Have fun

Today I was trying to add strafe support for the right or left analog stick just like in lsdldoom but it seems it’s not trivial. I really miss this feature from lsdldoom… I must try another time. This was feeling much like work today and work is not fun

Minor update:

No more hicups on sound during screen melt/wipe effect at the start of a new game or at level ending.

PS2Doom_v1021.zip

Time for updates:

Version 1.0.2.0 features USB keyboard support, so if you own a keyboard compatible with the PlayStation2 (not all USB keyboards are, unfortunably) it’s time to try it! It was as simple as enable it at the SDL makefile  

Now it’s possible to change the weapon at will  Select previous/next weapon with the Square and Circle buttons, respectively.

Also,  gamma correction, run, and map view are accessible. L1 button now results in ‘n’ key instead of a ‘x’ key, which is good for confirmation input.

Saving and loading is still only possible via host: device.

Dualshock Joystick mappings:
============================
Left Analog Stick :     Move

Cross:     Shift / Run

Square     : o / Previous weapon

Circle     : p / Next weapon

Triangle     : Escape

L1     : n

L2     : y

R1     : Fire

R2     : Space / Open doors

Start     : Enter

Analog Left click     : Map

Analog Right click     : Brightness (gamma)

Please note: Enter key action (required to menu operations like starting new game) is a bit clumsy for now. For bringing up the menu, use the Cross button but to select items, use the Start button. This will be fixed.

Enjoy it:
http://www.4shared.com/file/90209288/bbf3a18b/ps2doom_v1020.html

And today is the day!

Sound seems now reasonable, after adding some calls to swap between the mixer and game threads and even without any optimization over the mixer code, it seems to run well.

This is PS2Doom v.1.0.1.0 (let’s call the original Lukasz version 1.0.0.0) and features sound. Basically is the same version presented at http://ps2homebrewing.wordpress.com/2008/02/19/modified-ps2-port-of-doom/ but I first replaced the sound routines by Jason’s http://www.jasonyu.net/ps2/lsdldoom-bundle.zip hoping to get sound working. Since it didn’t worked, I removed the SDLmixer calls from Jason’s functions and injected my own mixer calls.

I developed a rather simple mixer I decided to call cosmitoMixer, or cosMix for short and I’ll present it properly soon. Currently the cosMix uses SJPCM lib (this means it will fail on some older Japanese consoles) but hopefully I’ll switch to isjpcm lib.

Binary and sources here :
http://www.4shared.com/file/89869930/2d608c18/ps2doom_v1010.html

Instructions for running and compiling included. WADs not included.

The plan is to drop the unstable lsdldoom port and apply all the features I’ve been adding to PS2Doom port.

Stay tuned for more updates.