PS2 Homebrew standards

[adavidm]

I was looking at my collection of Homebrew apps yesterday and came to the conclusion that while they are all great (thanks devs), there are some minor annoyances that could be fixed, I think, relatively easily. The main thing is standardisation. It would be nice if there was a standard way do do simple tasks in all applications.

To implement this, you would probably need a single, global preferences file (stored somewhere like mc0:bedata-system/prefs so it can be copied from MC to MC easily) that would contain global settings for your personal PS2 environment. If this file implemented the following variables, then the benefits would be tremendous.

LaunchApp: This would be the path your preferred launcher, KeyLuanch, LaunchELF, etc...If each app were to implement a quit function that re-launches the program that launched it, this would be awesome. ExecFTPS would be ten-times faster to use.

IPInfo: This is just the line from IPCONFIG.DAT. It's irritating having different IPCONFIG files scattered through the system.

SelectKey/CancelKey : These two would take care of your personal preferences for X and O for select and cancel. LaunchELF uses O to Select and X to Cancel, this drives me mad when going into HDLoader, which is X to Select and O to Cancel (Which, incidentally, makes more sense to me)

Background/Foreground: These two are for simple text based apps such as ExecFTPS. I generally prefer Yellow-on-Black for text
apps, and it would be nice to make a change once and have it reflected throughout all the apps. You could add Accent1 and Accent2 to implement a slightly more complicated colour scheme like LaunchELFS

Language: Any multi-lingual apps out there could look to this for a hint of which langauge to use

Sound: Use this boolean to decide weather to play music/sound/whatever.

Anyone patient enough to read to the bottom of this will realise that I have just described several duties that an operating system would normally perform. I would suggest that implementing the above features would make the need for an all-encompassing OS unnecessary.

There are major hurdles for sure, as everyone would have to rewrite their code, and people are maybe not willing to do this, but it sure would be nice, wouldn't it?

/me wakes up from dream

cheers

adavidm

[Stefy2]

just a point, for the language is better checking at the system configuration of the ps2 itself
the standard phat was sys-conf mc0:/SYS-CONF/ and subdir aren't so good the ps2 browser can't use them correctly so it can't be BEDATA-SYSTEM/config/ but at least remains SYS-CONF also because not all use the exploit (dev1/2/chip flash users) and don't want their bedata system messed up whit files

[adavidm]

I think all sys-conf needs to be usable by the browser is a valid icon. I wasn't aware that sys-conf was used by DEV modes, I don't use a chip, thanks for the info.

Your point about language is well taken, but lots of software completely ignores this setting, even commercial games!

Most of what I want to see will never happen, but it doesn't hurt to dream!

adavidm

[HypERSoniC]

it can.. it's just a folder.. and like any other folder you need a icon.sys pointing to a valid icon.ico

[Stefy2]

commercial games don't ignore it, they ignore it only in two cases
1-they ask at boot the language
2-they don't have that launguage
the same for homebrew apps just few has other languages than the default one.
sys conf isn't a modchip related dir but a standard for storing configuration used for example by ps2menu, dev mode dir are /BOOT/ and some chip has theirs own (out of standard) for example /O2/

[adavidm]

I wasn't saying that sys-conf was a modchip specific folder, just that I wasn't aware that it was. Sorry if that point wasn't clear. I don't really care what the folder is called, just that its a standard! If you install lots of homebrew then you'll appriciate what a PITA it is to have 3 different IPCONFIG.DAT or USBD.IRX files hanging round. You could even build a simple hierarchy say:

sys-conf

|
|-bin ELFs go here
|-lib IRXs here
|-conf IPCONFIG and other preferences files

On a more general note, the purpose of the original post wasn't to lay down a specific set of 'rules' but to explore the possibilities of what could happen if the homebrew devs could work to standards. I'm sure people can think of better ones, but the idea was to see what could be achieved with tighter integration between the various homebrews out there.

adavidm

[zabolyx]

A standard would improve just about everything in the community....

standard files formats, irx usage, HD usage, and a solid development OS to work with would be great. But everyone in the scene wants to do things their way. I pray to God that the dev for the PS3 will be more organized.

[omegatron]

ok no all of a sudden my expoit icon only shows up as the normal ps2 config icon even though the key launcher icon is in ther