unofficial LaunchELF Plug-in API/SDK

[barf]

As someone said the thread "unofficial LaunchELF" is far off topic, and perhaps this will be one of the sub threads that can cope with some of that.

This thread should contain:

• discussion on possibilities for making uLaunch plug-ins
• which potential plug-ins that are desirable

I guess the new parole from now on will be: don't start new projects; make plug-ins for uLaunchELF :-p

[zabolyx]

None of this will come to be if EP and Dlanor don't impliment a way to run these plug-ins.....

This is a great idea though... we could use this to toss around some theoretical ideas....


Of course first one should tackle the ideal way for the plug-ins to function....

1. uLaunch Elf would store the plug-in info file in 1 of 3 places...
MC0:/BXDATA-SYSTEM
MC0:/SYS-CONFIG
or in the LAUNCH.CNF file a path to the needed file

2. uLaunch Elf can load plug-ins from 1 of 3 places........
MC0:/BXDATA-SYSTEM
MC0:/SYS-CONFIG
or in the LAUNCH.CNF file a path to the needed file

3. Plug-in files would be compiled code that have an extension of LEP (uLaunch Elf Plug-in)

4. The Plug-in info file would be named LEPLUG.DAT and would store file extensions and corisponding plug-in for that extension.

example:
DAT HEXEDIT.LEP
MP3 MP3.LEP
TXT EDIT.LEP
JPG PICVIEW.LEP
MPG MEDIAP.LEP

and so on..........

[zabolyx]

Now for a few ideas.....

1. HEXEDIT

A simple USBKB compatable (or controller) simple hex editor program.... eventually with the ability to unpack and repack ELFs on the fly would be very nice...

2. EDITOR

A simple USBKB compatable text editor... there would be no need to have controller support because using the contoller to scroll through the available characters would be insane....

3. MEDIAP

A Mpeg, MPG2, MPG4 and DIVX compatable player... or a series of players (MEDIAP1, MEDIAP2....) that could handle the needed tasks with network streaming included

4. MP3

A well defined and visually stimulating MP3 player and possible ripper.... with networking with network compatable streaming

5. PICVIEW

A all around image viewing tool.... jpeg, gif, gif89a, tiff, bmp, raw (with various user selectable decoding schemes) and more.... with all the beels and whistles of slideshow, zoom etc....

[HypERSoniC]

the problem is getting the "plugin" to execute.. im no ps2 programmer but wouldnt you need some kind of multithreading support to do that?

[barf]

Multithreading is for several tasks to run at once,
and on a game console the plug-ins should really be templates with a destruct that deletes itself and relaunches uLaunchELF.

Hexedit should be some what easy,
if the files will have to be of the same size.

[zabolyx]

NO... we need not to relaunch uLaunch Elf...........

just to load into memory as a sub routine... then have uLaunch Elf run the named subroutine... the section of memory has to be loaded and unloaded but uLaunch Elf and the subroutine never really takes complete control... it should have some varioables passed to it... such as the selected file to run on... and so forth...

uLaunch Elf code.........
.............
,...............
..............
subroutine plugin memory start


subroutine plugin memory end
.................
..............
uLaunch Elf code end

just figuring the starting point and ending point for the memory allocation.... Although I don't know how hard it would be to set aside a section of memory to use for this....

[HypERSoniC]

can you do that with machine code?

[zabolyx]

We used to do this with QuickBasic... It has to be possible with C..... hell I'm going to look this up on the net... and see if this is even possible... I'd love to be able to bring this to the table for uLaunch ELf

[HypERSoniC]

isnt quickbasic interpreted not comiled?

[zabolyx]

well yes and no... it is compiled if ran seperate from the interpreter.. you can even write sections in C and ASM for QuickBasic....

As for finding any info... I'm not finding much.....