ps2gltyler_daniel@playstation.sony.com Copyright © 2002 Sony Computer Entertainment America All Rights Reserved Introductionps2gl is an OpenGL*-like API for the ps2. It is intended to be useful for anyone looking for a familiar API on the ps2, but its main purposes in life are to provide an easier way to write games and to serve as an example of a ps2 rendering layer. In a perfect world ps2gl would be just another OpenGL* implementation, but unfortunately that is not to be. The reason, aside from licensing issues, is that many parts of the OpenGL* API are not well suited to the PlayStation 2 architecture and would require software emulation, which is undesirable.Still, all hope is not lost; many of the calls act the same as their OpenGL* counterparts, while the rest behave similarly. Finally, ps2gl is still quite young, and developers who decide to use it can expect to find bugs, inconsistencies, and incomplete features. Since ps2gl is also an open source project, its users are welcome to participate in its development. One of ps2gl's main design requirements is that it be easy to understand and modify. CVS (version control) write access is available to frequent contributors, and read access to the working cvs tree is always available. Latest VersionThe latest version can always be found on the homepage: https://www.ps2-pro.com/projects/ps2gl/for game development and now http://ps2gl.playstation2-linux.com for the linux version. The homepage also hosts bug tracking, news, cvs versions, and discussion groups. Contents
Installingps2gl depends on another package called ps2stuff. You'll find it at https://www.ps2-pro.com/projects/ps2gl/ or http://ps2gl.playstation2-linux.com. ps2stuff is a collection of utilities for dealing with the ps2 hardware and forms the layer on top of which ps2gl is built.To use ps2gl you'll want to link against the libps2stuff.a and libps2gl.a libraries. There is also a very poor imitation of glut used mainly for testing, but useful to get something running quickly. The libraries are found in the directories obj_buildname, where buildname is the name of the build you want to use. Here are the most useful game development builds:
You'll find ps2gl in ps2gl/objs_* and ps2glut in ps2gl/glut/objs_*. Building the exampleslinux/gccAfter expanding the ps2gl and ps2stuff archives into the same directory, chdir to ps2gl/example/box. Now 'make run' should do it. NOTE: there is a known bug where make sometimes tries to run the 'vcl' program. If this happens, cd to ps2gl/vu1 and do a 'touch *_vcl.vsm.' DocumentationThe api documentation for ps2gl is generated from source comments using a wonderful program called doxygen. The full documentation for both the external api (gl* and pgl*) and the internal implementation is included: You'll notice that internal documentation is quite scarce at the moment... It will gradually get better.BugsBug reports should be submitted to the appropriate homepage, which hosts a bug tracking system. (Be sure to check the bug tracker to see if the problem has already been reported and/or resolved.)
* OpenGL(R) is a registered trademark of Silicon Graphics, Inc. |