Blogged by buffi

This post isn’t about programming for once. I also tend to spend a lot of time in front of my PS3 and just found out something that is quite cool and seems to have been overlooked.

Echochrome has been out in the Japanese and Hong Kong store for a little while now, and apparently it supports level sharing! And not just that, but it uses your PSN friends list as well (you can also send levels to people who aren’t your friends). There is also a feature for “uploading to a public server” but I couldn’t get that to work. Anyways, I really like this step towards community driven content, and I hope more games will use it. Here are some pictures:

The “Factory” for custom levels:

A test level I made just to try it out:

The send-dialog box:

Ingame friends list:

Sending…:

Transmission completed!:

Unfortunately Echochrome is scheduled for May outside of Asia, which is weird as hell considering that the version from the Hong Kong store is completely in English. There doesn’t seem to be any limitations for purchasing it for users outside of Hong Kong (I’m located in Europe) so there really doesn’t exist any reason to wait. Get a HK-account and download it now

buffi Gaming, Gaming Software

This guide assumes a basic knowledge about linux. Writing a step by step guide for complete beginners would take forever, and at the current state there is no reason for someone who aren’t a linux user (geek) to install this yet. I predict that eventually there will be distributions for PS3 bundled with media frontends but until then this is not for the mainstream audience. I take no responsibilities for what you do with your PS3. Don’t do this if you don’t know what you are doing (although it should be safe).

Some guy named cka at somethingawfuls forum hinted that someone should try compiling MMS (http://mms.sunsite.dk/) for PS3 since it seems kind of nice.
I gave it a shot and it worked just fine, so I might give a few hints on how to do this if you are interested.

Picture of it running (never mind the Swedish, it will use your own locales)

I did this using debian on my PS3 so my guide will cover how to do this in debian, but it should work just fine on any distribution, however you will of course not be able to use the same packaging tool (apt-get) as debian-users.

Step 1: Install debian on your PS3.
This might need it’s own guide… I used the debian live cd/installer from http://www.keshi.org/moin/moin.cgi/PS3/Debian/Live . I’m extremely pleased with this and concider it much better than YDL or FC5 for PS3 use. Try to follow the instructions (use the expert install) and it should be ok.

Step 2: Install ps3utils
Download ps3utils on your ps3 Available here.
As root do

dpkg -i ps3pf-utils_1.0.9-1_powerpc.deb

Step 3: Setup correct resolution
Most of the stuff here needs root access so open a terminal and su to root.
Create a file called “ps3video” in /etc/init.d/
Write the following text to it

#!/bin/bash
ps3videomode -v 3

Replace the “3″ argument in ps3videomode with your tv’s resolution as quoted from here

DO NOT ADD THE LINES BELOW TO THE ps3video FILE. They are just for you to find out which number to use.

Video mode ID:
  0:automode
  YUV 60Hz  1:480i  2:480p  3:720p  4:1080i  5:1080p
  YUV 50Hz  6:576i  7:576p  8:720p  9:1080i 10:1080p
  RGB 60Hz 33:480i 34:480p 35:720p 36:1080i 37:1080p
  RGB 50Hz 38:576i 39:576p 40:720p 41:1080i 42:1080p
  VESA     11:WXGA 12:SXGA 13:WUXGA

  full screen mode: 

ps3videomode -v 4 configures your PS3 for 60Hz 1080i and so on. I have a 720p 60Hz tv so I use ps3videomode -v 3.

Then make your ps3video script executable by doing

chmod +x /etc/init.d/ps3video

Finally make this script run at start up

ln -s /etc/init.d/ps3video /etc/rc2.d/S09ps3video

Step 4: Setup audio
Open /etc/modules
Add “snd_ps3pf” at a new line at the bottom of the file
Restart your PS3

Step 5: Install dependencies for MMS
First install pygame. You don’t really need this but is also sets up all of SDL correctly and will make it possible for you to use my script for showing the resolutions to pick later.

As root:

apt-get update
apt-get install python-pygame

Then install the dependencies as descripted in the mms help wiki.

apt-get install libimlib2-dev libsdl1.2-dev autoconf bazaar build-essential libxine-dev mplayer-nogui
apt-get install w32codecs libtag1-dev libsqlite0-dev libpcre3-dev liblircclient-dev libtool gettext

To compile you also need the xorg development package.

apt-get install xorg-dev

Step 6: Install MMS
Make a folder to hold the source files, change directory to it and do

baz register-archive http://mms.sunsite.dk/archives/2005-mmsv2
baz get anders@gnulinux.dk--2005-mmsv2/mmsv2--mainline--1.0.8

cd into the newly created directory and then do

./configure
make
make install

If no errors occur then it should have been installed correctly!

Step 7: Configure MMS
Open up /etc/mms/config and change some stuff in it

1. Make sure that outdev under “Output devices” is set to “sdl”
2. Set audio_dir to your folder containing music
3. Set mov_dir to your folder containing videos
4. Set mplayeropts to “-fs -zoom -sws 0 -ao oss”
(This stands for fullscreen, zoom, no software scaling, OSS audio)
5. Set v_res and h_res to your full screen resolution. For ps3videomode -v 3 this is

v_res = 1124
h_res = 644

If you are unsure about what resolutions are supported you can download a small script I wrote to find out (pygame required).

wget buffis.com/ps3/resolutions.py
python resolutions.py

6. Make sure that fullscreen is set to “true”
(if you want full screen)

Step 8: Run MMS
Write “mms” in a terminal. Hopefully it should start.
Read how to use the application at the mms-wiki.
http://mms.kicks-ass.org/wiki/index.php/MMS_Basics

And now you are done!
The possibility of me forgetting something to write in this guide is rather high as I’m simply trying to backtrack my actions from earlier today. If anyone run into issues drop a comment and I’ll reply as fast as I can!

buffi Gaming, Gaming Software, Programming & scripting