Is the PC-FX documented well enough for homebrew w/ CDDA/FMV/etc.?

[ruinatokyo]

oops, I put this in the wrong forum before, so here it is.

I've had a dream for a while to make a vertical scrolling shooter on the PC-FX using camera footage shot from aircraft as FMV backgrounds (including clouds etc on other layers) and some music tracks from CDs I've made.

With the current state of PC-FX documentation, would something like this be possible ?

(i know 68k asm and did some dreamcast dev, and have started to study the v810)

[elmer]

Now that GMAKER is out-in-the-wild, and MEDNAFEN supports the PC-FX for easy debugging ... then I'd have to say that "yes", it is possible.

It just not going to be "easy".

The GMAKER documentation is all in Japanese, and you'll have to use the old version of GCC that the Japanese hackers made in 2000 and also their versions of Hudson's GMAKER libraries.

If you do that, then I believe that those guys already got around the PC-FXGA-only restriction.

There will be a more up-to-date toolchain at some point ... but I keep on getting distracted from working on it.

With Alex Marshall's "liberis", you can definitely build a PC-FX CD that boots on real hardware.

[ruinatokyo]

thanks for the response! I guess I'll have to hunt around for the stuff you mentioned.

[elmer]

thanks for the response! I guess I'll have to hunt around for the stuff you mentioned.

Depending upon how far down the rabbit-hole you want to go ...

http://matejhorvat.si/en/pcfx/index.htm
http://hp.vector.co.jp/authors/VA007898/pcfxga/develop/
http://homepage1.nifty.com/hyperclub/
http://hwbb.gyao.ne.jp/soltin/gametool.html
http://forum.fobby.net/index.php?t=msg&th=246

And you might want to dig around a bit on EmuParadise.

[ruinatokyo]

thanks for the reply again.

your links were really helpful, but i was unable to find gmaker.

do you know where the documentation for it is available?

optimally i'd get the fxga development environment going and then play whatever games are needed to get it to boot on a pc-fx. on top of that, i might have the time to translate the gmaker documentation as i make my way, but all of this depends on how smoothly things go.

[elmer]

optimally i'd get the fxga development environment going and then play whatever games are needed to get it to boot on a pc-fx. on top of that, i might have the time to translate the gmaker documentation as i make my way, but all of this depends on how smoothly things go.

I've PM'd you some more info.

I'm sure that everyone would love to know how you manage to get on with resurrecting the old Hudson libraries.

I've not looked at them myself, because I'm more interested trying to produce a 100% legal toolchain that can be used without having to include any old copyrighted library code.

[Arkhan]

Currently, I think the tools are all there-ish, but it's currently alot like handing cavemen a buncha power tools.


It's not going to result in anything productive for a bit.   There aren't enough people dicking around to go off of.    TG had years of Zeograd's little demo things for people to mess with.

PC-FX hasn't gotten that far yet.     

If I wasn't balls deep in MSX stuff, I would be PC-FXing more probably.