[Request]Shinkon Gattai Godannar.

[alon]

Ok, i will upload some samples soon of this game.
I would be very grateful for your interest and support.

[alon]

Deleted the article.

[kingfisher13]

Nice, looks like we got a bunch of people interested. I wouldn't bring up different games, though... We should focus on Godannar, and its specific format, just in case there are some slight differences in coding.

[alon]

Nice, looks like we got a bunch of people interested. I wouldn't bring up different games, though... We should focus on Godannar, and its specific format, just in case there are some slight differences in coding.

To make my intentions clear, i deleted the article.
We should focus on Godannar, too

[kingfisher13]

wait, that's it?

No more progress? I thought this was working out... sorry, but this isn't going to end this way. I will have those models, textured and in a usable format, even if I have to find someone else to help me with it.

[finale00]

I wouldn't mind looking at PS2 formats if the only special thing to know about are those VIF tags. Like, a spec on what the common commands mean and how they should be dealt with.

Or better yet, a library that already handles all of those tags so I can just call them if I run into one...

[kingfisher13]

Hmm.... I'm not the one to come up with such a thing, but we have (at least, had) a bunch of prime programmers working on this. Maybe they could come up with what you need.

[dj082502]

The way I see it, this post is not so attractive by others.
Good luck.

[kingfisher13]

What do you mean, not so attractive by others? The format isn't difficult, as was stated earlier. It simply requires a little effort... It seems like whenever I contribute to a thread, everybody disappears. It's almost like cyber-bullying... Just because some of us don't have the programming experience that is favored on this forum, that doesn't mean our projects are worthless.

[howfie]

just post lots of tit pics from the game and you'll get finale00's reinterest in no time .

[dj082502]

Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to.
You don't need to care about it
Maybe the communication didn't go well because my English is not that good.

[finale00]

What do you mean, not so attractive by others? The format isn't difficult, as was stated earlier. It simply requires a little effort...

Ya, it isn't difficult...from someone who's spent much time looking at PS2 stuff.
I didn't even know about VIF tags until someone mentioned it.

If there were better tools and more info it'd probably be better.

If the people that have worked on it can provide info for VIF tags that would be great.

It seems like whenever I contribute to a thread, everybody disappears. It's almost like cyber-bullying... Just because some of us don't have the programming experience that is favored on this forum, that doesn't mean our projects are worthless.

Lol what.

I don't think there was much interest from the start. Of course, if you know people that can do this stuff I guess you can just ask them.

On the other hand, programming is also not difficult; it just requires a little effort.
If you can communicate with humans you are likely able to communicate with a computer, who will listen to you word-for-word like a total slave.

[revelation]

i explain a bit about how the VIF tags are parsed here:
viewtopic.php?p=52244#p52244
More information can be found in the ps2 sdk documentation as well. i can try and explain more of what i understand of them though.

This is a decent site to see some information on a number of ps2 formats that use the VIF tags, or at least see the names of some of the games. Most of the ones on that site use them.
http://ps23dformat.wikispaces.com/

i have been planning on turning my parsing code into a set of re-useable functionality, but there is some cleanup and other tasks i need to do to make it more useful for general use.

i am not opposed to helping with the format, i am simply fairly backlogged on my format work at the moment and would really like to get caught up. i am involved in the Force Unleashed, Resident Evil 4, Resident Evil 5/Devil May Cry 4, RAGE Engine (Red Dead Redemption, GTA4, etc.), Dragonball Raging Blast, Street Fighter 4, Metal Gear Solid 2 - 4, Zone of the Enders, CryENGINE, Forza, Marvel vs Capcom 3, Assassin's Creed, Prince of Persia, Final Fantasy 13, God of War, Kingdom Hearts, Ninja Gaiden, Super Smash Brothers, and Metroid Prime format research, among others, as well as i don't even remember how many additional formats i have said i would help with outside the forums that i still have to get back to. And i still don't think that covers all the formats i would like to get started with that i have already put off. So i try to make time for them eventually. As i reach a new roadblock in one format i get back to another with a fresh set of eyes and can usually make more progress.

[finale00]

Is there like specific things to look out for that would indicate that a tag is coming up.
Or do those tags just randomly appear whenever the devs felt like using it?

Like

Code: Select all

Struct Something {
   dword
   dword
   dword
   dword VIF tag
   ...
}

[revelation]

Unfortunately the VIF blocks are completely specific to packaging up data/commands to the ps2 and have no relation to the data structures the developer may have chosen. So you still have to decipher the base format to determine where the counts, offsets and sizes of the blocks may be. Another thing to be aware of is that things are often processed and unpacked from this data in 16-byte aligned blocks. As such a lot of the sizes and addresses used are usually specified in quad word count (qwc) form, which is simply the actual size divided by 16. There are a number of commands that can be specified by the structures from setting up how values are masked, what to unpack, where to unpack, and when to actually execute the commands associated with the buffer.

Code: Select all

		switch (vifTag->commnd.cmd)
		{
		case 0x00: // NOP
			vifStart += 4;
			break;
		case 0x01: // STCYCL
			cl = vifTag->stcycl.cl;
			wl = vifTag->stcycl.wl;
			vifStart += 4;
			break;
		case 0x02: // OFFSET
			vif1_ofst = (vifTag->commnd.imm & 0x3FF);
			vifStart += 4;
			break;
		case 0x03: // BASE
			vif1_base = (vifTag->commnd.imm & 0x3FF);
			vifStart += 4;
			break;
		case 0x04: // ITOP
			vif0_itop = (vifTag->commnd.imm & 0x3FF);
			vifStart += 4;
			break;
		case 0x05: // STMOD
			vif0_mode = (vifTag->commnd.imm & 0x3FF);
			vifStart += 4;
			break;
		case 0x06: // MSKPATH3
			vifStart += 4;
			break;
		case 0x07: // MARK
			vifStart += 4;
			break;
		case 0x10: // FLUSHE
			vifStart += 4;
			break;
		case 0x11: // FLUSH
			vifStart += 4;
			break;
		case 0x13: // FLUSHA
			vifStart += 4;
			break;
		case 0x14: // MSCAL
			vifStart += 4;
			break;
		case 0x15: // MSCALF
			vifStart += 4;
			break;
		case 0x17: // MSCNT
			vifStart += 4;
			break;
		case 0x20: // STMASK
			vif0_mask = *((uint32*)(vifStart + 4));
			vifStart += 8;
			break;
		case 0x30: // STROW
			vif0_r[0] = *((uint32*)(vifStart + 0x04));
			vif0_r[1] = *((uint32*)(vifStart + 0x08));
			vif0_r[2] = *((uint32*)(vifStart + 0x0C));
			vif0_r[3] = *((uint32*)(vifStart + 0x10));
			vifStart += 0x14;
			break;
		case 0x31: // STCOL
			vif0_c[0] = *((uint32*)(vifStart + 0x04));
			vif0_c[1] = *((uint32*)(vifStart + 0x08));
			vif0_c[2] = *((uint32*)(vifStart + 0x0C));
			vif0_c[3] = *((uint32*)(vifStart + 0x10));
			vifStart += 0x14;
			break;
		case 0x4A: // MPG
			vifStart += ((((vifTag->commnd.num) ? (vifTag->commnd.num) : (256)) << 1) + 1) << 4;
			break;
		case 0x50: // DIRECT
			vifStart += ((((vifTag->commnd.imm) ? (vifTag->commnd.imm) : (65536)) << 2) + 1) << 4;
			break;
		case 0x51: // DIRECTHL
			vifStart += ((((vifTag->commnd.imm) ? (vifTag->commnd.imm) : (65536)) << 2) + 1) << 4;
			break;
		default: // UNPACK
			// ...
			break;
		}

If you are using the hex editor 010 Editor, the structure i pasted in the link of the previous message is the one i use. And can be compared against the parsing above to get an idea of how some of this relates.

The UNPACK command is the one most are interested in usually, as a lot of formats never set the cycle or masking to anything other than the defaults. But for a complete parser you have to take those into account as well. viewtopic.php?p=52244#p52244 is a partial explanation of the UNPACK functionality.

* i'll see if i can add more details. Questions will help direct my focus...and if there is any clarification of anything stated so far?