PSn00bSDK

PSn00bSDK is a 100% free and open source SDK for developing homebrew games and applications for the original Sony PlayStation. The SDK consists mainly of libraries and some tools for converting and building resources to be used on the console.

While PSn00bSDK is currently a work in progress the project aims to develop an SDK that is as close to the official Sony SDK as possiblein in terms of supported hardware features which include GPU, GTE, SPU, CD, MDEC and controller/memory card peripherals and a library API written to follow the official SDK's API syntax. With extensive low-level technical documentation of the PSX readily available (such as nocash's PSX specs) there should be no excuse to not have full support of the aforementioned hardware features.

The PSn00bSDK libraries are written mostly in MIPS assembly language with compiler generated code limited to small and moderately sized support functions for best possible performance and to keep the runtime library footprint as small as possible. Many of the library functions avoid using BIOS calls such as C string and memory manipulation functions and use pure assembly equivalents for improved performance for memory and string manipulation operations.

Building the SDK

For most users (particularly those who run Windows) it is recommended to just download a release package containing the GCC toolchain and libraries in binary form ready to be used.

If you wish to build the SDK yourself building PSn00bSDK requires a GNU GCC toolchain targeting mipsel-unknown-elf. For instructions on how to build the GCC toolchain please read toolchain.txt.

To build the PSn00bSDK libraries simply enter the libpsn00b directory and run make. Make sure you have the path of the toolchain binaries in your PATH environment variable. If things go accordingly it should run through all library directories and produce library files.

To build the PSn00bSDK tools simply enter the tools directory and run make. You'll need tinyxml2 to satisfy the lzpack and smxlink tools.

To build the PSn00bSDK examples which also tests if your SDK setup works correctly simply enter the examples directory and run make. You may want to modify the sdk-common.mk file first and make sure the library paths are correct and that your PATH environment variable has the tools/bin directory in it as elf2x and lzpack are required for the examples to build correctly.

Examples

There are a few graphics examples and complete source code of n00bdemo included in the examples directory. More example programs may be added in future updates and contributions are welcome.

To-do

Support functions to get C++ classes working are yet to be implemented. glibc won't compile and likely depends on a Linux kernel that does not exist on the PS1. Newlib might be undesirable as it appears to be too bloated for PS1.
psxspu needs to be expanded upon. Currently lacks support for reverb and many voice controls.
Controller library that polls the pads on every vblank and support for multitaps are yet to be made.
An 'IRQ handler for all' implementation through BIOS function SetCustomExitFromException() is yet to be implemented for better/more reliable interrupt handling. Details can be found in the readme of psxgpu.
CD-ROM library is yet to be made.

Usage terms

PSn00bSDK falls under the terms and conditions of the Mozilla Public License. A quick summary of this license is that PSn00bSDK can be used freely in both free and open source projects and commercial closed source projects. But if modifications to the SDK were made as part of the development of such projects such changes must be contributed back in return.

Credits

Main developer:

Lameguy64

Important references used: