author: caol64 title: '"ps2mc-browser" New Feature Release' slug: ps2mc-browser-new-feature-release description: Check out the new features and updates in the PS2MC-Browser, a PS2 save file viewer that can now interactively display dynamic 3D Icons, provide enhanced visibility with a skybox layer, and much more. date: 2023-11-20 14:52:18 draft: false ShowToc: true TocOpen: true tags:
ps2mc-browser is a PS2 memory card file viewer that utilizes an OpenGL canvas to display 3D dynamic icons from the memory card. It relies on the following dependencies:
You can find the GitHub repository here.
Some PS2 game memory card files contain three sets of different animated icons, corresponding to three different operations: "browse," "copy," and "delete."
The newly released feature allows the ps2mc-browser interface not only to display animated icons but also to interact with users and respond to mouse operations. Consequently, the animation of icons can vary based on user selection.
The background pattern of each animated memory card icon is stored in the icon.sys file (refer to Parsing PS2 Game Memory Card 3D Icons for details). In reality, it has transparency, which is more apparent on a physical PS2 console.
Therefore, when rendering the background in OpenGL, an additional layer of skybox is added behind the bg background layer. The z coordinates of these two layers are distributed as 0.99 and 0.999, and the RGBA of the skybox is (0.6, 0.6, 0.6, 1) opaque. This setup ensures that if the bg has transparency, the color of the skybox will be displayed.
Taking Viewtiful Joe as an example, its bg has 100% transparency. Without the skybox, the effect would be as follows:
With the skybox added, the effect is as follows:
The problem with lighting has not been resolved, resulting in incorrect lighting for many games and poor display effects. For more details, refer to Parsing PS2 Game Memory Card 3D Icons.