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Use BPI images on J2ME devices!

The BPI format (standing for Bit-Packed Image) has been designed for mobile devices with limited storage. BPI mainly targets Java mobiles phones (J2ME) and more precisely the storage of the images required by a midlet. Image caracteristics are therefore limited (at most 512 pixels wide and a color space limited to 262 144 colors at most) and metadata are reduced to the strict minimum.

Each image is composed of a raster (size of the image and raw pixel data) which must be decoded thanks to a color model. A color model defines the color space (grayscale or colored), whether the image has an alpha channel and eventually a color palette.

Many images can be stored in the same data flow. A color model can be shared by multiple rasters and a raster can be decoded with several color models (e.g. with different palettes). Relationship between color models and rasters is not encoded into the data flow, to save space, but need to be programmed.

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MID4th is a Forth System for Java MIDP-2.0 phones.

Release notes:

An ANS Forth System written in Java2ME. It is adapted for Mobile devices from WebForth, available at the FIG archive. The Forth is reasonably standard with referance to the Dpans94 standard document, with a few changes to facilitae use on a mobile device. The main features are as follows.

The Forth suports persistant blocks of size 256 UTF-16 characters. There are 256 blocks in a block set. The current block set can be edited through the Java interface, or saved, or loaded. A Java based block set manager can be used to load or delete block sets.

The use of general URL files is supported. Any URL may be supplid as a filename, and opening the file is done read only. Writes to files are sandboxed, and so no changes are ever made to files.

There are PlatformSpecificWords to control many features of MID4th.

The display supports a background bitmap with 16 bit colour depth (ARGB each 4 bits), and an overlayed full colour font capacity. Alignment is to an 8*8 pixel grid monospacing of TheFont.

The playing of MIDI notes is supported, with note 69 being 440Hz. The notes play asynchronously, so as not to interfere with execution. There are facilities to synchronize code with the device master clock, and multimedia abilities depending on the phone model. Note that some phones suspend or end MIDlets when a media stream is opened, and this may be anoying.

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BTetris is a Tetris clone for J2ME.

Features:

– multiplayer mode via bluetooth

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WiiLife is an implementation of Conway’s Game of Life for Wii. It lets you watch a random population of cells evolve and die. You can zoom in for a better look and scroll around. If you get bored, you can create an new random population.

Changes:

Edit Mode finally here. Press A and draw Cells by Point&Click. Press A again and see what happens :

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Free MC Boot is an ‘exploit’ that allows a user to install it on official 8MB Sony MC’s as well as 3rd party cards. (with the exception of those needing a boot disc to be recognized or cloned Chinese cards).

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Eugene Plotnikov has updated his SMS (Simple Media System) multimedia playing application for the Sony PS2. Using this program you can view multimedia files including DIVX, AVI, XVID, MPEG, MP3, etc … on your Sony Playstation 2 video gaming console.

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Here is another PS3 homebrew game by dragula96. It’s a “2 Player Pong” game.

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Here is a very simple snake game coded by dragular96. “Snake” speeds up and gets longer the more “apples” you eat.

Changes:

-added snake head
-added apple image

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Here is another game made with BD-J. It’s a small port of Drakon’s old SameGame made for J2ME and PSP.

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FreePlay released a Minimal BD-J (Java) Development Kit for Playstation 3.

Release notes:

BD-J for PS3 minimal devkit by FreePlay

NOTE: For this to work properly, you *MUST* copy it to the root of your C: drive – that is, to C:bdj-ps3. DO NOT rename the folder.

Included is everything you’ll need to get started except for:
1. a working installation of JDK, the Java Development Kit (get that from http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/index.jsp – currently, the latest version is JDK 6 Update 7)
2. a copy of bdj.jar, the BD-J API. I can’t provide this, since you need a license to use it; however, if you have a PC program capable of making or playing Blu-Ray discs – like Nero or PowerDVD – you can get this file from there. (In Nero 8, the file is located in C:program FilesCommon FilesNeroNeroBLCBDJjl ib .)

I don’t have any real documentation on BD-J, though I’m sure you can find some on the HDCookBook website. In the ‘docs’ folder is some basic info on BD-J on a very high level.

So far as I can tell, there are some pretty strict limitations on the PS3’s implementation of BD-J:
1. You cannot read or write local files.
2. You cannot list the contents of a directory.

I may be wrong, so feel free to correct me, but I ran a few tests and couldn’t do those things.

I’ve also included a sample Hello World application and silenoz’s RSS reader, as well as a build.bat file for building, packing, and signing the programs. This batch script is pretty much universal, unless you need to add in other JAR files for your compilation.

Source files for each project should go in a folder called rootorghomebrew. For example, if you make a project called “Test App”, in your “Test App” folder you’ll place the universal build.bat , then make a rootorghomebrew folder and place your .java files in there. The ‘root’ folder will become the root of your JAR file; any files you place in that structure will become part of the JAR.

The ‘disc files’ folder contains the file structure for what you’ll copy to your storage device. Once you’ve built your 00000.jar file, copy it to ‘AVCHDBDMVJAR’ and you’ll be ready to test it.

Good luck!

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