Official interview of the Discordia Shell/OS

[ritterrav]

This is a interview of the Discordia Shell developer PSPearless, this is what he has to say about it. By Ritterrav on the pspupdate forum. SN Vaigaseptimos.
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vAiGa SepTiMoS: So, can you tell us, what your making, and why.

JJPeerless12: I am making a new shell for the sony psp, to give the users a new look and feel instead of the old boring menu system sony has given us. It will give the user a feel to something they are more comfortable with, as it resembles windows in a way. It will also allow 1.5 users to only have to deal with 1 eboot file instead of 2 separate folders. I am making this to help the community and to give myself some good programming practice.

vAiGa SepTiMoS: Ok, so besides making it more hombrew friendly, what other features are you adding?

JJPeerless12: It will have usb support, mp3 playback, homebrew launching, umd launching, full customization - wallpaper, the gui bars, icons - everything you see on screen can be edited to your liking. I will also be adding some wifi functionality, as well as IR port for a built in tv remote, as well as a handful of small homebrew apps built in such as file browser, address book, calendar, etc... and probably more that I cant think of at the moment.

vAiGa SepTiMoS:Ok, for the noobs... Will this over write the original OS?

JJPeerless12: no it wont, it will be launched once like a normal homebrew application and then you will not have to launch it again. When you exit out of homebrew games or umd games it will go straight back to my shell, not sony's os.

vAiGa SepTiMoS: One more noob question, What firmware version will this work on?

JJPeerless12: this will work on any firmware version that can boot homebrew. As of August 19th, 2005, the only firmware versions that can boot homebrew are 1.0 and 1.5. Maybe by the time this is released, homebrew will be working on higher versions, but as of now, only 1.0 and 1.5.

vAiGa SepTiMoS: ok, so how long have you been working on this "Shell"?

JJPeerless12: well, if you saw the latest 3 videos i released a while back, that was 3 days into working on it. Since then I have been on vacation in canada. Now that im back in the USA, I have been getting ready for college, having not much time to work on the shell. However, I was able to put a good amount of time into it today and yesterday. It looks like i'll be having more time shortly..soo total time worked on the shell so far, about 5 days.

vAiGa SepTiMoS:Ok, so do you see a release day insight at all?

JJPeerless12: Well.. not an exact date, but i am really shooting to get it out before I leave for college, which is on september 4th. So hopefully before then =)

vAiGa SepTiMoS: ok, will you have any beta releases? Such as to selected amount of people?

JJPeerless12: Well i have been doing 'internal' releases to my group and friends in real life. Possibly a public beta after a few more features are worked out.

vAiGa SepTiMoS: So, what is currently working on your OS at the moment?

JJPeerless12: currently working.. well you can already fully skin the shell, the USB connection is working, you can launch homebrew games and umd games and exit back to my shell, my on screen keyboard, clock/battery, and my newest addition is it searches the icons folder now and automatically adds the icons to the desktop it finds in there and they become shortcuts to the eboot in the folder that has the same name as the name of the icon. That might have sounded weird, but once its released, you will understand..its pretty straight foward.

vAiGa SepTiMoS: Will you be having any releases of teasers for us?

JJPeerless12: i've already released 4 videos of the shell in action since I began working on it. After reading all the response I got from these videos, I am not sure if I will be releasing any more videos to the public. However, if you want to know about new updates on the shell, feel free to IM me or email me.

vAiGa SepTiMoS: Ok, after the first real release of the Shell, will you continue to supply us with updates?

JJPeerless12: yes, I will continue to update it if there is any updating to be done. People will be able to add all the other homebrew apps out on the internet to this shell themselves, so many of the extra needed features can be added by the users... but if there are problems with something or people really want a certain feature added, sure, I would update it.

vAiGa SepTiMoS: Will the Scr code be released for all those other developers to get there hands on?

JJPeerless12: that is undecided, maybe once I get to college and find I dont have as much time to work on it.. ill release for others to make it better.

vAiGa SepTiMoS: Are you the only person working on this project?

JJPeerless12: coding wise, yes. However, I have some artists who do the artwork needed for the project.

vAiGa SepTiMoS: Ok, the compitition, You are aware of that ou have some right?

JJPeerless12: oh yes, and im not too excited about it. I will try my best to keep up with the competition, I just worry I will end up doing all this work for nothing. Hopefully someone out there will use my shell =)

vAiGa SepTiMoS:Do you have any comments about the other shell? The Biros

JJPeerless12: it looks great, i bet he sure is attracting a lot of people with that hot picture of the girl from eurotrip i think it is. Haha.. keep up the good work man.

vAiGa SepTiMoS: Are there any features that you wanna add, that you think that are too complicated or to farfeched?

JJPeerless12: fully working wifi browser =)

vAiGa SepTiMoS: Do you have any secrets that you are keeping about your shell? any suprises you wont tell anybody until its released?

JJPeerless12: hmm nope..everything ive added or planned on added ive told the public so far.

vAiGa SepTiMoS: About how much space will your Shell take up? Is there hope for those 32mb ppl out there?

JJPeerless12: yea there is plenty of hope for them. The eboot is only 216kb right now, that file shouldnt grow too much more. The image files to go with it are about 1mb right now, maybe less.

JJPeerless12: So i would have to say maybe 2-4mb MAX by release time.

vAiGa SepTiMoS:Wonderful.

vAiGa SepTiMoS: Do you think that your OS will bring somthing to the scene that the others wont, or cant?in other words, why do i download yours, and not theres?

JJPeerless12: I do not know of all the features the other shell's will have. I have a feeling though, by the time they are all released, they will all pretty much will have the same features. However, all three will have a different look and feel to them. I would have to say you will have to try them out for yourself and see which one appeals to you.

vAiGa SepTiMoS: Is there any thing you wanna add to this, for the public, anything ive left out to ask?

JJPeerless12: nope, i think you covered almost everything.

vAiGa SepTiMoS: Discordia OS? Correct, do you a shortened name?

JJPeerless12: I call it a shell, not an OS. Also, there is no official name yet...but Discordia Shell is fine for now
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vAiGa SepTiMoS: Do you give me full permsion to publish this interview on the PSPupdates site?

JJPeerless12: yes
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[TheMysteriousThug]

:clap: brilliant :clap:

[Ron]

Peerless, from what your shell has proven, Im sure many will use it. Whats to sto people from having several shells? Only one does get boring over time (like the Sony one), so I doubt people will only have one shell on theirs.

Great interview by the way! Nice to hear what other shell makers have to say.

Trust me, the Eurotrip girl wasn't intentional. Its what I use on there normally

[ritterrav]

Im happy that the people like the interview, its to answer everybodys questions.

[FrozenIpaq]

Interview seems nice. The only comments I have on it is the question of competition. This should not exist, since there is no selling of the shell involved. I myself will use all 3 shells that are planning to come out, just a month for each There really isn't any competition, just some form of friendly competition where everyone gains something (hopefully).

Another thing I noticed is that you stated the other "competition" as the Biros shell, when in fact there is also the original PSix shell/PSP OS still in production

[mtgking5287]

great i hope both shells are awesome and i think i'll use both shells/os's get really boring after awhile but this will be awesome :clap:

[fraseyboy]

I think all the shells sound pretty good but if one puts in a web browser or an internet radio player I will definantly use that one

[Shin Akuma]

Dude! Internet radio sounds awesome!

[fraseyboy]

Yeah. I've been wating for one for ages

[chill392]

They are thinking of throwing in a shoutcast-type thing? That would be AWSOME!!! The webbrowser wouldn't help much unless it had either an external keyboard or a better on-screen one though... :think:

[Lukero]

it would also be great if it could stream anything from a local source such as music videos etc stored on your pc. This is what I use my Xbox for mostly and it would rock to be able to be in another room and watch my videos etc

[ritterrav]

YO PSPearless, what have you done latly? if you could just say every now and then "worked on it today" bla bla, because you have alot of ppl waiting on this awsome project, we just wanna know was up... Thanks