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Quick Start: Your First PS1 Scene

This walkthrough creates a minimal scene with a floor, an object, and a player. By the end you'll have something running in the emulator.

1. Create a New Project

Create a new Unity project using the Universal 3D template. This gives you a Universal Render Pipeline project, which SplashEdit requires.

2. Install SplashEdit

Follow the Installation guide to install the SplashEdit package and toolchain.

3. Create a Scene

Create a new Unity scene (File -> New Scene).

4. Add a Scene Exporter

Go to GameObject -> PlayStation 1 -> Scene Exporter. This adds a GameObject with the PSXSceneExporter component. There can only be one per scene - it's the master controller for the export pipeline.

5. Add a Floor

Don't use Unity's built-in Plane

Unity's default Plane is two huge triangles. On the PS1, large polygons cause severe texture warping and will likely get culled entirely. Instead, create your floor geometry in a 3D modeling tool (Blender, etc.) and subdivide it into small quads/triangles. Built-in Unity primitives like Cube can work for simple testing, but avoid Plane, Sphere, Cylinder, and other complex built-in meshes.

  1. Import a subdivided floor mesh from your 3D tool
  2. Assign a material with a texture
  3. Add the PSXObjectExporter component to it

Texture Requirements

All textures must be power-of-two in both width and height, and the maximum size is 256x256. Valid sizes: 16x16, 32x32, 64x64, 128x128, 256x256 (and non-square like 64x128). SplashEdit does NOT check this for you - incorrect textures will produce broken results.

6. Add a Player

  1. Create an empty GameObject
  2. Add the PSXPlayer component
  3. Position it above the floor

The player is invisible at runtime - it represents the camera and controller.

7. Add the Scene to the Build

  1. Open the Control Panel (Ctrl+Shift+L)
  2. Go to the Scenes tab
  3. Click "+ Add Current Scene"

8. Build and Run

  1. Go to the Build tab
  2. Set Target to Emulator
  3. Click BUILD & RUN

SplashEdit exports the scene, compiles the PS1 executable, and launches PCSX-Redux. You should see your textured floor with camera controls.

What Just Happened?

Behind the scenes, SplashEdit:

  1. Quantized your texture to PS1-compatible color depth
  2. Packed it into VRAM alongside the framebuffers and system font
  3. Converted your mesh to fixed-point PS1 vertex format with pre-baked lighting
  4. Wrote everything into a .splashpack binary
  5. Compiled the psxsplash C++ runtime with your configuration
  6. Launched PCSX-Redux serving your data via PCdrv

Next Steps