Before I begin, I should note that Oobles gave the OK for me to make this thread, and the project on the PS2Dev.org main site as well. Given the atmosphere, and that some PS2Dev members are quite opposed to cheat/hacking systems, it would be a grave error not to mention that, so I hope Oobles doesn't mind my name-dropping
For some time now (several years, off and on), GSHI.org administrative staff and several select members of the scene have been working, in secret, on something tentatively called Project Artemis: a hacking system for the Playstation 2. The primary goal of this project is to allow users to create, or hack, their own cheat and game enhancement codes, using RAM-dumping, dump comparison, constant memory writes for testing, breakpoints, and as many other tools as feasible.
The project is far from complete. There have been quite a few stumbling blocks, and some impressive progress has been made. Through several primary coders (Sang123, Hit n' Run Games, misfire, Shyam Narain, Xerxes Technologies, cYs Driver), it has been determined that...
A: Hiring a company to design such a system will result in either paying tens of thousands of dollars, or ending up with a company that cannot complete the project, and...
B: Hiring a solitary coder, such as a skilled member of the scene, will eventually result in the coder being overwhelmed.
Hence, lacking the necessary funds to hire a coding group or company adept enough to complete the task at hand within a reasonable amount of time, we have made the best decision possible, with Artemis, GSHI, and the scene in mind: to bring the project out of the darkness, and into the realm of open source.
If anyone is interested in contributing (even an indication of interest in the project helps!), feel free to make a post, if only to say so. We will continue to chronicle our progress, research, and thoughts here:
http://gshi.org/vb/forumdisplay.php?f=56
...though I will be quite happy to respond to any questions or comments you have here as well. There is also a SubVersion repository for Artemis at
http://gshi.org/svn/artemis/, with some of misfire's recent work, and quite a bit more source from various authors will likely be committed in the near future.