Topic: PSP Homebrew (Read 1337 times)

Thad · « **on:** September 02, 2011, 09:36:55 PM »

Well, now that I finally got a thing, what kind of things should I run on it?

NES/SNES/GBA/PS1 emulation are things I am interested in offhand. Genesis/SMS wouldn't be bad either.

Also, though I am buying my games on UMD, it would be nice to play them from a memory card (given the general crumminess of the UMD format). Anything special I need to know about running ISO's from a card?

Bongo Bill · « **Reply #1 on:** September 02, 2011, 10:52:53 PM »

PS1 emulation on a PSP works differently than other platforms. With those you run an emulator program, whereas PS1 games make use of the system's built-in emulator. You will be converting PS1 ISOs into PSP EBOOTs through a fairly straightforward process; this becomes more difficult if you want to apply compression to the results to save space (this can be done but I think it can introduce bugs). I believe compatibility has improved to near-universality since I tried it, but any multi-disc game that required hotswapping will be problematic, since you can't switch discs without rebooting the game. It has to offer you a chance to save at the moment of disc change (a la Final Fantasy), or at least offer you a save point that can be loaded from either disc (a la Metal Gear Solid). If you want to emulate a game that's on PSN, it would be far easier to just pirate the PSN version.

Beat Bandit · « **Reply #2 on:** September 03, 2011, 03:19:30 AM »

also about 100% of all multi-disk games you would actually want to play have been condensed into single eboot.

sei · « **Reply #3 on:** September 03, 2011, 08:19:31 AM »

I think the emulator (versions) you're going to use will be dependent on your PSP type, firmware version, and homebrew enabler option (HEN vs Virtuous Flame, etc.).

The PSP CFW for Dummies Guide will more or less walk you through which homebrew enabler you want, but I'm not sure how up to date it is and know some of the download links are broken. The wololo.net homebrew forum is a good place to find working links, newer versions of PSP homebrew software, and discussions of how well which version of which homebrew works on different homebrew enablers. E.g. 'UO gPSP Kai,' a badly named GBA emulator, has newer versions incompatible with TN-HEN, but some not-too-old ones work fine.

Outside of gaming, I really strongly recommend bookr-mod—or bookr, but I've had better luck with the prior—for reading PDFs. It handles image-heavy PDFs pretty badly, but I've gotten a good amount of mileage out of it with novels. bookr-mod lets you adjust how quickly the analog pans the viewing pane and has some sort of faster-but-less-stable rendering mode that has made unusably slow books readable, without too many crashes.

GBC: I tried using MasterBoy. It seems to run Metroid Fusion/Zero well. Shantae emulated badly on it; tiles were scrambled half the time when exiting the pause menu.
GBA: UO gPSP Kai played Mother 3 pretty smoothly; haven't tried much else.
SNES: snes9xtyl. Slightly buggy, requires a little fiddling to break in, and text was kind of ugly in Seiken Densetsu 3.
Genesis: nfi, sorry.
N64: No personal experience, but Daedalus seems to be the go-to option.
PSP: Games are loadable via Prometheus, Aloader, and others. Aloader occasionally will have a rainbow-y border on the edgemost pixels for some games, while Prometheus won't, but Aloader is generally a lot more convenient. I'm sure there're newer loaders out there than what I'm using, too. If you're looking for Japanese RPG-y or anime-y game ISOs, check ffinsider.net/psp-iso. If you're looking for a wider selection of western titles, try devils-shadow.com. (Links are broken due to being uncertain about piracy-linking policy for this board.)

You can try poking around for stuff on wololo.net's download section, but it's still very beta, so usability isn't really worked out yet, and there's no advanced search. It's sorted by date, though, so it may be a good way to quickly see what's new, with less noise than skimming a PSP homebrew forum.

Thad · « **Reply #4 on:** September 03, 2011, 04:33:59 PM »

It's a 3000; haven't unboxed it yet so I'm not sure what firmware version it's running. Pros/cons of sticking with whatever's already on there versus upgrading to the latest?

A² · « **Reply #5 on:** September 03, 2011, 04:50:02 PM »

It generally takes a bit for the latest OFW to be hacked, so stay with whatever's on there. There's nowhere on the box to give a hint as to when it was made to determine it's current OFW?

sei · « **Reply #6 on:** September 03, 2011, 06:00:30 PM »

The safest bet is to not upgrade your OFW at all, unless you really want to run something very specific that requires it. There are downgraders available, but they tend not to be compatible with latest OFW.

I'm happily sitting on 6.20 with my PSP3000.

The only downside to not running the latest OFW is that some games (e.g. Phantasy Star Portal 2) may not let you netplay unless you're running your CFW and it successfully spoofs version info.

patito · « **Reply #7 on:** September 03, 2011, 06:10:23 PM »

I'm just here to drop a link to http://code.google.com/p/procfw/downloads/list which is a nice alternative to a permanent custom firmware, mostly because you pretty much keep your original firmware and just sort of boot into procfw when you need to. But I will admit I haven't run very many emulators on it but it's nice for running games from the memory stick and like cave story. It works on newer firmware and pretty much on any model psp.

sei · « **Reply #8 on:** September 03, 2011, 07:01:33 PM »

TN HEN works the same way. It lives in the XMB, with your games, and gets loaded into RAM when you choose. It sticks around until the PSP is powered off or crashes. Sleep mode does not unload it.

Lottel · « **Reply #9 on:** September 04, 2011, 06:51:38 AM »

I've used TN HEN. It worked well. In fact, the route I used to hack it required TN HEN for a bit.

Thad · « **Reply #10 on:** September 08, 2011, 07:10:50 PM »

Tangentially:

Memory card came today. Does not work in PSP; the light just blinks and it says there is no card there when I attempt to format.

Discovered that the 5-in-1 card reader in GF's laptop does not support Memory Stick Turbo Duo Whatever the Fuck Stupid 1990's Console Name These Things Haves.

Bought cheap card reader at Fry's.

Which, in hindsight, was a bad plan, because now I don't know if the fact that my computer can't read the card either is because the card is bad, or the cheap card reader is.

Destroyed the packaging the card came in, because Space Devil. Am hoping the third-party seller I bought from accepts returns with destroyed packaging. Which they should, because they sell products that are impossible to use without destroying the packaging.

Thad · « **Reply #11 on:** October 14, 2011, 07:51:40 PM »

Quote from: sei on September 03, 2011, 08:19:31 AM

I think the emulator (versions) you're going to use will be dependent on your PSP type, firmware version, and homebrew enabler option (HEN vs Virtuous Flame, etc.).

The PSP CFW for Dummies Guide will more or less walk you through which homebrew enabler you want, but I'm not sure how up to date it is and know some of the download links are broken.

I wound up with Virtuous Flame 3.35. Works pretty well on the whole, but I'm finding that most of the eboots I've grabbed don't play music. (I don't believe they're images with the music removed, because they're hundreds of megs in size.) Could this be a problem particular to the firmware I'm using? Or have I somehow gotten a run of bad eboots?

Haven't tried rolling my own eboots as yet; should I give that a shot? Where's a good tutorial? I've seen plenty of pages but most of them are dated 2007 or earlier and I'd like to know I'm using current programs/methods that won't, well, leave me with a damn eboot with no music.

(I found a tutorial that was completely fucking unreadable. A smiley at the end of EVERY SENTENCE? Seriously? What kind of complete asshole DOES that?)

EDIT: I've noticed that of the 3 games that have no music, 2 are PAL and the other is small enough that the music might have just been removed. The game whose music works is NTSC. Does anyone know of anything peculiar to PAL images that would cock up the music?

Beat Bandit · « **Reply #12 on:** February 14, 2013, 06:53:09 PM »

Oh hey I knew this thread existed.

Anyone know anything other than SNES9x for snes? I've been trying to run the Euphoria 5 release but literally no ROM runs properly. Other than going through each version for the best for my firmware or jumping through FWs for the best compatibility it'd be nice to find some options.

Thad · « **Reply #13 on:** February 14, 2013, 09:42:59 PM »

I've got two versions of SNES9X on mine, Euphoria and TYL. I alternate between them; usually SNES9XTYL has the better compatibility but sometimes Euphoria does.

I don't know of any SNES emulators offhand that aren't ports of SNES9X. zSNES isn't portable because of its x86 assembler base, and bSNES is right out because it's cycle-exact and requires a pretty burly machine to run. There may be other SNES emulator codebases out there but I haven't run across any off the top of my head.

sei · « **Reply #14 on:** February 15, 2013, 06:37:17 PM »

My experience matches Thad's: TYL was generally reliable.

RoboticDinosaur · « **Reply #15 on:** February 15, 2013, 08:17:28 PM »

DS Portal is a thing.

Smiler · « **Reply #16 on:** February 15, 2013, 09:54:52 PM »

I'm really glad you can read thread titles.

RoboticDinosaur · « **Reply #17 on:** February 15, 2013, 09:59:01 PM »

Quote from: Smiler on February 15, 2013, 09:54:52 PM

I'm really glad you can read thread titles.

Quote from: jsnlxndrlv on November 11, 2011, 09:22:37 PM

Quote from: FlutterShy on November 11, 2011, 08:27:35 PM
Steam was hacked.
Quote from: Brentai on November 11, 2011, 08:32:37 PM
Do tell.

"PSN got leaks"

If I squint my eyes really hard, it almost makes sense why that'd be where this discussion wound up appearing, and yet....

Just assumed you guys would want me to put homebrew news in here.

Beat Bandit · « **Reply #18 on:** February 16, 2013, 06:11:30 AM »

TYL does seem to be the best version to use as a standard. I guess I'll keep Euphoria around if anything ever doesn't work on it, but considering literally nothing has worked on euphoria and nothing has failed on TYL that doesn't seem like the most likely situation.

Thad · « **Reply #19 on:** February 16, 2013, 12:56:48 PM »

Off the top of my head, I think the title screen of Soul Blazer is blank on TYL. That's the only one I can think of offhand.

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Author Topic: PSP Homebrew (Read 1337 times)