Hacking [SUGGESTION] Right Analog stick support for Splinter Cell: Essentials

FR0ZN

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Hi everyone,

a few days ago I grabbed my Vita again to try the latest version of Adrenaline (which works like a charm btw!) and play some of my favourite PSP games.

I looked around to see what possibilities are now available, since the pspemu is patched natively now and I saw that there are patches (plugins) for games to support the right analog stick of the Vita natively !

One game I always tried to play on PSP was Splinter Cell: Essentials, but the lack of a second analog stick on the PSP simply made this game impossible to be fun, because the control schemes are just horrible :(

The problem with this game is, that you can choose between two control types. The first one says to hold O to activate the camera mode, so you can no longer walk with the left analog stick but move around the camera instead.

The second scheme allows you to toggle the camera mode by pressing down on the d-pad, so you can move the camera around with the four face buttons WHILE still being able to walk. The problem here however is that whenever you want to interact with something (by pressing X) or you want to duck/stand up (by pressing O) etc. you have to deactivate the camera mode and do these things, which is just a mess to play the game like this.

So I looked around and found out that Freakler made a plugin, which made my dream come "semitrue", you can find it here (Splinter Cell is also shown in the video below):

https://forum.hackinformer.com/viewtopic.php?t=967

The problem with his implementation however is, that he does a shortcut WHILE moving the right analog stick around, so the plugin basically presses O + Left analog stick for you when you move the right analog stick.
This results in the same problem mentioned above, so you can't move your character, because the left analog stick is locked to the camera movement while you are using the right stick.

So I looked around if someone else tried anything like that with the right analog stick and I saw that TheFloW managed to map the camera movements of both GTA games to the right analog stick while still maintaining the functionality of the left stick (walking), you can see it here:

GTA: https://twitter.com/theflow0/status/780481867149615104

Assassins Creed: https://twitter.com/theflow0/status/781910569171447808

Sourcecode for the GTA plugin: https://github.com/TheOfficialFloW/GTA_Remastered

So TL;DR my question is, if anybody here does understand what exactly he did to implement this into the game?
I tried to read the code but my coding skills (if you can call them skills) are simply to low to try and port this over to Splinter Cell.

He also did a write up on the wololo forums about how he did it, but once again, my lack of coding skills won't help me accomplish this task :/ ... you can find the write up here:

http://wololo.net/talk/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=47219

So my hope is to find someone here who has the skill and maybe a little time on his hands to at least give it a look and see if it would be possible to pull this off in a reasonable amount of time.
I will of course try to provide as much help as I can and see if I can get more people into this boat, so everybody can finally enjoy this game to its fullest and not have the bad controls stand in the way.

Thank you!

Regards,
iCEQB
 
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reprep

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flow patches the game-code, you have to have good RE skills and fully dissect the controller functions called from the game. Freakler's patch is an advanced remapper, doesn't patch the game-code.

Good luck finding someone to patch the game-code for you, i am also interested in many games to be patched flow's style.
 

FR0ZN

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flow patches the game-code, you have to have good RE skills and fully dissect the controller functions called from the game. Freakler's patch is an advanced remapper, doesn't patch the game-code.

Good luck finding someone to patch the game-code for you, i am also interested in many games to be patched flow's style.

Thanks for the reply, what other games are problematic w/o a second analog stick?
 

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FR0ZN

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any compiled .prx??

is he just pumping them out now?? if so that's great alot of games in right analog support

No compiled prx yet ... I think the exports are also missing, I asked him tho.

And I don't believe he's doing one after another now, I helped him to log the USB traffic for the Resistance patch today and asked nicely to consider Splinter Cell as the next candidate ... but no answer as of now :(
 

RitchieRitchie

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This is great! Can't wait for the assassin's creed .prx. A quick question re the Resistance plugin, in what ways is this better than Freakler's patch?
 

FR0ZN

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This is great! Can't wait for the assassin's creed .prx. A quick question re the Resistance plugin, in what ways is this better than Freakler's patch?

He didn't include a Makefile or the exports to compile it as a PRX so I made some educated guesses how they should look and attached the source here.
I hope someone with an installed PSP SDK can compile it for us.

About Resistance, the game has a feature to connect via USB to a PS3 running Resistance 2.
From there you can choose to control the game via a Dualshock 3 and unlock game features via a mode called "Infected Mode" ... check this trailer:



TheFlow asked me to capture the USB traffic on the PSP with a plugin he designed, so he knows how the DS3 input gets passed onto the PSP.
And that is basically what his patch does ... it maps the DS3 controls natively to the Vita buttons/sticks without the need of a PS3 or a DS3.
And in the readme he also described how to activate the Infected Mode, again w/o a PS3.
 

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reprep

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just a few corrections. Freakler's right analog patch is a port of DS3remapper for psp go to Vita including presets for games remappings. Think of it as a button remapper. Flow's plugins (GTA, Assasins creed and Resistance) are hacks made to game code for supporting dual analog (or patching psp plus for resistance).

Flow's patches are much better as it has real analog for both joysticks but unfortunately it is per game and i dont know anyone besides flow who can RE so deep into games control systems.

If flow continues to make these game spesific patches i can backport them to psp go like i did with the gta patches, i can also backport freaklers right analog camera patches back to psp go if there is interest. But i can't do game spesific patches like flow does. Also no need to try gta plugins for different games, they wont work, they are game spesific.
 

jellybeangreen2

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just a few corrections. Freakler's right analog patch is a port of DS3remapper for psp go to Vita including presets for games remappings. Think of it as a button remapper. Flow's plugins (GTA, Assasins creed and Resistance) are hacks made to game code for supporting dual analog (or patching psp plus for resistance).

Flow's patches are much better as it has real analog for both joysticks but unfortunately it is per game and i dont know anyone besides flow who can RE so deep into games control systems.

If flow continues to make these game spesific patches i can backport them to psp go like i did with the gta patches, i can also backport freaklers right analog camera patches back to psp go if there is interest. But i can't do game spesific patches like flow does. Also no need to try gta plugins for different games, they wont work, they are game spesific.

Nice, great expiation. Yeah I knew they were game specific. I just meant try the GTA plugin on the go. Not try the GTA plugin on another game
 

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