Hacking Phantasy Star Portable 2 Infinity - English Translation

HomeShineBrew

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Thanks, I guess if those that can could upload a copy of their saves somewhere and send the link over to Weyu he can pick which one he wants to use. Though he might be able to get you to check the thing he wanted directly.



The short answer it is that it's not something I'm looking right now, and possibly never.

***

It would probably be quite a bit of effort and I'm not sure how well automatic upscaling will work. It was discussed briefly before. Unless there is a higher resolution source to rip the textures from e.g. PSU? haven't checked if they are better or not.

There are quite a lot of textures and if I remember correctly there are also textures that are composed at run time, for both the CLUT and pixel data. You'll probably want to generate new textures to cover all possible combinations.

Edit: To be clear I'm talking about texture replacement in PPSSPP here, which is probably the only viable way to go.
Yeah I tried recently making an HD texture pack for Valkyria Chronicles 3 and it dumped almost a million textures by the time I was done the game. So many of them were repeats. There's a way to avert this but I haven't found much info on it, would need inside info from someone else who's made an HD texture pack for a PSP game. I was using AI Gigapixel and it looked pretty good with the textures I did but there was way too many to process and the pack would've been near 100gb upscaled cause of the repeats with different addresses.

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JamRules

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Yeah I tried recently making an HD texture pack for Valkyria Chronicles 3 and it dumped almost a million textures by the time I was done the game. So many of them were repeats. There's a way to avert this but I haven't found much info on it, would need inside info from someone else who's made an HD texture pack for a PSP game. I was using AI Gigapixel and it looked pretty good with the textures I did but there was way too many to process and the pack would've been near 100gb upscaled cause of the repeats with different addresses.

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Yeah, I expect Phantasy Star to be a unwieldy too.
Thanks for the info :)

FYI, [Unknown] explains the hashing here
https://forums.ppsspp.org/showthread.php?tid=18963
 

Weyu

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If it's of any help, I too can possibly help. I have Shizuru unlocked as a partner character and have his partner card. Though, I own the EU copy of PSP2, I'm pretty sure you can just rename the save file to the US PSP2 game save and it should work. Then again, it's been awhile since I have tampered with my PSP saves, so I could be wrong. In any case, I am happy to help assist you in any way I can.

We got what we needed, but thanks for offering.
 

HomeShineBrew

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Yeah, I expect Phantasy Star to be a unwieldy too.
Thanks for the info :)

FYI, [Unknown] explains the hashing here
https://forums.ppsspp.org/showthread.php?tid=18963
I just found a method to get rid of most of the duplicates when dumping the textures.

In textures.ini under [options] add hash = xxh64 and ignoreAddress = true

The textures will only work on 64 bit systems and executables of PPSSPP. The textures also will only work on the newer versions of PPSSPP. I'm about half way through VC3 again and this time I think it will be under 150k textures at the end. It's 10% as much as it used to be so it's way more viable. If you're looking into upscaling try ESRGAN if you have a Linux installation (it runs way slower on Windows) and a NVIDIA card. You can also buy AI Gigapixel and it works on almost anything, it's what I'm using. I think ESRGAN with the manga model would look way better than Gigapixel it just takes more work.

Update: Ended up with 270k textures about 25% of what I was before the tweak. Still some repeats but they are small enough dimension wise that they can just be deleted. If anyone is looking into upscaling PSP textures this is what you'll end up dealing with. Majority is repeats still as it appears it dumps every time a color changes on things like lights. I'll update with the file count after I delete all of the useless stuff.

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JamRules

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I just found a method to get rid of most of the duplicates when dumping the textures.

In textures.ini under [options] add hash = xxh64 and ignoreAddress = true

The textures will only work on 64 bit systems and executables of PPSSPP. The textures also will only work on the newer versions of PPSSPP. I'm about half way through VC3 again and this time I think it will be under 150k textures at the end. It's 10% as much as it used to be so it's way more viable. If you're looking into upscaling try ESRGAN if you have a Linux installation (it runs way slower on Windows) and a NVIDIA card. You can also buy AI Gigapixel and it works on almost anything, it's what I'm using. I think ESRGAN with the manga model would look way better than Gigapixel it just takes more work.

Update: Ended up with 270k textures about 25% of what I was before the tweak. Still some repeats but they are small enough dimension wise that they can just be deleted. If anyone is looking into upscaling PSP textures this is what you'll end up dealing with. Majority is repeats still as it appears it dumps every time a color changes on things like lights. I'll update with the file count after I delete all of the useless stuff.

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Nice, thanks for the extra info.
The ignore address flag is useful, so you have to manually edit the hashes then.
For the colour changes, I wonder if there is something similar for ignoring the CLUT or if that would even work, depends on how colours are applied I guess.
 

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Nice, thanks for the extra info.
The ignore address flag is useful, so you have to manually edit the hashes then.
For the colour changes, I wonder if there is something similar for ignoring the CLUT or if that would even work, depends on how colours are applied I guess.
Yeah that would be nice. Luckily most of the color changes textures a so small (32x32 and lower) that I'm just going to delete them. Currently over 100k I can delete. I'll deal with it in the morning.

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Yeah that would be nice. Luckily most of the color changes textures a so small (32x32 and lower) that I'm just going to delete them. Currently over 100k I can delete. I'll deal with it in the morning.

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Just as well probably, I guess it would be too much of an ask for it to apply the original CLUT to the replacement considering the colours and format could be different.
 

HomeShineBrew

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Just as well probably, I guess it would be too much of an ask for it to apply the original CLUT to the replacement considering the colours and format could be different.
After deleting the small repeat images from VC3 I'm left with 20k images to upscale. When it's done I'll post screenshots of before and after. It'll let you know how much of a difference it can make to the image of the game. Things like small icons were ignored but I think it'll look fine.

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JamRules

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After deleting the small repeat images from VC3 I'm left with 20k images to upscale. When it's done I'll post screenshots of before and after. It'll let you know how much of a difference it can make to the image of the game. Things like small icons were ignored but I think it'll look fine.

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Thanks, might be interesting to see.
Unlikely that I’ll do anything for PSP2i anytime soon. I think upscaled HUD and menu elements might be cool, actual textures is harder since their isn’t the original detail. I think PPSSPP has some different upscale options as it is, could be wrong though.
 

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Alright here's the post of the comparison images. As you can see some textures like the sky would need manual upgrading as they're too noisy. It works great on the ground and other textures. UI would also need manual upgrading. If you know how to access the textures from PSP2I through the ISO manually instead of dumping through PPSSPP it would save a lot of time. This took days and still missed some textures and I'm sure if you could get into them through the ISO it would have much less repeat textures than dumping them. Ended up with 20k textures and lots of repeats still. Just to give you an idea of what can be done.

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JamRules

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Thanks for the examples, a little confusing since they don't seem to be in a consistent order e.g. some images have the new one on top, and others on the bottom. I guess that the ones where the UI in the bottom right is messed up are the new ones.

Given the number of possible weapons, costumes, etc. you would probably want to dump the files as you say.
However you would have to program a way to output the files in a format to edit, as previously mentioned the textures are composed at runtime so you would need to mimic this for all possibilities.
You'll also have to be able to compose it as if the game was doing it and generate a hash to match PPSSPP's.
And then you'll still have to modify the 1000s of textures...
Not sure if the difference is going to be worth the effort, especially if higher detail textures aren't available.

Admittedly it would be very nice to have high quality textures, since PPSSPP scales the rendering itself nicely, just seems like it would take ages to get it right.
 
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HomeShineBrew

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Thanks for the examples, a little confusing since they don't seem to be in a consistent order e.g. some images have the new one on top, and others on the bottom. I guess that the ones where the UI in the bottom right is messed up are the new ones.

Given the number of possible weapons, costumes, etc. you would probably want to dump the files as you say.
However you would have to program a way to output the files in a format to edit, as previously mentioned the textures are composed at runtime so you would need to mimic this for all possibilities.
You'll also have to be able to compose it as if the game was doing it and generate a hash to match PPSSPP's.
And then you'll still have to modify the 1000s of textures...
Not sure if the difference is going to be worth the effort, especially if higher detail textures aren't available.

Admittedly it would be very nice to have high quality textures, since PPSSPP scales the rendering itself nicely, just seems like it would take ages to get it right.
Yeah. I tried to re upload them in order but it might not have worked. It'd be nice if the PSP textures dumped like dolphin but the PSP used a lot of tricks to get their textures to work so it isn't that easy. It'd be nice to have a way to just rip then from the ISO but each game uses different formats, encryptions, etc that it's nearly impossible. You'd have to visit every possible UI combination and every possible location in game that uses the UI to get all of them. As I said I played the whole game and I still didn't get everything, in some levels textures will be missing.


Really this just proves it would be a pain in the butt unless you have a tool for PSP2I's ISO to get textures.

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Now, I'm just spitballing ideas here and could be way off the mark and possibly in dreamland but what do you think about this?

https://www.reddit.com/r/PSP/wiki/pro_online

If and when the patch arrives could it be possible to play PSP2i (and other titles) online with others using this method or would there be variables in place that would prevent it from being so?
 

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Now, I'm just spitballing ideas here and could be way off the mark and possibly in dreamland but what do you think about this?

https://www.reddit.com/r/PSP/wiki/pro_online

If and when the patch arrives could it be possible to play PSP2i (and other titles) online with others using this method or would there be variables in place that would prevent it from being so?

Haven’t tried it personally but PPSSPP has features for multiplayer built in that use this I believe. There are other methods too I think. There is a discord for PSP2 and PSP2i somewhere which has a guide for how to start playing online and finding others to play with.
 
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THOMI

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Haven’t tried it personally but PPSSPP has features for multiplayer built in that use this I believe. There are other methods too I think. There is a discord for PSP2 and PSP2i somewhere which has a guide for how to start playing online and finding others to play with.

Ah I see. I play on actual hardware so I'm unfamiliar with PPSSPP and its functions. I'll have to test this out. You were right though I did come across this via the PSP2 discord:

https://sites.google.com/site/psp2iguide/playing-online

Kinda surprised me that there are still people actively playing this game. I discovered PSO very late and didn't think anyone still touched the psp game. Very exciting!
 
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xBladeM6x

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Just curious, but is it possible to mod the game to allow

- Trading of A and S ranks at the trading post.
- Scaling the the UI smaller
 
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Just curious, but is it possible to mod the game to allow

- Trading of A and S ranks at the trading post.
- Scaling the the UI smaller

To be honest I've never used the trade feature before this but I put the following cwcheat together that will hopefully work to extend the range items that can be traded.
Both people will need the cheat active.

_C1 Extended Trading
_L 0x2002023C 0x34020000
_L 0x200724F4 0x34020001

No guarantees, and of course I would both take a backup of your savedata first.

It doesn't cover everything I think, for example weapons that have extend codes applied.
I haven't comprehensively tested if it breaks anything or not so you maybe check it out and see.
I only did a quick test, as below:

Screen 1) S rank item in P1 inventory


Screen 2) S rank item selected for trade by P1


Screen 3) S rank item can be seen by P2


Screen 4) S rank item as part of a trade as seen by P2


Screen 5) S rank item in P2 inventory - level, stats, element etc. seem to be ok

(I had one already with different stats, also tried trading Steel Hearts IV too)

As for the UI, I think everything has hardcoded positions and sizes so it would take ages.
Unlikely to happen.
Out of interest what specifically is too large? Presumably your playing at high resolution?
 
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