PS1/2 Newest version of OPL and it's changes?

[Bimmel]

Hey there,

so I started OPL (I have both 0.8 and 0.9 installed) on my fat PS2 after a long time again and tried to play Haunting Ground. I noticed that I couldn't save my settings in OPL 0.9 at all, but booted the game anyway. After that the game told me that I haven't enough memory card space left on my card (I only have 1 - with FreeMcBoot on it). So I tried to figure out how to save the game data on my HDD.

What came out is that OPL 0.9 does exactly that, but needs a partition on my HDD to make that happen. As I browsed through the forum of psx-scene, I noticed the program is still being worked on. But why is the version still 0.9.3? And how big should I make this partition? Can I expand it later?

 

[Ryccardo]

There are two main backup loaders with "OPL" in the name, both sharing most of the code, user interface, and PS2 core functionality, but not the philosophy:

the official one (by Ifcaro on github, although he's not working on it anymore many others are contributing to the repo), sponsored by psx-scene,
and the "Daily Builds" one (by Jay-Jay, adding most notably PS1 backup loading in the form of a controversial frontend to Popstarter), sponsored by ps2-home

While the name of their fork is misleading, ps2-home does indeed currently provide instant builds of both their own variant and psx-scene's - and to further add to the confusion, you can now get instant builds of the official one at https://akuhak.github.io/test_build/



As for virtual memory cards, if stored on HDD they'll be in a subfolder of the "+OPL" partition (also used for per-game configuration, cover art, etc) - modern versions of OPL will autocreate one if needed (of course you can also do it yourself using wLaunchElf's HddManager, and yes also expand it later due to the curious design of the PFS filesystem)

(while you're there you may want to reinstall FMCB (and wLaunchELF, which is bundled with it) using an USB drive and https://sites.google.com/view/ysai187/home/projects/fmcbfhdb?authuser=0 - it was updated fairly recently)

You will of course need a version/variant of OPL supporting VMC, and a game that supports them (compatibility is far from perfect, and I personally don't support its use)

 

[Bimmel]

There are two main backup loaders with "OPL" in the name, both sharing most of the code, user interface, and PS2 core functionality, but not the philosophy:

the official one (by Ifcaro on github, although he's not working on it anymore many others are contributing to the repo), sponsored by psx-scene,
and the "Daily Builds" one (by Jay-Jay, adding most notably PS1 backup loading in the form of a controversial frontend to Popstarter), sponsored by ps2-home

While the name of their fork is misleading, ps2-home does indeed currently provide instant builds of both their own variant and psx-scene's - and to further add to the confusion, you can now get instant builds of the official one at https://akuhak.github.io/test_build/



As for virtual memory cards, if stored on HDD they'll be in a subfolder of the "+OPL" partition (also used for per-game configuration, cover art, etc) - modern versions of OPL will autocreate one if needed (of course you can also do it yourself using wLaunchElf's HddManager, and yes also expand it later due to the curious design of the PFS filesystem)

(while you're there you may want to reinstall FMCB (and wLaunchELF, which is bundled with it) using an USB drive and https://sites.google.com/view/ysai187/home/projects/fmcbfhdb?authuser=0 - it was updated fairly recently)

You will of course need a version/variant of OPL supporting VMC, and a game that supports them (compatibility is far from perfect, and I personally don't support its use)

Thanks for your reply.

In which way does the philosophy differ? And how does the PS1 backup loading work? Through HDD as well? This sounds really confusing.. which one should I use?

For my VMC problem: So I can just use a newer version of OPL and it will automatically create the partition and folders for me? Sounds good.
So you are saying not every game works with VMCs? How do you handle your space in general? I haven't really played much and my 8 MB are, of course with FreeMcBoot, full. Should I just buy a new one?

 

[Ryccardo]

In which way does the philosophy differ?

Support for PS1 games in "OPL Daily Builds", again as a (very basic) frontend for Popstarter, was very controversial - the developer of Popstarter opposed the idea of making a way of using his then-still-in-progress software that would have made it look polished and usable, and many block-and-workaround wars happened; on top of that (actually, mainly as a consequence), Jay-Jay (the head of ps2-home as well as OPL DB) doesn't have a very good reputation with the other famous people of the current PS2 scene (mainly working on Ifcaro's OPL)

And how does the PS1 backup loading work? Through HDD as well?

HDD, USB, or SMB1 - just like PS2 backups
If you want to use Popstarter "the official way" you should read the official documentation at https://bitbucket.org/ShaolinAssassin/popstarter-documentation-stuff/wiki/index - if you want to use it via OPL DB, also give that a quick read but the applicable instructions are the ones posted on ps2-home.com

So you are saying not every game works with VMCs?

Correct, in great part because different games use different memory card drivers (and interface with it differently)

How do you handle your space in general? I haven't really played much and my 8 MB are, of course with FreeMcBoot, full. Should I just buy a new one?

An original "Memory card (8MB) (for PlayStation 2)" will always be the most compatible option
Most of my saves fit neatly in one card (I don't play many of them often, so when I need some space, I just move them to USB or HDD - note that this is unrelated to VMC)
And if 3-5 seconds more to boot the console aren't an issue, you don't need FMCB - you could use FHDB instead
(if on the other hand all your games supported VMC, you could go from a completely stock console to playing backups without ever inserting a CD, DVD, or memory card!)

 

[Bimmel]

Damn.. I just tried to update my FreeMcBoot version and two things happened:

1. The program told me to uninstall the "multi part" version because I wanted to install the normal one. I did that.
2. Next it told me that there wasn't enough space left on the MC.. so I left the menu and deleted some save data.

Now it won't boot into FreeMcBoot anymore.. am I screwed? Can I reinstall FreeMcBoot myself? I could not do it on my own back there, so I let someone else do it for me.

 

[Ryccardo]

You removed FMCB so you can't use that card as an entrypoint (until of course you reinstall it), any other one will do (hdd with custom bootloader, independence exploit, homebrew booting disc, swap-with-modified-backup as commonly done with "007 agent under fire", chip with usb boot option, PC + PS3's memory card to USB adapter, buying/borrowing another FMCB card, sending your card to someone to backup/format/install FMCB, ...)

 

[Bimmel]

You removed FMCB so you can't use that card as an entrypoint (until of course you reinstall it), any other one will do (hdd with custom bootloader, independence exploit, homebrew booting disc, swap-with-modified-backup as commonly done with "007 agent under fire", chip with usb boot option, PC + PS3's memory card to USB adapter, buying/borrowing another FMCB card, sending your card to someone to backup/format/install FMCB, ...)

I bought another 64 MB FMCB Memory Card since I couldn't find any adapter. I also bought 2 new 8 MB original Memory Cards to make some for the games I want to play. For safety measures I installed another FMCB version on one of those, just to be save. I chose version 1.966 which should be the newest?

What I need to do now is installing the other programs (mainly OPL, HD Loader and of course a new version of wLaunchELF) on my 8 MB Memory Card. Do I just copy the folder from USB to the MC? And have you other useful programs you can recommend?

Thanks for you help so far! :-)

 

[Ryccardo]

If you installed FMCB it should already have included a quite recent version of wLaunchELF (very likely the newest one, in fact), located at [INSTALL/]BOOT/BOOT.ELF

For most homebrew "installation" means simply copying it to a compatible storage device (memory card, USB, ... - remember that not all homebrews support running from all storages), and optionally using the FMCB configurator to map it to a hotkey (the E1/E2/E3 options, tried in order) and/or add it to the console's main menu (the Hacked OSDSYS 1-100 options, which can also be mapped to 3 sources tried in order)

I like Simple Media System (a MPEG-4 (Part 2 = Xvid, not Part 10 = h264), MP3, and JPG media player)... controls are VERY clunky and limited but it's the best/only one

You may want to look into POPS and Popstarter for not-terribly-good but playable (on compatible games) PS1 software emulation

and HDLoader is of fairly questionable value, unless you have one of the edge cases of OPL (which are probably better worked around with a different version of OPL)