TheFlow has just released an Adrenaline plugin that increases the two PSP GTA games' internal resolution to 950x544, aka the PS Vita's native resolution, as well as including mipmap patches to increase the textures' overall quality. This comes with a slight tradeoff, however, as the game will run at a slower framerate (around 20 FPS instead of the original 30) and 16 bit color depth instead of 32 bit. Nevertheless, the end result can indeed look impressive, as you can see from the screenshot above!

The plugin requires Adrenaline v6.9 and, as previously stated, supports both Liberty City Stories and Vice City Stories, specifically:

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories [ULUS10160] (v3.00)
Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories [ULUS10041] (v3.00)

Detailed usage and installation instructions, as well as a download link, are available in the project's GitHub repo linked below in the sources. Keep in mind that it's adviced to disable the plugin when launching other games than the ones listed above, otherwise they may not run!

The author also recommends to install another plugin called RemasteredControls which will enable you to use both analog sticks while playing the game. This last one is also compatible with a few other titles, so you may want to read more about it if you find yourself playing many PSP games on your modded Vita!

Source

 

[PRAGMA]

Im confused, does these games not run at full psp native resolution on the PSP itself?

 

[stitchxd]

Im confused, does these games not run at full psp native resolution on the PSP itself?

They run at the PSPs resolution yes, but not the PS Vita's resolution.

 

[Vinceherman]

great improvement, just been playing Liberty City for the past few hours, real nice with the dual stick mod

 

[DinohScene]

Aside from the slight slowdown, this is amazing <З

 

[Yandere-chan]

Aside from the slight slowdown, this is amazing <З

Agreed.

 

[bennyman123abc]

It's great to still see Vita homebrew making it to the front page!

 

[TheMrIron2]

It's fascinating to see this done and I'd love to see this for more games.

For the curious, the way Flow did this was explained as well. His exact words were that you just draw assuming 960x544 so instead of using VRAM for the framebuffer, you point towards 0x0A000000 - which, according to the Henkaku wiki, is the starting address for "SceKernelUserShared" memory.

Basically, he's pointing the game to use a different part of memory so that he can run the game outside of Adrenaline restrictions at 960x544.
The colour depth was reduced to 16-bit because this saves a substantial amount of memory and was probably unnecessary. To give you some figured, a single 32 bit 960x544 framebuffer is 16.7MB; at 16 bits, this is halved to 8.3MB. When talking about a 4x increase in pixel count from 480x272 -> 960x544, halving the memory usage like that obviously would have gone a long way.

Note that not everything I say is 100% certain and I'm open to correction but this should be a generally accurate gist of what's happening. Great work all the same and definitely opens the door to PSP homebrews, for example, at native Vita resolution - as well as other PSP games, of course.

 

[eyeliner]

At the moment, is getting a Vita worthy? Can all versions be hacked?
How about PSP compatibility?

 

[rodan100919]

At the moment, is getting a Vita worthy? Can all versions be hacked?
How about PSP compatibility?

I'd say so. Current OFW is 3.70, whereas the latest supported version of h-encore is 3.68 (both for PSV and PSTV). Supposedly 3.69 and 3.70 will get support once the vita's end of support is reached. As for PSP compatibility, I haven't experienced any issues playing PSP games.

 

[eyeliner]

I'd say so. Current OFW is 3.70, whereas the latest supported version of h-encore is 3.68 (both for PSV and PSTV). Supposedly 3.69 and 3.70 will get support once the vita's end of support is reached. As for PSP compatibility, I haven't experienced any issues playing PSP games.

Thanks. PBP Eboots are good to go, or are there any hiccups there?

 

[rodan100919]

Thanks. PBP Eboots are good to go, or are there any hiccups there?

They're good, but you may want to use CSO where possible to save on space. I haven't heard issues with either format performance-wise.

 

[Smoker1]

Anyone manage to get CWCheat working? TempAR works, but CWCheat will not come up. Even with the Plugins turned Off. When was the last time CWCheat worked on Adrenaline? I know it worked before, but it seems with Recent Builds of Adrenaline, it wont work

 

[eyeliner]

They're good, but you may want to use CSO where possible to save on space. I haven't heard issues with either format performance-wise.

Thanks, man.
Sorry for the OT, guys.

 

[HOv]

Aside from the slight slowdown, this is amazing <З

How slow exactly? How many fps drops? And is the slowdown on the entire game or just certain sections of the game?

 

[DanOl98]

This really looks nice, PSVita didn't get enough love from Rockstar (a native GTA would have been awesome)

 

[Smoker1]

This really looks nice, PSVita didn't get enough love from Rockstar (a native GTA would have been awesome)

Exactly. A GTA 3, VC and SA HD Adaptation would have made it so Users could have all 5-6 on 1 System (LCS and VCS PSP), or even add those to a HD Version.

 

[Xppp1]

For some reason it seems like this plugin doesn't work for me correctly, after the 2D start sequence with the credits i start to get garbage data in my display like the one in the picture here

Spoiler

 

[Vinceherman]

For some reason it seems like this plugin doesn't work for me correctly, after the 2D start sequence with the credits i start to get garbage data in my display like the one in the picture here

Spoiler

View attachment 162305

check your PSP/adrenaline firmware version, you need to be on 6.9.

Note that if you use adrenaline bubble manager it causes problems and downgrades your PSP/adrenaline version to 6.8. I've had to stop using bubble manager at the moment and just load games through adrenaline.

 

[Xppp1]

check your PSP/adrenaline firmware version, you need to be on 6.9.

Note that if you use adrenaline bubble manager it causes problems and downgrades your PSP/adrenaline version to 6.8. I've had to stop using bubble manager at the moment and just load games through adrenaline.

Yeah i knew i had to update so i specifically updated for this mod, also i never used the bubble manager