Hacking Emulation POPS on PSP/Vita - Config Research

[wad11656]

Nah, compatibility should be fine with pop-fe compared to other converters, so it must be just that everything has to be copies over manually. It's really easy too, I did a few edits and they don't take more than half a day to be accepted at most.
Games that could have better compatibility are those that crashed because of CDDA, like Wipeout 3, Vanishing Point, The Next Tetris (although there are graphical issues in the NTSC-U release, works fine on PAL and NTSC-J).
Otherwise, compatibility should remain equal, except for those that have configs, of course.

I see. Yeah, in terms of compatibility (aside from configs & libcrypt), fixing CDDA-related crashes was the only inherent difference I noticed between PSX2PSP & pop-fe. Glad to have that confirmed

(Irrelevant/Tangential note on EBOOT converter differences: I haven't tested them with pop-fe, but I was only able to get Lightspan games working through POPstation GUI & not PSX2PSP. Just a bit weird)

alright sounds like my time's better spent just getting started on PAL tests

The FF8 config stayed the same between PSP and Vita it seems, but I never checked the config within the PSN eboot... Perhaps it differs somewhat.
Anyway, maybe it's like Fear Effect which only the PSN release works fine on PSP and not brew conversions.

Could you ask the redditor for his save?

Here it is. Thanks!!

 

[mrjaredbeta]

@wad11656 Yeah, pretty much what @Webardo said. I have just been manually been moving over the reports slowly.

After adding the rest of the entries, it will become very clear which games still need to be fixed, which is pretty nice to visualize. I think we can get the list down to very few incompatibilities when all is said and done.

 

[OPPAI_DAISUKI]

@OPPAI_DAISUKI I tested your Jackiechan config and to me it seems that everything is ok regarding the terrible slows from before, while there is still no solution for the game videos, I intend to create a ppf and include your custom config along with it, thank you.

appreciated sir!!! thank you!! although i notice a slowdown in cutscene in the subway where jackie jumps inside the hole...but nevertheless gameplay wise the config makes the game steady playable...i hope i found the right config for the game... i hope we can find a solution for video... and also Fear Effect i really really really wanted to play it..

Post automatically merged: Feb 16, 2024

I basically never cared much about it, I always used OPL for PS2 only and the rest used UlaunchELF, to run other emulators and Popstarter (PS1).

yup after the latest updates of OPL where PS1 Tab was removed i also go to Ulaunch Elf to run PS1 games... as its kinda hassle to type every name of PS1 game on config just to be loaded on "APPS" tab in OPL... but sadly the POPSTARTER itself is still obsolete... i hope someone will get in touch with it..

 

[Acid_Snake]

Please excuse my ignorance about the details of the situation, but is pops integrated into opl in that case or is it independent but distributed together with opl?

In the latter case just providing an external README on "do this to install pops ontop of opl" could be a solution.


That said, the ZSO and the exFAT additions to OPL are amazingly great. Thanks for that! If it comes at the cost of losing POPS support then so be it.

From what I understood (though I'm not 100% sure so don't quote me on this) it's not just about including Sony's POPS itself, but PopStarter (the homebrew app that patches Sony's POPS to make it work) is also not open source and/or the code to include it into OPL was made by someone who's long gone from the scene so it's not so easy to use it without ethical/moral/philosophical issues.

There were talks about doing something about it, but what came out of it was a PC utility to convert your PS1 bin/cue to OPL
APPS format, which is good enough for the most part, specially since the focus is on unlocking the full potential of deckard consoles (not just for PS1, but potentially also adding CSO support).

In my experience the PS2 scene is the slowest moving scene, but at the same time the one that moves the most. There's still a lot of brilliant minds giving their spare time to the console, but things take their time.

 

[OPPAI_DAISUKI]

From what I understood (though I'm not 100% sure so don't quote me on this) it's not just about including Sony's POPS itself, but PopStarter (the homebrew app that patches Sony's POPS to make it work) is also not open source and/or the code to include it into OPL was made by someone who's long gone from the scene so it's not so easy to use it without ethical/moral/philosophical issues.

There were talks about doing something about it, but what came out of it was a PC utility to convert your PS1 bin/cue to OPL
APPS format, which is good enough for the most part, specially since the focus is on unlocking the full potential of deckard consoles (not just for PS1, but potentially also adding CSO support).

In my experience the PS2 scene is the slowest moving scene, but at the same time the one that moves the most. There's still a lot of brilliant minds giving their spare time to the console, but things take their time.

still Popstarter gives the compatibility of every PS1 game right sir?... even if the OPL is still keeps updating...

 

[leeretro]

@The_Ho da uma ajuda, help plz, where can i find the link for valkyria profile and brave fencer musashi eboots? all links on this post seems to be offline, vlw, thanks

 

[OPPAI_DAISUKI]

@The_Ho da uma ajuda, help plz, where can i find the link for valkyria profile and brave fencer musashi eboots? all links on this post seems to be offline, vlw, thanks

in cdromance there are already converted Eboot PS1 games THOUGH the recent changes on the site makes downloading games hassle and kinda too many things to do unlike before... BUT you can also create your own custom eboot by using either POPS Fe and PSX2PSP.... POPS FE is more updated and had a configs that atleast fixed our favorite games so thats the best choice to use sir...

 

[The_Ho]

@The_Ho da uma ajuda, help plz, where can i find the link for valkyria profile and brave fencer musashi eboots? all links on this post seems to be offline, vlw, thanks

Hello, Follow what @OPPAI_DAISUKI says and you will be able to create your EBOOT in the best way it currently exists. I recommend downloading your game in .bin format and using pop fe.

==================================================

I leave here a disc 2 dummy that works in pop fe. I don't know if it will be very useful, but I believe it will give more freedom to modify and test the settings in 1CD games to avoid save conflicts or duplicate saves from the same game.

-Apply SetRegionGUI for JAP to the image, convert with pop fe adding the placebo as disk 2.

-Now you will have the freedom to create a detailed or raw config by resetting the config and changing it directly to a GAMEID as a direct test, based on the list of cmds on the PSP Wiki. Using a GAME ID directly can often speed up the process, if it shows any improvement in the game, then filter it.

I know that the PSX2PSP can be used for this manually, but games with many CDDAs reduce their size considerably with AT3 applied by pop fe, which will save some transfer time in our lives lol

I've already used this dummy a few times to see if it would generate any problems, but nothing happened to me, so I think it was as safe as using the same method on the PSX2PSP. The only thing I noticed were different errors regarding this image, but in the end it was always there as Disc 2 anyway without interfering with Disc 1 gameplay.

If anyone wants to use it, just remember not to select disk 2 or everything will freeze.

 

[OPPAI_DAISUKI]

Hello, Follow what @OPPAI_DAISUKI says and you will be able to create your EBOOT in the best way it currently exists. I recommend downloading your game in .bin format and using pop fe.

==================================================

I leave here a disc 2 dummy that works in pop fe. I don't know if it will be very useful, but I believe it will give more freedom to modify and test the settings in 1CD games to avoid save conflicts or duplicate saves from the same game.

-Apply SetRegionGUI for JAP to the image, convert with pop fe adding the placebo as disk 2.

-Now you will have the freedom to create a detailed or raw config by resetting the config and changing it directly to a GAMEID as a direct test, based on the list of cmds on the PSP Wiki. Using a GAME ID directly can often speed up the process, if it shows any improvement in the game, then filter it.

I know that the PSX2PSP can be used for this manually, but games with many CDDAs reduce their size considerably with AT3 applied by pop fe, which will save some transfer time in our lives lol

I've already used this dummy a few times to see if it would generate any problems, but nothing happened to me, so I think it was as safe as using the same method on the PSX2PSP. The only thing I noticed were different errors regarding this image, but in the end it was always there as Disc 2 anyway without interfering with Disc 1 gameplay.

If anyone wants to use it, just remember not to select disk 2 or everything will freeze.

any good news sir @The_Ho ?... you know NFS 3 Hot Pursuit and Fear Effect 1/2....

 

[Webardo]

Hey @ronniesahlberg, I read this on Vagrant Story's spanish hack issue:

"The md5 sum is computed over the first 1Mb of data and should be unique across games.
When you run pop-fe or pop-fe-psp and it can not recognize the game it will print somehting like this in the command terminal :
MD5 fingerprint 1808dd8b039de821d347167930b0bcf1

That fingerprint is what goes into gamedb.py and matches it up with a genuine release."

I'm not too sure up to what offset I should get to obtain the proper hash, as I can't seem to replicate the hash even when using a dump that gets verified by pop-fe. I tried just doing a Md5 checksum on the first MB of the file but the hash is different.
How many bytes do you exactly use for this?

 

[The_Ho]

Hey @ronniesahlberg, I read this on Vagrant Story's spanish hack issue:

"The md5 sum is computed over the first 1Mb of data and should be unique across games.
When you run pop-fe or pop-fe-psp and it can not recognize the game it will print somehting like this in the command terminal :
MD5 fingerprint 1808dd8b039de821d347167930b0bcf1

That fingerprint is what goes into gamedb.py and matches it up with a genuine release."

I'm not too sure up to what offset I should get to obtain the proper hash, as I can't seem to replicate the hash even when using a dump that gets verified by pop-fe. I tried just doing a Md5 checksum on the first MB of the file but the hash is different.
How many bytes do you exactly use for this?

What type of error happens @Webardo?

I converted and here it looks normal.

Spoiler: Spoiler

ID SLES02754
Found an external config for SLES02754
Fetching SND0
Found cached prebuilt PIC0 https://github.com/sahlberg/pop-fe-assets/raw/master/pic0/c7509632dd09889ba53072d48728d1e9
Found cached prebuilt PIC1 https://github.com/sahlberg/pop-fe-assets/raw/master/pic1/4e898a6f0deba895121315e4b6e5bb13
Creating EBOOT
DISC SLES02754
TITLE VAGRANT STORY
Found cached prebuilt SND0 https://github.com/sahlberg/pop-fe-assets/raw/master/snd0/8d55c8d88bffa3f9b8f93fe95a4dfdd7
Creating SND0.AT3
Creating temporary WAV file clamped to 59 second duration pop-fe-psp-work/SND0.WAV
Clamping file to 59000 ms
End of input file.

Create pop-fe-psp-work//SND0.AT3 from pop-fe-psp-work/SND0.EA3
Creating temporary WAV file clamped to 28 second duration pop-fe-psp-work/SND0.WAV
Clamping file to 28000 ms
End of input file.

Create pop-fe-psp-work//SND0.AT3 from pop-fe-psp-work/SND0.EA3
Create PBP file at C:/Users/Nando/Desktop/SLES02754/EBOOT.PBP
Injecting subchannel blob of len 408 at offset 0x00177d60 for disc 0

Version> package #575: Commit 3df92d2

any good news sir @The_Ho ?... you know NFS 3 Hot Pursuit and Fear Effect 1/2....

These will give you a headache.

 

[ronniesahlberg]

The fingerprint is computed over the first 1048576 bytes of the ISO that is extracted from track 1. It is not computed over the bin file.

The easiest way to get the fingerprint is to just run pop-fe.py/pop-fe.exe. It will print the fingerprint to the terminal :

./pop-fe.py tmp/Tetris\ -\ The\ Grand\ Master\ \(USA\).cue
Processing tmp/Tetris - The Grand Master (USA).cue ...
cdrom: line in system.cnf does not contain a proper id, read disc label instead
MD5 fingerprint 48615d361ff1026873ef5a1161a75e36
...


You can also get it from the bin file by manually extracting the ISO, using a tool like bchunk, and then run md5sum over the first 1M of that file. But it is just much easier to have pop-fe get the fingerprint for you.

 

[Webardo]

The fingerprint is computed over the first 1048576 bytes of the ISO that is extracted from track 1. It is not computed over the bin file.

The easiest way to get the fingerprint is to just run pop-fe.py/pop-fe.exe. It will print the fingerprint to the terminal :

./pop-fe.py tmp/Tetris\ -\ The\ Grand\ Master\ \(USA\).cue
Processing tmp/Tetris - The Grand Master (USA).cue ...
cdrom: line in system.cnf does not contain a proper id, read disc label instead
MD5 fingerprint 48615d361ff1026873ef5a1161a75e36
...


You can also get it from the bin file by manually extracting the ISO, using a tool like bchunk, and then run md5sum over the first 1M of that file. But it is just much easier to have pop-fe get the fingerprint for you.

Thanks! This way I don't have to pester you as much and can add games with just a pull request.

What type of error happens @Webardo?

I converted and here it looks normal.

Thank you for the assistance, the conversions are fine, I just wanted to know how to get the md5 checksum that pop-fe uses in its database. This is to add some odd games that don't have their region code as accessible as usually expected.

 

[ronniesahlberg]

Thanks! This way I don't have to pester you as much and can add games with just a pull request.

Awesome. Keep them coming. It would be awesome if we had fingerprints and sections, including icon0/pic0/pic1 links for all unofficial games too and homebrew.

For another user, I am working on getting all ~500 demo disks added to the database. At least with disk-id and title, but it is a start. I hope to push an update for that over the weekend when work slows down.

 

[FamitsuDesu]

So I even patched it and I don't know to what extent the method made the game playable, but it actually seemed to work very well, unfortunately I still can't post download links and videos to be better explained. Well, I can say that this method I used in DQVII seems to also work with Winning Eleven among other games I've tested, but due to lack of time I didn't go into much depth. So I'll leave a walkthrough below for the DWVII:

You will need:

Dragon Warrior VII (USA) CD1 and CD2 [REDUMP Preference]
Dragon Quest VII (Japan) 1.1 CD1 and CD2 [REDUMP Preference]
HxD
PSX2PSP

Open CD1(bin or img) of Dragon Quest VII (Japan) and CD1(bin or img) of Dragon Warrior (USA) in HxD and copy CD1 Japan offset from > [0 to D3AF], now select them the same offset sectors on CD1 USA and paste over it rewriting that part and save the modified CD1 USA.

For CD 2 it will do pretty much the same thing.

After the modifications just create your EBOOT and play on Adrenaline, as I said at the beginning PSX2PSP and Adrenaline will identify as a Japanese game, just ignore it, this happens because the ID was changed in the HEX code, just run the game and it will be functional ..

I think it's possible to do a lot more, who knows, I know about the MKT case, I haven't stopped to look yet, but with help and people who understand, maybe create some patches based on that.

....

Hello buddy!

Could you please re-upload the DQ patch for Adrenaline? Unfortunately, this link is already dead. No matter how much I tried to rebuild the USA version using HxD, nothing worked...

 

[The_Ho]

Hello buddy!

Could you please re-upload the DQ patch for Adrenaline? Unfortunately, this link is already dead. No matter how much I tried to rebuild the USA version using HxD, nothing worked...

Forgive me, I really need to update the main page. The method is already outdated.

I recommend that you use a backup of Dragon Quest/Warrior VII in .bin .cue and convert it to EBOOT.PBP using POP-FE from @ronniesahlberg on GitHub.

 

[OPPAI_DAISUKI]

What type of error happens @Webardo?

I converted and here it looks normal.

Spoiler: Spoiler

ID SLES02754
Found an external config for SLES02754
Fetching SND0
Found cached prebuilt PIC0 https://github.com/sahlberg/pop-fe-assets/raw/master/pic0/c7509632dd09889ba53072d48728d1e9
Found cached prebuilt PIC1 https://github.com/sahlberg/pop-fe-assets/raw/master/pic1/4e898a6f0deba895121315e4b6e5bb13
Creating EBOOT
DISC SLES02754
TITLE VAGRANT STORY
Found cached prebuilt SND0 https://github.com/sahlberg/pop-fe-assets/raw/master/snd0/8d55c8d88bffa3f9b8f93fe95a4dfdd7
Creating SND0.AT3
Creating temporary WAV file clamped to 59 second duration pop-fe-psp-work/SND0.WAV
Clamping file to 59000 ms
End of input file.

Create pop-fe-psp-work//SND0.AT3 from pop-fe-psp-work/SND0.EA3
Creating temporary WAV file clamped to 28 second duration pop-fe-psp-work/SND0.WAV
Clamping file to 28000 ms
End of input file.

Create pop-fe-psp-work//SND0.AT3 from pop-fe-psp-work/SND0.EA3
Create PBP file at C:/Users/Nando/Desktop/SLES02754/EBOOT.PBP
Injecting subchannel blob of len 408 at offset 0x00177d60 for disc 0

These will give you a headache.

Forgive me, I really need to update the main page. The method is already outdated.

I recommend that you use a backup of Dragon Quest/Warrior VII in .bin .cue and convert it to EBOOT.PBP using POP-FE from @ronniesahlberg on GitHub.

@The_Ho i think spike (cdromance) reverted back the site again and checking your DQ7 eboot uploaded there it was still the same...i really didnt like that discord method he used to download games..for me its just hassle and adds another job just to download games to the site instead of one click and your good to go...

 

[Snowbro88]

@Webardo
Hello boss, this time I ask you if you have been able to identify the command in the configs that causes the screen to stretch and not show some vertical lines of European games such as Tombi, Rollcage 1 and 2, Motoracer 2?

I think maybe it's some part of those specific configs why many other European games converted with Pop Fe that use configs look perfect.

And I would also like to report another problematic game on adrenaline, it is the European exclusive motorcycle racing game called Extreme 500, it works quite well but if you restart the race it freezes, something like the problem in the first Driver.

Thanks for the answers.

 

[Webardo]

@Webardo
Hello boss, this time I ask you if you have been able to identify the command in the configs that causes the screen to stretch and not show some vertical lines of European games such as Tombi, Rollcage 1 and 2, Motoracer 2?

I think maybe it's some part of those specific configs why many other European games converted with Pop Fe that use configs look perfect.

And I would also like to report another problematic game on adrenaline, it is the European exclusive motorcycle racing game called Extreme 500, it works quite well but if you restart the race it freezes, something like the problem in the first Driver.

Thanks for the answers.

Yeah, don't worry, it's cmd 0x01, so I'll just have to edit the configs and submit them.
I took my last test for the week, so I should have the next week free to do a lot of things for POPS.

 

[Acid_Snake]

Do we know if there's any compatibility differences between PSP 6.60 POPS and PS Vita POPS?
We know that PS Vita POPS is based on PSP 6.60 POPS but it's very heavily changed (specially sound emulation is completely reworked).
But I am still not sure about them having the same exact compatibility. What do you guys think?