Hacking Emulation POPS on PSP/Vita - Config Research

[yessirballs3]

@ronniesahlberg

I tested Racing Lagoon in v1.14

If you convert EBOOT with the Disable PIC0 and 1 options enabled, EBOOT works.

If the check boxes are unchecked, the game will not work.

The same goes for the internet, if you convert with the internet disconnected the game will work, if it is connected and the check boxes are unchecked the game will not work.

Man ty and now i think they need to fix this prob

 

[yoooblls]

@ronniesahlberg

I tested Racing Lagoon in v1.14

If you convert EBOOT with the Disable PIC0 and 1 options enabled, EBOOT works.

If the check boxes are unchecked, the game will not work.

The same goes for the internet, if you convert with the internet disconnected the game will work, if it is connected and the check boxes are unchecked the game will not work.

Hey bro it even works with downloded picture just replaced both pic0 and pc1 with your own picture instead it works great

 

[Webardo]

@ronniesahlberg

I tested Racing Lagoon in v1.14

If you convert EBOOT with the Disable PIC0 and 1 options enabled, EBOOT works.

If the check boxes are unchecked, the game will not work.

The same goes for the internet, if you convert with the internet disconnected the game will work, if it is connected and the check boxes are unchecked the game will not work.

Huh, guess it worked for me because I used custom art... How odd for it to not work because of that.

 

[The_Ho]

Try pressing select instead of PS.

Strangely I haven't managed to get it yet, only on Vita. I will reinstall and try again.

I've pressed it and even held it for a few seconds

Huh, guess it worked for me because I used custom art... How odd for it to not work because of that.

I also found this type of problem strange, I don't know if it has anything to do with the dimension or size of the artwork.

I also have the game running on the PSP and converted by pop fe, but from previous versions, so I also suspected the firmware, popsloader or some problem with the translations as sometimes happens.

But when I saw his comment on GIT I got really curious and went to test with the new version, to my surprise I detected this problem related to PIC0/1

Man ty and now i think they need to fix this prob

It's a problem that can be overcome by alternative means, if Ronnie confirms, he will certainly do it in his time.

 

[ronniesahlberg]

It's a problem that can be overcome by alternative means, if Ronnie confirms, he will certainly do it in his time.

I added a workaround for now. For the very very few games where you need to use an older version of pops you now have to select "Disable PSTITLEIMG" in pop-fe-psp.

Later on I will try to reproduce what is wrong with these eboots when there is no PSTITLEIMG.
I suspect some alignment issue when there is a lot of icon0/pic0/pic1 data that causes the PSISOIMG to be misaligned.

 

[ciarli-b]

Hi, this is the patch for F1 99 USA version.
Credits go to Hugopocked (he publishes updates here: https://www.psx-place.com/threads/hugopocked-fixes-for-popstarter.39750/).
Permission to share the patch is granted to me from Hugopocked.

 

[mrjaredbeta]

@ciarli-b Awesome, thanks for posting!

@ronniesahlberg I have added hugopocked's patch as PPF in order for easy implementation into pop-fe. This should fix the game on both PSP and PS3 now, and a port to the other Formula One games will ensure 100% compatibility with PS1 on PS3!

Thanks hugopocked!

 

[ronniesahlberg]

@ciarli-b Awesome, thanks for posting!

@ronniesahlberg I have added hugopocked's patch as PPF in order for easy implementation into pop-fe. This should fix the game on both PSP and PS3 now, and a port to the other Formula One games will ensure 100% compatibility with PS1 on PS3!

Thanks hugopocked!

Can you try re-generating the PPF? The embedded PPF file is 0 bytes in size.

 

[mrjaredbeta]

Can you try re-generating the PPF? The embedded PPF file is 0 bytes in size.

Sorry about that, not too sure what happened. Here is the fixed patch.

 

[ronniesahlberg]

Sorry about that, not too sure what happened. Here is the fixed patch.

Thanks, Added.

 

[Acid_Snake]

@ronniesahlberg @Webardo
I've been testing the libcrypt magic word patch and can't get it to work.
It's not an issue with the live patch I made, I'm having result even if I manually inject the value via hex onto the eboot directly.

 

[ronniesahlberg]

@ronniesahlberg @Webardo
I've been testing the libcrypt magic word patch and can't get it to work.
It's not an issue with the live patch I made, I'm having result even if I manually inject the value via hex onto the eboot directly.

Oh, ok. As I said, I never used this since it was not discovered how to do this when I added support to pop-fe.
So what I did in pop-fe, and which works, is injecting kind of a SBI file into the eboot.

I.e. sony added TWO different ways to handle SBI files, and I used the SBI-blob approach in pop-fe
because we did not yet know how the magic-word approach were supposed to work.


So, on this page https://www.psdevwiki.com/psp/PSISOIMG0000
you have the magic word that you injected at offset 0x12b0, but I do not use this in pop-fe.

Instead, what I use is injecting the SBI-like blob at offset 0x100400 and then I store this offset at 0x12d4 and the number of entries at 0x12d8.

Here is the python code in pop-fe that creates the SBI-blob:
https://github.com/sahlberg/pop-fe/blob/109975306f1bb37d947f6ee8f63722ee0258b02e/pop-fe.py#L3754
This function basically takes the magic word and then generates the sbi entries for all the sectors that are supposed to be
corrupted for this magic-word and writes it to a file.
Instead of writing to a file you can just write these entries straight into the eboot.

Convert a libcrypt protected game with pop-fe and you can see what it does in a hexeditor.

EDIT: or you could just skip libcrypt and rely on end users having to apply a ppf to disable it themselves. the biggest benefit is likely the support for configs since that allows people to iterate fast, testing new configs.
Libcrypt is also just for EU games and I think most people would think of the US version of the game as better and prefer it ot the EU versions.

EDIT 2: The offset 0x100400 as in the example for PSISOIMG might not be great.
Maybe a better place would be at offset 0x100000 - 0x400 into the PSISOIMG section.
It needs to go after the last DiskMapTable but before offset 0x100000 into PSISOIMG which where the disc tracks start.
Pop-fe puts this immediately after the DiskMapTable but it might be difficult in your application to see how big teh DiskMapTable is, pop-fe knows how big it is because pop-fe creates it when converting.

After the end of the DiskMapTable there is a huge gap of padding until offset 0x100000 where the tracks are stored. It can go anywhere in this huge gap.
This is the code in pop-fe that writes the sbi / subchannel blob into the EBOOT :
https://github.com/sahlberg/pop-fe/blob/109975306f1bb37d947f6ee8f63722ee0258b02e/popstation.py#L2786

 

[Acid_Snake]

Oh, ok. As I said, I never used this since it was not discovered how to do this when I added support to pop-fe.
So what I did in pop-fe, and which works, is injecting kind of a SBI file into the eboot.

I.e. sony added TWO different ways to handle SBI files, and I used the SBI-blob approach in pop-fe
because we did not yet know how the magic-word approach were supposed to work.


So, on this page https://www.psdevwiki.com/psp/PSISOIMG0000
you have the magic word that you injected at offset 0x12b0, but I do not use this in pop-fe.

Instead, what I use is injecting the SBI-like blob at offset 0x100400 and then I store this offset at 0x12d4 and the number of entries at 0x12d8.

Here is the python code in pop-fe that creates the SBI-blob:
https://github.com/sahlberg/pop-fe/blob/109975306f1bb37d947f6ee8f63722ee0258b02e/pop-fe.py#L3754
This function basically takes the magic word and then generates the sbi entries for all the sectors that are supposed to be
corrupted for this magic-word and writes it to a file.
Instead of writing to a file you can just write these entries straight into the eboot.

Convert a libcrypt protected game with pop-fe and you can see what it does in a hexeditor.

EDIT: or you could just skip libcrypt and rely on end users having to apply a ppf to disable it themselves. the biggest benefit is likely the support for configs since that allows people to iterate fast, testing new configs.
Libcrypt is also just for EU games and I think most people would think of the US version of the game as better and prefer it ot the EU versions.

EDIT 2: The offset 0x100400 as in the example for PSISOIMG might not be great.
Maybe a better place would be at offset 0x100000 - 0x400 into the PSISOIMG section.
It needs to go after the last DiskMapTable but before offset 0x100000 into PSISOIMG which where the disc tracks start.
Pop-fe puts this immediately after the DiskMapTable but it might be difficult in your application to see how big teh DiskMapTable is, pop-fe knows how big it is because pop-fe creates it when converting.

After the end of the DiskMapTable there is a huge gap of padding until offset 0x100000 where the tracks are stored. It can go anywhere in this huge gap.
This is the code in pop-fe that writes the sbi / subchannel blob into the EBOOT :
https://github.com/sahlberg/pop-fe/blob/109975306f1bb37d947f6ee8f63722ee0258b02e/popstation.py#L2786

Basically do the same I do for config but with SBI files. I'll give it a try when I get some time.

 

[HNKMaster]

Hi. I've noticed with some games that CDDA tracks ends or loops wrongly as far as my tests shows. Some were fixed during newer versions, but with Rockman X3 (JP SLPS-00283) every track ends in a glitchy way. If I find more games with this issue, I'll notify you here. Good work by the way.

 

[Acid_Snake]

Hi. I've noticed with some games that CDDA tracks ends or loops wrongly as far as my tests shows. Some were fixed during newer versions, but with Rockman X3 (JP SLPS-00283) every track ends in a glitchy way. If I find more games with this issue, I'll notify you here. Good work by the way.

Same thing happens in Tekken 3, when you finish Arcade Mode and the credits roll there's a small audio glitch. But it's present even if you use an older CDDA-enabled pops via popsloader.

 

[ronniesahlberg]

Same thing happens in Tekken 3, when you finish Arcade Mode and the credits roll there's a small audio glitch. But it's present even if you use an older CDDA-enabled pops via popsloader.

It happens with actual CDDA tracks too? The it sounds like an emulator bug.
I tested slps00283 but aborted the program after it had converted all the audio and listened to the wav and aea files in pop-fe-work/ and they all sound good so I suspect an emulator bug.

 

[sonictopfan]

Sorry to bump this thread, I don't know if this is the right place to ask or not but recently I got a hack for Digimon Rumble Arena (US) to replace the soundtrack with the Japanese version.

See, I grew up with the Japanese version of the game and I also grew up with our native dub of the anime which kept the original soundtrack, it's very nostalgic for me which you can see why I could not get into playing the US version.

Now I don't know wither this is also an issue in the unmedified version or is it just this version, it runs fine on emulators but when I converted it using PSX2PSP v1.4.0 the game runs alright cutscenes and all no issues, however some levels run at full speed while others run a bit slow, not sure wither this has to do with my conversion, maybe I need to change something in the settings, if someone has the game can you confirm if this is a known issue or do I need to use a specific tool like POPS?

 

[OPPAI_DAISUKI]

Sorry to bump this thread, I don't know if this is the right place to ask or not but recently I got a hack for Digimon Rumble Arena (US) to replace the soundtrack with the Japanese version.

See, I grew up with the Japanese version of the game and I also grew up with our native dub of the anime which kept the original soundtrack, it's very nostalgic for me which you can see why I could not get into playing the US version.

Now I don't know wither this is also an issue in the unmedified version or is it just this version, it runs fine on emulators but when I converted it using PSX2PSP v1.4.0 the game runs alright cutscenes and all no issues, however some levels run at full speed while others run a bit slow, not sure wither this has to do with my conversion, maybe I need to change something in the settings, if someone has the game can you confirm if this is a known issue or do I need to use a specific tool like POPS?

OH WOW!!! i thought i was the only one of the few people who was a fanboy of Digimon Rumble Arena...dont worry sir i also used PSX2PSP to convert the game and what your experiencing is that Rumble Arena has some issues when playing on PSP even if your on 6.61 Infinity even setting FAST on Speed (Home Menu) (just like other PS1 games like Brave Fencer Musashi, Chrono Cross and others). You've converted them flawlessly and then when copying to PSP you have some problems while playing them confused and frustrated. The solution that all of us here that where able to fix "PROBLEMATIC PS1 GAMES" on PSP was a CONFIG. All of us here help each other to figure out at least how to make the game play and run at least good and smoothly on our PSP. You can download the latest configs here (https://github. com/sahlberg/pop-fe/tree/master/pspconfigs/Digimon%20Rumble%20Arena) and choose US Version. You can add this config manually on your converted game by usinig HXD or any Hex Editing Tool you have...

 

[sonictopfan]

OH WOW!!! i thought i was the only one of the few people who was a fanboy of Digimon Rumble Arena...dont worry sir i also used PSX2PSP to convert the game and what your experiencing is that Rumble Arena has some issues when playing on PSP even if your on 6.61 Infinity even setting FAST on Speed (Home Menu) (just like other PS1 games like Brave Fencer Musashi, Chrono Cross and others). You've converted them flawlessly and then when copying to PSP you have some problems while playing them confused and frustrated. The solution that all of us here that where able to fix "PROBLEMATIC PS1 GAMES" on PSP was a CONFIG. All of us here help each other to figure out at least how to make the game play and run at least good and smoothly on our PSP. You can download the latest configs here (https://github. com/sahlberg/pop-fe/tree/master/pspconfigs/Digimon%20Rumble%20Arena) and choose US Version. You can add this config manually on your converted game by usinig HXD or any Hex Editing Tool you have...

Thank you so much, I'm a nooby in using pop-fe I remember this tool was suggested to me for Bugs Bunny Lost in Time then I got the game preconverted elsewhere because I could not convert it myself could you explain to an idiot such is myself how to fix this issue?

 

[church_foster]

OH WOW!!! i thought i was the only one of the few people who was a fanboy of Digimon Rumble Arena...dont worry sir i also used PSX2PSP to convert the game and what your experiencing is that Rumble Arena has some issues when playing on PSP even if your on 6.61 Infinity even setting FAST on Speed (Home Menu) (just like other PS1 games like Brave Fencer Musashi, Chrono Cross and others). You've converted them flawlessly and then when copying to PSP you have some problems while playing them confused and frustrated. The solution that all of us here that where able to fix "PROBLEMATIC PS1 GAMES" on PSP was a CONFIG. All of us here help each other to figure out at least how to make the game play and run at least good and smoothly on our PSP. You can download the latest configs here (https://github. com/sahlberg/pop-fe/tree/master/pspconfigs/Digimon%20Rumble%20Arena) and choose US Version. You can add this config manually on your converted game by usinig HXD or any Hex Editing Tool you have...

There is a fix for the slowdowns and stuttering on Brave Fencer Musashi? And what's the issue with Chrono Cross?