[PSX] Debuggers Opinons

[PSXCraver]

Like the title says.

What PSX debugger you guys preferred to use to do your Rom hacking work with?
Currently, Windhex32 is doing me well. What about you?

 

[FAST6191]

Is Windhex32 a PS1 debugger these days or featuring some kind of generic debugger? I thought it was mostly a hex editor.

Anyway no$psx if I can get it working is nice, for more basic things the old pcsx I think it was usually did what I had to do. Not sure what epsxe has going on these days as it has been a while since I looked there. Bizhawk is probably where many will be looking as tool assisted speedrunning kind of needs a debugger to do things with that.
I also used to do a fair bit with static analysis, maybe guided slightly by what I was seeing in the emulator.

A lot of emulators these days are also not doing their own debugger (it is a hard task and as fewer use such features than faster, more reliable or more accurate emulation then it tends to fall by the wayside before long) and instead providing something like a GDB stub. https://wrongbaud.github.io/posts/ghidra-debugger/ , maybe IDA or even gdb itself, not sure what radare2 has here.
Whether PS1 emulators have gone down this path or not I don't know but it would be something I look at.

 

[BigPanda]

Is Windhex32 a PS1 debugger these days or featuring some kind of generic debugger? I thought it was mostly a hex editor.

Anyway no$psx if I can get it working is nice, for more basic things the old pcsx I think it was usually did what I had to do. Not sure what epsxe has going on these days as it has been a while since I looked there. Bizhawk is probably where many will be looking as tool assisted speedrunning kind of needs a debugger to do things with that.
I also used to do a fair bit with static analysis, maybe guided slightly by what I was seeing in the emulator.

A lot of emulators these days are also not doing their own debugger (it is a hard task and as fewer use such features than faster, more reliable or more accurate emulation then it tends to fall by the wayside before long) and instead providing something like a GDB stub. https://wrongbaud.github.io/posts/ghidra-debugger/ , maybe IDA or even gdb itself, not sure what radare2 has here.
Whether PS1 emulators have gone down this path or not I don't know but it would be something I look at.

no$psx is the way to go. You have the emulator, debugger, tools, documentation and the ability to use it on a real console (To upload code), all on the same app.

Used it a couple of times and it is working great.

 

[PSXCraver]

Is Windhex32 a PS1 debugger these days or featuring some kind of generic debugger? I thought it was mostly a hex editor.

Anyway no$psx if I can get it working is nice, for more basic things the old pcsx I think it was usually did what I had to do. Not sure what epsxe has going on these days as it has been a while since I looked there. Bizhawk is probably where many will be looking as tool assisted speedrunning kind of needs a debugger to do things with that.
I also used to do a fair bit with static analysis, maybe guided slightly by what I was seeing in the emulator.

A lot of emulators these days are also not doing their own debugger (it is a hard task and as fewer use such features than faster, more reliable or more accurate emulation then it tends to fall by the wayside before long) and instead providing something like a GDB stub. https://wrongbaud.github.io/posts/ghidra-debugger/ , maybe IDA or even gdb itself, not sure what radare2 has here.
Whether PS1 emulators have gone down this path or not I don't know but it would be something I look at.

Actually, It was my mistake. I got mixed up.
I actually intended to ask about Hex editors, sorry abut that. But debuggers is also something I was going to ask anyway hah
Thanks for the reply!

 

[PSXCraver]

no$psx is the way to go. You have the emulator, debugger, tools, documentation and the ability to use it on a real console (To upload code), all on the same app.

Used it a couple of times and it is working great.

Thanks for that, I really appreciate the information.

I do use No$SPX a lot, actually. Still working around to understand all its functions, though.

 

[FAST6191]

In that case it was some years ago now I did a shootout but I still mostly rock the same setups on Windows as not all that much has changed/nothing has risen up to threaten these (though HxD is a bit better and may have some limited table support at some point -- the author did wander over to romhacking.net a while a back to ask about adding things on the tables/encoding side of things*
https://gbatemp.net/threads/rom-hacking-hex-editors-mid-2012-discussion.326873/

If you want to trial out a few things then reasonable start of a list of them
https://www.texteditors.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?HexEditorFamily
I do generally find most are woefully lacking compared to the kit I came to at the end there.

*for those wanting to contemplate some more about tables https://transcorp.romhacking.net/scratchpad/Table File Format.txt

 

[PSXCraver]

In that case it was some years ago now I did a shootout but I still mostly rock the same setups on Windows as not all that much has changed/nothing has risen up to threaten these (though HxD is a bit better and may have some limited table support at some point -- the author did wander over to romhacking.net a while a back to ask about adding things on the tables/encoding side of things*
https://gbatemp.net/threads/rom-hacking-hex-editors-mid-2012-discussion.326873/

If you want to trial out a few things then reasonable start of a list of them
https://www.texteditors.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?HexEditorFamily
I do generally find most are woefully lacking compared to the kit I came to at the end there.

*for those wanting to contemplate some more about tables https://transcorp.romhacking.net/scratchpad/Table File Format.txt

Again, thank you for this! The more I read, the better I understand.

 

[FAST6191]

On the subject of debuggers I am pointed at https://github.com/stenzek/duckstation these days.
Not played properly with it but looking at the source code it has several very nice options.

 

[PSXCraver]

On the subject of debuggers I am pointed at https://github.com/stenzek/duckstation these days.
Not played properly with it but looking at the source code it has several very nice options.

Really, I thought Duckstation was only an Emulator? So then, it is also a debugger you say. Thanks for the information.
I had tried running this Emulator a little while back, but could not get it to lunch.
Lack of understand on my part, maybe?

Whenever I attempted, I remember it just not functioning.

Perhaps you can assist me on this?

 

[FAST6191]

Many emulators are also debuggers (helps the emulator author fix games/find issues, homebrew authors like it, ROM hackers like it, advanced cheat makers like it, tool assisted speedrun types like it, glitch finders like it...). Not all will be as it is an extra feature to code up into something useful and while all those groups like it then simple game players, the overwhelming majority of users of an emulator, care only as much as it helps the former groups produce things for them to look at.

Not sure what is going to be the issue for Duckstation offhand. Does it give any error messages?

 

[PSXCraver]

Many emulators are also debuggers (helps the emulator author fix games/find issues, homebrew authors like it, ROM hackers like it, advanced cheat makers like it, tool assisted speedrun types like it, glitch finders like it...). Not all will be as it is an extra feature to code up into something useful and while all those groups like it then simple game players, the overwhelming majority of users of an emulator, care only as much as it helps the former groups produce things for them to look at.

Not sure what is going to be the issue for Duckstation offhand. Does it give any error messages?

I figured it out. Thank you for wanting to help me with this, regardless.
At first glance, It wouldn't load, but only because It needed to be set up correctly.
Anyway, have a great day, man!