Hacking [RELEASE] PSVGameSD By Motoharu-Gosuto

[Billy Acuña]

Why so much hate on the new PSV format?
I think that having the ability to dump 1:1 backups and mount them as retail gamecards is a big deal. Hope the format get popular once it supports SD2Vita and trimmed roms.

 

[Tom Bombadildo]

Why so much hate on the new PSV format?
I think that having the ability to dump 1:1 backups and mount them as retail gamecards is a big deal. Hope the format get popular once it supports SD2Vita and trimmed roms.

Mostly "ease of use" issues. PSVGameSD doesn't support digital games yet, no auto trimming, you have to mount each game and they can't be installed as bubbles. For most people, Maidumps and VPKs were "good enough" for them, and now that people actually understand why NoNpDRM is good it's the new "it's good enough". I think once PSVGameSD matures more it'll be more widely accepted. But shitty pirates would rather use "good enough" trash than still-being-developed good...stuff.

I think it's great that we have full, 100% 1:1 dumps myself. Once digital games and auto trimming are supported I plan on backing up all my games as .PSV

 

[Madridi]

Mostly "ease of use" issues. PSVGameSD doesn't support digital games yet, no auto trimming, you have to mount each game and they can't be installed as bubbles. For most people, Maidumps and VPKs were "good enough" for them, and now that people actually understand why NoNpDRM is good it's the new "it's good enough". I think once PSVGameSD matures more it'll be more widely accepted. But shitty pirates would rather use "good enough" trash than still-being-developed good...stuff.

I think it's great that we have full, 100% 1:1 dumps myself. Once digital games and auto trimming are supported I plan on backing up all my games as .PSV

You can really tell who understands the scene, dumps, and everything else.. and those who are just pirates who want something that works.

I don't know how people can't see that THIS is the tool that everyone should be looking at. This is the tool that would set the benchmark.

I think people are confusing the fact that tool is what doesn't support the digital game dumping and trimming of the .psv is just what's not implemented in the tool. It's not a limitation of the .psv architecture.

Ah well, once this goes mainstream with future releases, people will eat their words

 

[invaderyoyo]

You can really tell who understands the scene, dumps, and everything else.. and those who are just pirates who want something that works.

I don't know how people can't see that THIS is the tool that everyone should be looking at. This is the tool that would set the benchmark.

I think people are confusing the fact that tool is what doesn't support the digital game dumping and trimming of the .psv is just what's not implemented in the tool. It's not a limitation of the .psv architecture.

Ah well, once this goes mainstream with future releases, people will eat their words

I understand perfectly and for me it's not worth the extra effort, right now. In the future? Probably.

 

[Madridi]

I understand perfectly and for me it's not worth the extra effort, right now. In the future? Probably.

That's the problem. It's not about what YOU want or I want. It's what the scene is missing.

No one is stopping you from being perfectly happy using mai or vitamin if you are just looking for a tool that "just works" (though you can easily lose your save, but I'll pretend that issue doesn't even exist)

Fact is, this is THE tool to generate exact, untouched images, and those images are mounted just like a real cart is mounted.

As for nonpdrm, it's a good tool to play all games without any issues, and while the files are untouched (disregarding the fake license generation), it's still not an image file. It's a set of extracted files. tldr: Great workaround, but not the perfect solution.

You said it's "not worth the extra effort". Then you don't get it. It's not about the effort. This is just a first release of what the tool could do. It's about creating a framework for the .psv format, a real vita cart image file. As for additional features such as extending support to digital games and trimming, those are already planned for future releases. If it was a limitation of what the tool or psv format could never do, then I would understand any criticism to the tool if it could never do the above. But it isn't. It's just that it's not implemented yet

----

@yifan_lu:

I'm wondering about something that you may be able to clear up:
If I have 2 dumps of the same game, will they generate exact dumps (same sha-256 or md5)?

If yes, doesnt the retail game has some sort of header file that would make the cart unique? Images for the 3ds do have header files, which would make dumping the same game using a different cart generate in a different checksum, though removing the header file from the image makes all images of the same game have the exact checksum. Fortunately, that header file is not needed to play the game. It is however needed for online play (which I know isn't possible on henkaku anyways on 3.60 but that's besides the point)

The reason the above would be dangerous, similarly to the 3ds, sharing an image with the unique header of the game makes all of those who play that image file in risk of getting banned (again, with the current situation on 3.60, this is meaningless but it's still beside the point)

If not, doesn't the vita have some of mechanism to differentiate each cart? Like a serial or cart_id number or something somewhere.

I also remember reading you mentioned somewhere you didn't want to include many info in the metadata. Any reason why? From my standpoint, the more info the better?

Thanks

 

[invaderyoyo]

That's the problem. It's not about what YOU want or I want. It's what the scene is missing.

No one is stopping you from being perfectly happy using mai or vitamin if you are just looking for a tool that "just works" (though you can easily lose your save, but I'll pretend that issue doesn't even exist)

Fact is, this is THE tool to generate exact, untouched images, and those images are mounted just like a real cart is mounted.

As for nonpdrm, it's a good tool to play all games without any issues, and while the files are untouched (disregarding the fake license generation), it's still not an image file. It's a set of extracted files. tldr: Great workaround, but not the perfect solution.

You said it's "not worth the extra effort". Then you don't get it. It's not about the effort. This is just a first release of what the tool could do. It's about creating a framework for the .psv format, a real vita cart image file. As for additional features such as extending support to digital games and trimming, those are already planned for future releases. If it was a limitation of what the tool or psv format could never do, then I would understand any criticism to the tool if it could never do the above. But it isn't. It's just that it's not implemented yet

----

@yifan_lu:

I'm wondering about something that you may be able to clear up:
If I have 2 dumps of the same game, will they generate exact dumps (same sha-256 or md5)?

If yes, doesnt the retail game has some sort of header file that would make the cart unique? Images for the 3ds do have header files, which would make dumping the same game using a different cart generate in a different checksum, though removing the header file from the image makes all images of the same game have the exact checksum. Fortunately, that header file is not needed to play the game. It is however needed for online play (which I know isn't possible on henkaku anyways on 3.60 but that's besides the point)

The reason the above would be dangerous, similarly to the 3ds, sharing an image with the unique header of the game makes all of those who play that image file in risk of getting banned (again, with the current situation on 3.60, this is meaningless but it's still beside the point)

If not, doesn't the vita have some of mechanism to differentiate each cart? Like a serial or cart_id number or something somewhere.

I also remember reading you mentioned somewhere you didn't want to include many info in the metadata. Any reason why? From my standpoint, the more info the better?

Thanks

I don't get it because it's not worth it to me? In reality everyone gets it. This thing makes perfect 1 to 1 backups of vita cartridges, it's not hard to understand. People are having trouble seeing the value in that and can you blame them? The cons outweigh the pros for MOST people as of right now. If you're an archivist or something, sure go ahead and use this tool. If not, you will gain absolutely nothing by using this instead of NoNpDrm. Why is this the tool that "everyone should be looking at"?

Mai and Vitamin had lots of problems and some games were even unplayable. NoNpDrm has no problems that I'm aware of. I can even use PS Plus to backup/restore saves. It's not the same.

 

[Ryccardo]

It's WiiU WUD vs NUS (app) vs Loadiine (extracted) again, WUD or WUX (trimmed) is the only format to perfectly represent the contents of an original bluray, and it can be converted to the "more practical" format without loss of signature/license while you can't go in the opposite direction, but as long as there won't be card emulators like Sky3ds or bootleg cards "nobody" will gain from the format, at which point if ever it will be too late to redump most stuff

 

[Madridi]

I don't get it because it's not worth it to me? In reality everyone gets it. This thing makes perfect 1 to 1 backups of vita cartridges, it's not hard to understand. People are having trouble seeing the value in that and can you blame them? The cons outweigh the pros for MOST people as of right now. If you're an archivist or something, sure go ahead and use this tool. If not, you will gain absolutely nothing by using this instead of NoNpDrm. Why is this the tool that "everyone should be looking at"?

Mai and Vitamin had lots of problems and some games were even unplayable. NoNpDrm has no problems that I'm aware of. I can even use PS Plus to backup/restore saves. It's not the same.

I think you are losing the chain of the conversation here.
The chain started with Billy's post on why .psv format was receiving hate. Tom's reply, followed by mine, was related to that.
Your post however (which was a quote to me) with the explanation above, is related to preference.

That's 2 different topics there. Developers dont care about what people want, they care about making something proper. Hence why I said, people don't get it.

It's WiiU WUD vs NUS (app) vs Loadiine (extracted) again, WUD or WUX (trimmed) is the only format to perfectly represent the contents of an original bluray, and it can be converted to the "more practical" format without loss of signature/license while you can't go in the opposite direction, but as long as there won't be card emulators like Sky3ds or bootleg cards "nobody" will gain from the format, at which point if ever it will be too late to redump most stuff

Perfect example. While NUS (app) files is what we have for the current hacking method, there is no doubt that WUD format is the image format standard to look at scene wise. It's not about convenience. It's not about preference. It's about what's proper.
Just because WUD format results in 24GB files or whatever, doesn't mean it should get hate because "NUS files are smaller and works". Two different issues.

 

[Billy Acuña]

Let's be honest.
Nowdays we can use vitamin/mai dumps because those works for pirates, but in 10 years when the Vita gets old and we will go on emulation for Vita games, we will find no proper dumps of most of the Vita games because we did stick on vitamin/mai dumps (if emulators even support those formats), we could only find a small portion of PSV format games and for most of the games we will only find crappy dumps with the same issues that we encounter nowdays (random crashes, save corruptions and stuff).
This is not about convenience, is about games preservation as Yifan stated before.

 

[Burai-ha]

Let's be honest.
Nowdays we can use vitamin/mai dumps because those works for pirates, but in 10 years when the Vita gets old and we will go on emulation for Vita games, we will find no proper dumps of most of the Vita games because we did stick on vitamin/mai dumps (if emulators even support those formats), we could only find a small portion of PSV format games and for most of the games we will only find crappy dumps with the same issues that we encounter nowdays (random crashes, save corruptions and stuff).
This is not about convenience, is about games preservation as Yifan stated before.

I don't think there will ever be a fully-fledged Vita emulator, to be really honest.

 

[invaderyoyo]

I think you are losing the chain of the conversation here.
The chain started with Billy's post on why .psv format was receiving hate. Tom's reply, followed by mine, was related to that.
Your post however (which was a quote to me) with the explanation above, is related to preference.

That's 2 different topics there. Developers dont care about what people want, they care about making something proper. Hence why I said, people don't get it.


Perfect example. While NUS (app) files is what we have for the current hacking method, there is no doubt that WUD format is the image format standard to look at scene wise. It's not about convenience. It's not about preference. It's about what's proper.
Just because WUD format results in 24GB files or whatever, doesn't mean it should get hate because "NUS files are smaller and works". Two different issues.

No, I'm trying to address the idea that people "don't get it" and that they were content using mai/vitamim. This isn't true for most people. We all know that vitamin and mai were a mess.

 

[Lordjontan]

Right now Nonpdrm is better in practical terms, it doesn't have any problem so...
And people must be free to choose the format they want, if somebody wants to use Vitamin 1.0 is his problem.
That psvgamesd master race is ridiculous.

 

[Ryccardo]

I don't think there will ever be a fully-fledged Vita emulator, to be really honest.

You'd better hope it would, as full security chip emulation would mean 3.61+ hacks ᕙ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ᕗ

 

[Madridi]

@yifan_lu:

I'm wondering about something that you may be able to clear up:
If I have 2 dumps of the same game, will they generate exact dumps (same sha-256 or md5)?

If yes, doesnt the retail game has some sort of header file that would make the cart unique? Images for the 3ds do have header files, which would make dumping the same game using a different cart generate in a different checksum, though removing the header file from the image makes all images of the same game have the exact checksum. Fortunately, that header file is not needed to play the game. It is however needed for online play (which I know isn't possible on henkaku anyways on 3.60 but that's besides the point)

The reason the above would be dangerous, similarly to the 3ds, sharing an image with the unique header of the game makes all of those who play that image file in risk of getting banned (again, with the current situation on 3.60, this is meaningless but it's still beside the point)

If not, doesn't the vita have some of mechanism to differentiate each cart? Like a serial or cart_id number or something somewhere.

I also remember reading you mentioned somewhere you didn't want to include many info in the metadata. Any reason why? From my standpoint, the more info the better?

Thanks

@yifan_lu
Could you shed a light on this?

 

[Billy Acuña]

Hope this ain't a dead project, I'm looking forward for SD2Vita support

 

[Madridi]

Hope this ain't a dead project, I'm looking forward for SD2Vita support

There hasn't been any activity since it was released (not publicly anyway). I don't believe it's a dead project given the work that they put into this. But as of the current release, it has numerous issues.

 

[Dvdxploitr]

I can't get it to work.....I have tried different sources in case the other sources were bad or corrupt in some way and Virtual GC keeps crashing out....I did get lucky and it dumped a game one time and when I tried to run it, the game crashed and froze the system forcing a reboot.....

 

[Xandrid]

I can't get it to work.....I have tried different sources in case the other sources were bad or corrupt in some way and Virtual GC keeps crashing out....I did get lucky and it dumped a game one time and when I tried to run it, the game crashed and froze the system forcing a reboot.....

You can't use this format to play games, it's for either archival purposes or maybe a future emulator..... one of those, or both

 

[gnmmarechal]

You can't use this format to play games, it's for either archival purposes or maybe a future emulator..... one of those, or both

Actually, a tool was provided to mount the images as cartridges.

 

[Xandrid]

Actually, a tool was provided to mount the images as cartridges.

Well the fact of the matter is that you can't play games with this format lol