If you’re a homebrew developer (or you’re not one yet but want to learn!) looking for a nice little contest, or simply to release something cool for the PSP, here is the 2022 PSP Game Jam, brought to you by Iridescence and the PSP Homebrew Community.

Update: in a previous version of this article, we stated the prize was a total of $175, but this has been increased to $410 after publication of the article. We’ve corrected accordingly.

Some of you might recall they had already organized such an event back in 2020, and they are back after a hiatus last year. This is a lightweight, lighthearted and fun contest so I encourage everyone to join, even as a learning experience!

In 2020, the winner of the contest was Bloodshot.

What’s the PSP Game Jam 2022?

RE:Start! The 2022 PSP Game Jam is a homebrew contest open to everyone. You’ll have to create a game for the Sony PlayStation portable, and submit it to the contest between October 7th 12PM EST and October 21st 12PM EST. The three best entries, as judged by the community, will be awarded $100, $50, and $25 respectively, for a total of $175 in prizes. The prizes are now as follows:

• 1st: $175
• 2nd: $125
• 3rd: $75
• 4th to 10th: $5 each

This year’s theme: It’s not a glitch, it’s a feature!

From my perspective, the theme should be inspirational to get you started, but then it’s up to your own interpretation. You could build a platformer, an RPG, a sandbox game, etc… There are already 13 participants so it’s already shaping to be a good competition this year

From the official page of the contest:

All games must be compiled and ready to be played on the Sony PlayStation Portable. If your game runs in an emulator, but not the hardware, your entry will be disqualified. You are allowed to submit a game that is cross-platform. Be sure to use the #testing channel on our discord server! You can use any tool to make a game on PSP.

Submissions will be evaluated democratically based upon the following criteria:

Adherence to Theme: Does the submission reflect the stated theme?
Creativity: How unique is a given submission?
Visual/Aesthetic Quality: Does the game have a coherent and pleasant visual theme?
Soundtrack: Does the game have a quality soundtrack (sound effects, music, etc.)?
Clarity: Does the game make it somewhat obvious what you’re intended to do? (Make sure it’s not confusing for an end user)
Enjoyability: How much do you personally enjoy this game?

Additional Info For Entrants:

It would be appreciated if your code was open sourced and hosted on a service like GitHub or GitLab for others to contribute to your game if they wished to continue your idea. The PSP Homebrew Community encourages open source development! Join the discord! We will set up a channel soon for the gamejam!

Below will be useful links, tutorials, and tools to use:

Toolchain:

PSP Toolchain: https://github.com/pspdev/psptoolchain 
Rust-PSP Toolchain: https://github.com/overdrivenpotato/rust-psp
Zig-PSP Toolchain (zig v0.8.1): https://github.com/zPSP-Dev/Zig-PSP
Installing Toolchains: https://psp-dev.org/doku.php?id=tutorial:toolchain_setup

Interpreters:

OneLUA (lua): http://onelua.x10.mx
LuaPlayerPlus (lua): https://github.com/Rinnegatamante/lua-player-plus
StacklessPSP (python): https://code.google.com/archive/p/pspstacklesspython/
Scratch on PSP Block Editor: https://snap.berkeley.edu/project?username=pspscratch&projectname=ScratchToPSP
Scratch on PSP Interpreter: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/933676293843714068/1018618737550700554/Sc…

Engines:

Gen7 Engine: https://gbatemp.net/threads/gen7-engine-visual-programming-engine-for-switch.522…
Stardust-Celeste: https://github.com/Iridescence-Technologies/Stardust-Celeste

Libraries:

GLib2D: https://github.com/libcg/gLib2D.git
QuickGame API: https://github.com/IridescentRose/QuickGame
OSLibv2: https://github.com/dogo/oslibmodv2.git

Tutorials:

PSP-DEV Text Tutorials: https://psp-dev.org/doku.php
PSP-DEV Video Tutorials: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwIRcsl57ziPsDYCi6bgO-W9qqAwuW3Mk
More Video Tutorials (including Graphics, Scratch, QuickGame): Iridescence

Iridescence has published an announcement video on his youtube channel to rehash the details available on the contest’s page:

How do I enter the contest?

1. Go to the contest’s page on itch.io then click on “Join JAM”
2. Check the community’s discord server for help and details

The post RE:Start! The 2022 PSP Game Jam, PSP Homebrew contest with $410 in prizes! appeared first on Wololo.net.

RE:Start! The 2022 PSP Game Jam is a PSP Homebrew contest starting tomorrow brought to you by Iridescence and the PSP Homebrew Community. The contest has now raised $550 in prizes (to be awarded to the creators best homebrews of the competition) thanks to donators, up from $175 when we first talked about it. What this means in particular is that now the homebrews that end up between the 4th and 10th positions will get $25 each (was $5 each initially).

This is now shaping to be the biggest PSP homebrew competition in years! The contest now has a donation campaign if you want to help increase the prize pool even more.

What’s the PSP Game Jam 2022?

RE:Start! The 2022 PSP Game Jam is a homebrew contest open to everyone. You’ll have to create a game for the Sony PlayStation portable, and submit it to the contest between October 7th 12PM EST and October 21st 12PM EST. The three best entries, as judged by the community, will be awarded prizes as follows:

• 1st: $175
• 2nd: $125
• 3rd: $75
• 4th to 10th: $25 each (was $5 before)

This year’s theme: It’s not a glitch, it’s a feature!

From my perspective, the theme should be inspirational to get you started, but then it’s up to your own interpretation. You could build a platformer, an RPG, a sandbox game, etc… There are already 13 participants so it’s already shaping to be a good competition this year

The contest rules have been slightly updated since our last article, in particular the organizers have added the precision that you can use any game engine to make your homebrew, not onlythose for which they provide links or guides.

From the official page of the contest:

All games must be compiled and ready to be played on the Sony PlayStation Portable. If your game runs in an emulator, but not the hardware, your entry will be disqualified. You are allowed to submit a game that is cross-platform. Be sure to use the #testing channel on our discord server! You can use any tool to make a game on PSP, including visual editors and prebuilt engines like RenPy, Quake, and more.

You cannot start creating your game assets or developing code* before the specified start date. 

*You are allowed to create an engine or utility library, so long as said engine or utility library does not implement your game’s actual mechanics. This engine or utility library can have things that may set up components like sprite drawing, tile mapping, generic physics, etc. that can be used. An example of a disallowed engine or utility library would be in a final submission that was a flight simulator, the engine defines an object called Plane that has all or most of the features in the final version. 

Submissions will be evaluated democratically based upon the following criteria:

Adherence to Theme: Does the submission reflect the stated theme?
Creativity: How unique is a given submission?
Visual/Aesthetic Quality: Does the game have a coherent and pleasant visual theme?
Soundtrack: Does the game have a quality soundtrack (sound effects, music, etc.)?
Clarity: Does the game make it somewhat obvious what you’re intended to do? (Make sure it’s not confusing for an end user)
Enjoyability: How much do you personally enjoy this game?

Additional Info For Entrants:

It would be appreciated if your code was open sourced and hosted on a service like GitHub or GitLab for others to contribute to your game if they wished to continue your idea. The PSP Homebrew Community encourages open source development! Join the discord! We will set up a channel soon for the gamejam!

It’d also be nice if your projects on GitHub or GitLab were set up to be Hacktoberfest repositories! Find out more here: 

Below will be useful links, tutorials, and tools to use: https://hacktoberfest.com/

Toolchain:

PSP Toolchain: https://github.com/pspdev/psptoolchain 
Rust-PSP Toolchain: https://github.com/overdrivenpotato/rust-psp
Zig-PSP Toolchain (zig v0.8.1): https://github.com/zPSP-Dev/Zig-PSP
Installing Toolchains: https://psp-dev.org/doku.php?id=tutorial:toolchain_setup

Interpreters:

OneLUA (lua): http://onelua.x10.mx
LuaPlayerPlus (lua): https://github.com/Rinnegatamante/lua-player-plus
StacklessPSP (python): https://code.google.com/archive/p/pspstacklesspython/
Scratch on PSP Block Editor: https://snap.berkeley.edu/project?username=pspscratch&projectname=ScratchToPSP
Scratch on PSP Interpreter: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/933676293843714068/1018618737550700554/Sc…

Engines:

Gen7 Engine: https://gbatemp.net/threads/gen7-engine-visual-programming-engine-for-switch.522…
Stardust-Celeste: https://github.com/Iridescence-Technologies/Stardust-Celeste

Libraries:

GLib2D: https://github.com/libcg/gLib2D.git
QuickGame API: https://github.com/IridescentRose/QuickGame
OSLibv2: https://github.com/dogo/oslibmodv2.git

Tutorials:

PSP-DEV Text Tutorials: https://psp-dev.org/doku.php
PSP-DEV Video Tutorials: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwIRcsl57ziPsDYCi6bgO-W9qqAwuW3Mk
More Video Tutorials (including Graphics, Scratch, QuickGame): Iridescence

If you want to contribute to the funds, donate here: https://www.givesendgo.com/restartpspgamejam22

Iridescence has published an announcement video on his youtube channel to rehash the details available on the contest’s page:

How do I enter the contest?

1. Go to the contest’s page on itch.io then click on “Join JAM”
2. Check the community’s discord server for help and details

The post 2022 PSP Game Jam Homebrew Competition starts tomorrow, prizes now at $550 ! appeared first on Wololo.net.

Vita dev Rinnegatamante has pushed a significant update to the latest Nightly build of VitaDB Downloader, an “app store” for your homebrew-enabled PS Vita. This update adds auto-installation of libshacccg.suprx, a file necessary for many homebrew games and ports. Installing this file was a somewhat painful manual process until now.

Recent updates of VitaDB Downloader also added support for PSP Homebrew games. With the amount of features and quality of life enhancements, this is becoming the best appstore for the PS Vita.

What is VitaDB Downloader

VitaDB is the most used Vita app repository for owners of homebrew-enabled PS Vita consoles. The database hosts thousands of utility software and games, with a website where people can manually download the homebrew themselves for manual installation on their console. It also provides an API, allowing developers to access the database programmatically. This means in particular that there are several Vita app “homebrew stores” that let you install games directly from your Vita, leveraging this repository.

Multiple “homebrew installers” exist that leverage VitaDB, such as Vita Homebrew Browser (VHBB), Easy VPK, Better homebrew Browser, and more. Which one you’ll use depends on your personal preferences, but Rinnegatamante (who developed and maintains VitaDB) has shown frustration that they all seem to have issues.

It’s in this context that he decided to release VitaDB Downloader, which can be considered as the “official” VitaDB client.

VitaDB Downloader Features

• Searching by author/homebrew name.
• Filtering apps by category.
• Viewing of all available screenshots for apps.
• Sorting apps by different criteria (Most Recent, Oldest, Most Downloaded, Least Downloaded, Alphabetical)
• Showing of several metadata for apps.
• Download and installation of vpk+data files or vpk only at user discretion. (No more need to redownload data files everytime you want to update an homebrew for which data files are unchanged)
• Minimalistic GUI based on dear ImGui with focus on robustness over fancyness.
• Fast boot time (Only the very first boot will take a bit more due to app icons download. Successive boots will be basically instant)
• Low storage usage (Screenshots are served on demand, the only data that are kept on storage are app icons with a complessive storage usage lower than 10 MBs).
• Tracking of installed apps, even when not installed through VitaDB Downloader, and of their state (outdated/updated).
• Background music (You can customize it by changing ux0:data/VitaDB/bg.ogg with your own preferred track).
• Background image/video (You can customize it by changing ux0:data/VitaDB/bg.mp4 or ux0:data/VitaDB/bg.png).
• Support for themes (Customization of GUI elements via ux0:data/VitaDB/themes.ini) with built-in downloader and manager.

In our experience, VitaDB Downloader has proven to be extremely reliable, packed with useful features, and blazingly fast.

Controls

• Left Analog or Up/Down Arrows = Move selection
• Circle = Cancel selection
• Left Arrow (When selection canceled) = Return to Search textbox (Top of the list)
• Start = Show/Hide screenshots for selected homebrew
• L/R = Change homebrews sorting
• X = Install homebrew

VitaDB Downloader Nightly build – what’s new

There’s been 2 new releases since we last spoke about VitaDB Downloader (which was release 1.4) not counting the Nightly build we’re talking about today, so we’re putting the changelogs for all these updates below.

VitaDB Downloader 2022-10-19 Nightly build

• Auto installation of libshacccg.suprx

You can see it in action in the video below:

VitaDB Downloader 1.6

• Fixed a bug causing VitaDB Downloader to be reported always as Outdated.
• Added shadowing support for texts for themes (TextShadow).
• Enhanced icons loading time. Now scrolling through apps will be considerably faster.
• Fixed a bug causing potential filesystem issues due to how icons were stored internally on storage.
• Fixed a bug that caused app bootup to take more time the more apps got downloaded from the app itself.
• Added support for PSP homebrews download and installation (L will now cycle through Vita Homebrews, PSP Homebrews, Themes).
• Moved version value to top left of the screen.
• Added info about current mode (Vita Homebrews, PSP Homebrews, Themes) on the top right of the screen.
• Improved version checking for installed homebrews made in Unity, Game Maker Studio, Godot or Lua. Now they will be correctly detected as Outdated if they are so.
• Made so that Vita homebrews icons are rendered as rounded.
• Made so that, if connection is lost during a download, the download will get resumed at the point where it stopped instead of failing the download.

VitaDB Downloader 1.5

• Fixed a bug causing potential crashes if you had a few specific apps installed with a very big eboot.bin file.
• Fixed a bug causing more than a popup to not always show in certain circmustances.
• Fixed a bug causing the first icon of an app being shown after a sort mode change, a search or a filter change to be wrong.
• Fixed a bug causing cached hash files to be incorrectly generated when installing an app (Resulting in slower boot times).
• Fixed a bug that prevented changelog parser to properly escape ” char.
• Made cleanup check for leftover unfinished app installs more robust.
• Added app name and version on changelog viewer titlebar.
• Properly aligned Filter text to Search text.
• Added some padding between Filter and Sort mode.
• Added possibility to customize font.
• Added possibility to properly customize any leftover uncustomizable element of the GUI.
• Moved missing icons download from everytime you hit an app lacking the icon to boot time (for all of them).
• Made so that Sort mode can be cycled only with R.
• Added themes downloader and manager with single theme and shuffling themes support (Reachable with L).
• Moved from SoLoud to SDL2 Mixer as audio backend. (Way faster booting time for the background audio playback).
• Fixed a bug causing a crash when opening the changelog viewer in certain circumstances.
• Fixed a bug causing VitaDB Downloader to be reported always as Outdated.

Download VitaDB Downloader

• You can Download VitaDB Downloader here.
• Themes can be downloaded here

Note
The Auto Installer for libshacccg.suprx can also be downloaded separately here (nickname ShaRKBR33D), if you need that file but don’t want to use VitaDB Downloader. Although to be honest, at this point given the benefits you’re getting with VitaDB Downloader, I don’t see why you wouldn’t want to install it

Install like any other VPK (reminder, you need a hacked PS Vita!). Once installed, you should be able to install any other homebrew (that is, those present on VitaDB) from the VitaDB Downloader interface!

source: Rinnegatamante

The post VitaDB Downloader updates add libshacccg.suprx autoinstall, and PSP Homebrew support appeared first on Wololo.net.

The 2022 PSP Game Jam is now over, with 20 entries and $650 worth of prizes. There are cash prizes for the best 10 entries, with in particular $200 for the first prize.

To vote, all you have to do is rate each game on their respective itch.io page. Time to dust off that old PSP of yours, then go give those PSP games a try! And don’t forget these were created within a two weeks time range

The full list of entries is here: https://itch.io/jam/psp-2022-game-jam/entries

• ShadowPong by stereofuture which is a game where you play as the pong ball or packet and try to get into a port (a hole)
• Untitled by KorigamiK which is a simple cross platform game based on Raycasting. It features puzzle-like mechanics as the user has multiple levels to solve.
• GlitchCade by CafeHaine which is an arcade style game with intermittent glitches trying to mess you up.
• Phase by Jormii which is a platformer where you gain inertia to phase through obstacles and get to the end of each level. It’s a challenging puzzle game that takes time to master.
• Something is Going Wrong! by idstudio (iyenal) which is a small story experience in a 3D world, where you eventually fight a boss and his skulls to remove the glitches in the world.
• Buggin’ Out by thegoodjakeward which is a 3D platformer where you catch bugs before time runs out. The bugs will try to mess you up though!
• Kitty Must Escape by jenneygames.com which is a 2D top-down style puzzle and stealth game where a cat tries to escape from its room.
• Glitchy PSP by luigi2498 (also on YT) which is a platformer-style game where you seek to help an unfinished program become complete again by collecting various computer parts.
• Noodle Box! by AlexRamallo which is a mashup of Snake and Tetris. You play as a snake and are in charge of packaging valuables using the game mechanics.
• Cowboy Coder John by Bastiaan which is a game where you have to move your keyboard cursor to revert changes actively happening in the code. If you go below a certain percentage, you lose it all.
• The Balls by naskivik which is
• Mine, Robot! by beedge19 which is a game where you play as a mine-diffusal robot with a sometimes glitchy sensor. Go through multiple levels to diffuse all the bombs before time runs out.
• PSPickr by joel16 which is a fun puzzle game where you have to choose the odd one out of a grid of 16 colors.
• Glitch TV by gremlinsoftware which is a game where you have to maintain the running program on a TV, amid a series of glitches 
• Medieval Tactics by psjuan97 which is a turn-based strategy game with a few “glitches” that you weren’t expecting
• Strato-Naut by anashalideen which is an open world space survival game where you have to collect resources to survive before a rescue crew can reach you!
• Buggy Mess by MEGAgameBoy which is a short game where you get to play the newest and hottest game on the market after making your way to the store.
• PSP Car Dodger by HendersonSoftworks which is a small 2D game where you dodge incoming cars until you make it
• Crystalline by Player1041 and WholesomeIsland which is a small survival game where you run around a stage and dodge enemies.
• Founder of Nations which is a 2D Infinite World Action Adventure RPG Demo. You have an infinitely generating world, a few allies to get started, and the ability to collect resources and build your own structures.

I personally really like the concept of Cowboy coder John and Something is Going Wrong, if only for these games’ strict adherence to this year’s theme, which was “it’s not a glitch, it’s a feature”.

Which games did you like? Let us know in the comments.

The post “2022 PSP Game Jam” Homebrew competition is now over, time to vote! appeared first on Wololo.net.

It’s a new release for Retroarch today, with the popular multi platform emulator frontend going to version 1.14.0. New versions of retroarch typically bring significant updates for all emulated consoles (cores) but also improvements for all running platforms, so be sure to check it out.

Retroarch is not an emulator in itself, but a unified GUI for multiple emulators, which helps centralizing controls, emulator management, etc…

Sadly, there is still no official PS4 support (I mean specifically to Run Retroarch on the PS4, not to emulate a PS4 on Retroarch!) despite it being advertised as “coming soon” on their website for months.

What’s new in Retroarch 1.14.0 ?

This is what the changelog looks like this time. There doesn’t seem to be anything specific for my favorite platforms (The Nintendo and Sony portable consoles), but it’s still packed with some significant improvements. In particular, in their “May/December 2022” progress report, the team have mentioned significant improvements in multiple cores. (Cores represent the emulation modules in retroarch, for example the NEStopia core is a NES emulator).

Getting upgrades this year are MojoZork, NEStopia, NXEngine, mGBA, FBNeo, MelonDS, Virtual Jaguar, Caprice 32, 2048, Dolphin, PCSX ReARMed, Mupen64Plus Next, Tyrquake, Beetle Lynx, Beetle PSX, Beetle NGP, Beetle PCE, Beetle PCE Fast, Beetle Saturn, Beetle VB, ProSystem, 81, FCEUmm, Mesen, LRMAME, LRMAME 2033, LRMAME 2033 Plus, LRMAME 2010, TB Dual, Gambatte, NeoCD, Picodrive, ECWolf, PX68K, VBA-M, Mu, Desmume, Genesis Plus GX, Genesis Plus GX Wide, Citra, SameBoy, Boom3, SameCDI, Atari 800, gpSP, Race, Opera. Wow…

Now, the names of the cores themselves don’t always describe what the emulator is for, but it’s probably enough to say that Retroarch has hundreds of Cores, meaning they support most retro consoles, and even have cores for very specific games such as “Boom 3”, a Doom 3 emulator. Your experience with each given core might vary depending on the platform you’re running it on though, and not all cores are available on all platforms.

• AUDIO/COREAUDIO/APPLE: Allow coreaudio3 driver to work with audio devices that have 2 or more output channels
• CHEEVOS: Fix construction of Cheevos badge path
• CLI: Fixed not getting any output when running –version or –features without –verbose
• CLI: Fixed crash when running empty – parameter (it proceeded to content loading)
• CLI: Reformatted –features to require less rows and to be more consistent
• CLI: Added -V shorthand for –version
• CLI: Tab removal + whitespace nits
• CONFIG/MIDI: Prevent MIDI startup error with old configurations
• D3D11: Fix when using shaders with TATE mode arcades etc
• D3D12: Fix when using shaders with TATE mode arcades etc
• D3D12: Added support for break on errors (development aid – define DEVICE_DEBUG to use)
• D3D12: Added support for DRED (device remove extended data) (development aid – define DEVICE_DEBUG to use)
• D3D12: Made D3D12 viewport and scissors to behave more like Vulkan drivers (or be more correct)
• D3D12: Fixed some shaders not appearing with the d3d12 driver – this reintroduces a validation error though but it seems to work as in not crash and is the old RA behaviour. Guess we need a different way of fixing the validation issue.
• D3D12: Fixed validation error on start up due to buffers not being setup correctly for one frame
• DATABASE/EXPLORE/VIEW: Bugfix – RGUI did not clear thumbnail on non-playlist items such as Save and Delete menu_explore_get_entry_playlist_index() returns -1 on invalid entries, but the variable where it was stored was unsigned
• DATABASE/EXPLORE/VIEW: Bugfix – XMB+Ozone cleared thumbnail in Quick Menu when navigating away from Run
• DRM/ODROID GO2: Implement get_video_size for DRM GL context driver
• FASTFORWARD: Restore framelimit on fastforward toggle. Fast-forward was broken after toggling vrr_runloop off, since it will force frame limit to 1.0 (even on every frame) and never restores it. So let’s make sure the wanted ratio is applied when toggling FF (Fastforward).
• FFMPEG CORE: Fix runtime error in FFmpeg core when build with FFmpeg n5.1.2 and OpenGL ES
• GFX/VIDEO FILTERS: (picoscale_256x_320x240) Added snn function to upscale Fuse (ZX Spectrum) core borderless output to 320×240. ZX Spectrum resolution of 256×192 was previously unsupported.
• HOTKEYS: Further reorder internal hotkey items for consistency and removed SEND_DEBUG_INFO, OVERLAY_NEXT and OSK from visible hotkey bind list. “Send Debug Info” stuff is removed as much as possible without breakage due to translation files.
• INPUT/AUTOCONFIG: Disable ‘pause on controller disconnect’ by default – was enabled by default on 1.13.0
• INPUT/MENU: Device Index menu refactor
• INPUT/OVERLAY: Fix analog drift blocking touch input (could occur on overlay_next if physical inputs shown on overlay)
• INPUT/OVERLAY: Fix overlay_next buttons lighting up in unison
• INPUT/OVERLAY: Skip meta keys in input_overlay_add_inputs (not supported by input_state_internal)
• INPUT/WINDOWS/WINRAW: Fix mouse position when using input overlay with mouse cursor
• INPUT/WINDOWS/WINRAW: Fixed mouse position to use the same method required for menu items and pointer when simulating input overlays with mouse, since it won’t work with multi mouse method
• INPUT/WINDOWS/WINRAW: Fixed passing mouse position to core also when using aforementioned method
• LEAPFROG: Add Leapfrog (LFx000) Target
• LOCALIZATION: Updates
• LOCALIZATION/INPUT/IME/MENU/ONSCREEN KEYBOARD: Extended IME and Korean OSK
• MENU: Cleanup of help texts
• MENU: Allow toggling info off with the same button
• MENU: Allow menu wallpaper/background reset. Let’s also remove the current wallpaper from the screen when pressing Start.
• MENU: Null driver shows with different color (Added for all menus the ability to show “disabled” items with a muted color)
• MENU/DRIVERS: Menu driver first, Audio Resampler removed because it is enough to exist under audio settings
• MENU/INPUT: Moved “Confirm Quit” to Input menu
• MENU/INPUT/HOTKEYS: Input hotkey menu completely overhauled to keep related entries together, and also adjusted some labels and sublabels
• MENU/OVERLAY: Fix overlays behind menu without core running. “Show Overlay Behind Menu” is currently broken with Ozone and XMB (with any other color theme than Plain) when running without a core.
• MENU/MATERIALUI: Fix home screen on first startup – no more stray entries
• MENU/OZONE: Allowed drawing sidebar and thumbnail bar background color also when core is running
• MENU/OZONE: Stopped using different padding and position for savestate thumbnails vs imageviewer
• MENU/OZONE: Removed gradient background effect when core is running, because some themes already have gradient background, which creates ugly rough steps
• MENU/OZONE: Fixed “Gray Light” theme from using the same background as “Gray Dark”, which makes selection cursor near impossible to see
• MENU/OZONE: Some whitespace corrections
• MENU/UX: Extend OFF menu value colors
• MENU/UX: Menu icon improvements – Menu Visibility icons (Quick Menu + Settings)
• MENU/UX: Menu icon improvements – Playlist Manager icons
• MENU/UX: Menu icon improvements – Explore icon as database icon
• MENU/UX: Menu icon improvements – View and filter icons as cursor icon (folder icon in GLUI)
• MENU/UX: Menu icon improvements – View save + delete icons
• MENU/UX: Menu icon improvements – Moved Explore + Views below Standalone Cores
• MENU/UX/OZONE: Removed icons from menus where others items don’t have icons, and added icons to menus where the rest have icons
• MENU/UX/OZONE: Changed the way “no icon” is handled from kludgy way of not drawing SUBSETTING icon
• MENU/UX/XMB: Changed playlist entry index positioning to bottom right when thumbnails are in vertical mode, because big lists will overlap with arrow and current “breadcrumb” icons when the position is next to current selection
• MENU/UX/XMB: Added a rather nasty hack to prevent showing wrong icons under Explore as “breadcrumb” icon
• MENU/UX/XMB: Optimized certain icon drawing loops (Main horizontal icons were looped even when not visible, and all previous “breadcrumb” icons were looped when only one certain was needed)
• MENU/UX/MATERIALUI: Fixed showing icons where there should not be any (Waitable Swapchains, Show Recording + Streaming)
• OSX/MACOS: Fixed Cocoa keyboard not allowing to map Analog stick
• PS2: Use the recently created ps2_drivers which makes easier the loading and init of all the drivers: Memory Card, USB, HDD, Audio, Controllers
• PS2: Adds exFat support for USB, and probably solves some unexpected issues when using an HDD driver for booting cores/games.
• SDL GFX: Fix no menu on start/blank screen issue.
• SRAM: Don’t init SRAM saving without content (gets rid of the redundant logging)

Download Retroarch 1.14.0

Head over to the Downloads section of the Retroarch Website to download the latest release for your platform of choice. As a reminder, you will need a hacked PS Vita or a hacked Switch in order to run Retroarch (and other homebrew) on these platforms.

Source: Retroarch Blog

The post Retroarch 1.14.0 Emulator released (Switch/PS Vita/PSP/3DS builds available and more) appeared first on Wololo.net.

Christmas has been a busy period in terms of releases for the console hacking scene. While we did write a few articles on some of these releases this week, a lot more releases happened over the past few days, and we couldn’t talk about everything fast enough. Here’s a short summary of what we saw for the scene:

PS5

• The first PS5 Custom Theme was released, to demonstrate usage of the PS5 Partition Mounter payload

PS4

• PS4 CFW Toolkit released by Al-Azif, decryption/encryption tool, paves the way for future full-fledged PS4 Custom Firmwares

• GoldHEN 2.3 released, the popular PS4 HEN brings plugin support
• PS4 NOR Validator is getting new releases almost daily recently, to improve support of the Syscon “downgrade” technique. New releases of PS4 NOR Validator here.
• LightningMods and MasterZorag released ItemzFlow, an open source PS4 Menu alternative that looks gorgeous!

• Reaper Studio and MultiTrainer II (tools to create PS4 patches and cheats) have been updated to 1.0.2 and 1.1.7 respectively. These releases bring compatibility with the latest GoldHEN, and bug fixes.

• the fpPS4 PS4 emulator is making crazy progress, almost on a daily basis. We reported on its status a few days ago here, but more games are already reported working. You can download the latest builds here. (click on the most recent action, then scroll down to artifacts for the download link. Must be logged in to github to see the link). Temmie’s launcher, a GUI for the emulator, can be found here.

PS Vita

• NetStream lets you watch Youtube on your PS Vita (official Youtube support was dropped years ago on the device by Sony). It was released by GrapheneCT.

• PS Vita 3.74 Kernel Exploit “HENlo” released by PlayStation hacker TheFloW
• ARK (PSP Custom Firmware within the PS Vita) version 4.19.2 fixes some bugs and adds a Christmas message every 12/25th
• The Vita3K PS Vita emulator keeps improving through daily builds. We last talked about the status of PS Vita emulation here.

• Apollo Save Tool for PS Vita was updated to 1.1.2

PS3

• Popular PS3 emulator RPCS3 basically now supports all PS3 games ever made.

PS2

• Howling Wolf & Chelsea over at PSX-Place released a showcase of XtremeEliteBoot+, a work-in-progress homebrew that serves as a launcher, an OSDSYS replacement and a fully fledged environment forPS2. XtremeEliteBoot+ lets you create your own plugins in lua to control its behavior, and mod it from the ground up. It is so powerful one can code a game inside its themes:

Nintendo Switch

• ENLBufferPwn was disclosed, a critical vulnerability impacting 3DS, Wii U, and Switch in Nintendo First party games

• L4T Ubuntu (Linux for Nintendo Switch) 5.0.0 was released.
• Hekate 6.0.0 and Nyx 1.5.0 were released.

I’m sure we missed a lot of other cool releases over the past few days. Let us know which ones in the comments!

The post Round-up of the holiday hacking scene releases you might have missed (Playstation, Nintendo) appeared first on Wololo.net.

Fans of old school point-and-click Adventure games rejoice. Available for your favorite platforms (Nintendo Switch, PS Vita, PS3, PSP, Windows, and much, much more), ScummVM 2.7.0 has just been released. This release brings compatibility for a few more games, and brings back Nintendo 3DS support, by the way.

What is ScummVM

Those of us who grew up in the nineties will probably fondly remember some of the old LucasArts and other point and click adventure games. Others… might still want to check the oddly dated but cute graphics of some of these games!

(and for a recent take you really need to

From the official ScummVM page:

ScummVM is a program which allows you to run certain classic graphical point-and-click adventure games, provided you already have their data files. The clever part about this: ScummVM just replaces the executables shipped with the games, allowing you to play them on systems for which they were never designed!

ScummVM supports many adventure games, including LucasArts SCUMM games (such as Monkey Island 1-3, Day of the Tentacle, Sam & Max, …), many of Sierra’s AGI and SCI games (such as King’s Quest 1-7, Space Quest 1-6, …), Discworld 1 and 2, Simon the Sorcerer 1 and 2, Beneath A Steel Sky, Lure of the Temptress, Broken Sword 1 and 2, Flight of the Amazon Queen, Gobliiins 1-3, The Legend of Kyrandia 1-3, many of Humongous Entertainment’s children’s SCUMM games (including Freddi Fish and Putt Putt games) and many more.

ScummVM 2.7.0. – What’s new

ScummVM 2.7.0 adds support for these games:

• Soldier Boyz
• Obsidian
• Pink Panther: Passport to Peril
• Pink Panther: Hokus Pokus Pink
• Adibou 2 “Environment”, “Read/Count 4 & 5” and “Read/Count 6 & 7”
• Driller/Space Station Oblivion
• Halls of the Dead: Faery Tale Adventure II
• Chop Suey, Eastern Mind, and 16 other Director 3 and Director 4 titles

New or revived platforms support:

• RetroMini RS90 (using OpenDingux)
• 1st generation Miyoo (New BittBoy, Pocket Go and PowKiddy Q90-V90-Q20) with TriForceX MiyooCFW
• Miyoo Mini
• KolibriOS
• 26-bit versions of RISC OS
• Nintendo 3DS

Additionally, this release improves support for the broken sword series, adds shader-based scalers, and predefined random seed.

See more details on the release notes.

Download ScummVM

You can download ScummVM for the platform of your choice from the official download page here. Tu run the game on PS Vita or Switch, you’ll need a hacked PS Vita or Hacked Nintendo Switch respectively.

The post Emulation: ScummVM 2.7.0 Released appeared first on Wololo.net.

The annual PSP Homebrew Developer conference (PSPHDC) is upon us, and no, it’s not a joke, it will happen on April 1st, from 1pm EST (5pm UTC). Tune in to their Youtube Channel (watch from the comfort of your home, or, I won’t judge, the office) for educative and entertaining talks about Homebrew development and hacks for Sony’s venerable portable console.

The conference will consist in short presentations about indie development (past, present, and future) for the portable console, as well about exploits.

Yes, the PSP is now fairly into the “retro” stage of a console’s life cycle, but it’s still in my opinion the best handheld that ever was! If you’re interested in console development, console exploits, or just curious in general, mark the date for a series of presentations on Youtube. Below, a more comprehensive list from the organizers:

The post Save the date! PSP Homebrew Developer Conference on April 1st, 2023 appeared first on Wololo.net.

ARK, the Custom Firmware for PSP (compatible with both PSP/Vita) has been quite active (thanks in particular to Acid_Snake, but also Meetpatty and Krazynez) for a few years now, and is regularly getting new updates. We rarely talk about it because the project is fairly stable, and at this point, you’re easier a convinced user of the Custom firmware on your PSP/Vita, or you’re not interested. This week though, Ark v20 was released, and it brings some significant improvements.

What’s ARK for PSP/PS Vita

The PSP is one of the best homebrew devices. It had a striving community, and a lot of developers pushed it to its limit, in particular with emulators that achieved incredible performance for those days (ok, I won’t pretend it’s the best way to play emulators nowadays though, but it still works great for older generation consoles such as the NES, SNES, GBA…).

Running a Custom firmware on the PSP turned a decent console into an insane beast. And the same remains true on the PS Vita: As the Vita has a full fledged PSP emulator embedded, it is possible (and recommended!) to install a PSP Custom Firmware on the PS Vita.

That’s where ARK comes into play, being a custom firmware that works for both the PSP and the PS Vita. It comes with impressive features (from the readme):

Features:

• Core system heavily updated from traditional CFW with new exclusive features.

• Inferno 2 Driver compatible with all formats (ISO, CSO, ZSO, JSO, CSOv2 and DAX).

• Popcorn controller for custom PS1 games. Compatible with PopsLoader V3 and V4i.

• Built-in No-DRM engine Stargate. Compatible with npdrm_free by qwikrazor87.

• Plugin support for PSP games, PS1 games and VSH (XMB), including the ability to enable and disable plugins per-game.

• Region Free playback of UMD Video on all PSP models. Change the region of your UMD drive on-the-fly.

• Compatible with all PSP models on firmwares 6.60 and 6.61.

• Compatible with all PS Vita models on firmware 2.10 up to 3.74, either official firmware or via Adrenaline.

• Compatible with 6.60 Testing Tool Firmware and Testkit Units.

• Compatible with 6.60 Development Tool Firmware and Devkit Units.

• Can be fully installed and booted on memory stick in compatible models via Time Machine.

• Can be used to unbrick any PSP using Despertar del Cementerio in combination with a Pandora or Baryon Sweeper

• Minimalistic: only 6 files installed on PSP flash, CFW extensions are installed on memory stick.

• Resistant to soft-bricks, removing the memory stick is enough to leave it in a vanilla state.

• Custom game launcher with built-in game categories, file browser, FTP server and client, modernized look and more.

• Fully configurable via the XMB.

• Improved and powerful Recovery app.

• Compatible with PRO Online and Xlink Kai.

• Compatible with Legacy Homebrew via eLoader and Leda.

• Compatible with cIPL and Infinity 2 bootloaders for permanent CFW.

What’s new in ARK 20

Here’s what’s new in Ark since 15, which was the last time we talked about it:

(emphasis mine)

Release 20

• Ported Time Machine and Despertar del Cementerio to ARK, allowing to unbrick PSPs and install and run the 6.61 firmware (plus ARK) on a memory stick.
• Created the Pentazemin compatibility layer that allows ARK to run inside Adrenaline, creating a Hybrid Custom Firmware that combines the features of both Custom Firmwares. Note: extremely experimental feature that’s still in development and there are known bugs.
• Created a new VSH Menu that combines both the Simple VSH Menu and the Advanced VSH Menu, no longer having to install it from a separate file to access its features.
• Re-wrote all static patches in the PSP compatibility layer to dynamic ones, fixing any issues with Testkits and Devkits.

Download and install ARK for PSP/PS Vita

To get Ark 4V20 stable, go to this specific release.

Alternatively, if you want the latest and greatest (automated builds with each commit), head over to the release section of the developer’s github to get the latest release.

Installation instructions in the readme.

The post PSP/PS Vita Release: ARK 4.20 appeared first on Wololo.net.

ARK, the Custom Firmware for PSP (compatible with both PSP/Vita) was recently updated to version 4.20, but it seems the latest release introduced a bug with 1.50 PSP Homebrew. If you like your old school, “kernel mode only” PSP homebrew, you might want to update to revision .05, which fixes the issue.

What’s ARK for PSP/PS Vita

The PSP is one of the best homebrew devices. It had a striving community, and a lot of developers pushed it to its limit, in particular with emulators that achieved incredible performance for those days (ok, I won’t pretend it’s the best way to play emulators nowadays though, but it still works great for older generation consoles such as the NES, SNES, GBA…).

Running a Custom firmware on the PSP turned a decent console into an insane beast. And the same remains true on the PS Vita: As the Vita has a full fledged PSP emulator embedded, it is possible (and recommended!) to install a PSP Custom Firmware on the PS Vita.

That’s where ARK comes into play, being a custom firmware that works for both the PSP and the PS Vita. It comes with impressive features (from the readme):

Features:

• Core system heavily updated from traditional CFW with new exclusive features.

• Inferno 2 Driver compatible with all formats (ISO, CSO, ZSO, JSO, CSOv2 and DAX).

• Popcorn controller for custom PS1 games. Compatible with PopsLoader V3 and V4i.

• Built-in No-DRM engine Stargate. Compatible with npdrm_free by qwikrazor87.

• Plugin support for PSP games, PS1 games and VSH (XMB), including the ability to enable and disable plugins per-game.

• Region Free playback of UMD Video on all PSP models. Change the region of your UMD drive on-the-fly.

• Compatible with all PSP models on firmwares 6.60 and 6.61.

• Compatible with all PS Vita models on firmware 2.10 up to 3.74, either official firmware or via Adrenaline.

• Compatible with 6.60 Testing Tool Firmware and Testkit Units.

• Compatible with 6.60 Development Tool Firmware and Devkit Units.

• Can be fully installed and booted on memory stick in compatible models via Time Machine.

• Can be used to unbrick any PSP using Despertar del Cementerio in combination with a Pandora or Baryon Sweeper

• Minimalistic: only 6 files installed on PSP flash, CFW extensions are installed on memory stick.

• Resistant to soft-bricks, removing the memory stick is enough to leave it in a vanilla state.

• Custom game launcher with built-in game categories, file browser, FTP server and client, modernized look and more.

• Fully configurable via the XMB.

• Improved and powerful Recovery app.

• Compatible with PRO Online and Xlink Kai.

• Compatible with Legacy Homebrew via eLoader and Leda.

• Compatible with cIPL and Infinity 2 bootloaders for permanent CFW.

What’s new in ARK 4.20.05

Download and install ARK for PSP/PS Vita

To get Ark 4V20.05 stable, go to this specific release.

Alternatively, if you want the latest and greatest (automated builds with each commit), head over to the release section of the developer’s github to get the latest release.

Installation instructions in the readme.

The post PSP/PS Vita Patch release: ARK 4.20.05, fixes 1.50 PSP Homebrew appeared first on Wololo.net.

Wait, don’t go! I’m not talking about real life murder here, just read along…

Crazy Hacks – What’s this all about?

In this new series of articles, we’ll be discussing imaginative hacks for various consoles and devices. Some became instantly popular at the time of their release, others were a bit obscure or got forgotten with time, but all of them were really crazy in this writer’s humble opinion. From “It’s so dumb it can’t possibly work” to “wait, how did they even think of that?” and everything in between, we hope you’ll enjoy this series.

A PSP Hack in which you have to die to get the goods

The year is 2009. The cat and mouse war has been raging between Sony and hackers. Sony just released Firmware 5.51, patching yet another exploit used by the Homebrew community to run unofficial games and tools.

Sure, all PSP-1000 models (the original “phat” PSP) are hackable in perpetuity thanks to the Pandora Battery. But newer models such as the PSP-2000, the PSP-3000, and the upcoming PSP Go all need software vulnerabilities in order to be hacked. It’s a never-ending struggle for the scene to find new ways to hack the console.

Some of these vulnerabilities can be found in the image processing libraries of the console (libtiff was a favorite of hackers back when consoles didn’t ship with Webkit), or in videogames, where injecting malicious data into save files could trigger buffer overflows to trick the device.

The most typical way to modify a game save file was to hijack a variable that most game developers didn’t bother to check for boundaries: the player’s name. Typically, the UI of a game would prevent you from entering, say, more than 8 characters for your name, but by manually editing the save file, one could enter much longer strings as the player name. This string would then often overflow into other variables of the code, allowing to take control of the execution pointer when done properly.

This is where hacker kgsws comes into the picture, with a very particular way to trigger such a buffer overflow exploit. You could hack your console alright, but you’d have to die first. We’re not talking about signing a deal with the devil, though.

The hacker created a typical “player name buffer overflow” exploit, but the exploit would only trigger when the game attempted to display your name. In Medal Of Honor Heroes, the easiest way to get the game to display your name on screen, was to die.

And this is how, in order to run this exploit, you’d have to nicely throw a grenade at your feet, and wait for it to blow you up.

The Medal of Honor Heroes exploit was used as the “base” for the creation of Half-Byte Loader, a popular Homebrew loader for the PSP. Before that Homebrew Loader was fully functional though, the exploit was replaced by the much more convenient Patapon 2 exploit, which used a similar buffer overflow vulnerability in a Demo, meaning the game was free, easy to find, and therefore a much better entry point than Medal Of Honor heroes.

PSP Medal Of honor Heroes – Where are they now?

Buffer Overflows in PSP games became such a prevalent way to hack the console in its late days (and the early days of the PS Vita) that at one point, a hacking team leaked 50 of them after an internal argument.

The MOHH hack itself never became widely used, having been replaced by more convenient options before it became really useful, but it certainly was one of the most shocking ways to trigger an exploit on the PSP!

kgsws remained active in the hacking community for years after this release. He became the first hacker to sign PSP Homebrews (allowing unofficial code to run on non-modified consoles),then more recently worked on the Nintendo Switch and also ported Doom to… Doom!

What other crazy hacks have you witnessed? Let us know in the comments!

The post Crazy hacks #1 – What do you mean I have to die to hack my PSP? appeared first on Wololo.net.

We talked a while ago about Baryon Sweeper, a series of tools and hardware schematics designed to unbrick later PSP models (which require more than the original pandora battery). Mimicking Sony’s official recovery tools, Baryon Sweeper allows to enter service mode and unbrick PSP 3000 models as well as pandora-incompatible versions of PSP 2000s.

Not all models are working with Baryon Sweeper though, in particular due to some missing encryption keys. PSP Hacker Davee has recovered some of these keys last week, unlocking unbrick options for PSP 3000 models 04g, 07g, 09g. At this point this means most PSPs can now be unbricked with the Baryon Sweeper tool. As I understand it, PSP Go and PSP Street remain the only unsupported models, that cannot be unbricked today with this method.

How to unbrick a PSP With Baryon Sweeper

As a reminder, if you have a PSP1000, or one of the early PSP2000 models, you simply need a pandora battery and Despertar Del Cementerio to unbrick your console. Baryon Sweeper is a more advanced technique for newer PSP models (some PSP2000s and all PSP3000s) which use a different way to enter service mode.

The hardware and tools required to use Baryon Sweeper are described on Khubik2’s github, and remain the same as what we covered back in 2021 (video tutorial).

For the newly released support, you’ll want to grab pysweeper (and follow the steps of the readme), but replace keys.json with this new version (courtesy of Zecoxao) until khubik2 updates his repository.

The post More PSPs can now be unbricked with new Baryon Sweeper keys appeared first on Wololo.net.

Tremendous progress has been made on advanced Pandora batteries (Baryon Sweeper) for the PSP with basically support for all models nowadays. PSP Go was one of the last models to not be supported, but that will change soon, thanks to work by Leo Oliveira.

What is Baryon Sweeper for the PSP

Baryon Sweeper is a series of tools and hardware schematics designed to unbrick later PSP models (which require more than the original pandora battery). Mimicking Sony’s official recovery tools, Baryon Sweeper allows to enter service mode and unbrick PSP 3000 models as well as pandora-incompatible versions of PSP 2000s.

Most PSPs can now be unbricked with the Baryon Sweeper tool, with PSP GO being the last model to not be supported, due to its different hardware and Syscon communication protocol.

Hardware Hacker Leo Oliveira has published details on how  to interact with the PSP GO syscon, and, pending some tests, this means creating Pandora batteries for the PSP GO should now be a possibility.

Developer Khubik, one of the hackers working on Baryon Sweeper, has stated that in theory, everything’s now here (including PSP GO encryption keys) in the publicly available tools, to create a Pandora Battery for the PSP Go.

Pandora batteries relying on Baryon Sweeper require significantly more work than the original Pandora Batteries (which were only compatible with PSP 1000 and some models of PSP 2000), but are what you need if your model isn’t compatible with the original Pandora. Thankfully, all schematics and processes are described on Khubik’s github.

Pandora Battery for PSP Go

Using PySweeper and Leo Oliveira’s instructions, you should in theory be able to create a Pandora Battery for your PSP GO. Of course you might not want to be the guinea pig for this unless you know exactly what you’re doing. Ultimately, I expect the process to be confirmed and refined, to a point where all PSP models can now probably be unbricked/downgraded.

I forgot to comment something. Set up like this the PSP GO thinks it is connected to a cradle with regular 5V psp power brick connected. If you need you can supply it 5v power through pin 22 of the multi port. Pins are counted left to right with screen facing up. pic.twitter.com/oNuA1C68Qz

— Leo Oliveira (@leo__oliveira) August 5, 2023

We do. We have auth keys too. Only need testing. Figuring out how to talk to psp go syscon was the only missing piece. Oh we don’t have a psp go stick too but at least now we can try to boot homebrew on it.

— Leo Oliveira (@leo__oliveira) August 5, 2023

The post PSP: Pandora Battery coming soon to a PSP GO near you! (Baryon Sweeper) appeared first on Wololo.net.

Hackers looking to unbrick all models of PSP have made some tremendous progress this week, with Leo Oliveira showcasing working Service ode and unbricking tools for the PSP Go. Interestingly, his setup makes use of the PSP Go Cradle, a pretty hard-to-find docking station for the console (the hackers gave the precision that other components can be used instead).

We’ve mentioned a couple weeks ago that PSP hackers were actively looking into the PSP Go, to figure out how to unbrick it with Baryon Sweeper. It appears they’re already there, and we might see schematics sooner than later.

What is Baryon Sweeper for the PSP

Baryon Sweeper is a series of tools and hardware schematics designed to unbrick later PSP models (which require more than the original pandora battery). Mimicking Sony’s official recovery tools, Baryon Sweeper allows to enter service mode and unbrick PSP 3000 models as well as pandora-incompatible versions of PSP 2000s.

Most PSPs can now be unbricked with the Baryon Sweeper tool, with PSP GO being the last model to not be supported, due to its different hardware and Syscon communication protocol.

PSP Go Pandora Battery is here

Hacker Leo Oliveira had shared new details on the PS PGO’s Syscon last week, and today he’s confirmed they are now able to enter service mode and unbrick the PSP Go. He credits Proxima in particular for Reverse engineering the Firmware controller software.

PSP GO jig is here! pic.twitter.com/uoTyUcCPbs

— Leo Oliveira (@leo__oliveira) August 17, 2023

In parallel, Zecoxao has published some initial schematics on how the Baryon Sweeper “battery” will connect to the PSP Go. Why the PSP Go cradle was used is shown clearly here, but as the schematics mention, “any plug containing all pins may be used instead”.

The post “Pandora battery” for PSP Go confirmed appeared first on Wololo.net.

The PSP is alive and well for many homebrew enthusiasts. Following the recent breakthrough that allowed unbricking info to see the light of day for PSP Go*, multiple tools have been updated recently to handle a bunch of new use cases. If you still use your PSP, or were thinking of getting it out of its drawer, have a look at these tools which got a recent update:

Chronoswitch Fork updated to 7.2

Chronoswitch is a PSP Downgrading tool originally created by Davee. The Zett has a fork of the tool, which he has recently updated to version 7.2. This new version has the following changes, compared to Davee’s latest change (which was in 2019).

Version 7.2:

• Removed ‘factory firmware limitation’, which prevented certain PSPs from being downgradable at all or limited them from being downgraded to certain firmwares they theoretically support.
• Chronoswitch now detects your PSP’s motherboard alongside its model and allows flashing all firmwares (5.00+) that are supported by it.
• Removed support for downgrading 09g units below 6.30.

Version 7.1:

• Added experimental support for 07g units on 6.6x.

On the “controversial” decision to remove downgrade options for 09g below 6.30, The Zett says:

We decided to remove the 6.20 support for 09g due to a few reasons: – It was a hacky workaround (turned your 09g into a ‘fake 04g’) – FW 6.20 on 09g was slightly unstable (standby mode) – It was cumbersome to re-update to 6.3x+ – It’s redundant nowadays, just use 6.6x + Infinity. If for whatever reason you still want to go to 6.20 on a 09g, just use the older versions of Chronoswitch

Download Chronoswitch

• The Zett’s fork (7.2)
• Davee’s original (7.0)

Source: The_Zett

PSPIdent Updated to 1.0

Developer yoti has updated pspIdent to 1.0. PSPIdent gives you important hardware information about your PSP, in particular which Firmware and motherboard you’re running. This can be important information you’ll want to keep (most tools will do the detection for you, but you might want to keep the information handy).

PSP Ident 1.0 is rewritten from scratch, compared to the older versions from a decade ago.

Download pspIdent

• pspIdent 1.0

source: Yoti

* AFAIK Unbricking a PSP Go still requires additional software tools, but my understanding is that Despertar Del Cementario and Time Machine are currently being updated by Davee.

The post PlayStation Portable getting a bunch of scene tools updates appeared first on Wololo.net.

The recent drama surrounding the Unity engine price structure change has given a popularity boost to competitors such as Unreal and Godot engine. This got me curious about the level of support of Game engines on the homebrew scene, Godot in Particular.

Disclaimer: This article is about using Godot for creating homebrew games. Generally this implies the created games will only run on a Jailbroken console. For support of consoles on Godot for a commercial game, please check the very informative official page here (TL,DR: it is possible to port your godot commercial game to consoles, but you will have to work with a 3rd party company for legal reasons)

TL,DR: There are very good homebrew ports of Godot 3.x on the Nintendo Switch and PS Vita. Other consoles, the PS4 in particular (and the PS5 as well, of course), apparently still need to wait.

Note: Humble bundle currently have a great Bundle going on if you’re looking to get started with Godot: The complete godot software bundle, which provides $1000 of courses and software. Pay what you want for the bundle, support charity (affiliate link)

Godot Engine for Homebrew consoles – why and how

Developing a game isn’t always easy. Developing a game for a homebrew console just adds a layer of difficulty to the mix. For some people who are interested in homebrew development, I feel the easiest way to get introduced to hacked consoles is to be able to use tools they are used to, in more conventional environments.

The Godot game engine is a very popular cross platform game engine nowadays, which has the insane benefit of being open source. This means that, theoretically, porting it to homebrew SDKs is a possibility.

When you publish a godot game, what you are really publishing is the full Godot engine, along with a resource pack that represents your game. Porting Godot to a console (and in particular its homebrew SDK) means creating a single “engine” binary (aka template) for that particular console. Once that is done, taking into account some particular limitations of the console such as its level of OpenGL support, “all” Godot games could potentially work on that console, with little to no modifications.

This is exciting in particular because a game you developed for Windows could probably work on your Nintendo Switch or PS Vita out of the box.

Nintendo Switch and PS Vita Homebrew have Godot 3.5x support

As it turns out, Nintendo Switch and PS Vita have Godot ports for the homebrew SDKs. These are ports based on the 3.x version of godot (which is the mostly used nowadays. 4.x was released in 2023 and is slowly taking over, though). We did talk about the Vita release by SonicMastr last year.

• Godot 3.5x for Nintendo Switch by Stary2001
• Godot 3.5x for PS Vita by SonicMastr

Support discord for both versions: https://discordapp.com/invite/yUC3rUk

In both cases, all you need to to is run the editor, create your game, and then in the export menu, select the platform of your choice (Vita or Switch). Due to how the two codebases are separate though, you’ll need to use the separate engine builds to export for Switch and Vita respectively, although you would only need to create your game once, of course (just load it in the two separate editors).

There are limitations, related to the godot ports themselves, or the console you’re targeting. For the PS Vita in particular:

• Any LiveArea assets HAVE to be 8-bit indexed AND have to be the sizes listed. Otherwise VPK installation will fail
  I like to use pngquant
• Version HAS to be in XX.YY format. If it is not, it will be defaulted to 01.00 to protect from failed installations
• Parental Level has a range of 0 (off) to 11 (adult). Anything above or below will default to 0
• Always change the Title ID from default if planning an actual release to avoid overwriting other applications
• Make sure you enable fallback to gles2 no matter what (for now, need to fix this or it probably already is. I’m too tired)

A short list of existing Switch Homebrew Godot ports can be found here.

The PSP has Godot 2.x Support!

This is more anecdotal at this point, but even the PlayStation portable also has a godot port available, but it is for a fairly old version of the engine. You might still want to give it a try, but a lot of people developing for PSP or 3DS end up creating their own engines.

• Godot 2.x for PSP by PSVita-Dev

The PS4 is crying in a corner – You can still use SDL though (question mark)

I started this article in the hope to find a homebrew godot port for the PS4. There isn’t one!

To be honest, GPU acceleration support is in a confusing state on the PS4 Homebrew SDK. The SDL port you’ll find with OpenOrbis isn’t apparently supporting hardware acceleration. There is a hardware-accelerated port of SDL for the PS4, by CPasJuste, and I’m a bit confused as to why it isn’t used as the default in the OpenOrbis SDK.

Furthermore, OpenGL is supported on the PS4 Homebrew SDK, as shown by this piglet sample. Despite that, I repeatedly read that GPU rendering isn’t supported for PS4 Homebrew yet (except via leaked official SDKs) and I’m a bit lost.

CPasJuste has stated a while ago that porting Godot to the PS4 would be “too much work” without shader compiler support, but that was before he ported SDL, so maybe his stance on this has changed.

With all that being said, currently, it appears that your best bet to create (hardware accelerated) homebrew games on the PS4 would be using CPasJuste’s SDL port, which can be found here: https://github.com/PacBrew/SDL/tree/ps4.Check out my guide on how to get started with PS4 Homebrew here.

Godot 3.x on the PS4 would be awesome, but unfortunately I haven’t found any ongoing project for that port to happen.

What about godot 4.x on Homebrew consoles?

Godot 4.x is dropping OpenGL ES 2.0 support (it will use GLES3 and Vulkan), so consoles that do not support those will have issues. As far as I can tell, none of the consoles mentioned above have Vulkan support for Homebrew toolchains, but it seems the Switch has GLES3. There is an ongoing port of godot 4.x for the Switch, but development has stopped.

The post The state of Godot Engine on (homebrew) consoles appeared first on Wololo.net.

Developer bucanero has released PKGi for the PSP, a PKG File Downloader and installer. This tool will let you download and install games straight to the PSP. No doubt that most people will use it to only install homebrew apps, and games they legitimately own.

Jokes on piracy aside, this is an incredibly useful tool, and it’s insane to see such a cool release on the PSP

What is PKGi for the PSP

PKGi is a PKG file downloader and installer for the PSP. It is technically a PlayStation Portable port of pkgi-ps3.

Features

• easy to use: list available downloads, including searching, filtering, and sorting.
• standalone: no PC required, everything happens directly on the PSP.
• automatic downloads: just choose an item, and it will be downloaded by the app to your Memory Stick (ms0:/PKG/).
• resumes interrupted downloads: you can stop a download at any time, switch applications, and come back to resume the download later.
• localization support: Finnish, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, Turkish

Notes:

• content activation: downloaded content requires a valid license to run. If your PSP hasn’t been activated, you can use one of the following plugins:
  • npdrm_free_mod plugin (PSP/PS1 games only)
  • npdrm_free plugin (PSP/PS1 games and DLCs)
  • nploader_mod (PSP DLCs only)

How to use PKGI on PSP

You need to create a pkgi.txt file in ms0:/PSP/GAME/PKGI/ that contains the items available for installation. The text database format is user customizable. Check this section to learn how to define your own custom DB format.

You can refresh and sync an online database by adding the DB URL(s) to the config.txt file in ms0:/PSP/GAME/PKGI/.

For example:

url http://www.mysite.com/mylist.csv
url_demos http://www.demos.com/otherlist.csv
url_emulators http://www.example.com/emulators.csv

Using this setup, pkgi.txt will be updated with mylist.csv, pgi_demos.txt with otherlist.csv , and pkgi_emulators.txt with emulators.csv.

Next time you open the app, you’ll have an additional menu option  called Refresh. When you select it, the local databases will be syncronized with the defined URLs.

Some premade pkgi.txt files circulate online. I’m not sharing them here as a vast majority of those contain links to commercial games which, while encrypted, can then trivially be installed on the PSP with PKGi.

Download PKGi-PSP

You can Download PKGi for PSP on the project’s github here.

Source: Bucanero, thanks to Roc6d

The post PSP Release: PKGi 0.8.0 for PSP (PKG Downloader and installer) appeared first on Wololo.net.

The end of the year is often a special time for the hacking scene. I don’t know if it’s the holiday spirit, or hackers having a bit more free time to work on awesome stuff, but I always feel they manage to time great releases around Christmas.

Today, it’s Zecoxao (who else) who’s setting the scene on fire with a Tweet that “spills the beans” on what we might be expecting for Christmas. In this article I’m debunking his abject lies, so get ready for some pummeling! (Just kidding sir, I’m only trying to separate the wheat from the chaff like everybody else)

This is what the scene veteran predicts we’ll see by end of year for the PS5:

we should have: sistro’s goldhen sistro’s ps5cheat sleirs ps5 hen with ps5 fpkg support the flow’s userland + kernel exploit and a special surprised for people from other scenes (namely psp and ps2, also maybe ps5 as well)

Keep in mind that no one has a crystal ball, and although Zecoxao undoubtedly has insider information, nobody can tell you exactly when a release will happen (due to technical roadblocks or other issues), or even if a given hacker will change their mind and cancel a release. With that out of the way, let’s go through each one of these predictions:

Rumor #1: PS5 GoldHEN and Cheat support by Sistr0

We knew about this one already, although Sistr0 hasn’t given any information about a release date. It’s not a secret at this point, Sistr0 has been working on Homebrew Enabler GoldHEN for the PS5. How much this will actually support, and whether it will add new features that are not already available to the community, is up to everyone to guess. As a reminder, we already have a competitor “All-in-One” Homebrew enabler for the PS5 now, with LighningMods’ etaHEN.

Verdict: Zecoxao is right that GoldHEN for PS5 is being worked on, however it’s unclear if a release will happen this year. We can certainly hope that, having shared screenshots already, Sistr0 is close to at least a beta of some sort for PS5 GoldHEN.

Rumor #2: PS5 FPKG support by Sleirsgoevy

This one apparently stems from something Sleirsgoevy said about a month ago, that PS5 SELF support is already working, and that FPKG still need to be investigated. Technically, all the tools are in to run PS5 ELF files (such as libhijacker), and combined with Sleir’s Homebrew Enabler and SELF decryption, I can see how basically it “already works” for SELF files. But as far as FPKGs are concerned, the hacker has specifically said he didn’t look into it, and he reiterated that statement a few days ago:

Verdict: (update) This rumor has now been confirmed to be unfounded by Zecoxao after discussion with Sleirsgoevy.

my original guess:

“unless Sleirsgoevy has privately shared information that contradicts what he publicly said a few days ago, it looks like Zecoxao is full of it on this one. Of course, it’s also possible hackers are playing games with us. SELFs already work though :)”

Rumor #3: Userland and Kernel exploit disclosure by TheFloW

Technically, TheFloW has already disclosed a usermode exploit for PS5 up to firmware 7.61, and I’m personally not sure there’s another one. The famous PlayStation hacker has however recommended people do not update their PS5, and has 2 exploits pending disclosure on PlayStation’s bug bounty program. It is believed one of them at least is a kernel exploit for the PS5, as the hacker is pretty much known for dropping huge bombs on the scene now.

Verdict: given what we know, it is very likely TheFloW has something huge in store for the PS5 scene, possibly a new kernel exploit. However the timing of the disclosure is controlled by Sony and their bug bounty program right now, so I doubt anyone on the scene can guarantee disclosure (let alone an actual release) will happen by end of year.

Rumor #4: Special surprise for the PSP and PS2, and possibly something for the PS5

On this one, Zecoxao certainly has some insider information on some relatively big release that could happen for the PSP/PS2 scene. He hasn’t given me more details on that, I assume because he’s sworn to the secret. I’m wondering what remaining secrets these consoles still have to share with the world, given how fully open they’ve become by now. I also fail to understand how some massive breakthrough on any of these two consoles could relate to the PS5, and I think Zecoxao’s “possibly” keyword here is important. I wouldn’t put past him to just try and artificially relate that piece of information with PS5, just to get people excited

Verdict: while there’s most likely something huge incoming for the PSP and/or PS2 by Christmas, it remains to be seen if this will actually be interesting to the end users of these scenes, or just some final “nail in the coffin” of security for consoles that are already pretty much 100% homebrew-able. Interesting from a “scientific” point of view, but maybe not for most end users? Wait and see on this one!

What do you think of these predictions by Zecoxao? Let me know in the comments!

The post Rumors: lots of cool stuff incoming for the PS5 hacking scene by Christmas? What about PS5 FPKG Support? appeared first on Wololo.net.

Scene developer Yoti has published a video of a work-in-progress unbricker for the PSP, using the Raspberry Pi microcontroller RP2040.

You can now unbrick pretty much any PSP model

Unbricking older models of PSP (PSP 1000) has been a possibility for a long time with the Pandora Battery, but further models became harder to hack, and also to unbrick. Recently, significant progress has been made on hacking/unbricking PSP 2000 and PSP 3000 models though, with the Baryon Sweeper method.

The hardware for this technique is a bit more demanding, as one needs to emulate the encrypted handshake of the advanced unbricking batteries used for that process. In other words, a “simple” pandora battery isn’t enough anymore, you need something a bit more advanced, with some intermediate logic running on a microcontroller.

That’s where Baryon Sweeper comes in. Now, with cheap hardware implementations such as the one Yoti is working on here, unbrickers for all models of PSP are a possibility, as described in the original explanations (source khubik).

Yoti has been a key dev on the Baryon Sweeper method.

While all the documentation is now available to make your own unbricker, it’s nice to see people showcasing implementations here.

Source: Yoti

The post (Work in progress) RP2040 PSP Unbricker by Yoti appeared first on Wololo.net.

PSP hacking scene veteran and developer Davee is currently applying the finishing touches to his upcoming unbricker for all PSP models, which will be able to restore any retail PSP model to the official system software 6.61.
Despite not directly installing a custom firmware itself, it allows various existing custom firmwares (ME/LME, PRO or ARK) to be easily installed afterwards.

Project “Unbricker”:

A PSP 3000 (07g) booting a custom IPL via service mode

While the unbricker already has a proper name, it is still being kept a secret for now.
But who knows, maybe you are bright enough to already guess it? Alternatively, why not come up with a great name for the upcoming unbricker yourself? We’re curious about what you can come up with!

Unlike previously assumed, Davee did not end up porting Despertar Del Cementerio (DDC) or Time Machine (TM) to the newer PSP models, instead he opted for flat out reverse engineering various components of the PSP’s firmware himself.

This means he has effectively written his own mini-firmware for the PSP’s multiple types of LCDs, its NAND and various of other components. What a mad lad!

Requirements for the unbricker:

Even though Davee decided to do his own thing, instead of opting for a DDC or TM port, his unbricker is still as easily usable as the older pandora tools were, assuming you fulfill the requirements.
Similar to the pandora tools of ye olden days, this modern type of pandora unbricker effectively requires the same 3 things:

– a memory stick for your PSP (Memory Stick Micro for PSPgo, Memory Stick ProDuo for the other models)
– the unbricker and 6.61 firmware files
– a way of entering service mode on the PSP

The memory stick is necessary for copying some files onto it, and it is also required for injecting an IPL into the memory stick’s boot sector space (this is easier done than it sounds, trust us). Entering the service mode is the real challenge though.

Pysweeper software and BaryonSweepers for PSPgo, Street and 1k, 2k, 3k (click to expand)

The newer PSPs (3000s, PSPgo, E1000) each require a dedicated physical BaryonSweeper, while any PSP 1000 or 2000 (this time even the TA-088v3 model!) may use an old fashioned Pandora Battery instead.
Additionally, using the BaryonSweeper method also requires running the pysweeper software on a PC, while being connected to a BaryonSweeper.

The BaryonSweepers can be either purchased from dedicated private sellers (such as Peter Lustig on Twitter) or you can craft them yourself, following the instructions available on the PSPDev wiki, if you have some experience in tinkering, that is.

Even though there is currently no exact release date so far, we will keep you informed about it and we will also tell you how to use the unbricker once it has finally been released.

The post Davee’s Unbricker for all PSP models is about to be finalised?! appeared first on Wololo.net.