PSP Genesis Competition

About time I stop being lazy and post...

The past while a lot has happened, but the biggest is probably the PSP Genesis Competition. It is a competition for anything made for PSP, so long as it includes a MIPS binary, so games, apps, plugins, HENs, CFWs, etc. Even more impressive than the huge scope is the prize, which the value has grown to over $4000 total already. It will be interesting to see how the competition goes, and what amazing little projects come out of it.

Most people who chat with me enough know I've kinda spoiled two of my three entry ideas for the competition. A game based on a similar idea to Where's Waldo, though it will be called "Where's Nymphie?", and a keyboard dock for 2000/3000 PSPs which will obviously need a plugin.(I plan to make more features so it can still be useful to people without the dock, but the main feature will be the keyboard) The third idea that I have kept pretty well secret so far is the first one I am working on, and will be somewhat of a development tool that even other people in the competition may end up using :P

I can generally guarantee the app and the game, but I'm not 100% sure about finishing the dock in time, since it requires custom hardware and will be the last thing I work on most likely. Sometime within the next month I should be giving my first release of the app, and maybe posting graphics for the game up on my deviantArt.

Needs to be said...

This has been bugging me the last few days, so I'll say it.

THE PSP HAS NOT BEEN CRACKED WIDE OPEN.
NO WE CANNOT SIGN HOMEBREW YET.

The so called "signed" homebrew and HENs that have been released so far are all using a trick that requires the encryption keys, hence the name of the tool, PSPencrypter and NOT PSPsign. The tool encrypts the homebrew, and wraps it with a demo games signed "box", so to speak. This tricks the system into thinking it is signed. People on #pspcommunity have been calling these wrapped homebrew, considering that's exactly what they are. Some have also been using "signed", with the quotes, however I find this will confuse people when signing is possible in the future.

Don't get me wrong though, this is still very useful, but it's not done, and there is still a lot to be done before signing is possible. I have not tested the new 6.37, but most likely this trick has been fixed, if not, it will probably be fixed in the next one, so don't expect these wrapped homebrew to work forever.

[Game Review] Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep

A little late, but it's a new year, give me a break :P Speaking of which, Happy New Years to everyone :)

Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep was one of those games I knew I had to get the second I heard of it, being a big fan of the Kingdom Hearts series. One of the foolish things I kind of wished for was for it to be similar to the PS2 games. Oh how glad I am that it isn't anything like them, because I love the way it is.

6.20TN-B is here.

I was too tired to post this last night, but TN released the second version of his HEN last night, 6.20TN-B. This fixes the problems with 04G PSP3000's, a few bugs, and allows downgrading. I will say though, although I've heard of people with 03G's successfully downgrading, I still think it is a very bad idea to try downgrading an unhackable PSP as you risk bricking.

You can get my new All-in-One package [here].

This package includes a trimmed down Patapon 2 demo from Omnija(only 49MB), HBL revision 109 and of course 6.20TN-B. It is set up so that all you need to do is run the exploit, and it will automatically run the HEN for you. Follow the instructions in the readme if you get lost.


On another note, later today I will be posting a review of Kingdom Hearts, and maybe Invizimals tomorrow.

[Game Review] Phantasy Star Portable 2

I will be working on getting some more info on TN HEN up, such as plugin suggestions, soon, but for the next few days I'm going to post reviews of the 3 new games I got on Christmas, Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep, Invizimals, and of course today's review, Phantasy Star Portable 2.

Updates, Should post alot more soon

Well I have PSPSDK back on my computer, and have been slowly working on simpleMenu 3 again. I am not sure if I will continue on the NyMenu idea, because I am slightly more interested in trying to work with kernel mode once 6.20TN comes out. I do have a few other ideas on things to work with though.

Also, I should be getting my phone(Desire Z) finally sometime this week, so I may start posting things about development with that. I've recently gotten the Android SDK installed and have been going through the documentation's tutorials. It's somewhat confusing the heck out of me, being so used to C and assembly, but I'm sure I'll adjust.

Another thing that will be pushing me to post more is Christmas, 11 days and I'll be getting a few new PSP games, Phantasy Star Portable 2, Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep, and Invizimals. The last of those especially has been giving me ideas on homebrew, I'm tempted to try augmented reality, we'll see if I ever do though. I should also be getting a 100$ BestBuy gift card, which comes with the phone, on Christmas, and I'm considering using it and some cash to get a PSP Go, who knows.

Anyways, hopefully within a day or two I'll have more info. I've also been considering buying a DSLR, so who knows, maybe I'll start posting some pictures if I do.

Sitefrost going down :(

Wow 25 days, I really need to get into the habit of updating more. Well here I go.

h4ck.fi.st is back up :D

Just a quick update, h4ck.fi.st is back up, yaaay. Go visit it, now, gotta get the activity back up!

=P

h4ck.fi.st Currently Down

Because alot of people have been asking about this, I thought I'd give an update.

Basically, the server h4ck.fi.st was on, sitefrost's "Kiwi" server, was DDoSed yesterday, from what I know. For those who don't know, DDoS is a kind of internet attack involving spamming the hell out of a server. The people at sitefrost are working on getting the server back up, and it should be back ASAP. We're sorry for any inconvenience, but there isn't much we can do but wait for them to do their thing.

Advancedpsp.tk gone

Unfortunately it seems 000webhost is a sack of crap, and deleted advancedpsp without any reasoning or warning. According to m0skit0, it isn't coming back, and suggests you stay away from the host.

In order to try replacing it, TiPi made http://h4ck.fi.st/, which it seems plenty of people are starting to join as the new replacement. It has lots of fancy features which can take some getting used to, but it works.


As an update to the VSH crash I've been working on with TiPi, we've hit a bit of a snag in that the crash doesn't work as we thought it did, and I can't find what we are looking for because of it. I'm not giving up on it, or on looking for other crashes, just thought I'd share. I'm focusing mainly on VSH crashes because we're pretty well set with game exploits right now :P

An Update

I thought I'd give a small update for the few people who come visit my blog, considering it's been almost 2 weeks. Basically what has been slowing me down the past while is that I started helping people go through their crashes on the PSP, to see if we could find any new exploits.

I have been working mostly with TiPi, of advancedpsp.tk. There was one we found a short while ago that had potential, but we found that it had been patched on 5.50, and considering there is already enough on 5.03, we dropped it. Soon after we found a very buggy file that was very easy to cause crashes with, and not just 1, what TiPi eventually nicknamed "crash mode", where the whole system was doomed to eventually crash if you didn't turn it off. Before we got to test many of these, however, we stumbled across something else.

Half Byte Loader Revision 100

Sorry I haven't had much updates lately, but I've been able to free time and get myself back on track, I am working on the LanguageTool and will post it ASAP.

In other news, HBL r100 has just been released. Unfortunately nothing new for older users on the Patapon exploit, however HBL r100 has one major improvement, portability. This means it is easier to move HBL to other exploits, and this includes all three versions of "Everybody's Golf", which means people on OFW 6.3x now have a way to run homebrew. As wololo himself states, this isn't flawless yet, and has kinks to work out, but it works better than nothing.

Enjoy your homebrew, and I promise I will be working on all my projects more actively now. I have been picking up on OSL for graphics on PSP and have come up with some other possible future projects.


Source: http://wololo.net/wagic/2010/09/08/release-hbl-r100-for-psps-up-to-ofw-6-31/

Half Byte Loader Revision 99

The new revision 99 of HBL was released today, shortly after revision 98. A small mistake was made in fixing memory cards for PSP Go, that killed HBL on the Go completely, hence the quick new version. Included in these was improved syscall estimation, which nearly puts 6.20 back up there with the rest of the firmwares on non-Go PSPs, and my patch for the home button, which should work in 99% of cases. Any time the home button fails to work, such as crashing or freezing, it would be nice to see a dbglog, post it at the advancedpsp forums like all other HBL dbglogs. Hopefully nobody has problems with it, though.

You can get it from: http://wololo.net/wagic/hbl/

Here is a full version change list from both:
2010/08/29 (JJS)
- Added Nymphaeas patch that allows to exit HBL to the XMB by using the HOME exit menu ( http://advancedpsp.tk/foro_es/viewtopic.php?f=37&t=1046 )
- Added code to get additional syscalls using the stubs of utility dialogs loaded into p5.
-- This means sceCtrlPeekBufferPositive can now always be used and the option to override it is now obsolete for all 6.20 users.
-- Also all relevant sceIO* functions should be perfectly estimated now.
- Fix for issue 43 (crash on start from MS on the GO). Kernel dump is now saved to ef0.
- Fix for issue 306 (control issues). Hopefully fixed by replacing the sceCtrlReadBufferPositive call with sceCtrlPeekBufferPositive.
- Corrected 5.70 nids files. Thanks n00b81!
- Corrected scesuspendforuser.nids for 5.xx and 6.xx.
2010/08/30 (Wololo)
- fix a bug introduced in r98 that prevents syscalls from being correctly estimated on pspgo 6.20 (error reading kdump)

I'll try to post updates on HBL here from now on, considering it is one of the bigger things in PSP right now, and that it is what I use.


(source: http://wololo.net/wagic/2010/08/30/half-byte-loader-r9-by-jjs/)

Sorry for delays

EDIT: Okay so maybe one day was a bit of a hasty number. I decided to start working into graphics programming, because I don't want to have to reprogram my new input method later for NyMenu. So the translation tool, which I decided to call "LanguageTool", will be graphical. Makes including the graphical previews much easier anyways, so I may include that with the first release as well. I have changed the extension of the language files to '.FLF', as well, standing for "Formatted Language File." Hopefully someone else ends up using this whole translation thing, it seems like it could be useful. I will try getting it done ASAP.

As the title says, sorry for the delays. I've been helping friends with things, made my raver friend some fuzzy leg warmers, and fighting an annoying little infection on my elbow, which has made using my computer a bit difficult. I have gotten a cream for the infection, and have 3 or 4 days of free time, so I'll get back to work.

I will try releasing the translation tool later today or more likely, tomorrow. It will be a psp homebrew(too lazy to make it for pc hehe) that will allow you to create '.lang' files, which will be used by simpleMenu and future projects to allow translations. It will also allow making of '.prvw' files, which will contain the rest of the info needed for viewing how that translation file will look, so you can preview them. It will come with 'english.lang' which you can translate for simpleMenu, and 'simpleMenu.prvw' for previewing them.

Obviously, the previews are for text mode, when I move to making NyMenu, maybe I will allow images to be included with preview files so that translations can be previewed for anything, but right now I'm trying to catch up, so I'll add features as needed.

After the translation tool is done(I'll come up with a clever name when I release it I'm sure) I'll work on simpleMenu v3. Hopefully people using the tool can share a few translations before I release version 3, that way it can come with a few by default.

simpleMenu v3 and NyMenu coming

I really need to start making more posts to this blog, lazy little me.

Well, simplemenu v3 should hopefully be out within a week. After it is complete and released, I will work on making a graphical menu, which I will name NyMenu. It will do pretty much everything I have seen people ask for in the menu. It will contain the time and battery levels, all the features of simpleMenu(minus eXtra menu), a nice clean look totally different from the other HBL menus available now, display the icon of the homebrew if available, play the homebrew's sound file if available, and possibly more, who knows.

After NyMenu is done, I will be working on making a 2D fighting-learning game. Wierd mix? Oh well, it works. It will be focused on those trying to learn Japanese, more specifically to read the kana and kanji, and to do so in a fast paced, action filled setting so to make the learning a bit more fun. Because the game will be based around reading characters, it could possibly be modified to allow other languages that do not use latin characters as well.

Now here is a list of the new features I am working on for simpleMenu v3:
~ A search function
~ Multiple languages can be loaded from a menu/language/ subdirectory.
~ A language file editor for those who wish to contribute changes.
~ Four sorting methods instead of the original idea of six. It appears the PSP autosorts eboot-less directories alphabetically at the top of the list, so you will have the choice of alphabetic or modification date sorting for eboots, as well as a choice of having directories first or last.
~ Built in HBL config editor. The only problem with this will be that it removes any commenting from the config file, but otherwise it will work.
~ I will possibly be changing from my textinput method to a danzef-like method, as it should be a bit faster.

Well, expect to see more when that is done. I may release the language editor before the menu so that there can be some alternatives included in the simpleMenu v3 release.

A change of pace

I thought I would post about something other than PSP for once, I'm not giving up on it don't worry, just thought I should write some of my other geekiness here for once.

Lately I've been looking up on hydroponics, and I'm thinking of making a small garden soon. Most likely an ebb and flow one. For those that don't know, hydroponics is a method of growing plants without soil, supplying nutrients directly in the water. There are 6 major designs for a garden, some passive and simple, others a little more complicated.

Ebb and flow hydroponic gardens basically have a tank of fluid below the garden, with a pump inside the tank to pump the fluid to flood the garden. There is an overflow pipe, so that it doesn't litterally flood, and when the pump is turned off the water drains back through the pipe to let the plants roots get air. This could be controlled with a timer, or possibly a computer.(I might build a small PIC circuit for mine)

I'm planning on growing grape tomatoes, just because they are amazing. I currently have some seeds fermenting to get rid of that slimey coating, they should be ready to use in about a week or so. Still not entirely sure what I'm going to use to make my actual garden, though. When I figure it out I'll post instructions.

For those PSP people patient enough to read through all this, I am looking for ideas for things to program for PSP. I'm thinking of possibly dropping the RegEdit, just because the main hacks you would do using it are already made into homebrew,(buttonhack and fontmod) but if anyone is still interested just say so and I'll bring it back up. Things I'm thinking of making right now are mic-based homebrew(a recording program, a walkie talkie, and a tuner, are the three I'm focused on) and possibly a top down shooter, though that would be a bit further in the future most likely. I would love to hear other peoples ideas for homebrew they think is still needed for the PSP, it's better to know your work is wanted.

I also would love ideas on the hydroponic garden, if anyone has any experience or even if someone would like to try and want me to post more info about it, please comment. In my oppinion hydroponics is probably one of the best ways to garden, just takes a bit of geekiness to get started ;)

simpleMenu Version 2

A tiny bit late, but here it is! I decided to do some extensive testing this time before releasing it, so I think I caught all the bugs, but I would still love it if people could keep an eye out for them.

Here are the download links:
simpleMenu v2
simpleMenu v2 (eBoot only)

And here's the feature listing:
~Unlimited homebrew loading
~Sorting of homebrew using directories
~eXtra Menu now supports directories, which will be opened in the eBoot Menu
~Pressing L and R will open the simpleHacks menu, a personalization tool
~Change foreground and background colors in simpleHacks
~Change how eboot names are handled in simpleHacks
~Change which button is used for selecting, circle or cross, in simpleHacks
~eXtra Editor now in simpleHacks, old bugs fixed and now allows 10 entries

simpleMenu V2 this weekend

I appologize it is taking me so long for V2. I was planning to release it today, but it will have to wait until tomorrow or sunday. The problem was that I tried getting the cache to work with the new multi-directory version, which was messy messy messy. Even when I thought of a way to do it, getting it working well is another issue all together.

The fix? I'm dropping the cache. It prevents the need to define how many directories deep you want to be able to load(no limit), and makes one of the new features I came up with work a little easier anyways. Should also make alot of the functions run much faster.

As for the new features, here is some that haven't been listed here:
~Aside from allowing subdirectories, the eXtra menu will support folders, and open that folder in the main menu as if it was your root homebrew folder(pressing the exit button at this point will bring you back to the original menu)
~The menu will not display normal files or folders with corrupt eboots

Also, I already have a list of what will be on V3! Those are:
~Multiple Languages changeable in simpleHacks
~Sorting algorithms to make browsing a little cleaner, will have psp method(by creation date), alphabetical order, and a variation of both with directories at the top or bottom(6 total)
~Built in HBL config edittor

After that, simpleMenu will be pretty much done. My next HBL menu, which will have graphics, sound, bells and whistles, will have any further requested features. The features for simpleMenu v3 should be enough for a simple menu :P

PSP-RegEdit delayed, simpleMenu V2

I am still working on RegEdit, but I found another small problem with the simpleMenu, and instead of continuously re-releasing it, I'm going to just add a bunch of the features people have been asking for to the menu, and release a version 2. In order to add some of them, I will be dropping hblmenu.

Things to expect:
~Subdirectories
For all the people who wanted it, I'll be adding the ability to access subdirectories.
~Unlimited Homebrew
For you insane people who have hundreds, this will be for you(what do you do with hundreds? o.O)
~Fixed eXtra Menu
Every fix I've posted for this thing has bugged up, it should work 100% in v2.
~simpleHacks menu
A menu that will be accessed by pressing L+R, it will give the following options.
~Colour Customization
A simple little modification, allows modification of the foreground and background colours.
~Name Customization
Will allow you to choose to use the eBoot title or the folder name for use in the menu.
~Select Button Customization
Due to having directories, a back button will be needed. Standard choice of X or O.
~eXtra Editor
Free up a slot for your eXtra Menu by moving the editor to simpleHacks.

Have anything else to request? Please tell me, I'd love to help. I may consider adding multiple languages to it, considering how little there is to translate, although that I may wait for v3.

simpleMenu, hblmenu and textinput

UPDATE 2: I've noticed some people have been downloading this version still. If you're curious about the programming that's okay, but there is a newer version available [HERE].

UPDATE: A small bug was found in the eXtra Editor that prevented its eXtra.nym files from working, the download links have been updated to the new working version. Sorry for any inconvenience ^-^

After plenty of bug fixing, here are the first few files I'll be posting up. I also added a download page with these links.

simpleMenu for HBL (eboots only version)
textInput for PSP Programming
hblmenu for HBL Menu Programming

Please tell me any bugs you find within the code, I spent a while checking but you can never be too sure. Hope you enjoy :)


Here are the descriptions I posted yesterday again of the files:
~hblmenu.c & hblmenu.h
A set of files I made to make Half Byte Loader menu programming a little simpler, mainly for people newer to programming. I added some commenting, however all code is credited to wololo.
~textinput.c & textinput.h
A set of files I made to give a simple input function for text mode applications for the PSP. I tried to comment it for those interested, and it will come with a readme.txt for usage.
~simpleMenu
A simple menu(who would of guessed that? :O) for Half Byte Loader using the above two. Aside from xstrtoi, the code in this is writen by me. It includes an "eXtra Menu", along with the standard one for linking to other eboots not in your main homebrew folder. Includes a second eboot for modifying the eXtra menu.