PSP News is a News and downloads site for the PSP, PSVita, PS4, PS3, PS2 and PSOne, We have all the latest emulators, hack and custom firmwares, homebrew and all the downloads on this site, we also cover commercial gaming and console news., the latest homebrew and releases, Part of the
DCEmu Homebrew & Gaming Network.
Video games often are blamed for causing violent crimes. But in the case of a Tennessee kidnap victim, Sony’s PlayStation Portable (PSP) may have saved his life.
As reported by the Knoxville News-Sentinel, Jose Ignacio Ortega Garcia was kidnapped, beaten and tortured by a pair of men who held him captive in a filthy motel room for nine days.
Garcia, a business owner, was forced to write checks to the men totalling more than $17,000. His kidnappers also made him call his wife and tell her that he had left her for another woman in order to keep her from calling the police.
Charged in the case are Jose Sanchez, 18, and Juan Gonzales, 28. As reported by the Times-Sentinel, it was a video game which finally ended Garcia’s ordeal.
On June 21, Gonzales gave Sanchez a hand-held video game that would prove to be Garcia’s savior…
“Sanchez played the video game virtually all day that day and much of the night,” [according to an FBI report]
Garcia used the distraction as an opportunity to loosen his bindings. When the exhausted gamer fell asleep, Garcia bolted, running from the room to the hotel office, screaming, “They are trying to kill me…”
While the newspaper doesn’t say which handheld system gets credit for saving Garcia, GamePolitics has learned that it is Sony’s PSP. A criminal complaint filed by FBI Agent Buddy Early, Jr. includes the following sentence:
Suspect Sanchez’s thumb print was recovered from a Play Station Portable hand-held video game box recovered from victim Garcia’s car…
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THQ has released a demonstration version, 4 MB in size, of their upcoming action/platform/strategy game -- Worms: Open Warfare 2.
Within, there's a sneak preview of the Pirates level and a few new weapons: including the electromagnet! You can play single player or against a friend in 'Hot-seat mode'.
Note that the demo requires firmware version 3.52 to run! Works just fine on M33 3.52-2.
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It's great that developers give us demos of their games to try them out. We get way too few of those.
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Hi Guys,
Here's the latest of my Time Baby PSP clock program with improvements
to it's world time clock. I have updated the world time clock YouTube
video to clearly show these improvements.
World Time Clock YouTube Video:
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Boogie will have gamers dancing, singing and starring in their own music videos. Players can also choose and customize different characters in the game to best show off their dancing style and karaoke skills. According to a product listing on online rental outlet GameFly, Boogie might make an appearance on the PS2, scheduled for November 2007. Most likely a wrong entry, but interesting nonetheless ...
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Within the next week or so im going to post an article detailing the very best releases so far in every scene and this is where the whole DCEmu Community comes in, i want to compile the very best releases for each scene.
It doesnt matter if the release is a Game, Emulator, Demo or application/hack. If you are submitting what you consider the best please post a mini review and any details such as homepage and release date/ screenshots.
With that in Mind please post your top 5 releases for the PSP Scene.
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controls:
analog stick/dpad=move ship
triangle="super" bullet
square=bullet
circle=bullet
cross=shield
ir modes:
press button on remote to move up
the ir modes can be controlled using any tv remote or the like though some work better than others.
edit: screen
edit: somehow my eboot isnt nworking so ill re upload lua player with the game in it clean.
medifire link to the working version : http://www.mediafire.com/?6pdyudymgug
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September is the date for the release of the next firmware for the PSP, its not known if this will concur with the date of the release of the PSP Slim but i would hazard a guess that its gonna be the same. Talk around the Net is that the next firmware will be v2.60 because of the release of the PSP Slim.
If you are using PSP® with OS version 3.52 to play PlayStation® classic game 『BIO HAZARD DIRECTOR'S CUT®』(CAPCOM) which is purchased at PLAYSTATION®Store，there might be malfunction happening in the 「ORIGINAL」,「BEGINNER」and「ARRANGE」modes.
The malfunction is expected to be fixed in the next PSP® OS Update (tentatively scheduled in the beginning of September). The game is running properly on PLAYSTATION®3.
We apologize for any inconvenience this might have caused. Please kindly be advised to update your PSP® to the latest version once the next software update is available.
Will the next firmware have support for the extra 32mb of ram in the PSP Slim, if so then thats the firmware that all PSP Hackers should be setting their targets onto for Homebrew hacking.
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Yongobongo has posted a new entry into the Neoflash Coding Comp:
New Update-
yPaint AE-2 released, patch to work on Custom Firmwares through XMB.
yPaint is a powerful graphic editing program for the Sony PSP which allows users to edit photoes (up to 512x512 in resolution for PNGs) in PNG or JPG format, or create completely new images in a user-friendly environment.
Features
- Save
- Open
- USB Mode, for transferring created images
- Pencil
- Zoom (up to 4x zoom, with no quality loss!)
- Brush
- Custom Brushes (by Haxxblaster, these are from version 5)
- Text Input Tool
- New Enhanced Keyboard (based on Danzeff, originally by Fuzzie 360)
- Rectangle Tool
- Circle (Ellipse) Tool
- Random Spray Tool (Like the spray in MS Paint!)
- New redesigned interface
- Size selection
- RGB Colour Editor
- Quick Colour Selector
- Full Colour Selector
- Eraser (Now transparent, not white!)
- Transparency in canvas (NOTE: Save as PNG if you want to keep the transparency!)
- Line Tool
- Scroll Tool (To move around canvas)
- Fill Bucket (Fill areas of the same colour, NOTE: This is a little buggy.)
- Completely recoded from the ground up
- PDF User Manual
- 'settings.cfg' for editing settings
Notes
- The zoom is made mainly for pixel art, so custom brushes etc. will give a bit of an inaccurate preview since the preview isn't resized with the canvas.
- The zoom may cause a slight lag in the program.
- In settings.cfg, you can edit the save/load directory. Read the PDF manual for more info.
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gambiting has posted an entry in the Neoflash Coding Comp:
This is my attempt to make a fast mandelbrot fractal rendering program with zoom feature.It's using fastest bruteforce rendering method,so unless someone use asembler programming or Xaos algorithm it's the fastest rendering possible for psp.This actual version has three fractal sizes: Fullscreen(480x272),medium(250x200),small(120x100) .Bigger fractal means longer rendering time.Also,you can set number of orbit checks per loop - more checks means more details and longer rendering time.Default is 100 and with this setting you can reach 60-70x zoom,with ~30sec rendering time.With 300 checks per loop you can reach as far as 500x zoom,but rendering of single zoom can take even up to 5 minutes.And yes,the zoom here is finite.With very good pc software you can reach even 10000x magnification,but this would require setting a 2000checks per loop,and then one frame would render ~2h,so I limited possible number of checks to 300. This application isn't really practical in any way,but it's really fun to watch zooming of the fractal,and seeing as it replicates itself.Also,you can impress your math teacher that your psp can do that
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According to Home Media Research, Blu-ray outsold HD DVD 2-to-1 in the US during the first half of '07. If you want the big numbers, it's 1.6 million Blu-ray units compared to 795,000 HD DVD units. If those numbers are too big, just take a look at the recent release of 300, which sold 190,000 units on Blu-ray and 97,000 on HD DVD.
Perhaps these two formats can seek peaceful coexistence, but as things stand right now, Blockbuster has gone Blu-ray and so have some retailers. We really don't care who wins the movie format war, but we'd prefer people spending their money on a couple extra games instead of possibly throwing their money away on a console attachment for a dying not-selling-as-well format.
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A menu selection spotted during a demo of Unreal Tournament 3 seems to suggest that Sony is working on a player-identification system, perhaps similar to Xbox Live's Gamertag. After seeing the "Gamercard" option in a menu at the Edinburgh Interactive Festival, Games Digest was reportedly told by Epic's Mark Rein "Oops, you shouldn't have seen that."
What's more, a member of the Evil Avatar forums put forth an image from PlayStation Home that also has the "gamer card" option, this time with a space in the middle. We know very little at this point, but thought you all would appreciate a head-start on speculation. By the way, if the phrase "gamer card" seems familiar to you, you aren't imagining things.
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We shall now explain this fully. Hopefully this will clear all misconceptions and misunderstandings.
We had reversed DA's OE CFW and were in the middle of updating it to 3.51/3.52. We already had a working 3.40* but we were never planning to release it, since we knew it wouldnt be able to compete with M33 (who had by then already released a 3.52 version of theirs with advanced features such as NO-UMD). More importantly, we hadn't ironed out all bugs yet. So we were waiting until our 3.52 version was complete before releasing.
However, team member accounts on MaxConsole were compromised (the problem has now been solved - credits to Zeus). Hence, Lamers had access to all of our PMs, and several Wildcard members were completely unaware that their PMs were being monitored. Gradually, because of the information from those PMs, Lamers got access to a private forum setup for the Wildcard team. And from info gathered there, eventually got access to our private SVN.
Lamers leaked everything from our private SVN. Now, these people are the absolute scum of the PSP scene (and in fact have been 'infecting' every console scene ever in existance), they have known to lie, cheat, & steal all in the name of money. They grab every homebrew release they can find from all PSP sites and have the original authors names hex edited out and post them on their site pretending that they were the authors. They even posed as Dark_AleX on their forums and posted his releases there with his username to intice extra visitors.
They mainly gain their income through advertising, traffic, & site visits (hence their desparation to lie and cheat to gain more visitors). So when they leaked our source, we knew definitely it would bring a huge increase of traffic to their site. So to prevent them gaining anymore traffic (and hence income) and to prevent their name from being heavily promoted and advertised due to this leak, we decide the best course of action is to "officially" release our source instead. Now mind you, we never in a million years ever wanted this source to be public. It was done purely to pre-empt the release of the leak by Lamers. And also to further isolate their "big news item", we decided to publically release our 3.40 CFW (which was in the middle of being updated, hence why the recovery menu said 3.51* WildC*rd). So because of this rushed release, there were still bugs left and we apologize for this. But we then realised that this CFW was becoming quite popular so we decided to support the fans and start officially supporting 3.40* LE as an official release (hence the quick bug fixes).
Now having said all this, out of respect to the devs that worked so hard on this source and also out of respect for Dark_AleX, Team WildC*rd politely requested that this source be used for educational purposes only and not for public releases.
Now regarding Ketchup's release, firstly, we got permission from the author of SCEP to use his source in our release (you may ask him yourself to confirm). Secondly, even though members of Team WildC*rd wish to remain anonymous, there are members that know DA personally and we can assure you we have his blessings. Thirdly, we completely reversed DA's PRX's rather than using his direct source, Ketchup is not reversing our binary release of 3.40* LE, he is using our direct source code.
It is not that we do not respect Ketchups work, on the contrary, we were quite impressed with what he had achieved. What we do not wish however, is for the source to be used. Ketchup may of course still reverse our recovery.prx binary that we released from 3.40*. If he really wants to release something, reverse the prx himself from scratch like we did, do no rely on the source instead. We would have no problem with that. And the same goes for anyone else, if you wish to release something from our source, get the source by reversing the prx's, not by just downloading the leak. I believe we are respecting his wishes that way, he may release a recovery, only if its based on our prx and not the source code.
Like I mentioned above, out of respect for the hard work Team WildC*rd Members put into this CFW and out of respect for DA, we politely request that the source not be used for public releases. Realise that we were forced into a corner and we had not much choice but to release the source. We never wanted either the source nor 3.40* to be ever publically released. But of course, we cannot force anyone to do whatever we want, PSPGEN have have already said that Ketchup will release another version soon. We cannot force you not to, we can only ask for you to respect our wishes.
And finally, a quick note to those who see our source release as an opportunity to release a ripped clone of 3.40* or even 3.10* (read: Test30 and his pals) - Don't. It will not improve your reputation (or the size of your e-penis), sites such as QJ and MaxConsole will not support you, and members of the scene will discount your work.
Taken from the source of... well Sourceforge.
Here is the link to the page I found this out from: http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index...90&atid=774197
Do not thank me for this update, the creator is Paul Murray from the website.
Here is his update and his changelog:
Spoiler!
This is a collection of changes I have made for my personal copy of bookr
and thought that others might find useful. I use bookr on text and palmdoc
files, so my changes are targetted to that, I do not use the pdf
functionality.
Date Created:
- 2007-08-05 13:00
Changes:
- Swap Circle and Cross use to match western conventions
- Record last file opened and automatically reopen when bookr starts
- Tidy up source references to button images to use constants to make
source reading easier
- Reload document if font face changed, no only if font size changed
- Option to scale line height from 50% to 150% of normal, to either
increase spacing for better readability, or squeeze more text onto the
screen
- Option to ignore CRs if less than a certain number occur together, useful
if the file has been line broken at a specific width
- Separate last viewed folder memory for books and fonts
- Two separate speed settings, one for menus and file loading, one for
reading books, so you can set it to 10Mhz for good batter life, but still
open files quickly
- Read title for palmdoc files
Seeing that it's a small update, I don't know if anyone will grab this. I'm merely posting it so that some mod or admin posts this on the main PSP News website. Overall, an update is always welcomed I hope, especially since alot of people were asking for an update of this anyway a few weeks/months after it went dead from it's creator's last update.
Note: When I mean this is an update, it's merely a patch (Notice the small size). Please do not remove the original file if you have it on your psp already. Merely place the file in the same folder,overwrite, and things are hunky dorey!
The PSP and what can be emulated on it is a topic of discussion thats always being debated around the PSP Homebrew Community.
Last weeks release of a DS Emulator for the PSP brought out a lot of strong comments from people on all sides, some that say a DS Emulator will never be at a decent speed and unplayable etc etc.
I myself agree that a DS Emulator will most likely never be playable but then i thought lets look at specs and in particular specs for the Nintendo 64 which is being emulated on the PSP
Memory:
4 Megabytes (36 megabits) total RAM
Rambus DRAM subsystem
Transfers up to 562.5 MBytes/sec
Custom 9-bit Rambus Bus (to the DRAM)
Runs at 500 MHz max
Internal data bus to the RCP is 128-bit
Now heres the Nintendo DS Specs:
Main CPU: ARM 9, 67 MHz
Secondary CPU: ARM 7, 33 MHz
Memory: 4 MB main RAM, 656 kB VRAM
Sound: ARM 7, 33 MHz
16 simultaneous channels
stereo sound
Graphical prestations/effects:
ARM 9
dual 256x192 screen resolution
solid 60fps
120,000 polygons per second with all hardware effects @ 60 fps (expect game benchmarks to be a little less.)
262,144 colors
4 million vertices/second
30 million pixels/second fillrate
Cel-shading
Hardware fog
no bilinear filtering This really sucks...
When you look at the systems there doesnt seem to be a mass of difference between them, now with N64 Emulation on PSP at a playable or nearly playable state then will we see DS games at a much more playable condition than the 4FPS releases at the moment, of course any such emulator needs to be written for that console.
So is a decent DS Emulator a possibility or not, my answer would be no but in the world of emulation we are always amazed by the breakthroughs that happen. Im sure the coders who know the N64 and DS Hardware will be able to dissect the difference in specs in a way i cant but its nice to dream eh ?
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Another new post from StrmnNrmn's blog points out that Exophase suggested two optimizations for Daedalus to StrmnNrmn some time ago.
It turns out that exophase had already suggested two of the three optimisations I implemented this weekend in a conversation we had way back in February.
Whoops! It's been such a long time, I'd totally forgotten we'd talked about it. I really should pay more attention sometimes - if I had been you might have seen some of these improvements way back in R9. Sorry exophase - kudos for spotting this so long ago!
New blog post from StrmnNrmn's blog tells us about how some dynarec optimizations make Daedalus faster.
I was playing around with the code generation a couple of evenings ago, and realised that if I made a certain assumption, I could drastically speed up specific types of memory accesses.
When I discussed load/store handling on Sunday, I presented the new code that is typically generated for handling a load such as 'lw $t0, 0x24($t1)' on the N64:
ADDIU a0 = s1 + 0x0024 # add offset to base register
SLT t0 = (a0 BEQ t0 != r0 --> _Trampoline_XYZ123 # branch to trampoline if invalid
ADDU a1 = a0 + s7 # add offset to emulated ram
LW s0 <- 0x0000(a1) # load data
(I'll ignore all the extra code which is generated, and just concentrate on the 5 instructions above which correspond to the expected path of execution.)
Of the 5 instructions that are generated, two - the SLT and BEQ - are just there for performing error handling in the case that the address is invalid, a hardware register (i.e. for memory-mapped I/O), or a virtual address. I'll call this error handling for short.
If we were generating code in an idealised environment where we didn't have to perform error handling, we could drop the SLT/BEQ instructions to get this:
ADDIU a0 = s1 + 0x0024 # add offset to base register
ADDU a1 = a0 + s7 # add offset to emulated ram
LW s0 <- 0x0000(a1) # load data
We could then optimise this even further and perform the offset calculation directly as a part of the LW instruction:
ADDU a1 = s1 + s7 # add offset to emulated ram
LW s0 <- 0x0024(a1) # load data
In this idealised situation we could reduce an emulated load to just two instructions, with no branches. That's a pretty good saving!
The problem is that the environment we're generating code from is not 'ideal', and it's hard to know in advance of time which memory accesses are going to directly access physical ram, and which are going to access hardware registers or require virtual address translation. For that reason, we have to place a guard around every memory access to make sure that it behaves correctly. At least, that was the way I was thinking until earlier in the week.
What I realised on Monday is that I can make an assumption that lets me remove the error handling code for certain types of load/stores. The assumption is that when the N64 accesses any memory through the stack pointer ($sp) register, the address is always going to be valid, physical memory.
The assumption relies on the fact that most roms don't do anything particularly clever with their stack pointers - it gets set up for each thread to point at a valid region of memory then the game just runs along, pushing and popping values from it as the code executes. Of course, if the assumption is wrong then the emulator will just crash and grind to a halt in a unpredictable manner
It was straightforward to add a hack to the code generation to exploit this kind of behaviour, and the results have been better than I expected - I'm seeing at least a 10% speed up, and the code expansion factor (the ratio of generated bytes of instructions to input bytes) has dropped from around 5.0x to 4.0x. Stability has been excellent too - I've run about 8 roms with the hack so far, and all of them have run perfectly.
I think one of the reasons the hack has such an impact is that a lot of the memory accesses in a typical C program are through the stack. Here's an example snippet from the entry to a function on the N64, where the compiler emitted code to store the return address and arguments:
When I look through disassembly for the roms I'm working on, it's very common to see lots of sequential loads/stores relative to the stack pointer like this.
Previously Daedalus generated around 20 instructions (including 5 branches) for the above snippet. With the hack, the generated code now looks like this:
I still want to do lots of testing with the hack. I want to find out if there are roms that don't work with the hack enabled, and how common a problem it is. It's such a significant optimisation though that I'm certain I'll be adding it as an option in Daedalus R13. The results of my testing will probably determine whether I default it to on or off though.
So far Daedalus R13 is shaping up to be significantly faster than R12. I'm still not sure when I'll be ready to release it, but you'll hear about it here first.
-StrmnNrmn
Give feedback to StrmnNrmn here or in the comments section in his post.
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Joek2100 has released a new version of Music Prx, heres the release details:
This is the new version of the irsmp3.prx which now has support for atrac3, which is why I changed the name.
If you don't know, this is a custom firmware plugin which allows you to play music while playing a game and using the vsh.
Read the file called PLEASE_READ_ME.txt, for installation and usage
I'm not going to copy the whole readme file here, but there a somethings you should know:
This has new hardware decoder will work with all umd games/the vsh/ and most homebrew. (Thanks to cooleyes)
- It will not work with homebrew that uses the ME (SnesTYL ME, dosbox .71, etc)
- It will not work with copy protected atrac3's
- In the next release I'll have it switch back to the software decoder (mp3 only) when the ME is in use, but until then you'll have to use the non-ME version
- Also when playing an mp3 that has a samplerate different from 44.1kHz, you need to pause the song before the vsh's video/music player will work
If you have a problem with a game starting, try waiting until you are at the main menu to start playing music.
If you get an error message/if you hit play and don't hear any music, turn on the on screen display, and look for a line in blue.
Heres whats new:
0.51: (beta)
- Fixed a bug which would prevent playback in some games (You can now remove hw.prx, it is no longer used)
- Since many people are reporting problems, I made this a "beta" version, I'll try and fix the bugs as soon as I can, see me last post in this thread for details
0.52: (beta)
- Fixed a bug which prevented some (I guess a lot) of atrac3 files from playing properly,
0.53: (beta)
- Fixed another bug making atrac3/atrac3 plus files not play, please update to this version before reporting any bugs, if you still have problems
0.54 beta:
- Removed the settings file because it was causing a problem
- Added those settings into music_conf.txt
- NOTE: In 3.40OE (and possibly other fws, setting the cpu speed > 222 will cause the vsh to not work/crash)
- This seems fixed in 3.52 M33-2
- Now that I think about it, the above might just be a problem with my one psp
0.55:
- Fixed a bug which would cause some mp3s to hang at the end of the file
Future plans:
-auto enable the software decoder when the ME is in use, so playing mp3 can work with any homebrew that uses the me
- improve the on screen display
- add some sort of playlist in folder support (each subdir would be a seperate playlist and you can switch between them, something like DJEK was talking about in the old thread)
- add more formats
- figure out how to get pops mode working
- have button inputs that are used in the prx ignored by everything else
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via joek2100
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Fans of the PlayStation Portable (PSP) media device must continue to wait for a download store, a feature that experts have said is a must if the player is ever to launch a significant challenge to the iPod.
Sony representatives, which have been holding press gatherings in major cities in preparation for the September launch of the upgraded PSP, refused on Tuesday to set a launch date for the download store.
They did reveal that the store will launch with "short-form" games. Whether music and movies will be available at rollout is "still unclear," said John Koller, a spokesman for the PSP.
What's the holdup?
Koller said that concerns about Digital Rights Management (DRM) are part of the problem. The company is trying to find the best way to protect movies from being pirated. Sony has always been big on DRM.
British business publication The Financial Times sparked expectations about the store when it reported late last year, citing unnamed sources, that a download service would arrive by spring. Sony refused to confirm that a store was on the way until recently.
Back in 2005, when the PSP debuted, some PSP fans clamored for a download store. Many rejected Universal Movie Discs (UMD), a miniature version of the DVD created for the PSP. The format has yet to catch on with the public.
Sony's delay at offering downloads has held the PSP back, say analysts like James McQuivey, with Forrester Research. The PSP, with its high-resolution 4.3-inch screen, ability to play videogames, movies and music, should already be challenging the iPod, McQuivey told me in April.
McQuivey assessed the PSP this way: "The Sony PSP is one of the best portable entertainment media devices that anyone has come up with in years. It has a relatively big screen, plays video beautifully, has good storage and audio. It could have been the first big mobile carrier for TV shows and movies."
Instead, iPod, and not the PSP, is one of the world's most popular multi-media devices. Still, Sony is at least headed in the right direction. Another smart addition to the new PSP is a video-out cable. One of the biggest complaints among PSP fans was that they couldn't watch PSP movies or games on their TVs.
A demonstration of the video-out feature was impressive. Watching the film House of Flying Daggers, there was little resolution loss. Koller promised that downloadable movies would offer the same high quality--just as soon as they arrive.
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Xart has released a new MP3 Player for the PSP, heres the details:
Melody is the standalone music player of Choice BETA 1.5
Some may just want the music player so it is being released as a stanalone version.
please take note that melody is still being developed and Melody v1.0 will have shuffle & repeat playback.
ID3v3 PNG Cover Art only supported.
ID3v2 & ID3v4 will be added.
only cover art in png none interlaced supported.
144 x 144 size, if larger will be reduced in size on screen to 144 x 144 and you may notice a slight slow down in scrolling when loading large cover art
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