PSP Hacks · Hacks, Cracks, Mods, Homebrew, Utilities

Don’t piss your pants just yet, it’s far from stable and doesn’t function all that well; however, it’s definitely a major breakthrough in Nintendo DS emulation on the PSP. NekoMiMi, who appears to be the same author as PSPTube, has based his developments on DeSmuME — a DS emulator for Windows.

Tyler Ilg has kindly been providing updates — commercial ROMs don’t appear to run at all, but the good news! Homebrew written for the NDS works! Tyler mentions 3 separate homebrews that load up and run; mind you, they’re somewhat slow. That’s to be expected this early in the game. Nonetheless, awesome news!

Props to NekoMiMi and all the other genius minds.

How to use? Rename your ROM to “test.nds” and place it in the same directory as EBOOT.PBP.

Download: DeSmuME 20070725

- source: nekomimi

Boom bam, DAVEX in this jam. You were all gawking at DAVEX’s RIN GB/GBC release when the added ability of rewinding your actions came into play. Now do the same with Ruka’s Nintendo (NES) emulator, NesterJ! Persons who dug mirror mode can also use that.

To recapitulate…

“…With rewind (or “sands of time”, if you prefer) you can warp back in time without worrying about saving states. If you made a mistake, you can press “rewind” button and undo it….”

“…In mirror mode, like it’s name says, all graphics are horizontally inverted. So, if your favorite platform game is played from left to right, this time you can have the choice of playing it from right to left, giving it a little novelty touch…”

Thanks to Ruka for his original developments, and DAVEX for his added touch of dopeness.

1942!

Download: NesterJ v1.11 RM

In related news… NES emulation on the iPhone!

- source: davex @ qj

Developer DAVEX has added two snazzy features to Mr. Mirakichi’s Gameboy & Gameboy Color emulator for the PSP…

1. Rewind.
2. Mirror mode.

Quoted from the readme, because I couldn’t explain it any better…

With rewind (or “sands of time”, if you prefer) you can warp back in time without worrying about saving states. If you made a mistake, you can press “rewind” button and undo it. By default, it’s mapped to “RTRIGGER” button, but you can configure it in “KEY CONFIG” menu.

In mirror mode, like it’s name says, all graphics are horizontally inverted. So, if your favorite gameboy platform game is played from left to right, this time you can have the choice of playing it from right to left, giving it a little novelty touch.

I totally dig the “sands of time” feature, man that’s cool! Great job DAVEX.

Download: RIN GB/GBC v1.32 (Unofficial)

- source: davex

Wow — two heavy hitters in one day! Mark it on your calendar folks; the day of earth shattering PSP releases, June 26th! First we saw Noobz’ 3.50 firmware downgrader, and now StrmnNrmn unleashes the highly anticipated Daedalus R12, bringing Nintendo 64 emulation goodness to the PSP! Can it get any better than this?!

R12 primarily focuses on minor compatibility and graphical fixes; there are no optimizations for this build. Super Smash Bros. (SSB) is now running much smoother than the previous Daedalus versions. With dynarec enabled you’ll achieve ~ 30-40 fps; still not quite full speed. Although it’s playable with frameskip set to 1 or 2.

StrmnNrmn also mentions:

Goldeneye is also running in R12. Although the intro sequence is running very quickly and with few noticable graphical issues, a lot more work is needed to it running at a playable framerate in-game. I think it’s a good start though, and something to get excited about for the future :)

Daedalus R12 changelog:

• [!] Fixed issue preventing Goldeneye from being loaded.
• [!] Fixed dynarec for Goldeneye.
• [!] Fixed dynarec for Super Smash Bros.
• [!] Fix various texturing issues with 4bpp and small or non power-of-2 textures.
• [!] Fix TexRect instructions with negative s/t components.
• [!] Fixed the HUD in Mario 64 (broken in R11.)
• [!] Fixed lights in F3DEX2 microcodes.
• [+] Correctly implement instruction fetch exceptions, improving compatibility.
• [+] Improved floating point compatibility.
• [+] Correctly handle mask_s/mask_t tile values.
• [+] Implemented a few custom blend modes.
• [+] Screenshots just cover visible viewport.

Thanks for the countless emails everyone.

Download Daedalus R12 for:
fw 1.00 | fw 1.50+ | src code

- source: StrmnNrmn

StrmnNrmn highlighting his latest astonishing Daedalus advancement…

Anyway, I managed to spend a few hours this weekend isolating the problem, and after a little experimentation I’ve been able to come up with a temporary workaround. With the fix in place SSB is running at around 30-40fps in game on the PSP, which is very exciting.

Very exciting indeed! Other roms suffering from the same Dynarec issues should be relatively easy to figure out; we’ll leave that to the skilled StrmnNrmn.

I don’t believe there is a scheduled date of release for R12 just yet; nevertheless, it’s a safe bet we’ll be enjoying [faster/usable] Nintendo 64 action on our PSP’s in the near future.

Read More

In the meantime, download Daedalus R11 — give that a try.

DarkPacMan77 was fortunate enough to have a virtual one-on-one interview with Exophase, the author of gpSP (gameplaySP) — the Nintendo Gameboy Advance emulator for the PSP.

Exophase shares an inside look at his development path for gameplaySP; how it came to be, compatibility issues, future possibilities, and much more…

DarkPacMan77: Have you ever SERIOUSLY considered giving up the project?

Exophase: Not really. I tend to see things out to a high level of maturation, although gpSP for PSP has come a decent way.

DarkPacMan77: Many people have complained about features that are “missing” in gpsp. What are your plans for future development? Are there any features that are in store for the future?

Exophase: Nothing that people complain about really, and the only thing that I know that people seriously whine for these days is multiplayer. It’s not terribly likely to happen though. At any rate, features have always been THIRD priority before speed and compatibility. There are still things I can do in both areas, so that’s where I will continue to focus.

DarkPacMan77: Is it entirely accurate to rule out the possibility of multiplayer?

Exophase: I wouldn’t say it’s impossible.

Does that capture your attention? Click the following link to have a closer peek inside the mind of Exophase… Read More.

It’s definitely a captivating read for hardcore gpSP fans.

Download: gpSP v0.9

Not bad for a hour’s work indeed… StrmnNrmn’s latest indicates he has been successful with loading the GoldenEye ROM under Daedalus R12. Now, don’t be confused — there’s a fine line between loading a ROM and actually playing it… Nevertheless, StrmnNrmn’s on the right track — improvements aren’t far off.

There’s still quite a long way to go though. Firstly, I can still only get the rom running with dynarec disabled on the PSP, so the framerate is currently just 6-7 fps. Interestingly it runs fine with dynarec on the PC with the same set of changes, so this indicates a bug somewhere in the PSP dynarec implementation. Secondly, I’ve not been able to get in-game yet - it just seems to hang with a black screen shortly after starting to load the level. I’ve not figured out whether this is just running very slowly without dynarec and taking its time, or if there’s another bug to be fixed somewhere.

Read Full Article

StrmnNrmn comes storming through after much anticipation for Daedalus R11 — the Nintendo 64 emulator for the PSP. StrmnNrmn has devoted a significant amount of time and effort into Daedalus, and it certainly shows…

The R11 change list:

• [*] Large overhaul of rom settings and preferences. All settings should now be persistant.
• [+] Native support for palettised textures for faster rendering and less memory usage.
• [+] Provided a fixed size pool for all texture memory, to limit memory usage.
• [+] Expansion Pak enabled by default.
• [!] Updated rom info database to include save mechanism for many roms.
• [!] Fix memory leak in texture cache.
• [!] Fixed conversion of RGBA/32bpp textures with odd alignments.
• [!] Fix crash which occurred when recolouring textures in low memory situations.
• [^] Large rewrite of texture cache to reduce memory usage and improve performance.
• [^] Various optimisations to the way textures are looked up in the cache and installed.
• [^] Optimise offsetting/scaling of texture coordinates.
• [^] Improve performance of dynarec fragment cache and reduce memory fragmentation.

Download:
Daedalus R11 for 1.00 Firmware
Daedalus R11 for 1.50+ Firmware
Daedalus R11 Source

- source: StrmnNrmn

StrmnNrmn shares some details as he prepares for the next iteration of his Nintendo 64 emulator. After refactoring how Daedalus handles textures, R11 shows a 5-10% speed enhancement — quite impressive!

But, the most noteworthy fact, 8MB can now be permanently allocated for the Expansion Pak! And if you’re [in the EDT timezone] reading this now: 1) you’re up too late, and 2) Daedalus R11 will also include the added benefit of remembering individual rom preferences!

A few finishing touches remain and StrmnNrmn should have R11 out the door this upcoming weekend.

The most significant change I’ve made is to fix a memory leak in the texture cache. I mentioned last week that I’d discovered that the texture cache was the biggest culprit for soaking up memory. It turned out that despite my fixes and support for 4-bit and 8-bit palettised textures, I was still running out of memory in certain situations. I did a bit more investigating, and discovered a resource leak that had been in the texture cache since it was first written (probably 7 or 8 years ago now!)

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In the meantime, check out Daedalus R10.

StrmnNrmn has shared what he intends to implement with Daedalus R11. Essentially Daedalus R11 will focus on compatibility issues — the Expansion Pak support will hopefully result in a few more roms running (Majora’s Mask is already verified).

For R11 I’m hoping to fix the Expansion Pak support for once and for all. Memory is currently very tight, so I need to look at shaving off a few hundered KB here and there. Almost all the memory Daedalus uses is allocated up front - there are very few dynamic allocations at runtime, with the biggest culprit being the texture cache. So for R11 I want to introduce a pooled allocator for the texture cache, which will mean that when it runs out of memory, you just get white textures appearing rather than a hard crash.

R11 should be ready within a couple of weeks; before May, anyway. Also mentioned is Daedalus R12’s future which will concentrate, again, on speed. What lies ahead looks quite promising, seeing as though R10 achieved a 10-15% speed-up without implementing many optimizations that had originally been planned.

In the meantime, download Daedalus R10 and have some fun!

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