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.

VSH Exploit

Finally some "proof" to the exploit, I guess. It still is terribly unstable, and probably not very useful to others at the moment with all the wrapped homebrew, and even ISO homebrew more recently. If anything, it may be useful in the future on newer firmwares, because the crash still occurs in 6.37, and every firmware we've tested it on works. Let it just be a reminder that there is still plenty of hidden exploits in the firmware that Sony hasn't caught yet, for those who are still looking.

This video(made by TiPi :P) shows him setting up the PSP, showing what's on it and the OFW version.(5.50, in this case) He then hides the exploit action, and when the PSP is tilted back, we're in VSHBL, as we like to call it, some1's port of the homebrew loader to VSH. PSP-Filer is run, and all the contents of flash0 are shown, since VSH mode has full access.

Credits obviously go to TiPi, who found the crash, I noticed the exploit in the crash, and some1 helped us get the exploit up and working. Along with us 3, who have spent quite a while getting to this point, many people helped out. m0skit0, wololo, JJS, and Davee, to name a few, all helped us out, and possibly others I am not remembering at the moment.

For those curious, by what I mean with "unstable", although on 1000's the exploit works out of the package, so to speak, on newer PSP's, the only ones it would really matter on, the exploit needs tailoring to get it work, hence it not being very useful to others at the moment. We're working on it :P It's far from unstable in the traditional sense, once the file is fixed, it works 100% of the time.

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.