Wishlist of Homebrew for Rejuvenate: Apps
With two months still to go in the ReVITAlize competition, I don’t think we’ve seen as many homebrews crop up from the Rejuvenate hack as could be. One could speculate why this is: maybe because the vita-toolchain is still in development; or maybe the appearance of the RetroArch Vita port made some people feel we are bound to have all the emulators we could need sooner rather than later. However, emulators are not the end-all-be-all of homebrew and the Vita has many flaws that the Vita scene could and probably should be trying to cover to make it a better do-it-all device.
However, I know many of you might be tempted to say one of the following two things:
But why would we need that when we can just run old PSP homebrew that was released way back when?
A: Using that logic, why would we even need Rejuvenate in the first place? Sony has put many roadblocks in front of us: from blocking access to the GAME folders to memory limitations. Rejuvenate means we can build a new scene from the ground up and use the full capabilities of the Vita, PSPemu be damned.
But I have xzy phone and I can do many things like that with it!
A: Well yeah but, doing pretty much anything on your smartphone that doesn’t involve texting/calling/chatting is a HUGE drain on the battery of any phone. I own a Nexus 5 and I get more juice out of my Vita listening to music than I do out of my Nexus and that’s without even going into the gaming aspect of it. The Vita in terms of battery vastly outperforms most phones in the market!
So with that out of the way and without any further ado, here are the homebrew I feel we could have on the Vita that would make our devices just a little bit better (in no particular order)!
An Actual Media Player
Admittedly the Vita’s music player isn’t the worst thing in the world (just as the PSP’s wasn’t awful and we still got many alternatives) and the 3DS is far worse off when it comes to that. However it only supports MP3 and MP4 files (audio) and I’ve always thought the the process of copying songs to the Vita is quite the pain (also, have I mentioned the built-in Vita music player does not support skipping songs by pressing L or R? This was a basic feature on the PSP and a terrible downgrade). The screenshot I used above is from an old pspbrew called Xandu’s Media Player (a cool alternative was called LightMP3) and here are some of the features it had that the Vita player still doesn’t:
- Support for OGG, MOD, S3M, IT (along with the obvious MP3, WAV) audio files;
- Music Quiz;
- Themable;
- Editing of song ID3 tags;
- Lyrics!
I remember rocking this as my default music player on the PSP for years, until I finally parted with it. How cool would it be to have something like this on the Vita? I know that you could technically use it if it is compatible with the PSPemu/actually detects the songs on the Vita filesystem (or you could spend tedious hours waiting to upload them to the PSPemu using FTP), but it would be really cool to have a Rejuvenate version of a full-featured media player.
An Alternate Shell
Remember IRShell? Most of you probably do, given you were a part of the PSP Scene. Well, this is mostly a pipe dream of mine but how cool would it be if someone made something just like it, but running in Rejuvenate? It could even be a shell to control Rejuvenate itself, allowing you to launch native Vita homebrews directly from within it (which has been proven to work). However, this shell could do other simple things like running an FTP server so you don’t have to open VitaFTP every time you need to transfer a file and who knows, it could double as the media player I just referred to earlier.
The possibilities are endless but I think this is the hardest thing to create on this list, if the vita-toolchain even supports it.
A Comic/Manga Reader
Considering a huge part of the gaming community is also big into geekier stuff like manga and comics, I am honestly surprised that a comic reader for the Vita still hasn’t appeared (it kind of did but it wasn’t all that practical). The 3DS scene just recently got a bare-bones one, so I’m honestly surprised no one has thought of this yet.
The screenshot used above is from a homebrew that many of you should hopefully be familiar with called PSPComic that is still an amazing homebrew, but due to the fact that the PSP native resolution was 480x272px and the Vita upscales that to fill its amazing 960x544px… things get pretty awfully upscaled to the point some stuff is unfortunately unreadable. The Vita has some features the PSP did not that could make for a better reader too: the already mentioned superior native resolution, touchscreen to make changing the pages more natural and in the case of the OLED-model: more vibrant colors.
I am also aware that this could be done on a smartphone and I have addressed this earlier in this piece but I am willing to go a bit further and say: if you could centralize your gaming and other hobbies on the same device… wouldn’t you? I certainly would.
A Native Ebook Reader
While I wonder how many of you here use their digital devices to read ebooks, I think there is no doubt that simply having a homebrew like this would give us a viable alternative to other devices we may own. There is reason BookR was made for the PSP in the first place! However, considering all the features that are expected of an application like this nowadays, I’d say that support for file formats like .epub is key. BookR isn’t awful by any means, but by nowadays standards support for only .pdf files is not stellar since the rise of digital books has given birth to many other formats and PDFs have become used mostly for other purposes. The PSPemu upscaling also hits BookR pretty hard since, like PSPComic, the pixelation of the screen causes texts to be harder to read forcing you to zoom in, which can sometimes make things even worse.
Other cool things that could be created for Rejuvenate:
An instant messenger program: While instant messaging isn’t as popular as it used to be in the early 2010’s (mostly due to Facebook and Whatsapp’s growth), many people still use services such as Steam, Skype and to a lesser extent, GTalk to do their talking (even Facebook has a semi-open protocol that can be used to connect to their chat) and since these apps are also huge drains of smartphones batteries, an alternative on the Vita would be nifty!
A port of an open-source engine: It recently came to my attention that the LÖVE engine was ported to the 3DS and since I am aware that many people are interested in making their own games, a port of LÖVE or something like it could be pretty cool for people to dabble in game development and figure out whether or not they want to try and do something related to it. In the meantime why not try out Lua Player Plus (that was released for the ReVITAlize competition too!) and see what you can create?
That’s all I got for this part! In the next part we’ll be talking about what everyone really wants: games! Do you, however, think I’ve forgotten something? Do have anything you’d like to suggest? Drop a line in the comments and add your own two cents about on this topic!
Rejuvenate is dead.
Vita is dead.
pretty much, with all the hassle is not worth it, honestly not even the psp exploit are worth losing psn or playing online, i think that i had been waiting for a lot of time is not playing psp games on my ps vita but be able to store all of my games wich i don’t because the damn memories are too expensive, it would be great to see an exploit that let you use some custom modified ps vita game card with an sd slot.
I don’t get how people can’t see something so simple. Rejuvenate is only a hassle right now, if/when either another flaw in the vita is found, or the barriers to Rejuvenate are bypassed – this will 99% be using the same code portion Rejuvenate uses – PSM. There will be no native hack on 3.52+.
Rejuvenate is not dead – it is our best bet for homebrew on the vita. Our only bet for homebrew on the vita even. If anyone, ever wants to run homebrew on the vita, and have the possibility for untethered, hassle free homebrew in the future – stay on 3.51. No matter how useless you think Rejuvenate is right now.
Of course, if you have no interest in homebrew on the vita, then update away
And then you obviously have Android Defiler, which makes the process much simpler and portable. Granted you’re still tethered to a device, but it’s much more portable than a computer.
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Agree. There’s little point to develop anything on Vita. As it for me, it now works mainly as streaming device from PS4 (great to play PS4 games on it when 100’s of kilometers away from my PS4) . But other than that and replaying some of the few AAA games, there’s again no point to put an effort to develop anything on Vita. It’s not PSP and never had its success, audience is too small now and lots of Vita owners already put it in case next to other old phones or legacy consoles. Blame Sony but understand it is definitive over.
I am not agree : vita is a great homebrew plataform,it need time and more interest.
About oficial developers and Sony ,mm,it seem sony doesnt worry about it which is a shame and
a lack of respect (also is user fault for buy its PS4 when it had no any great games ,only “remakes”)
What about a android OS emulator
This is exactly what we need. If we could run android apps we would have plenty of features.
The vita only being clocked at 333/444 mhz is kinda low with access to 1xxmb ram.
PC DESKTOP streaming. it shouldn’t be hard
Check out moonlight that connects up to the nvidia gamestream. It runs on the RPI and the open pandora. I wonder if it could be ported over to the vita.
posting again since deleted.
Why not a pc desktop streaming homebrew?
nvm. i failed
I’m dying for an n64 emulator that uses the full hardware capabilities of the ps vita so there’s no lag when playing zelda ocarina of time
Another good idea for homebrew is new Video Player, which will play not only mp4, but also avi, mpeg, mkv.
Or a better Homestreaming App, the one we have now since ~1 year is *** as heck, even there you must convert all to that little format the Vita could play.
i think full media player is not good idea. open you mobile phone, it cloud do almost jobs. the only thing i think vita cloud do better is more game emulators. first of all .psvita is a game device.
What really would be great would be a HTML5 Browser that can play HTML5 Media Content. The Vita Browser is really limited in that point. With that many Video Streaming Platforms would be work on Vita too. But I don’t know how easy it would be to port a browser as Homebrew to the Vita. Or would it be possible to wrote own Homebrew Apps for example for Amazon Prime Video? I really like it that there is a Vita App for Crunchyroll.
And for me: I only have an older cheap Smartphone with Prepaid Card and I only use it as Audio Player, for SMS (Pin’s etc.) and some other little stuff. And also it is small, too small to watch a video on it and bigger is to big for me for a mobile device, that is also the reason why I use my Vita only at home.
A comic/ebook reader is actually the one thing I’ve wanted above all with this homebrew scene. With that, my Vita would become a daily necessity for me. Add screen orientation toggle for bonus points. I’d be happy with that. Here’s hoping. Although an FTP program would have to come first. The Content Manager is just a headache.
I would have done something, but now I’m on 3.52. Sue me.
Also, I was wondering about a REAL web brower, not limited to 8 tabs. But that may be a little tricky ^^
A good music/video player would be great,.
the problem with rejuvenate is its precarious way in order to use it on the vita, I mean, if everytime we have to connect the vita to pc and and lunch stuff via pc is just hilarious, make stuff in iOS or android on the go is much more viable.
Here are the homebrews that I want on vita:
Internet Browser(original one sucks. It has memory problem and less features)
Video Player(MX Player on android is awesome. It would be great if we get a copy of it on the vita)
Audio Recorder
Gmail app
Facebook/whatsapp messenger
Youtube
Spotify
Torrent
The difficult setup and the portability issue of Rejuvenate are really killing it for me. I’m sure most people are in the same boat.
I have to admit I was on the same boat until android defiler came around. My phone is usually always around me and may be awful for games, but it literally takes me the press of a button to turn on hotspot and turn it off.
I guess not everyone has that comodity tho.
You’ll have to get someone else to write VitaComic. I have a tablet now–a much better experience for reading comics than a 5″ screen can provide.
Well I wasn’t naming anyone specifically. 😛 Glad you’re enjoying yourself. I don’t have a tablet and a 4.95″ phone isn’t the best when it comes to reading comics however.
I think the main reason Rejuvenate hasn’t done as well as it could have is because many people want to keep fairly up-to-date, and realising it can’t work on newer versions of the Vita people are probably just hoping for a new hack to come along that will work on any version when hacked (i.e. no Sony dependency). At least with hacks from the past you pretty much knew you’d be able to hack it again in a more recent version at some point in the future.
I would love to see original games come from the homebrew scene. Not going to lie, emulators are awesome, and Daggerfall on the go would make my year, but nothing like cool original games. If something like LÖVE was ported over, when I find the time I might develop something.
I cannot encourage you enough! But atm that would require a 3DS. We have Lua though, I remember in the hayday of the PSP Scene, many people and newcomers tinkered with Lua to make games.
The portability problem is what makes rejuvenate hard to recommend, or even take seriously. So the ideal homebrew would be a hack that removes this limitation. Then you’d see new stuff just flying in! Right now I haven’t even installed rejuvenate, because if I need a pc to run sth… I can probably as well run it on the pc anyway.
A PPSSPP port so we can play games with upscaled textures at 960×544 <3
That would actually be amazing 😛
I only want a homebrew that could make my vita a controller for PC.
I wonder why those apps like manga reader, instant messaging apps, and ebook readers, didn’t have chance to take off when PSM support was still available. Of course, it was a platform with limited capability, but probably should have been enough for many practical apps just mentioned. At least it had official support and own app store. Was there something missing for making them that only hacks such as Rejuvenate could have solved? Was it like Sony banned these types of apps at the time?
PSM wasn’t popular enough… It barely had a calculator app on there. It was a free service after a while but even then few people ever made apps for it. All apps had to be approved by $ony, meaning at least emulators were out of the picture. So… long story short: some of the apps could have been made but Rejuvenate can do it with less limitations.
There was a PSM Manga/Comic reader, but since the Vita did not support the copying of files via USB to a local folder, you had to upload to your dropbox and use that to read them. It was kind of a pain so it failed miserably.
i was wondering why do you copy this from hackinformer.com ?
I would like to see Reicast emulator (Sega Dreamcast Emulator) , Play! emulator (PS2 emulator) and Nintendo DS emulator just like in Android but if not possibble an Android Remote Play will do just Like PS3 or PS4 Remote Play on Vita but streaming Android Games instead.
There is indeed not enough interest in rejuvenate lately. As for possible programs, i have been recently fascinated with game porting and i would like to see some older games like warlords or dink smallwood being ported to vita in similar fashion as dividead was. Also Dos box would be great to have on vita. From practical view, photo editing tool would be nice as currently, default photo viewer contains none. Having option to play more movie or sound file types would also be great. Maybe have alternative web browser ? Posibilities everywhere. Unfortunately my programing ability is almost non existant but id gladly help with testing and stuff.
I feel that if there was a port of SDL 1.2/2.0 or OpenGL for the Vita it would be a lot easier for hobbyist or indie developers to port/program their games for the Vita.
I agree
Remote play for PC and emulators. And thats all we needs.
quote
I think that an Android emulator would be good, I believe the Vita has capacity to run it and some android games since we have gamepads and a touch screen!….from my point of view would be better than some tablets and phones. Also a remote access for PC would be good…just like ps3/ps4 to access my PC in home from my vita at office and play some computer games would be awesome!
I wouldn’t mind having a manga reader and an alternative to the stock music/video player. Great ideas, man!
— A Vita App that would use the Vita’s processing power to allow live streaming of ’emulated’ games like PSP, PSX and PS Minis.
— Also, this might not require homebrew, but is there yet a way to enable screen capture of PSP games?
My wishlist:
1. A music player with a playlist creator/editor.
2. Ports:
-Marathon trilogy
-Sword of Moonlight: King’s Field Making Tool
-Other games that can be ported
3. Emulators:
-Nintendo 64
-Nintendo DS
4. A FPS game with zombies and RPG elements, or a port of one.
— Headphone and motion support for the DS4?
I agree.And the same (motion support) for vita tv
I just want all emulators with full ad hoc multiplayer funtionality
Forgive me for saying the obvious, but how about an eCFW that lets you play PSP and PSX games, but which is run using Revitalize rather than using a PSP exploit game? If Revitalize has better permissions than a PSP exploit, wouldn’t this be possible?
(Though I suspect that this would be unlikely for the same reason we don’t have a 3DS program that runs under a full exploit as a .3ds or a .cia, and is used to load a .3dsx.)
(I think noscript ate my comment….)
Forgive me for saying the obvious, but how about an eCFW that can run PSP and PSX games, but which is run using Rejuvenate rather than using an exploit game? If Rejuvenate has more permissions than a PSP exploit, shouldn’t this be possible?
(Though I suspect we wonb’t see this for the same reason we don’t have a 3DS hopmebrew loader that runs under a full exploit as a .3ds or a .cia and can be used to run a .3dsx program.)
Hi,i think it is a powerfull machine which could have a great homebrew (and use same tech arm,powervr than the most common devices as android phones,which should be easier to make a port its app)
As personal suggestions:
-New Emulador no available psp :
Saturn
virtual Boy
N64 (with 64dd and extra ram (32mb )mod
Pc-fx 32
Dreamcast/Naomi
Nuon DVD player
Nokia ngen
Arcade/mame
Games which are open source (the original ,using reverse ingeniery…
here are a good list :
http://osgameclones.com/
Scumvm
Heart of darkness
Gzdoom
freeciv
Openra
Echocrone GNU
tuxracer
Doom 3 bfg
Portal (the normal source was leaked and it happened the same with the sources of nvidea tegra port)
….
DosEmu
An android interpreter
(other devices/os interpreters as palmos,apple messagepad..)
For streaming:
Limelight
open Remote play
And which i found more dificult (no enought information or kernel acces for creating them )some “drivers” of devices as:
Wiimote plus for vitatv
Move -ps camera vitatv
Psvita as controller to pstv
Full Dualshock 3,4 driver ( motion detector,sound…)
making posible to create someway to “Link” pstv and vita being as one device (no need of streaming,both can make its chores but could be great for asimetric game which wii u tried ,and latter sony with ps3-vita..
super interesting
Kerry.Robertson@ird.govt.nz
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