July 2010

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It’s legal to hack your PSP…unless it’s a Phat  

July 29, 2010 in security | 39 comments

(image from concept-phones.com)

If you’ve been following hacking news of other devices, you probably know that recent updates in the US law finally confirmed that jailbreaking an iPhone is legal in this country. Out of curiosity, I read the original announcement from the US copyright office. Of course, I assumed it doesn’t mention the iPhone specifially, so maybe this change in the DMCA would have a positive impact on the PSP as well ?

It turns out that the hacking of the PSP remains in a grey area, as the article says:

The purpose of the proceeding is to determine whether current technologies that control access to copyrighted works are diminishing the ability of individuals to use works in lawful, noninfringing ways.[...]

Computer programs that enable wireless telephone handsets to execute software applications, where circumvention is accomplished for the sole purpose of enabling interoperability of such applications, when they have been lawfully obtained, with computer programs on the telephone handset.

So, you are authorized to jailbreak your iPhone, if your goal is to run software that you legally obtained AND that cannot run on the iPhone because of DRMs. In other words, it is alright to jailbreak a phone in order to run homebrews.

What I find annoying is that this precision in the law specifically mentions “wireless telephone handsets”…which the PSP isn’t…oh, but wait, Skype is officially provided by Sony on the PSP 2000, 3000, and on the PSP Go, so technically, these PSP are wireless telephone handsets…

Hence my cool conclusion of the day: in the US, hacking your PSP (for example using Half Byte Loader) to run Wagic is perfectly legal, unless it’s a psp 1000 :)

By the way, it is wrong to say that it means that hacking a psp1000 is illegal in the US. It just means the psp1000 remains in a grey area because it is not a handled phone. Companies like Apple and Sony will always try to make you believe that hacking your device is illegal. The truth is, it’s not. Of course, hacking these machines will (obviously) void your warranty, and what you do with an unlocked device can be illegal, but that’s a different story.

Additionally, the update of the DMCA clears another area, for reverse engineering. It is now officially legal to look for vulnerabilities in video games, as long as your goal is to improve the security of the game and/or fix bugs. To quote the statement:

Video games accessible on personal computers and protected by technological protection measures that control access to lawfully obtained works, when circumvention is accomplished solely for the purpose of good faith testing for, investigating, or correcting security flaws or vulnerabilities, if:

(i) The information derived from the security testing is used primarily to promote the security of the owner or operator of a computer, computer system, or computer network; and
(ii) The information derived from the security testing is used or maintained in a manner that does not facilitate copyright infringement or a violation of applicable law.

I believe such a law was already clearly specified in many European countries, in order to protect Free Software and the right to fix bugs on systems you own, as well as IT companies that specialize in security.

In case you didn’t figure it out, I’m not a lawyer, so this article has absolutely no legal meaning :)



Half Byte Loader on OFW 6.30  

July 27, 2010 in HBL, security | 154 comments

Mamosuke just informed me that coder J416 started porting Half Byte Loader to firmware 6.30, based on his game exploit previously found on 6.30.

Before you get your hopes too high:

  • I haven’t tested this and I don’t know the name of the game, but I trust mamosuke (and therefore J416 as well), so I know this is real
  • This is still work in progress and might take a few weeks before it is usable
  • This relies on a game exploit, which is not a Demo. It means that people would have to buy that game, and additionally, it will most likely be patched very quick on the PSN, so interest is limited for PSP Go owners (although rumors say that a solution exist against Sony patching their games on the PSN)

To mamosuke and J416: Good luck guys, you know my email address if you need help on this. Also, please keep in mind that HBL is GPL, so if you release this, we’ll be expecting the sources as well ;)

15 Backgrounds for HBL and wMenu  

July 25, 2010 in HBL | 34 comments

Thanks to the folks at advancedpsp.tk who created a bunch of cool wallpapers to use in HBL, here are 15 (actually 17, but 15 sounds cooler!) wallpapers for wMenu 0.2, to enjoy with your Half Byte Loader.

Download

To install, just unzip the file in your hbl/menu/Res folder, where you can already see other images (logo.jpg, bg.jpg, etc…). wMenu will automatically loop randomly through your backgrounds.

Please create more and share them :)

Enjoy!

Wagic campaigns – Brothers war  

July 25, 2010 in Wagic | 12 comments

As we released Wagic a few weeks ago, I announced the “Story Mode”, a mode in which you can write your own campaigns and you own scenarios. A few people started playing with it, and I’d really like to see more cool stuff like this in the weeks to come!

Today I want to introduce Abrasax’s Campaign, Brothers’ war, a brilliant story in which two brothers fight for power and knowledge. The campaign contains a deep scenario, with several dozens of “chapters”. Each chapter of the story takes you to a challenge, which is sometimes an enigma in which you’ll have to use your cards wisely in order to complete it, or sometimes a duel against the AI, with very specific decks.

Overall this campaign is terrific, it will keep you occupied for a few hours (good luck against the Roc, that one is quite complex!) and I hope to see more people creating such entertaining stories in the near future!

Download and discussion here

Note: there is unfortunately a memory leak in the current version of Wagic, so on the psp you might have to restart the campaign a few times when the game starts to get slow. Don’t worry though, your progress is automatically saved :)

15 Essential Homebrews that run on Half Byte Loader  

July 18, 2010 in HBL, Homebrew, Top 10 | 386 comments

People keep asking for lists of homebrew games that work with HBL. I believe making a full list is an impossible task, especially since we fix bugs on a daily basis, but today I want to showcase 15 homebrews that work great in HBL. These homebrews are of great quality and will give you hours (if not hundreds of hours) of gameplay. I’ve tested them myself on a 6.20 psp go. These games are presented in no specific order.

Please keep in mind that emulators usually require bios files and/or roms that I cannot legally provide. Don’t ask for those here, thanks.

1. Wagic 0.12.1

Ok, I lied, there is an order… at least for the first game :) . Wagic is an heroic fantasy card game in which you fight against the CPU. As you win battles against your opponent, you earn credits that will allow you to improve your army, unlock sets, and play new game modes. Highly customizable (you can create your own cards, even your own rules and campaigns), Wagic can easily bring you hundreds of hours of gameplay (hell, I’ve been playing it on a daily basis for the past 3 years!), and has already won several homebrew contests.

Download

Read the rest of this entry »

Half Byte Loader R95  

July 18, 2010 in HBL, release | 55 comments

With this new revision of Half Byte Loader, I’m happy to announce that picodrive finally has sound. Be sure to select 44kHz in your settings though, because the 22kHz mode might sound funky…

Additionally, I fixed a regression introduced in R94, which prevented some homebrews (such as PSP KVM or GoEar) to run. For those who want the technical bits, there was a problem with the way I violently decided to unload all libraries between each homebrew :D

This revision also fixes saving issues with Snes9xTYL (and maybe other homebrews). Thanks to JJS and Sean994!

Finally, the distrib version of Half Byte Loader 95 ships with wMenu 0.2. Check this article for details on wMenu 0.2, but basically the major improvement here is that you can add as many wallpapers as you want in the “Res” folder.

Enjoy this new revision!

Download here

wMenu 0.2  

July 17, 2010 in HBL, release | 19 comments

wMenu 0.2 brings no functional improvements, but people who like customization will definitely enjoy it. wMenu now supports as many background pictures as you want, and will cycle through them randomly. I also added a nice sound effect in menu navigation and… well actually that’s it.

wMenu 0.2 will be included in my next HBL release, but those who want to enjoy multiple wallpapers can give it a try now. just put your jpg files in the “Res” subfolder of wMenu, and wMenu will automatically load them next time you run it.

Oh, and if you don’t like the sound, just erase or replace the “menu.wav” file :)

Thanks to cole and ?Juanjo18x who provided the additional background images. If you made a background image and want it to be included in next wMenu’s release, don’t hesitate to contact me or post a link here.

Download wMenu 0.2

Wagic on twitter and facebook  

July 17, 2010 in Wagic | 2 comments

Good news for those of you who are addicted to social networks, thanks to leungclj we finally have a twitter page and a facebook page for Wagic! There you will get the latest info about our cool game, and MTG news once in a while if we feel like talking about it. I know lots of people have been requesting it, so many thanks leungclj.

Have fun!

Coming Soon in HBL – Sound in Picodrive  

July 14, 2010 in HBL | 43 comments

My next release is not ready yet, but I can tell you it will finally fix the sound issues with Picodrive. I thought I’d share this :)

Enjoy the video!

Half Byte Loader R94  

July 13, 2010 in HBL, release | 75 comments

After a few days of work, here’s a new release of Half Byte loader. It has increased stability and slightly improves compatibility. Games that are reported to work better include: Doom, Snes9xTYL 0.4.2, and ScummVM 1.1.1.

Below are the details:

Changes

  • Improved Compatibility For Static ELF Loading (thanks JJS!)
  • Fixed issue 269 (Doom crash on exit)
  • Added override_sceCtrlPeekBufferPositive as a parameter to hbl_config..txt. When set to 0, speed in some Emulators such as daedalus should work faster, but this increases the risks of crashes (a lot). Honestly I’ve never seen this feature work on a psp go, so don’t expect too much. But this will allow people who want to experiment to do it without recompiling.

This revision has been tested and confirmed to work with Wagic 0.12, T.O.M.E 2.3.5 (patched), CSPSP 1.56, Daedalus, Picodrive, Gpsp (kai), FCEUltra, ScummVM 1.0, Doom 1.4, and ZX81′s Stella 2600.

Download here

Enjoy :)

PS: We are aware that some compatibility has been apparently lost in some rare cases between R85 and recent revisions. We are hard at work to get your favorite games to work with HBL!

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