release

While I was getting awfully sunburnt on a stupid beach, JJS was actively working on the HBL, thanks man! HBL Revision 99 comes with some major improvements. First, the dreaded “sceCtrlPeekBufferPositive” (the function that basically makes emulators run at full speed) should now be available on all models of PSP. Remember, it wasn’t correctly working on PSP 1000/2000/3000 on 6.20. Although there are still a few differences in the quality of syscall estimations for these models on this specific firmware, this major function is now working on all models, and you should all be able to enjoy full speed on your favorite emulators. This makes the “”override_sceCtrlPeekBufferPositive” obsolete, and if it hasn’t been done yet, this option will be removed from HBL in a future update (since it doesn’t do anything anymore).

This version also fixes most issues with the PSP HOME button, thanks to a patch by Nymphaea. It finally allows to run HBL from the memstick on a pspgo, and should fix the issue with controls introduced in R97.

I haven’t fully tested this release, but it’s been tested by a few people already, so I believe it’s good to go. For those who ask, R98 was released a few hours ago, but had a bug that prevented it to work correctly on a 6.20 PSPGo

Download here, as usual

This revision fixes a few minor bugs, some of them might be important to you.

• First, a graphical glitch has been fixed. Because of that, Homebrews such as PSP Rhythm were technically unplayable (@Muffinhead: you owe me ). Others such as FCEUltra or Doom had minor graphical issues because of this.
• Additionally, I added a shortcut to quit homebrews that don’t have an “exit” button. Yes, the “home” button is still broken, but now you can exit most games by pressing select+start for a few seconds. (Note that some homebrews such as gpsp still crash upon exiting, this is unrelated). The “select+start” combination can be changed in the hbl config file, or even customized for each homebrew (as usual, by putting a hbl_config.txt file in the homebrew’s folder)
• The distrib version now ships with wMenu 0.3, which allows you to navigate in subfolders, so you can now split your homebrews in several folders if you use wMenu
• Other minor bugs were fixed, which shouldn’t make any visible difference (check the changelog included for details)

Here’s a video showcasing the new features

Download here

If you haven’t noticed, the latest cool updates to HBL are thanks to our genius fellow coder JJS. JJS recently found a way to perfectly estimate most syscalls on most models of the PSP. What this means to the end user is that for example your favorite emulators will now run at full speed without the need for a configuration file, and without sacrificing stability. It also means that some homebrews will now work better (JJS mentions that Opera mini on the Java VM now works perfectly fine without stopping during the install process).

There’s a small drawback though. This update doesn’t improve HBL on firmware 6.20 for the PSP 2000 and PSP3000. JJS found a way to have it work on the PSPGo 6.20, but unfortunately it relies on a trick that works only for this model. I know I said a few weeks ago that it was fine to update to 6.20, and people will probably hate me for that, but hopefully we’ll make progress on these models and this firmware one day too.

For the models on which this change works (that is, all models and firmwares, except PSP2000 on 6.20 and PSP3000 on 6.20), emulators run at their native speed without a need to use any specific configuration overrides (actually, configuration overrides – a.k.a. syscall hooks – will not work anymore for models that have this perfect syscall estimation, because by definition, they are not needed anymore)

Here’s an example with Daedalus R13 running Mario64 on a psp go. both R95 and R96 are run “out of the box” with no specific configuration.

to make it clearer, this change improves HBL on the following machines: PSP1000/2000/3000 for all firmwares except 6.20. PSP Go for all firmwares, including 6.20. Of course, HBL is still compatible with all psp models up to firmware 6.20 included, and no, this change doesn’t magically bring compatibility with firmware 6.30 or 6.31, so don’t ask.

Once again a huge improvement to HBL, download here and enjoy

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

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