It was just earlier this month that I had the pleasure of telling you guys about VitaShell 0.1, an homebrew that allows us to do many things from simple file browsing (from the Vita file system to the PSPemu’s one) and connecting that to FTP to more advanced stuff like a basic photo gallery. What I did not notice at the time of the original release however was that you have full write access to the PSPemu, to the point you can once again copy EBOOT.PBP files to PSP/GAME freely! This post, however, is about the newest version of VitaShell and a small tutorial on its best feature yet: bubble creation. But before we get to that, here is a small changelog by developer TheFloW himself:

Changelog 0.2:
– Added ability to sign PSP homebrews.
– Added sleep prevention when using FTP, deleting and copying files.
– Added a scrollbar.
– Added date and time to info bar.
– Added correct enter and cancel buttons assignment.
– Added some cosmetic changes.
– Fixed crash when deleting marked entries.
– Copied entries now still rest in clipboard after pasting them.
– The application now cleans itself before launching homebrews.

As you can see there are a few very nice improvements like sleep prevention when in FTP mode and the ability to sign PSP homebrews, which is the feature we need to create the bubbles. The process is rather simple and can be done in 5-10 minutes but has one huge drawback: many PSP homebrews will not work since the code for the signing in VitaShell is based on the Sony eboot format and those are created with a non-static elf. Unfortunately many PSP hombrews use a static elf which make them incompatible erroring with either a 0xFFFFFFFE error or a simple “This cannot be signed error”. I have had about a 50% rate of finding compatible homebrews, but all those that worked do so flawlessly and so does the bubble: homebrew like Wagic, Exult and others work while on the other hand, both me and TheFloW have been unable to find a compatible version of stuff like gPSP. The bubble creating process is extremly simple:

1. Create a folder inside the PSPemu filesystem with your homebrew (I always use PSP/GAME);
2. Press X to sign the homebrew: this will create a new file and rename the original to EBOOT_ORI.PBP;
3. Go to any PSN PSP game you have on your Vita and copy the files EBOOT.PBP and __sce_ebootpbp to the folder of the homebrew you just created. I used the WizOrb mini as a base and it worked like a charm – that game is about 23MB.
4. Reboot the Vita into recovery mode and rebuild database. When it comes back you will have the bubble(s) for each homebrew you did this on listed and working.
5. To delete any bubble, just delete the folders in VitaShell and rebuild databases again.

As with last time, you can head to the /talk thread to discuss the release or head here if you want to help contribute to the list of compatible homebrew. Let’s keep hoping that the ReVITAlize competition brings us more applications and games that we can use, remember the competition only ends at the end of the month. You can still enter if you so desire!