ForceLang for the PSVita released allowing games to override the system’s language and melonDS updated with OpenGL support & upscaling opening up possibilities for the Switch/PSVita!
Following Atmosphere 0.8.10’s release with support for language changing on a per-game basis, it seems that somebody decided to bring that feature over to the PSVita with a plugin called ForceLang! Other than that, melonDS has finally got a hardware-accelerated OpenGL renderer which could potentially bring some interesting news relating to DS emulation on the PSVita/Switch in the future.
PSVita Plugin Release: ForceLang by xdanieldzd
As its name implies, ForceLang is a plugin that lets you force a language, other than that of the system, for a specific game/application. This plugin works by hooking into sceAppUtilSystemParamGetInt and SCE_SYSTEM_PARAM_ID_LANG thus forging the language selection message passed to software.
This means that you can, for example, run a specific game in Italian even though your system’s language is set to British English.
Fancy practicing a foreign language by gaming on your PSVita without changing the system language? With ForceLang, you can do that easily! (Dragon Quest Builders in image)
Getting this plugin to work is pretty simple and requires you to go through the following steps:
- Download the plugin from this link and also grab kuio (a plugin to facilitate I/O by Rinnegatamante)
- Copy these plugins in ur0:/tai or ux0:/tai and add them to config.txt
- kuio needs to be installed in the *KERNEL section and ForceLang needs to be installed on a per-title basis as show in the README linked below
- For the Title ID you installed the plugin for, you need to create a corresponding text file in ur0:/data/forcelang with the Title ID in question as its name. In this text file, you input the number of the language you want; a list of which can be found in the README
- For example, if you want to change the language of PCSE00120 (Persona 4 Golden), you need to create a file called PCSE00120.txt in ur0:/data/forcelang
- Reboot your PSVita and enjoy your games in a different language!
It’s important to note that this plugin is still in development and might have some issues. Other than that, some games might not have the files needed to run in certain languages so keep that in mind before blaming the plugin.
To get this plugin, follow this link and to check out the README, click here. Issues should be reported in the Issues Tab of the GitHub links just provided.
Emulation Releases: melonDS 0.8 released with OpenGL acceleration & upscaling for better Nintendo DS emulation!
If you haven’t heard, melonDS is a Nintendo DS emulator by staplebutter (Arisotura) on which work started sometime in 2016. While it had an on-off period last year, progress has now been steady for a pretty decent amount of time and we have finally got the long-awaited 0.8 release bringing us an OpenGL renderer for faster performance alongside upscaling support!
melonDS now has an OpenGL renderer allowing you to play DS games with a lot of 3D sprites like Mario Kart DS in HD resolutions! (Source)
According to melonDS 0.8’s release thread, this update is a somewhat experimental since further testing is needed to make sure that it works on all setups and OpenGL drivers. Furthermore, some features of the DS’ GPU aren’t implemented as of right now so some games might have some odd graphical issues but one can always use the software renderer for that.
That being said, Mario Kart DS seems to be running pretty well as per a video attached in the release thread which means that the OpenGL renderer and upscaling are working pretty well provided your PC is powerful enough.
Other than good news for people who want to emulate the Nintendo DS on a PC, the release of melonDS 0.8 also brings some promising news for DS emulation on the Nintendo Switch and PlayStation Vita; two consoles to which the emulator has been ported (the PSVita has source code for a working port available but not an installable version). This is because the OpenGL renderer can take a lot of load off these consoles’ CPU when emulating the Nintendo DS thus allowing more games to be playable.
However, there are no public builds of melonDS 0.8 for any of these consoles right now and it must be noted that the PSVita might still not be powerful enough to run most Nintendo DS games so don’t hold your breath on that front although the Switch will most likely fare much better.
To grab melonDS 0.8 for Windows or Linux, check out this link. Issues should be reported to its GitHub repository as usual.
Conclusion
Other than ForceLang and melonDS 0.8, the last few days also saw MAME 0.210 being released which brought about support for various table top games like Mattel’s Computer Chess! On the Switch front, L4T Ubuntu got sleep support and Emunand Switcher has also been released allowing switching between several EmuNANDs stored on a microSD card.
So if I had a Japanese Vita game, ForceLang would convert the on screen text into English?
Maybe so, maybe not. Unless the language pack exists in the game or another game patch exists, then it may not work.
Borderlands might work if you want to run that in Japanese, but I think you’ll need to fiddle with it. I’d like to just buy games, then run a patch to run the game.
All I could wish for – and I can’t be the only one – is to play Catherine: Full Body in English. Wish the good hackers will attend this grievance soon. But still I say Thanks, it’s great work.
Waiting it for Vita, и не ебёт =)))
Forcelang on psp would be wonderful.