[PS2] POPS stuff & POPStarter

Now that he's tampering with Kermit he deserves a punch on the skull !

 

I'm not in support of him but I do care about the icon Kermit gives out. I'm not even sure what that icon is so having it as an HDL icon is tempting to me.

 

Well the icon that an non tampered copy of kermit do put IS the HDL icon.

But it puts ODEM KERMIT on the title name. Of course tampering tampers like to tamper with anything so the guy went there and tampered with it.

Edit: AkuHak's modded hdldump/dumb make any modifications made on kermit redundant, useless and moot.

 

yeshuachrist wrote:KERMIT seems to be a little easier to use. I don't think HDLGameInstaller has a GUI for the PS2, I only got a BSOD when I tried to use it so I made this assumption.

LOL!!! :stupid:

 

I wonder if he actually knows what Kermit is for. And that ODEM is what he's tinkering with.

 

PS400-Q (third party) optical pickup, which has seemingly be modelled after the KHS400-R.

No comment. Each to their own.

That was the beta of the beta. The final beta uses the PS400-Q icon, which was meant (but obviously failed) as an inside joke. ("Had enough of non-working laser replacements? Use ODEM. All that remains is a 400Q icon.") I found that funny back then, don't ask me why... :very_drunk:

Well, I could be hopping mad about this, but I think that energy is better spent doing something else: deriving a scheme that prevents such incidents in the future. I haven't analyzed his hexcrack, mainly because I don't want to artifically increase the download counters for his cracked sh*t. Based on what I see from krHACKen's posts, he seems to be just overwriting strings and stuff. No serious developer would waste his time with that, he is just a script kiddie. So we may be able to throw him off the track with some slight modifications. Here are some ideas:

1. Compress, encrypt and/or sign the string section. Nothing fancy, just so that no readable text appears in hex dumps.
2. Use another packer that cannot easily be reversed offline to generate a loadable ELF. There is a neat trick to detect ps2-unpacker, and I seriously plan to use something like that for a reject gate. Run the ELF on a PS2, and everything is fine. Run it on PCSX2 (or any code based on that, like ps2-unpacker), and you get a non-functioning version that just displays a nice message, telling you to ditch whatever that idiot's came up with and use the real thing.
3. Some TLB fun to make dumping the ELF harder once DBGCORE is active.
4. Maybe add some more magic to not simply crash when running under a debugger, but behave in a slightly wrong way. Like corrupting the inner payloads on decryption, so that it fails the signature checks and kicks the user to the regular error path.

I already use a custom protection for the embedded binaries in Kermit, and it may be worthwhile to use that to hide things closer to the core. Or use some polymorphic cryptors and signatures (if you can locate it, the analysis of the Skype binary, written by two french EADS scientists, provides some really neat ideas). And if all else fails, there's still the nuclear option... Use of a "hardware root of trust" if you know what I'm getting at :love_heart:.

 

Oh wow holy shit did he just put his name and address out there? Was browsing that gamehacking.org thread and he links to this:

FMCB 1.8b Opensource Mod

Click on the about page, and you'll learn that he claims his name is Jimmy Mcfadden out of Darby, PA, USA.

This guy just keeps getting dumber and dumber. I wholeheartedly support homebrew being made that won't run on this guy's hexhacked shit. Also if there is any legal action that can be taken by the appropriate people, assuming that is indeed his name and address, I would support it being taken.

SilverBull: I have it and would be happy to send you a copy should you wish to actually analyze it without yourself adding to his download numbers. Let me know.

 

I've sent you an e-mail message, and I hope that you'll help us.

Even ideas will suffice. We're currently just evaluating the strength of the system and the level of difficulty we should just set it to... just enough to prevent such people from tampering with our work.

 

Now it seems that another moderator at IsoZone took a good action on it.

 

Not only that, he is also claiming that his f-up var. of FMCB 1.7 is FMCB 1.9 That's just... you know what I'm getting at, I hope anyway.

I'm happy to say that a moderator at IsoZone, delete all of his uploads. That's the best action so far.

 

Tried to use it and I can't get it working. Maybe because I don't know how to use it for there aren't much helpful documentation nor tutorial. I'm not even sure if that works with those already installed in the HDD-OSD.

 

I tested more PAL games which have the Libcrypt protection and patched for it,
added to the compatibility list:

Disney's Tarzan
Jackie Chan Stuntmaster
Medievil
Medievil 2
Radikal Bikers
RC Revenge
Space Debris
Speed Freaks
Superbike 2000

Some works fine, others not, from what i see the Libcrypt protection is
made only for PAL games, not for NTSC-U or NTSC-J games.

Regards.

 

Nice ! I see you also described what happens when the protected games aren't patched (in your comments). It's very helpful, as I'm writing LC patches in CUE2POPS. Thank you very much for your additions to the compatibility list:encouragement:.

 

You are welcome!

For some games i not wrote the cause of the fail made by the Libcrypt in the list for fit
well the descriptions in the list, but i wrote here now:

Final Fantasy VIII: Libcrypt made it freezes from the initial loading.
Final Fantasy IX: Libcrypt made it freezes from the initial loading.
Eagle One Harrier Attack: Libcrypt made that after finish the first mission, the replay is
blocked showing a message which says "Disk error", and you can't play anymore.
Formula One 99: Libcrypt made it freezes from the initial loading.
TOCA World Touring Cars: Libcrypt made it freezes in the loading screens just for start to play the races.
UEFA Striker: Libcrypt made it freezes from the initial loading.
V-Rally 2 Championship Edition: Libcrypt made it freezes in the loading screens just for
start to play the races.
Walt Disney World Quest Magical Racing Tour: Libcrypt mades the control for the left turn not works.

For other games i don't have the original games and backups are all already patched, then i
can't compare them for know which is exactly the problem caused by the Libcrypt
protection, and there is not info or accurate info over the net.
Its the case for example for games like Sypro 2, Spyro: Year of the Dragon, Crash Team
Racing, Crash Bash, etc.

About the game TOCA World Touring Cars it worked fine for me only the Multi-3 version of
the game (SLES-02572 English-French-German), the Multi-2 version (SLES-02573 Spanish
Italian) not worked with is own patch, probably the patch is not good.

For some games which is needed to play various levels, i have savegames just before the
point of the problem if you like check them, (Disney's Tarzan, Medievil, Jackie Chan Stuntmaster).

Regards.

 

I just had a question. Mainly it's about the use of the PSP Popsloader (I believe it's SCPH-100/SCPH-101), I don't understand why some games that work perfectly fine on either that BIOS, or just their respective country's BIOS (on the PSP) but refuse to work on this. Mainly, music games tend to have the biggest issue, yet have only one hurdle to beat (it seems streaming audio just doesn't load.)

 

It's a very early developed emulator for the PS2 and different then the emulator used in the PSP.
Music games, like for instance Ridge Racer, use an extra track on the cd for playing music, i think this was done so the music tracks could be played with the cdplayer in the console. For those multitrack (cdda) cd's to work, the emulator must be able to run images with an embedded cue file. For the music to work, you must have a 1:1 perfect dump of the original game.

 

And that is why I wonder why no one has tried PoPs 4.01 that was last pops that can run multi tracks for PSP without special conversion I know darkstone only runs the music in game for that pops and below above that will not run music

 

When it comes to music tracks I always think about Castlevania - SotN...:suspicion: It's pity that it does not work along with Popstarter. I do believe it's due to something concerned audio tracks, because once I removed them from the disc image then it did work with Popstarter. But of course is a heresy to play this wonderful game without the music.

 

Interesting. Which version ? UK and US versions have one CDDA track, is that what you have removed, or some files within the data track ?

 

On which Firmware version did you try Darkstone?
The audio emulation was changed on later firmwares and taken out of the emulator.
And there's a bug on later (custom) firmwares where you could only hear the sound of a pops game through a headphone...
When i have some time, i will try to test this game.


About Castlevania - SotN, you can try to rebuild the game from the ground up. I know for instance that Ridge Racer (US version) had no good disc layout so the music in the game might give you problems.
Here's the quote from radius from a very long time ago: