[PS2] POPS stuff & POPStarter

Tool Box obviously doesn't combine discs, because each game has to be hacked so the game specific disc check thing is fooled/skipped (see Disc Combining Kits @ ngemu.com). When I said that Tool Box allows you convert your merged game discs, I meant your already combined BIN+CUE. Previous CUE2POPS versions can't handle big .BINs. This bug has been fixed in the CUE2POPS version which is part of Tool Box. The new CUE2POPS also support the infamous CloneCD cuesheets that make previous CUE2POPS versions crash.

Since Tool Box is a command line app with multiple functions, you can't drag'n'drop a CUE on it. To use ToolBox's CUE2POPS, open a DOS terminal. You can also use a drag'n'drop batch or write your own batch file for bulk-converting your BIN/CUEs.

I see 4 ways to cheat (other than using developer's codes) :

I - Patch your game with a release group trainer (check consolecopyworld.com) before you convert it to a VCD.
Unfortunately some of them break the compatibility (Ape Escape with the Paradox patch for instance).

II - Convert PS1 GameShark codes to PS2 raw codes, and use a PS2 cheat engine.
ps2rd or ps2rdGUI (homebrews), a cracked CodeBreaker (commercial software)...
For compiling a CodeBreaker codelist, you need cb2util.

III - Live-edit the PS2 EE RAM with Kermit

IV - Compile a trainer with Tool Box
I've tested it with just a couple of games, so I can't tell that it's reliable. Here's how it works :
First, we get PS1 GameShark codes for the game. Random example, the UK version of Street Sk8er;
We add a $ character before each line of code we want to activate, and save the text file.

Like shown in this video, we open a DOS terminal and start Tool Box with the -trainer command and the name of the text file as the parameter.
When prompted, we complete the TROJAN file name with a number between 0 and 9 (inclusive), then we give the trainer a label (20 characters max, no whitespaces allowed).
The trainer is outputed as TROJAN_#.BIN. All we have to do is copy it in the VMC folder of the game and pray for the cheats to be properly working.



Sooooooo, I made TROJANs for a little bunch of games in the hope they stop crashing. Other emulation problems and glitches weren't fixed :
http://www.4shared.com/folder/iaxFQ6Ws/Game_Fixes.html

- 007 : Tomorrow Never Dies
Fixes the random freezes that occured in levels "Outpost" and "Ski Ridge".

- Casper
Workaround to the SPU timeout error (+ Y-fix in the US version).
The background music gets muted sometimes.
The PAL version seemed more "stable" than the US one to me. Users of the US version, when you see stuff like this :

... press the X button twice or more; otherwise the game will probably freeze.
A video of the PAL version running : http://youtu.be/D8sEnkYy1X0

- Crash Team Racing
Fixes the emulator crash when the game is launched + fixes the race loadings. A video of the European version here : http://youtu.be/i2uE2rf0Wu8
Remaining issues are the characters f-ing voices constantly played and Aku Aku that isn't animated.

- Destruction Derby 2
Fixes the random freezes in races. We still can't see the pause menu.

- Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone
Fixes the freeze after the EA games presentation. Seems playable...

- Metal Gear Solid
Autoskips the 3 cutscenes which make POPS crash.

- Roadsters
Fixes the freeze @ the Smart Dog logo.
The game has major framerate issues...

- WipEout
Fixes the random freezes in races.
Still no SFX. Horrible noises. Perhaps slowdowns too...


My goal was to prevent them from crashing. I didn't test these games deeply and didn't try the compatibility modes.

 

Slt kHn.


Impossible de DL, trop de "bordel" chez "4shared" et payant ...

Change SVP de fournisseur.

Cordialement.

 

Done. Get'em all here : 2014-10-29_GAME_FIXES.ZIP

 

Thanks "mio amigo" ...

 

Hello thank you very much, you could fix the freezing of the game: Road and Track The Need for Speed 1 ?

I would be extremely grateful. Hugs

 

Hello thank you very much, you could fix the freezing of the game: Road and Track The Need for Speed 1 ?

I would be extremely grateful. Hugs

 

Thank you very much krHACKen for the information about the cheats with Tool box,
and for improve compatibility with the freezes of the games.

Best regards.

 

any fix for harry potter and the chamber of secrets?

 

Well, im surprised that anyone here reclaimed about Tomb Raider, cuz here is just BSOD when i choose new game.

 

Yes, could fix Tomb Raider and NFS1 too....

Classics Games!

 

Hi
I have a little problem with mixing MGS discs into one. I did evertyhing as it's described in "read me", but don't works. I don't know what causes it. I'm using American version (slus-00594 & 00776). I also named them properly (mgs-1 & mgs-2); yes, those are in *.bin/.cue and i'm sure of that
Ok, now i will explaiun how it works for me.
It goes like this: first, i'm using "extract" tool, and it vomits "cd1" and "cd2" which contains empty (0 KB) *.txt files (for example ___cd1 and lba1). Then using "psxtool" and paches it with right patch. Third point says to move the contents of both folders to "merge" folder. doing what i should and runs "build" - it vomits "___cd_lba.txt", "mgs1.bin" (1232 KB), "mgs.cue" and "mgs1.toc" - that's all.
Can somebody explain me what am i doing wrong ?
In advance thx for help

 

this is problem with mgs-1.bin and mgs-2.bin names but i don't know the correct names. it's like "extract" tool is configured or something like that to search for different names of .bin files. In different version of "extract" tool correct name was eve-1.bin but on this one it's not working. But maybe you have the other version, so try eve-1.bin and eve-2.bin

 

try this https://yadi.sk/d/mrGwur2PawcnE rename disc names to eve-1.bin and eve-2.bin

 

hehe, worked kinda odd thing with these "eve" files names

 

You probably could've just edited the extract.bat file, since its really a text file. In windows you can right-click->edit, and change the lines that say something like: SET FILE1="xenogears-1.bin" SET FILE2="xenogears-2.bin"

 

Okay, i tried mixing the three FF VII cds by the damm tutorial (README), it ended with three files:

ff7.bin (99 kb)

ff7.cue (69 bytes)

ff7.toc (107 bytes)

 

krHACKen, thanks a ton for all of your hard work in making POPStarter great! And Algol, why did I lose permission to access the compatibility list?

EDIT: Wow, thanks for the Tomb Raider fixes as well! Working great.

 

Ok, I FINALLY figured out what causes CUE2POPS to just simply crash without error or warning on some CUE sheets but not others. It's such a tiny silly thing I couldn't even see it no matter how hard I looked at first. I kept looking through everywhere thinking maybe it only accepted certain line terminators (well, mine should all be DOS rather than Unix, but you never know) and couldn't find anything. Then it hit me like a ton of bricks. Some things save the CUE sheet with, say, "TRACK 1" "INDEX 1" and etc. CUE2POPS freaks out and just utterly crashes if it's not two digits. So that should be "TRACK 01" "INDEX 01" and etc. Seems like this is probably something that should be fixed or at the very minimum producing a proper error message instead of a complete crash, but there you have it. I edited one that was giving me troubles to add a leading 0 and suddenly it worked perfectly with no crash.

Now back to playing PS1 games from my PS2's harddrive, how it was really always meant to be done (they just didn't know it at the time.)

 

That's true, but actually some information about this matter could be found at Cue2pops README file. Although I agree that an error message should be more appropriated in this case.

However such errors are due to some programs which make non-standard cuesheet files. Maybe you should consider look for a better program to do dumps.

 

Except it's supposed to give an error message, which it does not, which is what makes it very confusing.

As for the programs, I've probably been using better for ages. Some of my oldest PS2 images date very very far back and I didn't always know what I was doing when backing up my games.