Heart of The Alien for PSP - R1 is out

[Tinnus]

Did you like the news about that oh-so-close Another World interpreter for the PSP?

Well, now you have the sequel! HOTA for the PSP is just released.

Remarks:
- Get an ISO image from the original HOTA game for the Sega CD.
- Don't ask anyone here (or me) where to get it, use your creativity (or google if you don't have any).
- The ISO file must be called "Heart Of The Alien (U).iso" and be in the same folder as the eboot.

Bugs:
- Some vertical lines in the display
- No music tracks
- Intro exits after one specific part

I'm working on solving both. The lines problem will go away soon for sure. About the intro I'm a little clueless, but you can just skip it for now using Triangle (see below). If you want so watch it just get the PC interpreter from http://hota.sourceforge.net :p

Features:
- Full sound effects
- Full screen display
- Quick Save/load -- that's a really good one! Never need to use those passwords again. Although you can still press Start anytime to go to the PW screen.

You need about 10KB for saving the game with Quick Save.

Controls:
- D-Pad: movement
- Square: run (hold and move) / shoot (see below)
- Cross: Jump
- Circle: whip
- Triangle: skip cutscenes, quit (although it's generally better to exit via the home button)

Shooting:
- Tap the button to shoot. Press and hold for a few moments to create a shield. The shield will disapeear after some time. Press and hold for even more time (the glow in the tip of the whip will get bigger) to release an energy blast, which destroys other shields, and some kinds of doors/enemies/machines.

Misc:
- In one part of the game you get two parts of a bomb and need to activate it somewhere. Press X, Square and Circle at the same time to activate the bomb.

Download and Give Feedback Via Comments

[jimmi]

screeeeeeeens ?

[Tinnus]

Screenies at http://hota.sourceforge.net/

:P

[PsychoSync]

Wow! Now this!! Its been one of the greatest week of all time for PSP!!!

[ACID]

It has been indeed

[wraggster]

wow Tinnus has officially joined the PSP Scene :)

excellent release to start the ball rolling ;)

[aries2k4]

Cool, all kinds of goodies. Glad your aboard, Tinnus.
More coders joining the PSP scene means more good homebrew. I´ll check this out as soon as I get a chance.
Good work!!

[SCSA]

Tinnus i got a question , does this mean that it's possible to emulate Sega CD on PSP ?

[Tinnus]

Not at all, this is not an emulator, it's just an interpreter for the game data files. That is, it's like a clone of the Sega CD software of the game, reading only the data files from the ISO image, but running 100% native on the PSP.

It wouldn't run as fast as it does otherwise :)

[M!ckeY]

wow, this week has been great...good thing i decided to buy a psp :D

[aries2k4]

Ok, SCSA asked the question that I was thinking.
But can´t this be considered as the first segacd game to run on the psp?
well, just finished passing the files to the ms..but I´m fading fast. still going to try it in bed though.
Once again, great work

[wolfpack]

Maybe this will give someone an idea to make a segacd emulater. Great work Tinnus, i had fun with this game a long time ago

[odino]

Good!!! Tinnus i love you...

[mr_nick666]

Not at all, this is not an emulator, it's just an interpreter for the game data files. That is, it's like a clone of the Sega CD software of the game, reading only the data files from the ISO image, but running 100% native on the PSP.

It wouldn't run as fast as it does otherwise :)

In the words of the Emperor... "Most impressive"! :D Whats next for this then?? (Any other game emulations in the pipeline!??) :p

[Cho Aniki]

Ive been waiting for a port of this , thanks alot!:)

[Mr. Shizzy]

Not at all, this is not an emulator, it's just an interpreter for the game data files. That is, it's like a clone of the Sega CD software of the game, reading only the data files from the ISO image, but running 100% native on the PSP.

It wouldn't run as fast as it does otherwise :)


So your saying Sega CD games could be "interpreted" one at a time on the PSP though huh?
Ah man, now I'm praying someone ports Sonic CD :D
Thanks for the release Tinnus:D I've always been a big fan of this game.:)


PS: Is there a way to shrink this ISO image? (and have it still work of course) It's pretty big.:eek:

[PsychoSync]

No Mr. Shizzy, Its about the same as ScummVM, its an engine that runs the data files on the CD. Heart of the alien could have been on any console/platform the same data files could be used.

The same thing have been done with Flashback, its called "REminiscence".

There is no SegaCD emulation involved in this. Though like i said in another post, SegaCD emulation could be possible if the emu is coded from scratch.

Anyway, please stay on topic, this has noting to do with emulation.

Tinnus, thanks for this, i LOVE the Out of this world games! Are you eventually going to eneble mp3 or better Ogg to play the music? And is there still copyright problems to add Out of this World?

Thanks again Tinnus

[hackercrackermonkey]

yuck. just kidding.

[Mr. Shizzy]

Anyway, please stay on topic, this has noting to do with emulation.


Thanks for the info. Although the comment above was a little uncalled for.:mad: This is a port of a SEGA CD game. So asking if other SEGA CD games could be ported one at a time is on topic bro. Anyways I got better things to do than argue. Peace.

[aries2k4]

hm, I can start the game see the cutscenes but when I get to the part to write your name, how do you go on from there. if I press OK it just deletes a letter and start deletes all. anybody have this problem??

[Mr. Shizzy]

hm, I can start the game see the cutscenes but when I get to the part to write your name, how do you go on from there. if I press OK it just deletes a letter and start deletes all. anybody have this problem??


I can't even get it to do that. It justs keeps exiting out to the XMB. Strange...:confused: I did everthing right...I named the iso just as desribed...any hints?

[Tinnus]

Mr. Shizzy: the game being originally for the Sega CD doesn't mean anything, really. The program is *just-an-interpreter-for-the-game-datafiles* and these datafiles have nothing special with them because the game is a Sega CD one. Moreover, I didn't code this from scratch, I just ported the PC version.

About shrinking the CD, technically it could be done since the ISO actually contains both games but the interpreter only plays HOTA and not Another World (no, it's not the same engine and not easy to do). But I don't know WHAT to strip.

aries2k4: er... that's not for you to input your name, it's to input a password. Where did you get idea from? Just tap OK without inputting anything and the game will run.

About music: I'm trying, eventually it will play the track files in .ogg format.

[gawd0r]

Hey!

Greetings.
Kudos on the PSP port. I haven't checked that out yet, but I'm glad somebody ported it cause I've been way too busy in the past ... almost 2 years now :)

I want to make a few things clear: I coded the PC version a couple of years ago. The hota:r project (hosted at http://hota.sourceforge.net) only supports the Heart of The Alien game in the shovelware for SegaCD. The engine used in Another World is *MUCH* simpler (I have a PSP version of it running in about 700 C lines :) Anyway, there was and still is, a problem releasing that version or that code. Legally, I'm not allowed to.

So, in the meanwhile, you can enjoy these shots of it:
http://static.flickr.com/61/197508195_7ddc030a0d.jpg

http://static.flickr.com/57/197508197_804f1dcbb0.jpg

This version is using the HiRes Collectors Edition backdrops and sound effects :eek:

One more thing, Tinnus: kudos and all, but you are obligated to release the source code. I have licensed my code as GPL :)

Cheers!

[aries2k4]

Ok finally got it going. Thanks for the info Tinnus. Don´t know why I was thinking that was to enter a name,lol.
Thanks for the original port, gawdOr

[Tinnus]

gawd0r: sure, no problem :) I was just lazy to package it, I'd post it as soon as someone asked.

Attached.

[Stoner4Life]

I have always wanted to play the Sega CD games What is the specs for the counsole system?
Shining Force 3 would be a really sweet game to port over.

[Mr. Shizzy]

I have the HOTA iso, & this download. I would give my right eye to get this damn thing to work. Note: The iso seem sto be 2 files. The first is a BIN image (435,525 KB) the second is just coming up as a "VLC image" (thats a media viewer on my PC) and that ones 3KB. Do I try to combine them or something? Any advice would most certainly be appreciated. :)

[Edshugeo]

You may need to extract the iso from the bin. My iso is like 10 mb. I assume it's the right one. I get far enough to either fall off a cliff or get eaten by a bear (or whatever that is).

I don't know if iso buster will do the trick, but may be worth a try,
http://www.isobuster.com/

Also this site offers one way of extracting the iso from the CD http://wiki.gp2x.org/wiki/Heart_of_the_Alien

[aries2k4]

Mr Shizzy,
Use google to search for a program called MagicISO. You can use that program to convert the .bin file to an iso.
or you can burn to a cd and then extract to an iso image with Isobuster.
Lol, ya I either get eaten by the bear or fall off a cliff. Any ideas? Are you supposed to make that jump off the cliff? Tried many times with no luck.

[PsychoSync]

Any idea on when the R2 will be out Tinnus?

[Tinnus]

Shizzy: yes, get a program to convert it to ISO.

PsycoSync: as soon as I fix the screen & music issues. Then it will most likely be over, since the intro problem is too minor :p (although I think maybe I can fix it)

About the bear/cliff thing... there's a way to attract the bear somewhere else so that it clears the path for you. And not get eaten in the process :)

(hint: as soon as the game starts, go to the right. There's something useful in this screen. Look closely at the rock formations...)

[DrNicket]

I think I actually have the disc for this kicking around somewhere (I still have the Sega CDX. It kicks all the other versions' butt!). I'll have to give this a try soon.

Semi-OT - If only Dark Wizard had a portable emu... muahahahahaaaaa!

[Apoklepz]

Whoa! I just saw this today...never actually played this before, but I will very soon...The original OOT on the SNES is one of my favorite games of all time, up there with Metal Gear Solid and CastleVania SoTN. Thank you for making this possible on PSP!

BTW, you still working on getting the music to play?

[PsychoSync]

Are you going to release an update with some bugs ironned out and add music? That would be nice. If not then thanks anyway.

[Apoklepz]

Just wanted to add that you've done an excellent job porting this over to the PSP, even if it doesn't have music and shows some lines in the screen, it's still very playable.

I look forward to updates on this, if you ever wanna come back to it.

[briker500]

bit new to this , i got hota as a bin/cue file ,i converted it to an iso using ultra iso and put the iso firstly into the % folder and then put the 2 folders into game150 on my psp but when i tried two run it ,it just went back to the xmb screen so ithen tried putting the iso into the other folder(the one without the % ) and when i run it i got a blue screen with your psp has just crashed message.
any help on how to get this game running would be appreciated.

[mcvader]

I always thought flashback was the sequel to Another World, where does this one fit in?
I'm gonna check this out as soon as I finish downloading the image (dial-up).

If anybody wants to play Another World on PSP it runs fine on CaSTaway (Atari ST Emu).

Thanks for the release Tinnus!

[dale_coop]

Yes very good job :)
I'm very fan of Another World, I recently played again with the gba version on my PSP (it's not as wonderfull as the Win XP Special HiRes Edition). I would like a port of this recent edition (the HiRes one) on my PSP
: ))))))))))))))))))))))))

[Apoklepz]

^^ Agree to that ^^

[daniguti]

Hi !!!! I`m brazilian I speak english but just a little!! I`m new in the forum . HEEEEELPPPP!!!!

They explain me step by step as I make to play Heart of the Alien in the PSP? Where I make download of iso, where folder to place...

Thanks!!

Daniel

[Tinnus]

Um pouco de google ajuda você a encontrar qualquer coisa...

De resto, você tem que poder rodar homebrew, copiar as pastas do zip pra psp/game (se estiver em 1.50) ou psp/game150 (se estiver num custom firmware). Ponha o ISO na pasta sem o %.

[Briggzy11]

So can somebody give me the rundown on what this game is about and whats so addictive???

x

[Caleb5]

Yes, me too!?

[sukhi-2006]

I've installed iso file into heart of the alien folder it doesn't work goes back to psp main screen.