PSPVita User Mode Exploit Hacking details

via http://wololo.net/2012/07/12/sometim...t-that-simple/

Neur0n has been kind enough to share with me the details of his latest user mode exploit, so that I could help porting VHBL to his game on the EU and US versions (yes, the game seems to be available on all stores, and don’t stop reading here, it gets better).

Sometimes porting VHBL to a new game can be a pain in the A**. Many times, as I discovered the hard way, we hit a wall and have to give up after dozens of hours of investigation.

On this exploit too, had I been alone working on it, I would have given up. It seemed impossible to free most of the ram (VHBL basically needs to cleanly remove the game from the ram, in order to load homebrews instead), and the exploit ended up with about 2MB of free ram, instead of the 24MB that we usually expect.

But hey, that’s where comes the joy of working with talented people like Neur0n: he figured out, within 24hours, how to free the additional 22MB. I am not sure really how he found out, and why it works, but it damn works.

So I can proudly show you a picture of my work in progress on the EU version of the game. But honestly, neur0n did all the hard work on this one

This is running on a PSP with Pro CFW, which is were all the initial development always happen for VHBL. I haven’t tried to run anything else than the menu yet, but getting to the menu is usually a very good sign.

There’s still lots of work to be done: confirm it works on the vita (which should not be a problem since neur0n already confirmed it on the Japanese version), code cleanup, homebrews tests and bug fixes, port to the US version of the game, ….


As far as a release is concerned, I’ll synchronize with neur0n, but I think it’s clear to most people that we’re all eagerly waiting for ps1 classics support before a new VHBL version is released. As you know, each VHBL release is quickly followed by a patch from Sony, so I’m sure everybody wants the next VHBL release to happen on a “useful” firmware. In this case, I’m sure everybody’s ready to wait for firmware 1.80.


As usual, don’t ask for hints on the game, or its price, or anything like that, as I won’t answer these questions.