ROMhacking-PSP_basics

This guide contains explanations to reverse engineering a PSP game to create a translation patch, using as example the “digivice ver. portable psp” ISO. (it has plenty of images to make the understanding easier)

Warning: Some files and/or methods of this project might be only as a proof of concept, hence they lead nowhere further on. If you don’t know why something is there, it’s probably that.

Considerations

• This is a PDF version of: https://github.com/Bunkai9448/digipet_PSP. To help clarity and visibility.

  • You must provide your own game files. Please do not ask here for them.

  INDEX

  • Extra Tools required

  • First Steps

  • Working with the CPK file

  • Text File

  • More unpackaging inside the CPK

  • Images and GIM files

  • Remaining text in the Eboot

  • The Font

  • Repackaging the CPK

  • System Messages

  • Last Steps

  • Extra: Making the patch

  • Extra 2: Making a cheatcode

  • List of References

  • Author

  • Special thanks

  • License

  To give a brief idea, here’s Extra Tools required list

  • https://www.ppsspp.org/index.html (PPSSPP emulator & debugger).

  • https://www.romhacking.net/utilities/1218/ (UMDgen).

  • https://www.romhacking.net/utilities/818/ (Crystal Tile 2).

  • CriPackTools & Cripack maker / crifilesystem (some versions don’t work and not all can be shared).

  • https://github.com/Kingcom/armips (armips program).

  • http://aluigi.altervista.org/quickbms.htm (quickBMS program).

  • GimConv (you have to find this tool on your own).

  • https://www.romhacking.net/utilities/1225/ (DecEboot to decrypt EBOOT.BIN).

  • http://aluigi.org/bms/parse_exe.bms (to unpack the decrypted EBOOT.BIN and work with the text part better).

  • https://www.romhacking.net/utilities/598/ (xdelta and xdeltaUI to create the patch easily).

• Special thanks: Fothsid (first guidance about the headers) Mugi (guidance about file structure and some scripts; Info, Data and guidance for System Messages) Ethanol (guidance about Font, GIM, Gimconv config snippet and help fixing extract/insert mistakes) kokibits (this project uses their PSP plugin for the syscalls) 前田太尊 (maeda taison) (betatester) All the authors of the tools and documents used in this project.