Hacking the PSP Blog

Daedalus R9 Details Plus Questions Answered

Over the weekend StrmnNrmn posted some information on the performance improvements he's made on his N64 emulator, Daedalus. All of the test results that he published on his blog showed significant framerate increases, about 40% on average according to StrmnNrmn. Here's an excerpt from the update he posted on his blog:

Clearly there's a significant improvement in framerate. On average, games are running about 40% faster, but in many cases the framerate has almost doubled. Subjectively, the difference means that many games are feeling a lot more responsive and playable now. Anything over 20fps 'feels' pretty good, but my long-term goal is to get this up to 30fps for as many titles as possible.

I noticed a couple of interesting differences between the two builds when running the tests, and you can see some of these in the new screenshots. Firstly, notice that the shadows in Super Mario 64 are all nice and round. This is due to the 'mirrored texture support' that I mentioned in Thursday's update (this also fixes the star that opens over Mario's head in the title sequence).

Secondly, the jerky/shaky screen that was affecting Mario Kart 64 now seems to be fixed. I'm not quite sure what was causing this, but I'm glad it's fixed :)

Next, notice that the text is Quest 64 is now fixed. In R8 this was horribly corrupted. This is due to the fixing a few texture conversion bugs as I was introducing proper support for 16 bit textures.

Finally, the texture on the floor in Quest 64 is now fixed. Again, I'm not totally sure what change is responsible for this, but it's nice to see it working correctly.

Read the full text of his post and the test results here...

Of course, with these new developments in the past few days, there come lots questions and comments. Yesterday StrmnNrmn responded to some common questions posed by his readers. Check out the questions and StrmnNrmn's answers here.

Source:  Retro Console Dev

More notes about the Flash Cleaner

From Fanjita and the Noobz crew:

After encountering the 'device full' error another two times today, on two separate non-modchipped PSPs, we did some more investigation, and have now finally understood exactly what causes it.

It seems that if you have a memory stick with corrupted data on it, then it can give the 8001001C error mentioned in the previous article, when you try to run the downgrader.  Fixing the corrupted data fixed the problem.

The moral of this story is that it is best to run any downgrader on a totally clean memory stick - format the stick on your PSP before loading on the necessary files.  And if you are having problems running the downgrader, try using a disk corruption fixer (like ChkDsk or the disk repair tools in Windows) on the memory stick, as it may fix it.

While we're on the subject of the downgrader, and HEN - we are not currently working on a version that does not require GTA.  It's not currently possible.  If you are having trouble finding a copy of GTA, then refer to this forum thread for a solution.

Source: Noobz

Sony's success 'won't depend on MS or Nintendo'

Ready At Dawn president Didier Malenfant has told GamesIndustry.biz that Sony's performance in the next-gen console market will be determined by the actions of the company itself, not those of its rivals.

"It's their market to lose. That's the reality," Malenfant observed.

"It doesn't depend on Nintendo or Microsoft - it depends on them. They've got a great platform in the PS3, they've got great teams working with them, but every hardware transition is difficult.

"Next-gen involves a lot of money, it's a big investment, and it's going to be a difficult time of transition whether you're Microsoft or Sony."

Malenfant conceded that Sony's image has suffered in recent months, stating, "I think that's the price you pay for being the number one player in the industry. You can see that with Microsoft with operating systems - after a while, you become the favourite target."

Read the full article here...

Ellie Gibson
February 12, 2007

Read the interview here...

Source: GamesIndustry.biz