Last we heard, from StrmnNrmn, he has just figured out a new clipping code to take care of problems with speed and graphics. It involves breaking down triangles into smaller pieces before rendering them, slimming down the chances of the PSP discarding them.

Since the new clipping code is new, you could say that it's still in the development stage. He's been very busy doing some trial and error to get various matrix/vector routines and the transform and lighting (TnL) code working with the VFPU. Unfortunately, it seems that until he comes back from visiting his family over the weekend, further testing and updates will be put on hold. However, he leaves us with some very good news and documentation before leaving.

I'm seeing very good results so far. The TnL code is around 2-3 times as fast running through the VFPU compared to the CPU. This gives around a 0.5-1.0fps speedup in the various roms I've been testing.

Come back soon StrmnNrmn.

Pro-Han Lin has released the latest version of the asteroid-blasting game Ceres for the PSP. Version 1.3 (created for the NeoFlash Summer Coding Contest) will run on firmwares 1.0 and 1.5 and features IR 2-player capability. The game author also challenges players to see if they can get past Mission 21 to see an additional challenge - wormholes - thrown in.

Like its predecessors, Ceres is donationware; donations will unlock expanded features in the game. The game itself provides instructions for donations at the credits, or you can register through the game's homepage at eDepot to make donations (as of this posting, the eDepot game site for Ceres has not been updated for v1.3).

Changelog from the Readme.txt (the last version featured in QJ was v1.1):

• 1.3: Aug 20, 2006: Zoom in and out of stars
• Explosion debris
• Ion thrust fragments
• Made for homebrew competition
• Removed hyperspace
• Wormholes in Mission 21+
• Moveable radar HUD
• 1.2: Storyline Release
  

Here's a video of the game in action:

Download: [Ceres v1.3 for PSP]

Don't you just hate it when you thing you're all hooked up (excuse the pun) and DevHook suddenly decides to freeze when you try running Firmware 2.71 at 333mhz? Just a few days back, IndianCheese has shared a nifty trick with us to solve this issue. Today, another good Samaritan is sharing an alternative trick you may want to try; it even has WiFi working.

But before proceeding with the instructions, make sure that you have Harleyg's Custom Firmware Patch v0.2, as it is an essential part of this trick. Much thanks to ando2k6 for the tip!

Intructions:

• Cold boot your psp then flick the hold button down to go to recovery menu
• In recovery menu go to change clockspeed select 333
• Select back then click exit (should take you back to 1.5)
• Start devhook go to CPU clock select 333mhz then start it without UMD in drive
• Once loaded try your web browser it should work
• Then reboot psp fully (coldboot) select devhook again now select cpu clock select no change then start devhook
• Now have a fully overclocked psp with wifi working
• To prove it works press home and select to change cpu speed should change to 133 so it was stuck at 333 to change it back repeat the process

Download: [Harleyg's Custom Firmware Patch v0.2]

NJ has released an updated version of his Capcom CPS1 Emulator for the PSP, brining it to Beta 3. With QJ's resident translator Jeff C. off duty and only the aid of Babelfish that cannot seem to translate the changelog, we cannot make out what exactly the changes are. Still, here's the translated text:

The variety doing, it increases, but speed rises absolutely and it cannot increase. On the other hand whether it went down, (laughing)
Being next, issuing formal edition, it is end.

All we can derive from what's in front of us is that because this is a beta and not a test version, both compatibility and speed improvements can be expected. Exhausting resources beyond what is present, we decided to try it out to see what developments this version really has.

We tried Street Fighter 2: championship Edition and it ran at full speed with no slowdowns at all; considering that this game's one of the harder titles to emulate, it'll be safe to say that most roms work great. The variety of Roms that can be played has most probably increased in this version, maybe at the expense of speed; or it could be that the variety of supported Roms cannot be increased due to speed restrictions.

NJ has certainly been pushing out these releases quickly in the past few days, and make sure you try this version to see if you have any speed increases from beta 2 of this emulator. If anybody can help with a Japanese to English translation please send us a news tip!

Update: Kind QJ reader Rick Ross has provided us with a translation of the changelog:

- Autofire function added
- Palette calculation process changed
- CPU interrupt process fixed
- Some alterations made to sprite drawing process
- Corrections made to Megaman/Rockman
- Reduced the filesize of the emulator executable
- Optimizing C68k (work in progress)

Thanks a lot Rick!

---

Update: Rom Chau was kind enough to provide us with the translated version of the entire readme.txt. Click Full Article for a better view of the text. Thanks, Rom Chau!


Download: [Capcom CPS1 Emulator Beta 3]

Coming to the PSP and DS, Q Entertainment's take on the original Gunpey, released for the WonderSwan handheld by Bandai, is a homage of sorts to its creator Gunpei Yokoi. Gunpey, is derived by cleverly changing the I in Gunpei by the Y in Yokoi The same seamless connection, done with Yokoi's name, is the very essence behind Gunpey. You'd have to make a complete line from left to right, with the variety of angular shapes and bars ascending over five columns. As time passes, the tempo increases and it is up to you manage the five columns. No matter what happens, you don't want those lines to reach the top or it's game over for you.

Anoyo Records' talented techno artists provide the magnificent selection of music for the game. As with the music, expect nothing less from the game graphically. It offers more than 40 exciting skins, ad hoc wireless play and a monstrous Super Gunpey mode. Although, some might speculate that PSP owners might be getting the better deal on the two releases, the DS has an ace up its sleeve. Included within the tiny cartridge, is an awesome sound sequencer. It allows you to customize the levels much like in a professional 16-track mixer. A great idea is to hook up two DS' and create a live versus mix. Gunpey also features a versus CPU mode in addition to the standard Challenge mode.

CWCheat was originally being developed to work with the 1.5FW and UMDs, but when devhook came out, weltall moved it to work with devhook. It now has support for all games available. CWCheat is basically the first general purpose cheat device for devhook. Now an update has been released for this multi-function cheat utility with a how lotta new features and bugfixes. Thanks go out to weltall for the hard work! The changes include, but are certainly not limited to, the following:

• multiple dumps
• usb mass support
• cheat searcher is finally in English
• searching for 16bit/32bit values was fixed

This multi-functional utility is to be used with Devhook and allows you to have full control over PSP games by creating and of course using cheats in every game! We can only imagine the whippings we could hand out with God mode in Fight Night! You are only limited by your own creativity with this application.

There's also an enhanced search feature that makes the large amounts of data that tend to be used more manageable. With the addition of USB mass support you can now access the memory stick from the PC while playing your favorite game. The improvements have made CW Cheat an even more useful tool that can be configured to accomplish many tasks; it is also well supported, promising an interesting future.

Download: [CW Cheat 0.1.1]

The detailed list of changelog awaits after the jump!

As you all know, QJ welcomes every developer willing to release programs they've created to make the PSP homebrew scene a lot better. In this tradition, we're now featuring developer weltall's application, CWCheat v0.1.

CWCheat was originally being developed to work with the 1.5FW and UMDs, but when devhook came out, weltall moved it to work with devhook. It now has support for all games available. CWCheat is basically the first general purpose cheat device for devhook.

This application from weltall has several functions that all of you will find very helpful:

• cheating functions
• a simple text reader cpu/bus tuning functions
• dumping and cheat making functions (also provided by windows pc side applications) button configuration
• various system information: ms available/total space, cpu/bus current frequence, devhook version, cw cheat version, advanced battery information and so on.

The zip file already contains a manual with the installation notes, a readme with the changelog and a detailed description of the features, and a cheat searcher app that (unfortunately) needs to be translated from Italian to English. (If you really want CWCheat to work, do take the time to translate using Babelfish or Google.)

Not interested yet? Just take a look at the developer's to-do list and you'll see why this application is very promising:

• saving abilitation/deabilitation of the single cheat in the db
• downloading of the latest db directly from the psp
• check if all the cheats type works
• adding games to the db
• code optimizations
• completing the text reader
• evolving the db format
• Adding support to loading inside the custum firmware
• others (he's accepting ideas)

Other people who helped the developer in this project are sincro, ale275 for the gfx, and zio`ale for the database website.

Tell us what you think about CWCheat v0.1, and we'll keep you posted on the newest developments in return.

Download: [CW Cheat v0.1]

We managed to get a few minutes with Didier Malenfant, President and Co-founder of Ready At Dawn Studios, he shares his thoughts on homebrew, the Ready at Dawn engine and even hints at what's next on the table for the venerable new studio.

Read the full interview after the jump!

With all the changes incorporated in PMP Mod subtitle mod's latest version, Looks like Raphael has been quite busy trying to make a better app for all you PMP Mod users to enjoy. The subtitle mod for PMP Mod v2.02 bears the following updates:

• Based on Jonny's v2.02 source with all improvements.
• Now has support for SubRip (.srt) subtitles.
• Asian language subtitles are now supported - Japanese, Korean, and Traditional Chinese (but Raphael admits that due to his lack of knowledge with the Asian languages, this new feature has not been highly tested yet).
• Support for up to eight different subtitles per video (switch them during playback with CROSS+LEFT TRIGGER).
• Change subtitle font and border color with CROSS+SQUARE and CROSS+CIRCLE.
• File list is filtered to *.pmp files
• Change CPU speed before playback (RIGHT TRIGGER in file list).
• ISO8859 fonts included in the release.

ISO8859-1: Latin-1, Western European (Danish, Dutch [partial]), English, Faeroese, Finnish (partial), French (partial), German, Icelandic, Irish, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Rhaeto-Romanic, Scottish Gaelic, Spanish, Swedish, Albanian, Afrikaans and Swahili.
ISO8859-2: Latin-2, Central European (Bosnian, Polish, Croatian, Czech, Slovak, Slovenian, and Hungarian).
ISO8859-3: Latin-3, South European (Turkish, Maltese, and Esperanto).
ISO8859-4: Latin-4, North European (Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Greenlandic, and Sami).
ISO8859-5: Latin, Cyrillic.
ISO8859-6: Latin, Arabic
ISO8859-7: Latin, Greek
ISO8859-8: Latin, Hebrew
ISO8859-9: Latin-5, Turkish
ISO8859-10: Latin-6, Nordic
ISO8859-11: Latin, Thai
ISO8859-13: Latin-7, Baltic Rim
ISO8859-14: Latin-8, Celtic
ISO8859-15: Latin-9 (revision of 8859-1 including euro sign € and complete coverage of French, Finnish and Estonian).
ISO8859-16: Latin-10, South-Eastern European (Albanian, Croatian, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Romanian and Slovenian, Finnish, French, German and Irish Gaelic [new orthography]).

Raphael promises all the features in this PMP Mod v2.02 subtitle mod will also be integrated in the PMP Mod AVC release - patience is the keyword.

As was mentioned, Raphael does not have much knowledge on Asian languages and he feels that character placement of the Asian subs "looks really bad". So expect a more accurate character placement in future release of this great mod.

Like previous releases, a font generator tool for Windows is included in this release (an updated version of which is coming very soon). And as always, Raphael requests those who'll be generating a font not included in this release to share the font with others - or at least with him, so the generated font can be included in the final release.

Version 2.01 of this subtitle mod can now support 2.01+ firmwares with the use of eLoader and both the GTA and TIFF exploit (thanks to tommydanger's help!). Speaking of 2.01+ firmwares, Raphael writes, "since we now have a working downgrader for 2.6, I don't provide any further updates on the 2.0+ version, unless I get enough feedback that it is still wanted. Version 2.01 for 2.0+ will still be available though."

The downloads are below, you know the drill. Don't forget to voice out your thoughts on the PMP Mod v2.02 subtitle mod via the QJ forums or the comments section. Enjoy!

Discuss: [Forum Release Thread]
Download: [PMP Mod AVC 1.02 subtitle mod (fw1.5)]
Download: [PMP Mod AVC 1.02 subtitle mod (fw1.5) Source]
Download: [PMP Mod v2.02 subtitle mod (fw1.5)]
Download: [PMP Mod v2.02 subtitle mod (fw1.5) Source]
Download: [PMP Mod v2.01 subtitle mod (fw1.5)]
Download: [PMP Mod v2.01 subtitle mod (fw1.5) Source]
Download: [PMP Mod v2.01 subtitle mod (fw2.0+)]
Download: [PMP Mod v2.01 subtitle mod (fw2.0+) Source]
Download: [Font Generator (Windows)]
Download: [Subtitle Mod Fonts] - includes ISO8859, Shift-JIS (Japanese), Uni-Han (Korean), and BIG5 (Trad. Chinese)

We have all witnessed a great number of breakthroughs these past weeks. Downgraders, FW emulators via DevHook, Custom Firmwares, and a lot more have blessed the PSP community. Just when we're about to say "things can't get any better than this", this news came our way.

NJ, father of NEOCDZ and NGEPSP, has revealed some juicy info on what the latest addition to his growing list of awesome emulators is - Capcom Play System 1 Emulator. Yep, you heard that right, give him a few days and we'll have a running CPS1 Emulator installed in our beloved PSPs. To give you an update, here's where he is with the development (as translated by QJ's very own Jeff C.):

Development State
Video emulation: 50% - row scroll not implemented.
Sound emulation: 10%
Input emulation: 80%
CPU emulation: 80%

According to NJ, video emulation is almost done except row scroll and screen flipping (maybe won't be implemented) of scroll 2, promising that SFZ CPS Changer version will also be supported. Although he did added that Final Fight, Street Fighter 2 and other games are still a bit "laggy" since he's still in the early stages of development. NJ puts it best in this translation:

"In a word, optimization will not come in before the emulation can actually run. If Row Scroll is implemented, it will add a heavy load to the emulation. CPS2 is still in a hard time since the performance of memory access of M68000 is very low. Most of the games will not have enough memory to run." As an added treat, the screens in this post were actually taken from his project.

So there you have it, the latest update on NJ's work in progress. Nice li'l combo to the release of Daedalus R6 earlier 'ey? Repeat after us. "things definitely can't get any better than this!" (cross fingers and looks around).