PlayStation Classic

[isiolia]

Maybe more that it was a rush job to get on shelves for the holiday season.

[samsonlonghair]

So the source code for a huge pile of amazing games like parappa the rapper, vagrant story, silent hill, tomba, parasite eve, suikoden and so so much more have been found on the console itself, but not the isos itself. What in the world is going on with this system?

Sounds to me that the development team had much, much, much higher aspirations for the system than the licensing team was able to deliver.

In any case, it’s good that we have the source code now. It’s good for preservation.

I wonder if the community can do cool things with this source code. Remember when high res texture maps became a thing in PS1 emulation? Maybe seeing the source code directly can help with building better texture maps. Maybe someone can try to rebuild these games with more elaborate polygon models or true stereoscopic 3D. It wouldn’t work on a cheap micro console, but it sure would look neat on a PC.

Here is a really good review of its shortcomings. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UU0dn9pRKuw

On paper, the hardware specs should be more than sufficient to run PS1 games. However, the emulator Sony used is garbage. In the video, they also run the same emulator on an Nvidia Shield and get slightly better but still poor results. And as expected, the PAL games further hurt proper performance.

Oh and for those that were wondering, the onboard storage is 16GB. So plenty of room for a healthy selection of games as long as you aren't filling the thing entirely with multi-disc games.

The guy in this video speculated that the PAL games were chosen on purpose. Apparently the hardware has a hard time pushing 60fps in some games. Using the PAL 50hz version of the game could have been a workaround for engineers on a tight deadline.

[isiolia]

In any case, it’s good that we have the source code now. It’s good for preservation.

I wonder if the community can do cool things with this source code. Remember when high res texture maps became a thing in PS1 emulation? Maybe seeing the source code directly can help with building better texture maps. Maybe someone can try to rebuild these games with more elaborate polygon models or true stereoscopic 3D. It wouldn’t work on a cheap micro console, but it sure would look neat on a PC.

It's not the game source code, or even something that's directly available on the console from what I can see. As Arstechnica's post regarding it indicates, it's actually Sony's posting of modified Open Source code that's part of the project (as they are required to do under GNU) that reveals a far more extensive list of titles - whether there for potential inclusion or simply testing.

[marurun]

No improvement in title lists will fix the poor emulation performance in this unit.

[Arenegeth]

They couldn't have access to the source codes unless they licensed the games already, those games belong to different companies (except the ones that don't).

There is a possibility those games were coming down the road via Memory Card mini's or whatever, but more than likely is just more incompetence on Sony's part in putting this thing together.

But it doesn't look like is the source code after all.

[samsonlonghair]

In any case, it’s good that we have the source code now. It’s good for preservation.

I wonder if the community can do cool things with this source code. Remember when high res texture maps became a thing in PS1 emulation? Maybe seeing the source code directly can help with building better texture maps. Maybe someone can try to rebuild these games with more elaborate polygon models or true stereoscopic 3D. It wouldn’t work on a cheap micro console, but it sure would look neat on a PC.

It's not the game source code, or even something that's directly available on the console from what I can see. As Arstechnica's post regarding it indicates, it's actually Sony's posting of modified Open Source code that's part of the project (as they are required to do under GNU) that reveals a far more extensive list of titles - whether there for potential inclusion or simply testing.

Oh, I get it now. It’s the source code to the emulator on the PlayStation classic, not the source code to the games. Thanks for the link to the article on ars.

[bmoc]

Some folks have be able to run custom ISOs as of last night (with soldering). Sony conveniently left the private keys readily available on the system so it was super easy to hack. One person doing the hacking thinks that in as little as 1 week to 1 month, we will have something solderless and user friendly to hack it with. Another interesting take away is that Sony is running the ARM 8 series cpu in ARM v7 32 bit mode. So hacking may significantly be able to boost cpu performance in the future.

[bmoc]

Hackers have been able to exploit a diagnostic mechanism that Sony left in place. Turns out that it is quite easy to run your own games off a USB drive if you have a dump of the internal storage also copied to the USB drive. I'm greatly simplifying the process here but the point is that things are progressing steadily. I definitely think someone will be able to replace the emulator with something better within a month.

[samsonlonghair]

That’s really great to hear! I haven’t felt the need to hack my NES Classic or SNES Classic because they come with so many great games. The PlayStation classic NEEDS to be hacked before I will consider buying.

[Tanooki]

So basically, using a hakchi comparison here with its menu. You perhaps run some future app. This app will dump a copy of the internel kernel (ie: firmware+all software, clone the drive basically) back to your PC. There you can then pop this clone on a thumb drive + add more games you like onto the device, and the PS Mini there will pick that up and you can do as you wish with it. At least as it currently stands in the hands of those figuring it out so far.

That about it?

If that's the case I may have to go buy one, if it gets along enough they can also fix the crappy emulator some so the games run stable too.