#ps1 modding

[silly-calm]

FreePSXBoot - finally we have a way to launch PS1 games on CD-Rs without modchips or disc swapping! It's not quite as powerful as FreeMCBoot for PS2, but it's still letting me play so many games I've always been curious about

[b0tster]

buntana's model is updated and ready to be modded into halo 2 😃

[bsptourist]

mu_aughts_v1

created by Cevi_Samy

[unusual-suspects]

i modded my psp :]

[schooltrashers]

Piracy Killed The Dream

How Piracy Killed The Dreamcast!

Written By: Ninja-X³ on February 27, 2025

It is often debated or talked about, but apparently the pro-piracy crowd doesn't want piracy to take blame for anything bad that happens to consoles. Dreamcast was negatively affected by piracy. Sure there was a lot of contributing factors that led to the demise of the Dreamcast, but piracy was a big one.

Let me explain. Imagine you were running a comic book shop. But some asshole decided to scan and upload every comic available in that comic book shop, turn it into a PDF file and then give it away for free. How is that comic book shop suppose to make a profit when people can just download the PDF version on their tablet?

The same applies to video games. Consoles are suppose to make profits off of selling games. Sega was selling Dreamcast at a LOSS so that they can SELL more games to make up for that loss profit. Without those sales, Sega losses money. Any chance they had against the PS2, went down the drain once piracy was widespread during the summer of 2000, months before the PS2 even became available.

The pro-piracy crowd would argue that piracy has no negative impact on consoles and that the most successful console is often the most pirated, but they'd be wrong. For example in order to pirate a PS1 back then, you have to have a mod chip. Luckily modchips weren't widespread, neither were CD-R's or CD burners at the time. So the chances of owning a modded PS1 was slim to none. Used video game stores weren't available at the time either. Everyone who has ever owned a PS1, didn't know that a modchip could be installed.

So of course with the lack of piracy, many games on the PS1 would end up becoming best sellers, selling over a million copies and often leading to a Greatest Hits version being sold in stores. Such as my copy of Silent Hill. Yeah...couldn't get the original version, I ended up with the Greatest Hits version. Same game, just the Greatest Hits label is on it.

Piracy would end up becoming a problem by 2000, CD-R's started becoming common, I can play DreamSNES on my Dreamcast to play Super Nintendo games on. It was wild. Didn't even own that DreamSNES disc by the way, a friend of mine brought it over and I was mind blown that I can play Nintendo games on a Sega console. This was the first time I discovered that piracy was possible on a Dreamcast. Didn't see it as a big deal at the time.

Then I saw countless articles about piracy, I knew that the Dreamcast days were numbered. Then by 2001, Sega pulled the plug on the Dreamcast. I was disappointed. A lot of things ended in 2001. For example WWF bought WCW and ECW. Dreamcast of course ended. But my virginity also ended, since I lost my virginity to a hot redhead.

Point being that piracy did lead to the demise of the Dreamcast. Piracy scares off video game publishers. PS2 had the advantage of being on a new format(DVD), which is harder to pirate. Gamecube had a mini disc. Xbox also had DVD. So of course the PS2, Gamecube and Xbox would live on. Dreamcast on the other hand died too quickly.

Piracy would have been okay, IF it had happened AFTER the console's lifespan. NOT during the console's lifespan, that just causes a huge host of problems. If you're going to pirate, then pirate the consoles that go woke (PS5, Xbox Series X). Not the consoles that deserve your hard earn money (Switch).

Conclusion:

Yes, piracy killed the Dreamcast. I'm not saying piracy is bad, it can do good. But NOT during the console's lifespan. When is piracy good? Well I know how hard it is to obtain Deadpool for the PC, so by all means go for it. If it's rare, go ahead. If it's no longer sold in stores, GO AHEAD! But when a console is trying to make money, DON'T DO IT! This is what frustrates me about piracy, it does have bad consequences and there is no defending those bad consequences. With that said, it is safe to say that piracy killed the Dreamcast.

[diamond-ultra]

This took far to long but hey she look cool! Made this for a BRC modding tutorial I'm making.

Get It Here: https://gamebanana.com/mods/473932

[nonbinary-sticks-the-badger]

how it feels to be a sims 2 glazer

[linnaealyn]

Been working on again off again on a Xenogears portrait mod for two years now, started in Sept 2021 right before I actually finished the game for the first time. Some time ago I started adding upscaled (hand painted) versions of UI elements, so I guess its now a general texture pack I'm working on.

Its done through RetroArch's Beetle PSX HW core real-time texture replacer.

My goal with this is to make a texture pack that stays very true to the original look of the game. I don't want to redesign elements, impose too much of my own influence into it, and make the game look like it had an identity crisis. I still want it to look like Xenogears in the end, just upscaled, and where the portraits are concerned I want it to look as close to the original artwork as possible, with no scanning artifacts and low res quality- as if we actually had digital versions of Tanaka's original artwork.

Also, this isn't intended to be super high res 4k or anything, idc about that.

Figured I'd make a full post here going over everything I've done so far. I'm on the home stretch! Just a few more left.

⬆ Starting with UI. I replaced the red selection arrow, the red/grey spheres, save block icon, save/load text/bar, Walk/Gear icons (more about that one later), compass cardinal points (was unable to get a proper dump of the circular compass texture), and the dialogue diamond and selection diamond within menus.

I totally get it if someone wouldn't want to use something like the dialogue diamond, as you see it all the time right beside the pixelated text and it seems to stand out more in dialogue vs the one in menuing bc your attention is typically focused elsewhere while menuing. In the end, all changes are optional and to remove something all you have to do is move/delete the equivalent img file from the texture replacement folder. Within said folder I have a sub-folder titled "alternate portraits" where I keep alts and things I want to "disable" without outright deleting.

⬆ In combat UI I've replaced the HP/dmg numbers, the Time/AP/numbers, battle palette text (used for other text as well), the circle and tags of the battle palette, Time/AP/fuel bars, green Gear text and numbers, Gear attack level/♾ indicator, black Gear UI backgrounds, and combo icons. The red arrows have been replaced, but unfortunately the black arrows around the red cannot be replaced based on how the game does it; it is not a texture you can change, it is a triangular shaped box that the game fills with the black texture from behind Gear UI.

⬆ Menu/gameplay buttons. Also numbers/"points/fuel/cancel end" Someone mentioned playing with a switch pro controller or joy-cons so I threw an ABXY version together as an alternate button display option. Used the same typeface as the combo icons to keep some consistency with a typeface already in-use as well as for overall clarity.

⬆ Also, DB icons, EP/Fuel/Miss text, and "total damage". Unfortunately, the other DB icons (showing the △🞪☐ highlighted) cannot be replaced as far as I can tell. The battle UI textures (the 17 or so textures of the same thing in varying hues) shows them on it, but changing them in each one of these textures does not change the icons. It does not pull from these specific texture dumps, in other words; its just one of those that doesn't dump, like the circular compass texture.

⬆ In working on the Walk/Gear icons I wasn't sure exactly how I'd go about doing it because the original is literally just that tiny. So I had the idea of putting a little Fei & Weltall in it, outlined by the same grey. Thought it might be weird in the other party members' menus, idk, and I don't like changing things too much from the original, so I decided to just use Fei/Weltall as the grey silhouettes instead. Ill keep the Fei/Weltall one as an alt option if anyone wants to use it.

⬆ And the minimap. Kept B&W so that the colored dots (indicators of where all you can enter an area) aren't difficult to see. I do have a colored version as an alt, though. Credit to Adelinold for having ripped the 3D maps and made a bird's eye view "minimap" esque screenshot of the world map some years back because it is absolutely perfect for use here.

~~~~~

Now onto portraits, the main bulk of the work. This includes dialogue portraits, menu portraits, and gameplay portraits. I go through each one individually, find the highest quality version of the art, and clean it up manually, painting over it to get rid of any jpg rot, scanning artifacts, or print dots from scans while keeping it as close to the artwork as possible. In order to keep colors consistent across the board (because scans of the artwork can vary) I'm picking from the sprites. One portrait typically takes 2.5+ hours, not including testing them in-game. Each one needs to be tested in-game and edited to make sure semi-transparent pixels around the portraits don't result in black or white pixels in the area that should be transparent.

⬆ Direct comparison to the sprites. I'm not too strict about how I match how much of the art is shown, but in instances like this I like to show more of the character than the pixelated portraits allowed for. However, this wouldn't work for everyone as Fei's default portrait is also used when Kim is naked from the hips up.

For the Captain I specifically wanted to get his pipe within frame. Typically the portraits end just behind their ear, have the eyes at 1/2 to 2/3 height, and end just above the clavicle.

⬆ Some portraits like Kim and Elly have no artwork equivalent, but were pretty basic to make with the artwork of Fei & Elly that we do have.

⬆ Other characters have no artwork equivalent whatsoever, like Stein and Wel-Gear Hammer. For Stein I had to take the collar from Stone's artwork and paint something from scratch using Stein's sprite as reference. This one was more fun to do than I expected because its a special case, entirely different from all of the other portraits. For example, usually the artwork has 4 colors for skin- base color, shadow color, deep shadow color (usually seen directly under the chin, used sparingly), and a highlight color for on the nose or lip. But with Stein his skin had many different colors you could pick from the sprite and no equivalent artwork to limit yourself in how many there actually are. So in trying to get it looking just right it took something like 7 different shades of varying pink, red, and orange. It clearly has more dynamic shading compared to all of the other portraits.

For Wel-Gear Hammer... I did my best given what all I could see was even happening in the sprite.

⬆ I made a close eyed Elly portrait as there is no artwork of it and a bomb collar Fei and Hammer portrait using the bomb collar in Rico's art. Its fun playing around with them when there is no equivalent artwork.

⬆ Made an unsmiling Citan to mirror his unsmiling dialogue sprite vs his smiling menu sprites as well as alt Krelians to better match the expression of his mouth that the sprite has vs the artwork. (sprites are always a bit stretched compared to the artwork, btw. even when you rip them from the disc)

⬆ I'm also working on alternate versions, like a two-eyed Bart I did for fun.

~~~~~

It is finished! 1.0 anyway. Right in time for the North American 25th Anniversary! I just gotta get it uploaded somewhere.

I'll continue to work on the ones that I think still need more work, but for now even the ones that are in rougher shape are passable.

Ill have two versions of the mod- one with stretched and cropped portraits that work in 4:3 (much like the sprite portrait bmps in the base-game that end up looking fine in true 4:3. they kind of end up blurrier due to stretching the artwork) (with Crop Overscan set to None) and another version which isn't stretched or cropped so its as crisp as I could get them, but in order to get them to display the image exactly as they are in-game without squishing you need Crop Overscan set to Static (removes horizontal padding) which makes it just slightly off 4:3. Honestly, to the untrained eye its hard to tell it isn't 4:3. 🤷‍♀️ The only thing you might notice it really affecting would be the animated cutscenes.

I'll make a master post for the mod itself, separate from this. This'll end up being a bit of a time capsule for me.

[aliciadessendre]

since we putting dlc and whatever into every category might as well put tr1-3 remastered somewhere in there

[theviceenforcer]

Crash Bandicoot: Warped - Dr. Cortex Retirement

Dr. Cortex has decided to cut his losses and retire from villainy much to Uka Uka's annoyance.

Uka Uka: We could've just gathered the Gems to defeat that Bandicoot but NOOOO!

[kaiseran-blog]

(via https://youtube.com/watch?v=My8QjdR6tuQ&si=6YhVhUzaS_7vn7qU)

[doom-engine-aesthetics]

DBP59: Zeppelin Armada

[crystalfissured]

Keen to share this new Spyro fangame in development by Bunbaroness!

She refers to the game as "Spaghetti Spyro." Bunn, known for the incredible Spyro Reignited Trilogy Omniswapper, has dedicated several years to developing this fangame in Unreal Engine 4.

The main goal is to create a foundation for fans to develop their own fangames, as the project will be open source once released. Right now, Bunn is focusing on the engine's detailed features, such as swimming, power-ups, and various breath abilities from all the Spyro games, including Legend of Spyro. This ensures that fans will have the tools they need to create their own games from this foundation.

Check out Bunn's channel here for frequent updates of the game:

[systemst91]

https://www.instagram.com/p/CtVRgHIoi_d/

Modded Satellaview with PSX inside

[onthegreatsea]

i'd love to be able to play games off of an SD card on my Dreamcast and PS1 but i hate hate that both mods involve completely removing the CD drive i much prefer how i can load games off of HDDs/SD cards on the PS2/GC/Xbox but still use discs if i wanna

[pandaemoanium]

finished ff5 for the first time! i absolutely demolished exdeath, i only had to stop to heal once bc he missed almost all of his attacks so i could just wail on him lmao, i barely had time to enjoy the banger boss theme

great game overall, i'm glad that i finally got to actually finish the game after all these years! the story is kinda nothing, but it's more about the journey and the goofy shenanigans the gang ends up in, it was a very feelgood game and got me laughing out loud a few times :3 the job system is overwhelming but super fun and customizable, it's also Very abusable; i barely looked at any job guides and i still managed to break the game by the end hahaha