WotL Slowdown Removal Patch

[endrift]

Having almost completed my research, I have put together two patches for WotL, for unstretching the screen and speeding up the game. Although I did not personally test on the PSN version or any regions other than US, I've gotten reports that it works on the PSN release as well as the EU versions. A separate JP version is included, as well. As these are only preliminary patches, you might expect some bugs. However, I've found that in general, they work pretty well. The patching utility will require a PSP with custom firmware, and additional instructions are included. However, you won't need ISOs or any messy patching utilities on your computer. Everything is done when the game is run on the PSP!

An early version of the patching utility as well as the patches are attached. Please post feedback and bugs you find! You probably will not need the debug version of the utility (the only noticeable difference to a user is that it dumps a log), so download the regular version unless I ask you for a log.

[st4rw4k3r]

spoiler: Test 1 - 26/2/12

Used:
    Lag Mod
    Screen Mod
    Live Patch 0.1

Other Plugins activated:
    CWcheat
    PopsLoader

Description:
    When I get to the Square Enix logo the game freezes and crashes.

spoiler: Test 2 - 26/2/12

Used:
    Lag Mod
    Screen Mod
    Live Patch 0.1

Other Plugins activated:
    popsloader

Description:
    Screen is unstretched and cut off at on the right side. ¹⁾
    I can input ramza's name, and his birthday, after that screen it shows the boy looking at the scroll. After that cut scene it, the screen goes black and that game crashes.

spoiler: 1)

spoiler: Test 3 - 26/2/12

Used:
    Lag Mod
    Live Patch 0.1

Other Plugins activated:
    popsloader

Description:
    I can input my name and zodiac. I get past the cutscene with the boy and the scroll, and go into the church scene. Crossing fingers....

    Exited the church entered the loading screen. I got to the battle. Gaffgarion runs up and- OMFG NO LAG!

    On a side note, when I clicked the home button the game froze and crashed.

spoiler: Test 4 - 26/2/12

Used:
    Screen Mod
    Live Patch 0.1

Other Plugins activated:
    popsloader

Description:
    Start the game with the screen unstretched, and clipped off on the right, just like in test 2. I get passed the newgame setup. I enter the church scene and the screen seems to be perfectly not stretched.

    I enter the battle, still unstretched perfectly. Interesting, it appears there is not lag in battle, even with the no lag mod not enabled.

    clicking home still freezes the game and crashes the psp.

spoiler: Test 5 - 27/2/12

Used:
    Lag Mod
    Screen Mod
    Live Patch beta

Other Plugins activated:
    popsloader

Description:
    I get past the loading screens. I still have the stretched screen cut off.

    Hitting the home button kills it still.

spoiler: Test 6 - 27/2/12

Used:
    Lag Mod
    Screen Mod v2
    Live Patch Beta 2

Other Plugins activated:
    popsloader

Description:
    Home Button freezes the game, clicking it twice crashes it. No Screen stretch, and no cut off text from screen.

spoiler: Test 7 - 27/2/12

Used:
    Live Patch Beta 2

Other Plugins activated:
    popsloader

Description:
    upon hiting home, it works and does not crash the game.

spoiler: Test 8 - 27/2/12

Used:
    Lag Mod
    Screen Mod
    Live Patch Beta 2 - Actiavted on VSH and GAME

Other Plugins activated:
    popsloader

Description:
    Clicking Home works, and does not crash the game. And The Screen mod does not unstretch the screen.
   

spoiler: Test 9 - 27/2/12

Used:
    Lag Mod
    Screen Mod
    Live Patch Beta 3

Other Plugins activated:
    popsloader

Description:
    Gets past loading screen.
    Screen Mod working perfectly, no stretch, no cut off.
    Clicking home and/or the volume buttons, crashes the game.

spoiler: Test 10 - 27/2/12

Used:
    Lag Mod
    Screen Mod
    Live Patch Beta 4

Other Plugins activated:
    popsloader

Description:
    Freezes on volume buttons, and home.

spoiler: Test 11 - 28/2/12

Used:
    Lag Mod
    Screen Mod
    Live Patch Beta

Other Plugins Activated:
    popsloader

Description:
    I decided to test to see what buttons can crash the game. I found clicking home, volume up, volume down, hitting the power switch, and pressing the back light button.

spoiler: Test 12 - 28/2/12

Used:
    Lag Mod
    Screen Mod
    Live Patch beta 5

Other Plugins activated:
    popsloader

Description:
    I started it up and waited for the animated intro screen so that I could properly see if it froze. I then hit home, volume up, down, and then mashed on all the buttons crazily. No Freeze. As a last test I turned the psp off and on again. And it turned back on perfectly, no freeze. I think we can call this plugin le finished.

[endrift]

Ok, I've fixed the cut-off text problem. Turns out there was an 0x0E where there should have been an 0xE0. Not sure how that happened, but I'll upload that fix after more feedback comes in.

E] I went over the rest of that patch and it LOOKS intact...so I'm not sure why that would be crashing. However, I'm pretty sure I know why exiting the game is crashing so I'll fix that soon.

[Argy]

Brilliant Work Arch, I would love to help out with the project, especially the testing. Alas though, I have a European version, but when it come to you looking at that though, I will be more than happy to help. Keep up the good work

[endrift]

I've uploaded a fixed version of the unstretch patch, and a beta version of LivePatch 0.1.1, which hopefully fixes all those nasty crashing issues st4r was having. The beta doesn't include directions or the like, so if you need those still, I've left 0.1 up.

[zzk]

wanna any feedback from testing in emus ?

[Mega_Tyrant]

Oddly enough while cleaning up for a party yesterday I found my PSP and hooked it up to the charger.  I'll try and test the patches later when I get home.

[Alaris]

I have WoTL, I'll put this to the test soon...

Edit: As soon as I find my damn ISO for it... don't want to have to rip from my UMD AGAIN...

Edit #2: Nevermind, just finished actually reading the first post. Won't need an ISO it seems.

Edit #3: Does LivePatch require a specific Custom Firmware? Because I'm getting no effect using it.

[endrift]

Edit #3: Does LivePatch require a specific Custom Firmware? Because I'm getting no effect using it.

I've tested LivePatch on 5.00 M33 and 6.60 Pro-B 10, so presumably it works on anything in between too. Are you sure it's enabled and the patches are in the right place? The patches (*.live files) should go in ms0:/livepatch/fftpsp

[Mega_Tyrant]

Test System:  PSP-2000 CFW 5.50 Prometheus-4
Patching Version: LivePatch Beta

Test 1
Patches Enabled: fast.live, unstretch.live
Notes: All other plugins disabled
Result:  screen is un-stretched, full-speed skills, no sound de-sync, saving is functional, game doesn't crash on pressing "Home" but game crashes on quit attempt.

Test 2
Patches Enabled: fast.live
Notes: All other plugins disabled
Results: stretched, full-speed skills, no sound de-sync, saving is functional, game doesn't crash on pressing "Home" but game crashes on quit attempt.

Test 3
Patches Enabled: unstretch.live
Notes: All other plugins disabled
Results: un-stretched, slow skill animations, sound de-sync, saving is functional, game doesn't crash on pressing "Home" but game crashes on quit attempt.

Assessment: Looks like something is still causing the game to freeze and crash but it is from the short test I did fairly stable aside from trying to quit to the XMB.  BTW Thanks for the hard work, ingenious patching method utilized it is nice to not have to rip and patch a new ISO each time I want to change patches.  The gang here should look into this as perhaps a viable method of patching when creating patches; it makes patch testing much faster.  I wonder if it could be implemented into fftpatcher and the other tools on the site.

[FinalInsanity]

I'm probably just missing something here, but I put the slowdown patch into the livepatch folder, in the fftpsp folder, in the root of my memory stick. All is fine there.

However, when I put the livepatch.prx into my seplugins folder and went to enable it, it wasn't listed. Am I doing something wrong? I have a PSP1000 with CFW 5.50 Prometheus 4.

[st4rw4k3r]

just manually enable it. Go to GAME.txt in the seplugin folder, or make it if its not made.
in the folder add this text:
ms0:/SEPLUGINS/livepatch.prx 1

[FinalInsanity]

Still getting slowdown, however now the .prx is visible in the menu. Is there something else I have to do, perhaps try a different version of Livepatch?

[endrift]

Well, I can't reproduce the crashes at all, so I'm only operating on guesswork, which isn't getting me very far. If I'm going to flatten out the crash when closing the game, I'm going to need someone who will let me tinker with the program remotely, either through relayed instructions (which will be very difficult!) or a remote shell of some sort (which would require giving me remote access for a little while, something that is understandably undesirable). Someone who has knowledge of PSPLink is better, but either way I'll need someone who is very responsive so I can do this in a fast way.

I can continue to upload versions that work by guesswork, but I can't really guarantee that that'll fix any related crashes.

E] Scratch that, for now. I think I managed to reproduce it on 5.00 M33, so I'm gonna plug away at that.

[Mega_Tyrant]

I'm fairly certain (well an educated guess anyway) that the reason may/is incompatibility with other installed and/or active plugins.  During my first few attempts (before test 1) the game crashed during launch when the SE splash screen came up, it was only after I disabled all my plugins that the game would boot at all to yield the test results.  Wish I could help but I don't know a thing about PSPLink or setting up remote access, plus work and school pretty much means I'm home, awake, and free maybe 2 hours a day.  There's a pretty good chance our time schedules don't match up.  Although tomorrow Ill format a memory stick and try to confirm my hunch.

[endrift]

Good news! Maybe. I think I found the bug, and Beta 4 (which hopefully fixes it for real this time) is now attached. It fixes the crash I experienced on 5.00 M33, which was a problem with timings relating to threads. Fun. Anyway, that's fixed now and hopefully that'll fix your crashes.

[Korangar7776]

Hello and thanks for the patch.
I tested both and they worked, though some crash still happens.
I used the livepatch 4, but the crash happened when I went into sleep mode(using home-->exit didnt crash though)
Using 6.60 LME-1.6 btw

[Mega_Tyrant]

hmm, still crashing on a clean memory card.  I think I'll need to change my firmware to get better compatibility.

[Alaris]

I've tested LivePatch on 5.00 M33 and 6.60 Pro-B 10, so presumably it works on anything in between too. Are you sure it's enabled and the patches are in the right place? The patches (*.live files) should go in ms0:/livepatch/fftpsp

I've got 5.50 Prome-4. I've got it showing up in the Plugin folder in the recovery menu, as on.  I've got the patch files where they should be, but I'm seeing no visible effect. I'm not getting any crashes from using Home or anything, so I don't think I'm getting ANYTHING to work.

[endrift]

I cleaned up the code a lot while investigating the crashes that I'm still not getting and in the process did three things;
1) Replaced the synchronization methods with something cleaner, in the hopes that that fixed crashes (it won't)
2) Disabled some debugging code and found a problem with my directory listing code (that are actually Sony bugs, not mine), so I fixed that
3) Found out that the way it was compiled was leading to my code stomping on top of another module. Namely, the module that makes the volume buttons, the home button (and the display for when the home button is pressed), and a few other things work. Now it's compiled in a way that will hopefully prevent that from happening again.

As such, I've uploaded a beta 5. This will hopefully eliminate those crashes once and for all. At least, it'll probably get rid of those crashes st4r was talking about. No idea if it'll fix the other ones that I still haven't been able to reproduce.

And Alaris, I'm sorry but I don't know why it's not working for you at all I can send you a debug version and some instructions for figuring out how far it's getting before it fails.