What's new
By:
Filters

Slightly off-topic, but I thought you might be interested to know how long all of this has been going on.

N

numbski

Student
Joined
Jun 22, 2016
Messages
66
Reaction score
4
Back in 1998, a fake CPS2 emulator sprung up named "Kallus 2". I tried to get the guy writing it to come clean and failed.

Around 2000, Dayvee (original Final Burn dev) added support for a small number of CPS2 games. For whatever reason, he was...reluctant to add newer games to the emulator even though it would run them. As a result, I wrote a perl frontend that simply shuffled the roms around to where Final Burn expected to find them, then launched Final Burn - and named it CPS2Extender:

https://web.archive.org/web/20010304172111/http://www.hksilver.net/

That lasted for a few days, at which point Dayvee lost his cool, went over to Retrogames to complain. I finally acquiesced and pulled my Frontend:

(ctrl-f, search for Numbski)

http://www.retrogames.com/022001.html

Unfortunately, that wasn't the end of it. Dayvee wound up pulling ALL support for CPS2 games from Final Burn (don't even recall why, but he literally took his ball and went home) and told everyone to "wait for MAME".

That prompted me to take the last version that supported CPS2, and support ALL of the games. MAME did finally add support - but not before one of the regulars at EmuChrist wrote a song (and recorded an mp3!) called "CPS2Lame". The following thread even has someone using a line from that song as a signature. I thought I had it sitting around here, but I can't find it right now.

Notice who is right in the middle of all of the drama though...

http://www.retrogames.com/cgi-bin/w...en&Number=80156&page=4&view=ex&mode=flat&sb=6
 
I believe the last thread you link on the first post (the 2004 one) planted the seeds for the effort which led to Charles MacDonald into building the hardware (CPS2 dumper) which was later used to create the enormous gigabyte tables which allowed Andreas Naive and Nicola Salmoria reverse engineer the encryption algorithm.



http://mamelife.blogspot.com.br/2006/12/cps2-notes-part-1.html
http://andreasnaive.blogspot.com.br/2006_12_01_archive.html


Read that stuff, it's fascinating, particularly if you enjoy math.



I think that XOR tables were just a stepping stone in the incredible community effort which resulted on the algorithm being reverse engineered.


After reading that stuff (I remember reading most of it at the time but did not give it the proper level of importance so I forgot most of it) I actually understand why things like MAME adding Phoenix sets to it's database actually happened. :whistling:
 
Heh. Definitely some fun reading. I remember following Retrogames and CPS2Shock repeatedly to see what new CPS2 game would come out, and trying my darndest to understand what the hell was being discussed. The guys who figured out how to get this done are incredibly bright folks. I still have trouble making sense out of hexadecimal notation which for those guys comes off as easily as the English alphabet does for me.

To be honest, despite the inane drama surrounding it, it would actually be kind of nice to read a book about the entire process from the first XOR tables being used (and how that was even discovered), up through the actual cracking of the CPS2 system, to the recently discovered way of re-programming keys into dead games. Have it include some of the complex stuff that's way over my head, but also simplify everything for the lay person to understand.

I'm sure there are folks who were involved who in no way would want to contribute to any of it, but still, it would be kind of cool. You could also talk about the method that CPS3 was decrypted as well.
 
The cps3 encryption is most likely a standard Hitachi made instead of the beast that was made for cps2.

I do like the last little extra in cps2 encryption was to mess up the sprite offsets.
 
CPS Too Lame

Dayvee wonders why I change his .ini
Well it's the kind of file type that you're supposed to modify
Made flamey Dayvee cry

CPS too lame
Dayvee was his name
Took my games away and made me wait for MAME
CPS too lame

I saw flamey Dayvee's name on the message board of flames
I said 'Dave I think you're lame' and I was banned again
For CPS2 sins

CPS too lame
Dayvee was his name
Took my games away and made me wait for MAME
It's just a fucking game
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top