PSP and LBA 2!!! (and pc dosbox guide)

[Martyvej]

Yes you've read it right LBA2 is now bootable, and somewhat playable on PSP.
Its made using the european version, meaning the one with LBA2.exe, and not Twinsen.exe <- this however shouldent effect the outcome so it should be suitable for all.

It took a while to make it work, and lots of hours went into this ^^ so before i'll even start showing you how you can do it, i'd like to thank alexfont for giving me lots of good ideas while messing with this.

I know i've allready added lots of junk here, but i still think you need to realize this: while it is PLAYABLE to some excent, it is a bit laggy (choppy movements), so im not saying 100% perfect.


Now then, the part you're only here to read.
First of all please note that the entire process here requires NO modification of ANY kind, no patches, no no-cd's, no cracks no nothing.
All you need is your original LBA2/Twinsen's Odyssey cd and some paitence and of course dosbox on your psp.

There will be a very detailed (hopefully) explanation first, and i will make a quick summary at the bottom -> so if you're very experienced with doing these kinds of things (dosbox psp) just skip to the bottom part, the initial is meant to help new people.

Index:
1. Tutorial in Detail!
2. Tutorial in less detail (for experienced users)
3. Tutorial for PC using this method.

Tutorial in Detail:

Step 1:
Insert your LBA2 cd into your drive.
Now you need to make an image file of it, i used the free version of isobuster.
When you've selected the cd drive where you have your cd, rightclick the process tree to the left (it has 1 element called CD, rightclick that) select extract -> raw data.
When saving select the .bin format (it will ask if you want a .cue file when its done making the .bin file, say YES to this.)
Im not sure it's necessary but i called my bin/iso LBA2 as thats the name of the cd.
---
The reason you want it in raw data, with bin and cue file as the image files is that other types such as ISO dosent contain the audio tracks used in older games but rather the pure data, NRG format does contain the audio as well (thats why some has been able to pass the "cd check" using .nrg isos) but these arent usable in the dosbox imgmount.

Step 2:
enter dosbox, (you can use your pc for this) and install LBA2 dos version somewhere on your pc <- i had to do this on the pc because it failed ocasionally when installing over usb directly to the psp.
I recommend entering the setup at this point (using dosbox) and turning off ALL SOUND, otherwise you'll have a 0.5fps (something around that) and it'll be unplayable at all.
When your done installing move the LBA2 folder (default install folder IS LBA2) to the psp/dosbox/ folder.
While your doing this, also move the LBA2.bin/cue into either the dosbox folder as well, or into your iso folder on the psp (i have mine in the iso).

Step 3:
Open up your dosbox.conf file (usually located in the PSP\GAME150\__SCE__DOSBOX\ ), use notepad to open it.
First of all go down to the "memsize" (just search for it in notepad) the default data i think here is 4, change it to something around 10-15 <- if you dont do this you will get a memory error when booting the game (after the initial logo's).
After that drop all the way to the bottom of the conf file under the "autoexec"

///Here's an example of what mine looks like.
[autoexec]
SYSOPT clock 333
mount c ms0:/psp/dosbox
mount f ms0:/iso
imgmount d f:/lba2.cue -t iso
C:\
cd lba2
lba2psp.bat

I'll explain it here, the first important line "SYSOPT clock 333" sets the psp's clock speed to 333, the max the psp can do, altering this will slow down the game speed :P so leave it at that.
Second (mount c) mounts the dosbox folder on my psp as the C:\ drive.
Third (Mount F) mounts my iso folder on the psp memstick as the F drive.
Fourth (imgmount) mounts the iso in my iso folder (now known as the F drive) using the cue file, the -t iso simply informs that its of an image file type.

then it returns to the C: drive (the dosbox folder), enters the LBA2 folder and runs LBA2PSP.BAT

The LBA2PSP.BAT file contains all the controls for the game (e.g. it makes Cross into Lctrl and such), you use these for all dosbox games <- i wont post mine just yet as i havent created a fully functional one for lba2 :P i will upload one once im done with it.

Step 4:
You can now disconnect everything, go into your game -> memstick -> Dosbox file and boot it up, it will automatically start LBA2 and then you can enjoy it.

Tutorial in LESS detail:

1. Take your cd and make a bin/cue image of it.
2. mount it in dosbox using imgmount and install it to your pc.
3. enter the options and disable all sound to get decent speed on the psp.
4. make a lba2.exe/twinsen.exe bat file (e.g. lba2psp.bat) with your control sheet, remember to exec lba2.exe at the bottom.
5. copy the game folder into your psp/dosbox folder.
6. copy the iso to somewhere easily accesible.
7. mount the place where the game folder is as C:\ and imgmount the .cue as d (using -t iso)
8. change the dosbox.conf file so memsize = 10 or 15 and make it auto-boot your lba2psp.bat
9. boot up dosbox and play lba2.

Easy LBA2 on PC!

For those who havent figured this one out from the PSP tutorial...this one will help you alot <- i've only tried this on my own pc though.

1. either make a bin/cue or .nrg (.nrg only on pc! psp needs bin/cue) image file of your lba2 cd.
2. if you made an .nrg file mount it in daemon tools, then mount the virtual drive as a cd (e.g. mount d f:\ -t cdrom , where F is your virtual drive).
3. if you made the cue file use the following:
mount a c drive as anywhere you want your game (e.g. mount d:\games\ as your c: drive) place your image file there as well, then:
imgmount d c:\lba2.cue -t iso.
4. run LBA2.exe/twinsen.exe to play the game

I havent had to use any patches (such as funfrocks) to get this to work flawlessly ^^ so it should be usefull for anyone, also using bin/cue and nrg will make it so that you wont get the insert cd message.

Pictures are included, showing the main menu, inside twinsens house and outside with zoe (sorry for low quality only have my cellphone cam).

------------------------------------------------------
Notes and additional information:
Figured i'd mention some further speed enhancements people can do
1. Go into options, find the level of detail and turn it all the way down, it dosent seem to affect too much qualitywise (at least you cant see it) so its basically free fps gain ^^





Feel free to ask questions if your having problems doing this or just want to call me master, god or similar ^^ its been a while.

[Quetch]

WOW !!! now we have both LBAs on PSP !!!! YUPEEEEE

[Echomote]

What are the specs of the PSP? If DOSBOX runs this well on it, I'd love to imagine how well it'd run on an iphone or ipod touch.

[Martyvej]

well im no genius on the specs, but its something in the likes of 333mhz with 32mb ram (for the phat model).

Guess LBA2 isent as popular as LBA1 :P or people just havent noticed this thread yet, or - perhaps people dont have psp's
Hope more people will reply ^^ (try it out! share your experiences! work to get it to run better).

[Zerath^]

AMAZING, THANK YOU MARTYVEJ, your name shall forever be written in stone ( a runic stone maybe ) Im definetly gonna test this , what cfw are you using when doing this?

[Martyvej]

Oh good idea ^^ i'll add what firmware im using to the info as well, but just for ref. im using 3.71M33-4 , allthough i think any firmware able to handle dosbox would do well
Well :P i thought i could alter it ^^ but not without talking with an admin ^^
So till we get some more reports in that more CFW's run it (again, i'd assume all dosbox capable cfw's are working just as well :P) i'll leave it at that but post here if you get it running!

[haniaj]

i try that good job martyvej
on phat it was horrible with sound but on slim it was not bad a little faster
i had problem on both psp slim and fat,after playin 2 or 3 min my psp shouted down.
and it happend every time what should i do?
do you have this problem too?

[Martyvej]

Nop, i havent had any problems running it so far :P and yes, thats why i mentioned that you ought to turn off sound at least for now -> its a whole lot better (almost fully playable with no lag) without sound...but sound is half the atmosphere

[Quetch]

actually it's all the atmosphere

[xesf]

Wow, great to see you finally get it to run, I got to test this. Btw, you've should upload in the first post the bat file as well, it will be easier for people to get it work.
I still didn't get what I was doing wrong, because from what I read, I didn't miss anything, maybe the image file type is the reason, got to check that.


Edit: Ahhh the *.cue file not the image (*.bin *.iso *.img) itself. Yeah, now its clear and make sense. Great work!!

[Streg]

oh that rules! Thanks pal!!

[Martyvej]

your welcome
Sorry about not upping the .bat files and such (for controls) :/ i havent had time to look at getting it to run smoother, or actually mess with lba2 on psp at all these past few days >-< got examns coming up monday so i've been studying my butt off :P but i promise that once its over i'll make sure to up copies of all files! so people dont even have to do anything themselfs anymore (aside making their image files :P)

[Toa-Nuva]

I just was googling for a guide how to use Dosbox on PSP... And the first match on the list was this great tutorial! Thanks!

Anyway, it's great to see that LBA2 does work on a PSP. (The PSP has become the most important thing for me, XD and LBA2 still is the game ) But it's not so great to see how well (or bad) it works... The intro movie takes years to play, and, of course, the game itsself is very slow, too. I don't think I would survive any battle with that slow speed. I didn't even survive climbing into the museum: After the scene switches to the inside, Twinsen falls into nothing and dies. XD And the battery only lasts about half an hour. XD
Anyway, I hope that the creator of PSP Dosbox will improve his program so that LBA2 will run better. There aren't many things I'd love to do as much as playing LBA2 on a PSP, but currently it just is impossible...
But I still want to thank you very much for that tutorial!

BTW, that's my lba2psp.bat:

inputmap up up
inputmap right right
inputmap down down
inputmap left left
inputmap cross space
inputmap circle lalt
inputmap triangle enter
inputmap ltrigger lctrl
inputmap rtrigger lshift
inputmap start esc
inputmap exec LBA2.EXE

I think that's all the important keys, but I haven't played very long now because of the museum bug. Just copy that code into notepad and save it as "lba2psp.bat" in the LBA2 folder.

(I'm using 3.52 M33-4, BTW... On newer custom firmwares, 1.50-homebrew crashed every time I use standby...)

EDIT: It wasn't possible to call up your inventory, I just fixed that.
I also uploaded a few more pictures for those who don't have a PSP or a custom firmware or can't or don't want to test this for some other reason.

- Picture from the intro. But the intro plays so slow that you won't survive watching it without eating or drinking... XD
- Twinsen getting the Holomap. Don't wonder about the text, I'm German.
- Everything seems to work, you can even see the rain. But it's sloooooooow....
- Just a nice photo of the landscape.
- Twinsen buying a ticket to Desert Island
- Hey, that's strange: The ship is missing! I think it's because of the storm... But on my PC it's always there! Does that mean that the game works better on my PSP than on my PC? XD
- But the bug that makes possible to go to Desert Island before getting rid of the storm is still there - the rain is proof.
- The behavior screen
- The ghost that walks between all of the tables is missing...
- Today's last screenshot. Strangely, I could walk through all the fireballs until I arrived on one spot... Then suddenly they started to hurt me.

[leoboe]

Wow very impressive
especially the missing ferry screenshot.
It's very funny to see how a game works if you just change the interface:P

[xesf]

Does anyone tried to reduce in the Options, the Level detail to see if it runs better?!
I forgot to test that

[Toa-Nuva]

Yes, I reduced the details and the game worked a bit faster outside, since only the current scene was rendered, and it didn't rain... But this sometimes looked a bit stupid so I changed back to full graphics.
But I didn't notice any differences inside.

[xesf]

Yeah, inside scenes use few 3D rendering thats why. Really don't know if we'll be able to make LBA2 run well in PSP, I think it will always push PSP to a limit.

[Martyvej]

well ^^ depends on the maker of the dosbox for psp, :P for now he just really needs to increase the "power" in it ^^ so we can get some higher fps that might in itself solve a few problems.
So far all the updates there has been lately was minor compatability issues (such as mouse support e.g.), so a preformance upgrade would be nice about now.

[Martyvej]

Hiya all again well, sad news first - my old psp phat has ceased to live in this horrible world, its mortal enemy the brick floor of my university, proved to be too much of an opponent.

So i got myself a slim, redid all the steps that worked for me on the phat^^ and guess what...:P it goes black screen and shuts down after the "Alkaline" logo.
So im calling out to other PSP Slim users, who have more experience with homebrew on the slim than i have ^^ you used my guide and somehow got it to work, how? :P

also, are you running it using the 1.5/1.0 version using eloader? or the 3.xx version?

[xesf]

Hey Martyvej

I'm using the last custom firmware 3.90m33-2 and I can run the game. I do the same as you do in this guide and it run without problems, only too slow.

[Quetch]

what ??? how is this possible ??? how can a game run on 2 different consoles but with different in-game behaviors ??? I mean why would the PSP architecture influence the ferry not to be there ???

[Martyvej]

Well, turns out it was a fault 42 (thats what we call human errors here anyway.)
Well...it wasent entirely my fault :P the installation had gone poop with no error, so once i reinstalled it and moved it (excactly like my guide says...except i had to do it one more time :P ) it worked flawlessly ;D
Havent had a time to play it much tho (darn those c++ classes!)

[xesf]

Good to know you found the problem. Hope some day we can play LBA2 without problems in PSP.

[Martyvej]

well for now i can at least say that unlike what i mention in my guide, where i mention that you can put your memsize to something around 14-15 <- that naturally only applies to the phat model.
So far i've been running LBA2 on the slim with no problems (by that i mean no errors :P not no slowdowns or anything), with between 40-50 ^^ so you can start by trying to up that, next step would be increasing cycles and such i'll continue experimenting with this till i get some decent results.

[Martyvej]

Messed a bit more on it now seems that Phat just have better support with lba2 than slims >-< my slim keeps freezing the moment zoe says something, so i havent been able to get past the house

just for the fun of it i tried enabling sound just now, then it just freezes before zoe manages to talk right about when twinsen takes his first step.
Wonder why it dosent work on my slim :/