Qestion for help straight for @Johndrinkwater

[GTPunk]

so,i want to export all models and textures for example from basic_apartment_evening_T037.sdat (harbour studio). What i need to do? i googled how to decrypt sdat to dat but what to do next? contentID and what-not,im not familiar with ps3 things.can you help me?

[johndrinkwater]

sdat files are encrypted with the PS3 platform encryption scheme… which is the reason I have not done any work on the files 😐

[GTPunk]

@johndrinkwater but can you create any easy tool for decrypt/view/export files from sdat's? like, you know, there is wrestling modmakers who learn any aspects of wwe games, even in old-gen games they learn what files inside, how to export from them, how to replace models, how to put files back inside. gigantic job.can you at least ask for colaboration with any ps3 hackers?i want to create ps home mod for another game

[GTPunk]

@johndrinkwater as far i know it needs to decrypt sdat to dat,then crypt dat to edat-convert it to pkg.or export from edat.problem is - to crypt to edat we need to know a lot of info,like cID,klak file or how it called ,ect ect. this is how one of edat tool decrypts sdat Архив ZIP - WinRAR.zip also try to learn code of pshome's pkg (the app itself) maybe there something userful

[snakescater]

Is there any new info on exporting models from these .sdat files? Iv gotten as far as converting to .dat, is there a way to extract the files from within the bin of the .dat?

[MercuryValentine]

.dat files contain ambiguous data. From Looking at basic_apartment_evening (Harbour Studio) and a couple other random files I have, they both appear to be .bar/.sharc files, which you can open with unbar or offzip. You can read more about them here. I've yet to work on opening or modifying the files since the preservation of missing game data is currently more important, but it'll probably require some reverse engineering and programming to extract everything from the .dat files.

Also, anyone wanting to use the assets for other purposes should try using unbar/offzip on older versions of the game, such as 0.8.3 (I'm missing some versions, if anyone has new links that aren't public, or just game data in general). The closed beta has the Harbour Studio in its PKG for example, so give that a go.

[GTPunk]

@MercuryValentine wow i've just a few days ago found about unbar and downloaded 0.8.3 shocking... i've found it on ps3hax net or something like that. but it seems doesnt work for me since its for win xp.

[MercuryValentine]

I don't recall if it worked for me (Windows 7), however offzip is pretty simple if you know how to use the command line, and extracted the files fine.

[GTPunk]

@MercuryValentine

• open input file: C:\Program Files (x86)\rpcs3\dev_hdd0\game\NPIA00005\USRDIR\SCENE_APARTMENT.BAR
  • zip data to check: 32 bytes
  • zip windowBits: 15
  • seek offset: 0x00000000 (0)
  • open output file: SCENE_APARTMENT_unpack.BAR .
  • zlib Z_DATA_ERROR, the data in the file is not in zip format or uses a different windowBits value (-z). Try to use -z -15

• 2 bytes read (zipped)
• 0 bytes unzipped in other words, it was not exported. it created only _unpack.bar version

[MercuryValentine]

You have to run the command flags which were specified in the above link and the error it returned: offzip -a -z -15 SCENE_APARTMENT.BAR

Hope that works.

[GTPunk]

@MercuryValentine Error: recheck your options, -15 is not valid or some are missing C:\Users\днс>"C:\Program Files (x86)\rpcs3\dev_hdd0\game\NPIA00005\USRDIR\offzip.exe" "C:\Program Files (x86)\rpcs3\dev_hdd0\game\NPIA00005\USRDIR\SCENE_APARTMENT.BAR" offzip -a -z -15 SCENE_APARTMENT.BAR

[MercuryValentine]

I extracted and uploaded them for you instead here (edit: removed due to temporary file upload expiration). If you'd like to extract other files yourself, you can read the usage guide

[GTPunk]

@MercuryValentine which files are models? .dat? and how to import them, any 3d max script?

[RedFox102]

I'm also looking to extract some models, mostly from scenes, harbour studio being at the top of the list, along with central plaza. Also the Café, but that seems to be missing, and I likely would have had it if my original hard drive hadn't died, I had been on since 2009 and I'm sure I visited every space possible.

I'm mostly just chiming in to show that another person is still interested in this. There seems to be some useful information here, so I'll go over it and see if I get anywhere.

[GTPunk]

@RedFox102 if we fail, there are also lkwd maps in avakin life (unity), atom universe (UE 4), harbor recreated in GMod (right now i'm trying to make it look right with gta 5 textures) Also to what we can port it : vrchat, almost the same sinespace, make fully look-a-like gta 5 mod

[josephlee222]

If someone is recreating pshome, I will suggest that the UI for chat dialogs and menu screens to be a flat, colourful design perhaps like material instead of focusing on something futuristic to re-create the feeling of pshome

[MercuryValentine]

@RedFox102 Whether or not you had it depended on how recently you visited it; the game only reserved 3, 7, or 12GB of space for data, after which it started deleting things, so don't feel too bad about it. If you ever figure out anything useful, PM me. I'm interested in eventually making a server emulator, so any help regarding file formats and what not is appreciated.

@GTPunk I haven't got into opening the models, though I've opened the texture images with GIMP. You can try opening the .dat files in 3DS MAX and Maya (which I know they used for asset modeling at the time), or Blender.

[GTPunk]

@MercuryValentine in .xml said theres .mdl files. creator of unbar said in read-me that there's havoc model files. can you try offzip any .dat?

[MercuryValentine]

@GTPunk Those .dat files could require offzip, but they could also simply be model files, so I don't know. You'll have to just try opening them and see what what works at this point, or find a program that detects what an unknown file is.

[GTPunk]

@MercuryValentine that is the point: offzip is often show errors for me. can you try?

[snakescater]

Getting to the .day is as far as I get. Sony has an internal program that reads that file type it seems. IV tried for awhile and could not figure it out. IV ran it by some buddy's that major in networking and still an unopenable file

[snakescater]

Best bet would be find a past developer for psh for this to happen. But I doubt a nda agreement would leave that out.

[MercuryValentine]

I ran the files through some programs and checked the file signatures, and none of them matched any formats I could find, and given snakescater's efforts, means it's most likely a proprietary format that only the HDK (Home Development Kit) can open, which nobody has uploaded anywhere at this point. 00001e22.dat, 006d6a42.dat, and 00001712.dat are all the same filetypes, which you can try running through some forums for some help on reverse engineering the files, however you will undoubtedly need to program your own file extraction program. I personally might consider writing one in the distant future, but it's low on my priority list.

Edit: Forgot to mention that the 3 files I listed are most likely the models. They contain plaintext of directories to the .dds textures, whereas the others reference things such as the sun, area lights, etc..

[snakescater]

If you ever decide to proceed with the program let me know, I'd be interested in helping. I have some contacts that may be able to help solve some of the issues.

[GTPunk]

@MercuryValentine OR, we can try to emulate server for 0.8.3. on rcps3. I tryed to run it and it says in console that some files are missing (folders CLANS, WORLDMAP ect.) and later said that it's asking for internet connection. And, if we can run at least just map thru emulation, we can try to use NinjaRipper or 3dripperdx on it

[RedFox102]

@GTPunk That's what I was thinking, I think we would have better luck on actual hardware though.

I have a ps3 on cfw, probably at least a few of you do too, does anyone know what was possible with the home app in debug mode? I remember seeing a video of someone accidentally going into debug mode after the server was taken down for maintenance, but they didn't show all the options. What if there was an option to load a scene on your hard drive without going online? We probably wouldn't be so lucky, but if we could manage to load a scene, a memory dump at that point would probably provide some useful information, right?

[snakescater]

I have a DEX console somewhere in storage, But I never played psh on it so mine does not have it installed nor any downloaded data. I do have a console that I spent some time in game with so i'm sure its content rich.

[MercuryValentine]

@snakescater Thanks for the offer. I'll remember if I do it. What model is your PS3 with Home installed? Given how much data is missing, there's a very high chance it has data I don't have, even if only 3GB was reserved, particularly if it wasn't used later on in Home's lifespan. If you don't want to jailbreak it, I'd even be willing to buy it off of you. EDIT: On second thought, you can simply use the Data Transfer Utility to copy Home from your OFW PS3 to your CFW PS3, which would allow you to copy it to a USB, no extra jailbreak required.

@GTPunk rpcs3 doesn't emulate the PS3's WiFi card as of yet. It's a planned feature for the long-term, however in terms of emulating the server, it'd only be a small workflow speed increase over just running Home on a PS3 for as long as it was useful.

@RedFox102 There was indeed an offline mode for the game, which I'll be trying to find by modifying the game's EBOOT soon enough, but I don't know if it'll be there, if it's a controller button combination in the menu, or if it's not even part of the EBOOT, though. As for other features, you can find a few videos on YouTube, it's mostly Moderator stuff; turn invisible, teleport, view scene list, etc.. The Options menu on the login screen is only for language/region. And if you mean recording a memory dump as the PS3 opens the proprietary .dat files for reverse engineering them, I presume it'd be useful, yeah.

[RedFox102]

Honestly don't know what I'm doing, but I messed around a little bit with a developer eboot I found earlier. I threw it on my ps3 out of curiousity and tried to activate the console with a netcheat table known to work with the same version, and unsurprisingly it didn't work from the login screen. There seemed to be a command to view game models, so I wanted to at least see what happened.

I also decrypted the eboot and had a look at the elf in a hex editor, and it does mention an "offline mode" a couple times, once preceded by "[CROSS] [TRIANGLE] [CIRCLE] [SQUARE] [R1]", and once followed by a check for an sdc file. Then I checked the non developer version, and it also mentions "offline mode", but only once with the button combination, if that's even what it is.

I guess that was fun even if I didn't accomplish anything.

[MercuryValentine]

@RedFox102 Nice to know all that ahead of time, I'll definitely try hammering away at that then, and thanks for the effort.

[RedFox102]

Do any of you know where I could find a collection of old packages for home? I'm looking for a version around 1.60, which I think would be right before they did away with the psp-like device and added the new navigator most of us are probably familiar with.

Honestly I just want to poke around it for fun, I doubt I'll actually accomplish anything. I did look at a very old version, I believe it was 0.98 and at that time it seems that the offline mode was referred to as "offline test mode".

It also had some interesting information such as the build date, which was sometime in November 2007, and what could have been some short notes between developers, though I'm not sure why they would be in the application, but I did see something about an object that needed to be textured or retextured.

[MercuryValentine]

I've been meaning to organize and upload my PKG collection to Dropbox for some friends, so I'll update here when it's done. I've spent hours collecting all these from what I could find on the internet. Sadly some of them like 0.7.3 and 0.8.6 had dead links from Mediafire and such no matter where I looked, but I have about ~50% of them.

[GTPunk]

edit: oh, no, its just me being stupid,sorry,solved:-) edit 2: this is my recreation of harbour studio, ready for vrchat. https://yadi.sk/d/HTrzrGLB3WMC99 download button is "скачать". i can't upload it to vrchat by myself somehow, maybe its because some amazon servers are blocked in russia, idk. it's a mix of gm_personalspace reworked, original and gta 5 textures. try to upload it to vrchat by yourself.

[MercuryValentine]

@RedFox102 Here they are at last. Enjoy.

@GTPunk I don't have VRChat so I can't play it, but nice work.

[RedFox102]

@MercuryValentine Thanks for this!

[RedFox102]

Also, this video is gold: http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1013809/-SPONSORED-PS-Home-Dev)

I've seen a few other videos from that conference, but I had no idea this one existed. He mentions the developer version of the home application, and also says that it runs offline, and the way he says it makes it seem like it's designed to only run offline. A couple in-game videos also show the game seemingly running in offline mode, which was pretty cool to see. I wonder if the leaked developer eboot I've been messing with is really the same as what he's using, aside from his version obviously being much older.

I found a post from a couple years ago from someone who bought a couple old reference units, and apparently one of them contained playstation home developer builds. I would really like to get in touch with them somehow, but I've not been approved on the forum I found them on. I'm crossing my fingers that they still have the files and are willing to share them, just imagine the treasure trove of information this unit could contain if it belonged to a developer for playstation home.

[MercuryValentine]

@RedFox102 Do you still have the link or know which forum it was on? I might be able to contact them.

[RedFox102]

@MercuryValentine Sure thing, I found the post here: https://assemblergames.com/threads/decr-1000a-4-53-firmware.62919/#post-902502

[MercuryValentine]

@RedFox102 I was hoping not, but I have in fact already contacted and gotten the files from him, and he said he'd contact me if he found anything new on the second one. Aside from having the developer EBOOT, which is as far as I know is identical to the leaked one you found (version aside - 1.41), there's sadly not much that's exciting. It had zero items or spaces downloaded except the defaults, some commandline history, etc.. I didn't include it in the Dropbox link because I'm still working on acquiring more copies of the dev version, but I'll make sure to upload it all once I get everything I can of it.

[RedFox102]

@MercuryValentine Ah, well that's a bit disappointing. Look forward to that upload though.

[RedFox102]

Anyone know what the devconfig.txt in the dev version actually does? It doesn't come with a list of options or anything so I don't know.

[MercuryValentine]

From mine- CONFIGVERS=1 COMPANYENV=Env_FuturLabLimited_1ac33256-e7ee-463c-8240-5178713d878a/ ENV=cdevc

Not clue what any of that's for at this point.

[RedFox102]

Thanks for that, I thought the file was read before the developer screen was loaded, but upon further inspection, it looks like the file isn't even touched until you hit "go online". Maybe if certain conditions are met, more options would be shown on the developer screen? Then again, you can easily find the options in plain text, and I didn't see anything.

[GTPunk]

is someone of you posted that https://assemblergames.com/threads/playstation-home-preservation.69185/ ? if no, it would be good if our and their info mixed up also i can approve that older versions works on rpcs3. on lowest settings, just press x and there are home beta logo and sound

[RedFox102]

@GTPunk I was wondering that too, I figured it had to be one of you guys. Not mine though.

Also, I noticed that on rpcs3 too, there's just nothing you can do with it.

Personally, I just want to mess around with the offline mode for nostalgia reasons, and if we can get those scene files converted into another format, I want to bring content from home into another virtual world, namely OpenSimulator, but on a private server. It would be pretty easy to create an experience very similar to home that way, minus most of the minigames. It will also run on just about anything, so anyone with a windows pc should be able to run it just fine.

[snakescater]

That would be so cool, I do have a high-end server laying around somewhere, we could use it for testing if needed.

[GTPunk]

@RedFox102 can you work in unity? i already posted my harbor for vrchat zip archive. you need only log in into vrchat settings (sdk already there), upload it and boom! its in the vrchat. if you doesnt know its playable without any vr devices.

[GTPunk]

or at least we can replace hex-values.like cheat engine works. rpcs3 says when it asking for online its 0xae1aa0 , if you can find offline mode hex value, (maybe using hex editor or similar) we can replace it in cheat engine

[MercuryValentine]

Yes, that was a post I asked a friend to make since he had an account there. I've acquired more data since that post from various people, about 70GB (which is still pathetic, and the vast majority never get around to extracting Home, sadly), but it seems you can only edit/update posts so long.

[GTPunk]

is it possible to replace hex values of connecting to sony servers with offline mode (in rpcs3 with cheat engine or similar way)?

[RedFox102]

Here's a thought, what if the HDK acted as a private server for "offline" mode?

I imagine starting in offline mode was done using the HDK, because there certainly don't seem to be any hidden options in the "dev" versions I've tried. But hey, I'm no expert.

Getting our hands on any version of the HDK would be the holy Grail, but I'm not gonna get my hopes up. I mean how many studios total we're working on content for home? Probably not a large number.