PS3 PS3 PocketStation support

[NappyE]

Hey guys. I've long just lurked on the forums, but I wanted to share that I'm working on a plug-in that adds real PocketStation support for the PS3 by way of the official memory card adapter. Still a little ways to go before a release, but I wanted to gauge how interested anyone is in such a plugin.

 

[Berion]

In what meaning support? PSX emulator(s) hack? Because as "saves" transfer alone, XMB can import/export from/to PocketStation if I'm not wrong via PS3MCA.

 

[NappyE]

In what meaning support? PSX emulator(s) hack? Because as "saves" transfer alone, XMB can import/export from/to PocketStation if I'm not wrong via PS3MCA.

Yes you're right. The standard compatibility for PocketStation on PS3 actually goes as far to even show a special PocketStation icon when you have it plugged in and you go to the memory card manager, and you can export saves to and from a virtual memory card, but even PC emulators don't allow PSX games to communicate directly with a real PocketStation. There are some such as pcsx-redux that can work with PocketStation emulators like pk201 to get some semblance of playing the games.

My goal was to preserve the charm of playing these games the way they were meant to be played like with FFVIII and its Chocobo World PocketStation game, you're meant to load the chocobo to your PocketStation, check on him throughout your day and when you get home you return him to the main game and get items and progress. Unfortunately Sony never considered this with their BC on PS3. If you transfer the data to a virtual memory card, and start a game, the game will treat it as a normal memory card. The adapter was never meant as a passthrough device, but only a transfer tool.

So far the plug-in does work. There are specific BU commands that are specific to PocketStation, and critically the adapter does not recognize them. I got around this by adding my own scripts that intercept these commands when the game emits them in memory and then forwards the corresponding operation to the memory card adapter. The only parts left are investigating how the PS3 assigns it's virtual memory card slots, because right now it relies on a specific named blank card being slotted into slot 1. If I didn't fix this, anyone using it might accidentally corrupt whatever VMC they had in slot 1 when it starts up.