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PS4 CFW and Hacks       Thread starter PSXHAX       Start date Mar 7, 2022 at 1:30 AM       4      
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Over the weekend developer Voliva released a work-in-progress PS4 P8 v0.3.0 PKG followed by PS4 P8 v0.3.1 PKG bringing the PICO-8 fantasy console emulator for making, sharing and playing games and other computer programs to those in the PlayStation 4 Scene with a Jailbroken PS4 console. 🕹️

Download: pico8.pkg (6.81 MB) / GIT

The PICO-8 Official Site describes the emulator as feeling like a regular console, but running on Windows / Mac / Linux stating, "When you turn it on, the machine greets you with a commandline, a suite of cartridge creation tools, and an online cartridge browser called SPLORE."

Some additional information also comes from volivav on Reddit: Hey there - For the past 2 or 3 months I've been working on a homebrew pico-8 emulator for the PS4, and I think it works just enough so that it can be usable.

For those that are not familiar with it, pico8 is a fantasy console, a console that never existed physically but was made for game development, adding some restrictions to simulate the ones present in old consoles: 128x128 display, 4 audio channels, 16-color palette, etc.

Games are developed in Lua, and features an all-in-one editor (with a 128x128 resolution) for code, sprites, maps, sfx and music. It has created a very good community of devs, mostly non-professional, but there are many that are really complete. The original celeste is made in pico-8.

The games published in the official forum are all free to play, and you can download the code of every cartridge. To build your own games you will need to purchase pico-8

After having my PS4 jailbroken on 9.00 I've felt motivated enough to work on this project. It's essentially an emulator compatible with pico8 cartridges. It features:
  • Some bundled games that I have used to test it.
  • Save states.
  • Local cartridges (place the .p8.png files in /data/p8-cartridges)
  • BBS explorer (Top 32 New and Featured)
Here's further details from the README.md: PS4-P8

An emulator to run pico-8 cartridges on a PS4.

Project based on OpenOrbis PS4 Toolchain

Pico-8 is a Fantasy Programmable Console made by Lexaloffle Games. This emulator is compatible with built pico-8 cartridges in PNG format, to build your own games you will need the original Pico-8 console.

Status

Not finished - Compatibility is still limited, but there are many cartridges it can run already.

Features
  • Modified lua interpreter compatible with pico8's lua.
  • 16-bit fixed point decimal arithemtic just like pico8.
  • Save states (at the moment simplistic, one save state per cartridge).
  • The most used predefined pico8 functions are implemented: 90 functions implemented out of 105
It comes with a set of bundled games which have been used to improve the compatibility.

More .p8.png cartridges can be bundled with the .pkg file by adding them into /assets/misc folder, or they will be loaded in runtime from PS4's /data/p8-cartridges folder.
  • print: It prints text on the screen, but it's missing some P8SCII control codes, non-ascii characters.
  • Sprites: Done
  • Sfx: Playable. Room of improvement for sound quality, and sound filters are missing (damp, buzz, reverb, etc.)
  • Music: Playable.
  • Menu: WIP.
  • Memory manipulation: Almost complete.
  • Maps: Done
  • Custom P8-Lua: Done
A list of some playable cartridges can be found here.

Building

The project is cross-platform for Windows + MacOS + PS4.

You'll need OpenOrbis PS4 Toolchain installed with its dependencies (.NET Core) and clang++.

You'll need to add the external libraries in ${SolutionDir}/lib:
Additionally, to run it on windows, you will need:
Windows

Run with visual studio. First build ${SolutionDir}/lua project, then ${SolutionDir}/pico8_ps4.

PS4

Run ./build.bat - First of ${SolutionDir}/lua project, then ${SolutionDir}/pico8_ps4.

License

External code used


Special thanks to:
  • Bucanero - The code under http.cpp is based from code on apollo-ps4 GPL v3
External tools and dependencies used
Bundled cartridges
PS4-P8

MIT

Copyright 2021 Victor Oliva

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

Cheers to BiteYourConsole on Twitter of BiteYourConsole.net for passing along this news over the weekend and for sharing the screenshot below! 🍻
PS4 P8 Emulator to Run PICO-8 Cartridge Games on PlayStation 4.jpg
 

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