PS3 Apollo save tool (development thread)

I've got quite a few users asking about adding "trophy unlocking" to Apollo
I know that part of the job (resigning files) is already done by flatz' pfdtool, but still, it would require quite a lot of work adding it to the app.

I wonder if it's really worth it, or if it's just going to be abused to get 'platinum' stuff
 
bucanero said:
I've got quite a few users asking about adding "trophy unlocking" to Apollo
I know that part of the job (resigning files) is already done by flatz' pfdtool, but still, it would require quite a lot of work adding it to the app.

I wonder if it's really worth it, or if it's just going to be abused to get 'platinum' stuff
Click to expand...

I'm not sure why you think it requires "quite a lot of work". Bruteforce SD already can sign trophies and I don't remember it required a big change in the code. However, IMHO the trophies are completely useless and people only "need" it to get 'platinum' and fill their ego.

People that want to resign trophies, already can use BSD. So only for completeness of your tool, you can add the feature to Apollo, if you feel too bored and want to waste your time implementing it :-p
 
Trophies are awesome addition to gameplay and I'm collecting them since day 1. ^^ Personally I don't care about any social compares, I just found in this some additional fun. But if someone using them to instantly unlocking platinum's etc. and breaking online statistics I have only pity of such sad peoples. However, it is common that some peoples using knifes for killing and others for cutting bread for breakfast. :P

If this feature is not to much time consuming, it would be nice feature to add. The only problem I see is global index files, which should be updated to not demand from user launching each game after resigning.
 
aldostools said:
I'm not sure why you think it requires "quite a lot of work". Bruteforce SD already can sign trophies and I don't remember it required a big change in the code. However, IMHO the trophies are completely useless and people only "need" it to get 'platinum' and fill their ego.
Click to expand...

well I was actually referring to the Apollo UI, all the work related to present the trophies in Apollo, allowing the user to select a game/trophy, and stuff like that (probably should have worded it better)
at least from my short ps3-dev experience, it takes some time to actually get things showing up properly, in a nice way and simple enough for the user

in this trophy case, I'd say that a simple way would be to list trophies just like game and saves right now. (a list of games, and when you select a game you get a bare list of available trophies for that game).
 
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There is no reason to resign each trophy set alone. They are not saves to be chosen on demand - I don't see a point of that. It would be just transparent or better with one question during import (because it is safe for peoples on the same console and account to don't messing with them when they don't need it in such case).
 
Berion said:
There is no reason to resign each trophy set alone. They are not saves to be chosen on demand - I don't see a point of that. It would be just transparent or better with one question during import (because it is safe for peoples on the same console and account to don't messing with them when they don't need it in such case).
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oh I was talking about the case of actually supporting unlocking (hacking) trophies directly from Apollo. As you said, for standard backup/restore is not needed and you could just resign it when you transfer it back to the HDD.
 
For hacking trophies isn't enough is just official functionality build-in debug XMB? They will get debug flag and don't count in statistics so it is the only "flaw". But they properly displaying in XMB and respected by also retail games.
 
Berion said:
For hacking trophies isn't enough is just official functionality build-in debug XMB? They will get debug flag and don't count in statistics so it is the only "flaw". But they properly displaying in XMB and respected by also retail games.
Click to expand...

honestly, I've no idea about debug XMB (I don't have a CFW ps3) probably the users requesting this feature are regular HEN users?
I've seen at least another Windows tool "TrophyIsGood" (besides Bruteforce Save Data) that allows users to edit/hack trophies.

I never messed with trophies before, as I play and get trophies in the regular way. I still remember running around with Ezio like crazy to find 200+ feathers to unlock some trophy in Assassins creed 2. :D
 
hey guys whats up? hope everyone is healthy so take care of yourself and also others

@Berion
you can unlock trophies freely with official functions and it will not count them "debugged". there is even an api in samples for this, but it is uncomfortable, because you have to set np com id. though there even was an official sample app as leftover in a game, but dunno remember which one. this was much more polished and it can unlock any game's trophies. maybe it is sample in later sdks, dunno

here a video from this standard sample
https://www.dropbox.com/s/vretnhm1j4yl9pv/2018-04-21-04-28-51.mp4?dl=0

@bucanero
very nice app and I like the fact you have used Artemis' gui. if I find time and get my internet connection, maybe we can talk about Artemis together with dnawrkshp. bungholio told me he wanted to talk to me after I have made these mod versions, but I've never came back to him

oh and I dunno why everyone is having issues with certain games and Artemis plugin. when I have changed the memory allocation I have tested those critical games I have with Artemis, even in systemsoftware mode (DEX), which is limited and even more picky with memory losses and they all went very well, for example gow3/gowa/la noir and a few others

oh, there was also this plugin to unlock all trophies at once from sc58 from ngu which has also worked for online syncing

edit
about the problem, I think it is related to wmm because of too much memory consumption. nothing against it, please do not take it as critic, but both of them Artemis+wmm isn't possible. maybe, aldo can include it into wmm, which should do the trick. back then, I have chosen sman, because it is compared to even original wm lighter in memory usage and already is using memory container
 
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@haxxxen I have unlocked trophy in Dead Space set for hardest difficulty (which triggering also platinum because it was my last missing trophy; I was piss of when I was leaved by half of game without enough ammo/resources, so I just unlocked it ;p), sync them, and they doesn't appear on my account. I'm talking about DEX XMB unlocking, maybe it works differently than in-game level (BTW interesting video, never heard of it).

@bucanero I'm opened 400+ chests in AC:Blag Flag. 200 feathers in compare was piece of cake. :D But this is still nothing in compare to cleaning the map in AC: Odyssey...
 
haxxxen said:
you can unlock trophies freely with official functions and it will not count them "debugged". there is even an api in samples for this, but it is uncomfortable, because you have to set np com id. though there even was an official sample app as leftover in a game, but dunno remember which one. this was much more polished and it can unlock any game's trophies. maybe it is sample in later sdks, dunno
Click to expand...

I was doing a bit of research on the topic, and at least on the cell SDK you should be able to unlock trophies as long as you have the right comm Id and the corresponding Signature Id. (my assumption from the docs and code samples)
I found a few samples (/samples/sdk/network/np/) but haven't compiled/tested any of them... perhaps one is similar to the video you shared.

on the ps3 dev wiki I also found a reference for Trophy functions on PSL1GHT ( https://github.com/an0nym0u5/PSL1GHT/tree/master/ppu/include/np ), but I tried them and it didn't work. :(

The code crashes as soon as I try to init the Trophy stuff with:

sysTrophyInit(NULL, 0, SYS_MEMORY_CONTAINER_ID_INVALID, 0);

it's weird because in the original docs that's the first thing you need to do before even messing with installing or unlocking trophies, but on PSL1GHT the function sysTrophyInit just crashes without even returning an error value... As I don't have a proper debug console I can't even guess what was happening there.

Also, since this branch was never merged with the main psl1ght I'm not even sure it was working at all.

anyways, just my first research on the topic, I bet there's more to discover.

very nice app and I like the fact you have used Artemis' gui. if I find time and get my internet connection, maybe we can talk about Artemis together with dnawrkshp. bungholio told me he wanted to talk to me after I have made these mod versions, but I've never came back to him
Click to expand...

sure, let's talk. After my update with Artemis r6, I was able to get in touch with dnawrkshp, I sent a pull request with my changes and he said he was going to check it out. No update from him since then, but I'd be happy to talk and see what we can improve there.

oh and I dunno why everyone is having issues with certain games and Artemis plugin. when I have changed the memory allocation I have tested those critical games I have with Artemis, even in systemsoftware mode (DEX), which is limited and even more picky with memory losses and they all went very well, for example gow3/gowa/la noir and a few others
Click to expand...

I believe that the behaviour with HEN might be different than with CFWs. I did some tests on my own, and found out that the original r5 plugin was working nicely with my PS3 (HEN). When I tried with your vr5 plugin, even if the cheat worked, I couldn't save my game progress or get trophies while playing. All tests done with the same games and codes, with no other plugin in memory.
I know from reports by @Cypher_CG89 that your plugin version (vr5) works great on CFW and even on DEX mode, so that's why I believe that maybe HEN is a special case for Artemis.

about the problem, I think it is related to wmm because of too much memory consumption. nothing against it, please do not take it as critic, but both of them Artemis+wmm isn't possible. maybe, aldo can include it into wmm, which should do the trick. back then, I have chosen sman, because it is compared to even original wm lighter in memory usage and already is using memory container
Click to expand...

more available memory always help, that's for sure. I also had the same idea at some point, to include the artemis "logic" into wmMod.

btw, would you mind sharing the source code of that "artsMan" version you did some time ago? I tried looking for it but couldn't find it. If it's not meant for the public, maybe sharing it privately as I'd be happy to check it.
 
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haxxxen said:
about the problem, I think it is related to wmm because of too much memory consumption. nothing against it, please do not take it as critic, but both of them Artemis+wmm isn't possible. maybe, aldo can include it into wmm, which should do the trick. back then, I have chosen sman, because it is compared to even original wm lighter in memory usage and already is using memory container
Click to expand...

I do not have plans of merge Artemis or Apollo features into wMM.
However I could accept pull requests with these features and others ;)
 
Berion said:
@bucanero I'm opened 400+ chests in AC:Blag Flag. 200 feathers in compare was piece of cake. :D But this is still nothing in compare to cleaning the map in AC: Odyssey...
Click to expand...

hahahah oh you mention chests and I suddenly remember those damn chests in AC Unity... you needed lockpicks and they would break and it was just a big pain... I guess I'll never get that Unity trophy! :D
 
haxxxen said:
about the problem, I think it is related to wmm because of too much memory consumption
Click to expand...
bucanero said:
I believe that the behaviour with HEN might be different than with CFWs. I did some tests on my own, and found out that the original r5 plugin was working nicely with my PS3 (HEN). When I tried with your vr5 plugin, even if the cheat worked, I couldn't save my game progress or get trophies while playing. All tests done with the same games and codes, with no other plugin in memory.
Click to expand...

That's part of it... it's also, from things I have done and tried, seems an API and Payload clash causing it to be a bit unstable at times. Both Arts and wwm have PS3MAPI which can clash...

Also the fact that Arts contains the Mamba Payload to load the SPRX into memory, one of the reasons it's completely standalone app that needs nothing extra. So on a Cobra CFW it might clash, HEN use's parts of the Cobra Payload so that can be an issue.

This is just things I think are highly possible from what I have been messing about with so a possible fix(s) would be:

1. Remove the Mamba Payload from it and use the Cobra Payloads native way of loading SPRX plugins into memory through bootplugins.txt, same for HEN. People who use a Standard CFW, no Cobra, can simply install the Mamba Payload separately if needed which would/should stop any instability issue's if people already had this installed from 2 of the same payloads installed.

2. Remove PS3MAPI from Arts and, as CCAPI is not usable on HEN, get it to use webMANs PS3MAPI to write the cheats into memory so at least in this way Arts and webMAN should play nice together and not clash.

" ... One payload to load them all ... One API to write them ... One method to use them all ... And in the OS bind them ... " o_O:-p:D

This might add the requirement of webMAN MOD being installed to write into memory but it should be more stable ...

Just some " Food for thought " ....

One thing that does have me baffled is this issue people keep having with Saving the game and unlocking trophies, never had that happen to me once on any game I have used...??? Nor the corrupted saves and trophies I have seen some report while using this...

bucanero said:
I know from reports by @Cypher_CG89 that your plugin version (vr5) works great on CFW and even on DEX mode,
Click to expand...

I only ever use DEX, and have done for years, don't ever really use CEX... the most I do is switch them Lv2 Kernel to CEX from DEX when playing online normally, other than that it's on DEX all the time no matter what I am doing.. Works fine for me, though as @haxxxen says there are some exceptions with some of the cheats and such.
 
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just a quick update, I finally had a chance to test my updated code to support compressed save-game files.
I ported Auriemma's packzip and offzip tools (also simplified the code a bit), and now the "compress" and "uncompress" BSD commands are working nicely. :D

with this update, I'd say that Apollo is finally ~96% compatible with all the cheats from Bruteforce data. ;)

Now I need to do a few more tests, and do a code review/clean-up, before I release this new version.

Edit: everything tested and looking good, so I'll try to release the new version tomorrow.
 
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