Game feature directory

This is a very incomplete list of games to test with if you want to debug a specific feature. Hopefully you can find one that you own.

OS and hardware features

OSK (on-screen keyboard)

  • MotoGP (single-language)
  • PES 2013 (single-language)
  • Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops (see issue #21856)
  • Fifa 07 (manager mode, create profile and name it)
  • many more

Microphone (hardware expansion)

  • Beaterator
  • DJ Max Fever
  • Go Explore
  • Infected (shouting into the mic pushes enemies back)
  • Invizimals
  • Rock Band Unplugged
  • Talkman

These additional games are "headset compatible", possibly some support voice chat in multiplayer?

  • Star Wars: Clone Wars
  • Tron: Evolution
  • SOCOM Fireteam Bravo 2
  • SOCOM Fireteam Bravo 3
  • Resistance
  • Syphon Filter: Logan's Shadow
  • Assassin's Creed
  • Spiderman 3
  • MACH
  • Ford Racing Off Road

Additional reports:

  • Traxxpad

Homebrew apps, possibly good for testing microphone functionality:

Camera (hardware expansion)

  • EyePet Adventures
  • Invizimals

GPS (USB accessory)

Needs the PSP-290 GPS USB attachment.

  • Go!Explore
  • MapThis! (homebrew)
  • Maplus Portable GPS

Audio features

VAudio, sceVaudioSetAlcMode

  • SensMe music player. sceVaudioSetAlcMode controls automatic audio normalization, the algorithm for that is unclear.

GE rendering features and/or techniques

Spline/Bezier patches

  • Loco Roco (all games and variants)
  • Namco Museum: Battle Collection (Pac-Man, more). This still exhibits a small bug (black patch on top of the ghosts)
  • Pursuit Force (both games, for the road surfaces and landscape)
  • Test Drive Unlimited (landscape)
  • Puzzle Bobble Pocket (completely unnecessary! Just used for rotating sprites)
  • one of the snowboarding games

Vertex culling / guardband

  • TOCA Race Driver 2 / DTM Race Driver 2 / V8 Supercars Australia 2 / Race Driver 2006
  • TOCA Race Driver 3 Challenge / DTM Race Driver 3 Challenge / V8 Supercars Australia 3: Shootout

Vertex skinning/bones

  • Crisis Core
  • God of War (both games)
  • Tekken 5
  • Tekken 6
  • many, many more.

Vertex morphing

You can supply multiple copies of input vertex data per output vertex, and the GE will make a weighted average using the morph factors, specified separately directly in the GE context.

  • MotorStorm: Arctic Edge (vehicles, 1-2 weights only)
  • OutRun 2006 (flame rings in 4th level on the left, 4 morph weights IIRC)

Depth buffer reads from the CPU

  • Midnight Club: LA (sun lens flare)
  • Syphon Filter (light halos (lots per frame!))
  • Wipeout Pure (sun lens flare). Multiple reads per frame to get an average.
  • a few more

Direct color buffer reads from the CPU

  • Coded Arms: Contagion (reads a single pixel from the alpha/stencil channel to identify enemies to lock-on)
  • Dangan Ronpa, Dangan Ronpa 2 (renders a separate mini buffer to select clues, people)
  • MotorStorm: Arctic Edge (light adaptation)
  • a few more

Color buffer format aliasing

  • Cars Race-o-rama
  • OutRun 2
  • Split/Second
  • Spongebob

Depth buffer manual swizzling through geometry

This is a mistake that a few games have made - the PSP has hardware to swizzle depth buffers to linear, but instead they use triangles to simulate the swizzle to match. This applies to the particle effects in these games:

  • Jak & Daxter
  • Ratchet & Clank (both games)

Tricks requiring dual source blending

  • Armored Core 3 (issue #11430)
  • Ridge Racer (lens flares)
  • WipEout Pure (bloom effect)

Intra-buffer block copies

  • Tales of Phantasia X/Cross Edition (included as a retro game in Tales of Phantasia: Narikiri Dungeon X), see issue #21098

Block copies to RAM, later used as texture

  • Burnout Legends (sun lens flare)
  • Digimon
  • Tales of Phantasia X

CLUT lookups from color framebuffers ("depal")

  • Dragon Ball Z: Tenkaichi Tag Team
  • Test Drive (with "smooth" lookup workaround for better color precision)
  • Burnout Dominator (lens flare effect)
  • Tantalus games (Spongebob, etc)
  • Many more

CLUT lookups from depth buffers

  • Fog effect in Katamari Damacy

CLUT lookups with palette in framebuffer

  • Ridge Racer 1/2 (digital speedometers)

Reinterpret color framebuffers

  • Outrun 2006 (however, worked around with "BlueToAlpha" method)

  • Split/Second (however, worked around with "BlueToAlpha" method)

  • Tantalus games (Spongebob, etc)

Memcpy framebuffer download/upload

  • Everybody's Golf 2 (line by line, ugh)

Zipped PRX

  • Fired Up

Persistent render targets

  • Mahjong Artifacts (Minis) relies on render targets sticking around.

"3D textures" using malformed mipmap chains

The PSP doesn't have any restriction on the size relationships between successive mipmaps in a pyramid. Hence, it's possible to put multiple images of the same size into the mipmap layers of a texture, and use trilinear filtering to interpolate between them. Usually, for control, the mip level is controlled directly (instead of automatic from screen-space derivatives).

This is used by the following games:

  • Macross series games (water effect, see #6357)
  • Misshitsu no Sacrifice (background animation, also see #6357)
  • Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together (JAP/CN-patch) (font atlas, see #5350)

As far as I know, no other games use a "malformed" mip chain like this.

In Tactics Ogre it's to fit a lot of characters in a single font texture (for no good reason, really). In this case, every two successive mipmaps points to the same texture page, for a total of four. Not sure why it's done this way.