PS2 Save Tools

This is a common question, especially for those who have just picked up a brand new Playstation 3

In short, you’re going to need to purchase the Sony Playstation 3 Memory Card Adaptor, without this there is currently no way to transfer your old saves from your Playstation 2 memory card.

UK users, who have yet to see the Playstation 3 reach their shores, can already buy an unofficial PS2 Memory Card Adaptor (PS3), which does the same job at the official Sony kit but comes in at a cheaper price. Not to mention the official adapter isn’t out in the UK yet despite needing no hardware changes.

Look out for an upcoming tutorial on transferring your Playstation 2 saves, in the .psv format, back to your PS2 from the Playstation 3 using PSV Exporter

You might be wondering what the new PS2 Save Tools Store is all about.

This site and all it’s software is provided on a free basis, we don’t charge and don’t intend to but as you can imagine our monthly bills to keep the site online just keep on getting bigger and bigger.

We love all the latest games and kit and we know you do too. We trust Amazon and we know you do to, so what better way to support the site and future developments than purchasing the latest game, accessory or consoles via our online store knowing that you’ve contributed a small amount to keep the site running. You get the security and service of Amazon without the clutter. Not to mention you’re doing the right thing.

There’s two versions of the store available, one for our UK visitors and one for our USA visitors, happy shopping! (And don’t forget to buy lots!)

Whether you’re new or old to save hacking there’s 5 utilities (besides a hex editor) that everyone should have:

PS2 Save Builder

Billed as the swiss army knife for PS2 saves, this is a must have program. Not only can you use it to create new saves, but you can edit existing ones as well as converting from one format to another. Absolutely essential!

GTA: SA Censor Remover

GTA San Andreas is the game that broke the censors limit. GTA: SA Censor Remover is the only program that unlocked the hidden “Hot Coffee” scenes on every platform the game was released on and is completely gameplay friendly. A must have for any GTA fan.

The PS2 Independence Exploit

Not strictly a program as such but a method for owners of the older Playstation 2 to load homebrew software. Widely used and a great boost to the PS2 community, no PS2 owner should be without this handy, and only slightly subversive, facility.

uLaunchElf (external link)

Unofficial LaunchELF, or ULaunchELF for short, is one of the programs that really took off after the PS2 Independence Exploit was released. What started life as a basic program launcher has now been fleshed out to a full file manager with themes, a jpeg viewer, hard drive management tools and more. The perfect compliment to the Independence Exploit.

XBox Game Save Re-signer

I just couldn’t complete this list without including this Xbox utility, especially considering it’s host is no longer available. Recently added to our downloads, this essential Xbox tool allows you to “resign” Xbox saves. Without this handy tool, modifying an Xbox save invalidates the digital signature contained within and, without updating it, the game will not load the save. A must have tool for this still populour console.

I did some more work on the header file earlier and I’m almost done mapping it:

THeader = record

magic : array[0..3] of char;

unknown1 : integer; //always 0x00000000?

Signature : array [0..39] of byte; //digital signature

unknown2 : integer; //always 0x00000000?

unknown3 : integer; //always 0x00000000?

unknown4 : integer; //always 0x0000002C? Size of following section?

unknown5 : integer; //always 0x00000002?

unknown6 : integer; //related to amount of icons? Possibly 2 words or even 4 bytes.

sysPos : integer; //location in file of icon.sys

sysSize : integer; //icon.sys size

icon1Pos : integer; //position of 1st icon

icon1Size : integer; //size of 1st icon

icon2Pos : integer; //position of 2nd icon

icon2Size : integer; //size of 2nd icon

icon3Pos : integer; //position of 3rd icon

icon3Size : integer; //size of 3rd icon

numberOfFiles : integer;

end;

‘unknowns’ 1 to 5 seem pretty static and haven’t changed in the 5 files I’ve looked at but unknown6 still eludes me at this point. Ideas on what it represents are welcome, my suspicion is it is related to the icon and/or icon.sys data as that is what directly follows.

I suspect the digital signature is a SHA-1 HMAC but I’m welcome to other ideas

Spurred on by an email from Alvaro I confirmed my suspicions on some of the unknowns in the PSV data structures I posted the other day.
The missing data in the directory and file info was of course the time stamps.

The updated structures look like this:

TMainDirInfo = record

CreateReserved: byte;

CreateSeconds : byte;

CreateMinutes : byte;

CreateHours : byte;

CreateDays : byte;

CreateMonths: byte;

CreateYear : word;

ModReserved: byte;

ModSeconds : byte;

ModMinutes : byte;

ModHours : byte;

ModDays : byte;

ModMonths: byte;

ModYear : word;

filesize : integer;

attribute : integer;

filename : array[0..31] of char;

end;

TFileInfo = record

CreateReserved: byte;

CreateSeconds : byte;

CreateMinutes : byte;

CreateHours : byte;

CreateDays : byte;

CreateMonths: byte;

CreateYear : word;

ModReserved: byte;

ModSeconds : byte;

ModMinutes : byte;

ModHours : byte;

ModDays : byte;

ModMonths: byte;

ModYear : word;

filesize : integer;

attribute : integer;

filename : array[0..31] of char;

positionInFile : integer;

end;

The Header structure still has quite a few unknowns in it though….

I’ve been doing some (brief) research into the format of the .ps2 files used by PCSX2, a popular PS2 emulator for the PC. These are a raw image of the PS2’s memory card and as such uses Sony’s FAT structure which I’ve detailed in brief over at A Badly Chosen Byte

Now go make some tools to rip this file apart

Since a lot of the things I do these days aren’t so PS2 orientated (such as my Xbox software) I’ve started blogging again, check it out for the latest news of what I’m working on and other things that take my interest.

As always the latest software releases and other useful things will be right here

PES/Winning Eleven fans out there who haven’t made themselves aware of Compulsion’s excellent collection of tools should drop their pads for a moment and head on over to his site for the rather excellent PESFan Editor and PES Save Converter.

As reported at PS2-Scene.org E P and dlanor have been working on implementing a new save transfer method named mcPaste. What makes this most news worthy is that this new method is compatible with GTA saves, somewhat of a rare and much needed function in homebrew software.

You can grab the latest uLaunchELF binaries from this thread at PS2-Scene.org

Reading a few forums it appears that updated versions of GTA San Andreas for the PS2 and Xbox have arrived in the shops

GTA SA Censor Remover will not work these versions as they will not contain the hidden ‘Hot Coffee’ segments. Using GTA SA Censor Remover on your ‘2.0’ save may well result in corruption, please be aware of what version of GTA San Andreas you have before using this program.