Pump It Up Exceed/Zero Portable tools

Hosts tools to mod the two Pump It Up games released to the PlayStation Portable.

I recently discovered the two games and I find fascinating the idea of having a pocketable PIU with the latest charts.

Port charts and songs

The entire process is experimental. While there is a proof of success, the converted songs might have some problems as piu-makestx needs to be polished more. The Exceed/Zero engine is also old and limited and it does not suppor the effects found in the chart from the latest games.

Also the following bugs are found when converting a SSC chart into STX:

• The chart will have a slightly off speed
• Tempo change are not yet supported
• I have no idea what the G/W/A/B/C are
• There is no way to port all the difficulties

1. Requirements

• Go
• ffmpeg executable files
• An ISO of PIU Exceed Portable or PIU Zero Portable
• A modified version of PIU Exceed Portable to load files from the memory stick
• PSP tools to convert audio and BGA to a PSP compatible format
• Either a real PSP or PPSSPP emulator
• The song+chart you want to install

2. Install the tools

After installing Go, open a terminal and run the following:

go install github.com/xeeynamo/piupsp-tools/piu-respack@latest
go install github.com/xeeynamo/piupsp-tools/piu-makestx@latest

3. Convert the chart

Get the SSC chart of the song you would like to convert and run the following command to convert, for example, the S10 chart as "normal difficulty":

piu-makestx 1640.ssc 1640.STX S10

4. Convert the song into AT3

ffmpeg -i 1640.mp3 -ar 44100 1640.wav
./at3tool/at3tool -e 1640.wav 1640.AT3

5. Convert the BGA into PMF

ffmpeg -i 1640.mpg -map 0:0 -vf scale=480:272:flags=lanczos -vb 4M 1640.avi
./psmfenc -video -avgb 1000 -peakb 2000 -2pass 1640.avi 1640.BSF
./psmfmux 1640.BSF 1640.MPS
./PsmfComposerCMD 1640.MPS 1640.PMF

6. Modify the game

Open the game ISO and copy all the content of PSP_GAME\USDIR into a new folder in your PSP memory stick called PIU. Replace one of the existing AT3 files in the folder PIU/AUDIO with the one you created. I would choose A06.AT3 as it is the very first song that is shown in the Arcade Mode. Then do the same with your PMF into PIU/BGA.

Now you need to put the chart inside the file STEP.DAT. Unpack STEP.DAT:

piu-respack x STEP.DAT

Put your STX file inside the new created folder STEP and repack it:

piu-respack p STEP STEP.DAT

7. Try it and have fun

As I previously mentioned, the process and the result is a proof of concept and I can streamline it if there is interest.

To do

• Modify the images with TPP format (they are essentially a TM2 picture)
• Find the list of songs and their difficulties to allow expanding the selection rather than replacing existing songs
• Polish the SSC to STX conversion

Special thanks

• hansscholt to have shared with me his STX parser