PsxVram-DotNet

Viewer for displaying PSX VRAM dumps.

Features

• Main PSX emulators savestates support
• Predefined texture pages and CLUTs positions for each mode for ease of VRAM navigation
• GUI with mouse/keyboard naviation
• Save image function for textures ripping
• Save selected pixels or CLUT to binary file for search in game's resources
• DotNet Core application allows to port it to Linux as well

Start

PsxVram-DotNet [InputFile]

Supported InputFile formats:

• ePSXe (1.0.6 and 2.0.5) savestates
• PCSX (1.5) and all based on this version forks, like Agemo or Zhaosili Debugger savestates
• PCSXR (1.9.93) savestates

*For most GPU plugins VRAM start addresses for these savestates are the same and should open correctly. But keep in mind, that start address (and even dump contents) can depend on GPU plugin.

• RetroArch (Core: Beetle PSX or Beetle PSX HW): .auto or .state savestate file, which should be uncompressed. Emulator's Savestate Compression option under Settings > Saving should be turned off.

• no$psx (2.0): .sna savestate file, which should be uncompressed. Emulator's save file settings: none, raw or uncompressed.

• Raw binary 1MB PSX VRAM dump. This be obtained from most PSX debugging emulators, like PCSX or No$PSX.

*Emulator's version numbers are tested ones, it's possible, that other versions savestates will be also opened correctly.

Application handles input file the following way:

• If InputFile command line argument is set, it will be loaded immediately. Which also allows you just to drag&drop files on the app icon in windows explorer.
• If a vram.bin file is found in current directory, and no command line arguments are provided, vram.bin will be loaded.
• If no proper format files are found, application opens in disabled mode and you can load new file via Open file button.

Usage

Base case scenario, it is assumed that you find the place you are interested in the game. You make savestate and open it with application.
Or you save emulator VRAM dump into a specific folder. You can then copy the application to this folder and it will open vram.bin every time it starts.
Then, you can view the entire dump in all supported PSX modes. Left mouse button moves rectangle, right mouse button moves CLUT line. Mouse button places rectangle with default padding (which must fit in most cases). If needed, rectangle and CLUT position can be adjusted with hotkeys or corresponding form controls.
You can then move through the code in the emulator, rewrite the updated dump over the old one, update the application with the button and see the last changes in the PSX video memory.
In the status bar, you can see the necessary coordinates and addresses of the pieces of graphics you are interested in for further work in the debugger.
It is possible to save mode window contents to BMP file in corresponding VRAM dump folder. Bitmap mode and palette are transferred to BMP according to current mode. Transparency is supported.

It is also possible to save CLUT and selected piece of graphics to binary files for further search. Suppose you have found specific CLUT in VRAM dump and now want to find where in game resources this CLUT is stored. You highlight this CLUT in indexed mode and select from the drop-down menu: 'Save binary dump -> CLUT' The CLUT is then saved to a binary file (in the same folder where the VRAM dump is located), and its hex representation is copied to the clipboard. Now you can use applications that can search by the contents of files in a certain folder, go to the rip file structure of the game's ISO and find the file that contains these bytes. Some file managers have this feature (like Total Commander). And then in the hex editor, you can find the offset of these bytes in the game resource file itself. The same logic applies to the search for pixels directly in game resources. In the main window, you select with a rectangle the graphics area in VRAM that you want to find, save the first scanline of the selected piece to a binary file and search for it in the rip folder of the game ISO.

Hotkeys

• W/S/A/D: Move view rectangle
• Ctrl + (W/S/A/D): Move CLUT line
• Shift +(W/S/A/D) direction: Change rectangle size
• Mouse. Left: move view rectangle, Right: move CLUT line, Middle: drag image if zoomed

History

Initially 'Psx V-Ram' was created by Agemo as pure Windows API application, then rewritten by Griever into 'PsxVram-SDL' for multiplatform purposes, which was then rewritten into this application for further development with normal GUI features possible.

Licence

For license information please see LICENSE.md

Credits

• Current version developer https://github.com/romhack/
• Original idea by Agemo http://www.romhacking.net/community/737/
• https://github.com/aybe/