PS3 Developer Builds from BDEMU drive

[yasen]

Hello there,

I have 4 beta builds for 4 different games that I have dumped from a PS3 DECR BDEMU hard drive. From my understanding, beta games for consoles are accepted as FTP contributions as long as it was dumped from physical media. Is this correct?

Would this be acceptable as an FTP contribution to get FTP access?

Thanks,
yasen

[tjd2]

I don't see any reason why not.
Most prototype games are just ISOs (they were dumped long time ago) or file dumps.
For example i submitted COD4 debug build for Xbox 360, that was just a file dump.

[Darkstar]

It's actually pretty simple. Do you have an original floppy disk, CD, DVD or Blu-Ray with the demo? If yes, then that is an original physical media, and it will get you FTP access if properly scanned and dumped.

Do you have the beta only on a harddisk (e.g. as ZIP file or in whatever format), or on a burned CD-R or DVD-R, then no, that will not get you FTP Access (although it will still be gladly accepted)

The words "physical media" should be interpreted as "original physical media", because at the end of the day, *everything* is a physical medium...

Exceptions to that rule are possible, of course... but that is up to mrpijey

[yasen]

Do you have the beta only on a harddisk (e.g. as ZIP file or in whatever format), or on a burned CD-R or DVD-R, then no, that will not get you FTP Access (although it will still be gladly accepted)

The words "physical media" should be interpreted as "original physical media", because at the end of the day, *everything* is a physical medium...

If it clarifies anything, the HDD that it was obtained from is the PS3 bdemu drive. It is the original physical media. The bdemu drive was used by developers when bluray disks were still expensive to be constantly writing to. This is the direct deployment medium. If it still is not considered acceptable, that is understandable.

I don't see any reason why not.
Most prototype games are just ISOs (they were dumped long time ago) or file dumps.
For example i submitted COD4 debug build for Xbox 360, that was just a file dump.

It's a newer rule, so I'm not certain if that would have changed things, or if these submitted builds were for FTP access.

Thank you all

[mrpijey]

A dump from a writable harddrive will never be considered "original" as the contents may have been altered, timestamps changed and files added and removed during its use, only if the drive was read only it would be considered as such. But regardless, the software in question would still be interesting to preserve, so it would most likely be accepted for storing in the archive, but since there's no way for me or anyone to verify its authenticity it would not be considered "original" or "unaltered".

[PixelB]

A dump from a writable harddrive will never be considered "original" as the contents may have been altered, timestamps changed and files added and removed during its use, only if the drive was read only it would be considered as such. But regardless, the software in question would still be interesting to preserve, so it would most likely be accepted for storing in the archive, but since there's no way for me or anyone to verify its authenticity it would not be considered "original" or "unaltered".

I'm the one that helped him dump the BDEMU content in question just yesterday. I've been helping Redump and other users with this for a few years now.
The way BDEMU (Bluray Emulator) works for PS3 devkits is an HDD formatted with a custom format that can store 4 disc images in slots as a way to not need to burn discs. Writing to this device requires the SDK and the proper hardware (which can be an HDD in a DECR-1000, or a flash drive formatted as such as later used when the HDD was removed from hardware). Your only options from these tools are to write, overwrite, erase, or format the entire device.

The .emu files created that are then written to these HDDs are created with a proprietary tool that preserves timestamps of creation as well as meta information that is lost when extracted . A pic below of this information can be seen (with some errors, read below as to why). The timestamp is generated the date of actual creation. If I were to make a new one it would use the time at which the command was issued to create the image.
https://www.betaarchive.com/imageupload ... .64893.png

Additionally, the file content would have to be correct for this to have been created successfully as the signed elf files within are checked for debugging symbols and if found they're rejected unless using special title IDs (TEST-12345 usually) which allow developers to bypass this check with warnings. While this doesn't blatantly mean much, it does help date each image based on how close to completion it is as it will still retain it's burn date.
https://www.betaarchive.com/imageupload ... .14646.png
The tool creates either a .emu or .iso, or you can burn it directly to a disc that can be decrypted by this tool, or by the system running it. It's realistically just a changed extension as both formats work and are supported by BDEMU.

In order to dump these from an HDD for the .emu files you either
A) have raw disc access and some specialized homebrew tools that can extract the image properly (resulting .emu file modification/creation date changes, contents retain timestamps)
B) have raw disc access and a very patient time in HxD (same as above)
C) you extract just the contents of the .emu through ftp or something (lose all dates, lose meta info, etc)
D) someone writes a tool that lets you directly access each image on the hardware in question (there is no way someone will do this)

The one used in the image above is returning decryption errors so I'm working with the yasen to figure out what's going wrong. A re-dump effort will be attempted eventually but it's likely bit rot in this one's case. The other 3 were properly dumped.
These functionally are no different from creating an iso from a dev ps3 disc but their delivery to the system stayed digital, rather than going to a disc to serve the same purpose. Functionally the same, intent is the same, how you go about operating it is slightly different.

I can agree that yes it's hard to take something found on an HDD digitally as authentic, however, this was a valid use case among developers, and a few PS3 betas are even .emu files found the same way and are on the FTP server right now. The most notable example is the Mirror's Edge build, which is known broken due to bytes being overwritten and not being fully recovered. I dont know who uploaded that one but that one for sure, while authentic, was recovered in a damaged way and is in essence effectively useless since the tool will fail to decrypt it, but extracting it's contents (while the PS3 is crashed and running) is doable, but some will return junk data.
If they were not authentic, the timestamps for creation wouldn't match in the metadata, and likely there would be altered timestamps not matching this with the files contained within it (you can mount this and it will show proper dates, with encrypted data).

[mrpijey]

Well, to properly tag this as original then we would need some kind of proof of this drive, like a scan or photo.

But we will have to check out the image, would be nice with some instructions on how to handle the dumped image.

[PixelB]

Well, to properly tag this as original then we would need some kind of proof of this drive, like a scan or photo.

But we will have to check out the image, would be nice with some instructions on how to handle the dumped image.

Yasen can provide you with photos the HDD in question. They're all the same when its from a DECR-1000, being 400GB Seagate drives.
As for handling these (and properly dumped dev discs, you can check the existing ones there too), you'll need a copy of the PS3Gen Tools which are found with the PS3 SDK. That's really about it. I know these tools are spread around and found quite easily, so if needed a small Google search can probably find it, or if you prefer I can add them to the FTP.

[yasen]

Well, to properly tag this as original then we would need some kind of proof of this drive, like a scan or photo.

But we will have to check out the image, would be nice with some instructions on how to handle the dumped image.

Excellent. When I get some time, I will submit the images with a picture and a short writeup explaining how to handle the images.

Thanks to Pix for explaining it better than I could have. Thanks to everyone else as well.

[gtgamer468]

If anyone needs testing/verification for a PS3 prototype demo or build, I can certainly pitch in. I've been running RPCS3, a PS3 emulator for over a year now most for Gran Turismo games but I can certainly try out other things anyone here needs. For the most part, the emulator is still in early stages but has matured enough to be stable on lighter games. As for accuracy, I believe it's as accurate as the PS3 itself so the authenticity shouldn't be a huge problem. If anyone rather wants to run it in real HW, it can done so in a CFW/HEN PS3.