Creating a PS1 image from a Net Yaroze game

[Ghegs]

Hey there,

I came across the Net Yaroze game Hover Racing a little while ago and I bought the Playstation Underground 2.2 demo disc that has the game included. I think it's a great game and I'm interested in making a PS1 image file that has just that single game included. I run a site dedicated to arcade-style racing games and I want to run time attack competitions with Hover Racing, so I'm hoping to have the game up for download there, hence the need for a small file with just the one game instead of one of the compilations already available.

From the demo disc I found the files HOVER.FPC and LIBPSX.BIN - can I make a normal, bootable PS1 image with just these, or is something else required? If I can, how would I do it?

I'd love to contact the original developer about this and ask for his official permission, but it doesn't appear he put his contact information anywhere in the game. Just his name, and he's Japanese, so I've been unable to track him down.

[Shadow]

I'll look into making a disc with just that game for you. It's very difficult trying to track down the developers of Yaroze games. I have found some here and there, but I never got a reply back from them. I'll let you know when/if it's done

[Shadow]

All done.

viewtopic.php?f=56&t=636

[Ghegs]

Wow, thank you very much. And a very small file too, great. I'll put it up for download on Rolling Start and make it clear who was behind this release.

[Shadow]

You're welcome

If you or anyone else has any that needs to be released, let me know. I will also look into making a tutorial, but some of the Yaroze games were good and used separate compressed file loading, in which case, you need to load the file into RAM according to what the dload address stated in their batch file. Hover Racing actually did this, so I made my own loader beforehand (seen as MAIN.EXE on the CD-ROM). That loads HOVER.PAC into the 1MB RAM area, while the game (HOVER.EXE) is loaded at the 80010000 mark (64K after the PSX kernel). It was a little weird though, because even if I didn't upload the HOVER.PAC file, the game would still run fine. Mind you I was doing a SGRAM clear on my programs initialisation routines, so the TIM's should have been wiped. Anyway, I left it and uploaded it as per the batch files requirements which is the right thing to do. It's difficult to know exactly what the HOVER.EXE is doing without me attempting to debug it.

Apart from that, it's a very difficult game, but a very good one. A few polygon layering/tearing issues here and there, but that's to be expected. The music is also very nice especially considering it's just 'MIDI' SPU based content.
I only managed to do a full lap twice out of the somewhat 20 odd times I tried

[Ghegs]

Yeah, the four side-boosters take some getting used to, but once you manage to take a tight corner perfectly with 'em it feels great. I just tried the Training mode earlier today, those challenges get really tricky really fast.

The post is now up here, I think in a week or two we'll have a proper time attack tournament. Feel free to join in!