With the first 2 days of 2020 already being over, the holiday season is coming to a close but don’t let this sadden you too much as some noteworthy homebrew has descended for both the PSVita and Switch! In this article, we’ll be looking at LowMemMode for the PSVita and RussellNX for the Switch.
Switch Release: RussellNX, by tijesef, released allowing for the creation of homebrew Game Maker Studio 2 games!
For quite some time, homebrew developers for the PlayStation Vita have been able to easily port Game Maker Studio games to the console thanks to SilicaAndPina’s G*Maker released in late 2018.
There are quite a few Indie GameMaker Studio titles that received ports to the PSVita thanks to G*Maker and these can now come to the Switch although their code needs to be converted to GMS 2. (Wasteland Kings is shown in the image)
As a result, the console received numerous Game Maker Studio-based homebrew game ports such as Deltarune Chapter One, Wizard Wizard, Wasteland Kings, Spelunky Classic HD and many others.
Now, Nintendo Switch homebrew developers have just gained similar abilities thanks to RussellNX, a tool by tijesef (Nik) which allows you to easily make GameMaker Studio 2-based homebrew games provided you have the GameMaker project available. In order to use this tool, you need to have Game Maker Studio 2 installed together with the 2.2.3.344 runtime. After installing GMS2 and providing a keys.txt (prod.keys) file used in building the resultant binary, you simply open the tool and set a few options which then results in an NSP file which can be installed on a real Nintendo Switch through tools like Goldleaf & Awoo Installer.
As RussellNX contains Deltarune’s exefs, no links will be provided even though the game itself is free because there may be legal issues. However, finding the tool online isn’t difficult and make sure you grab version 1.0.1 which fixes saving!
PSVita Release: GrapheneCt releases LowMemMode which allows limited multi-tasking on more games!
The PSVita natively allows you to open certain applications while you have a game open in background… unless it uses enlarged memory!
Anybody who has tinkered a bit with the PlayStation Vita knows that you can’t open multiple applications/games at the same time with the exception of system applications and a few 3rd party applications like LiveTweet which have a specific bootparam set.
However, some games like ‘Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana’ make use of enlarged memory which adds 29/77MB to their available memory pool and as a result, you can’t open applications that have the aforementioned bootparam set, with the exception of the Settings app, while the game is running.
Now, GrapheneCt has released LowMemMode, a user-mode plugin which gets around this limitation and allows you to launch other applications (which have the bootparam set) in LOWPHYMEM mode when games that make use of enlarged memory are being played. It’s important to note that not all applications may run/work properly and some may not launching by throwing a ‘C1-2609-7’ (SCE_KERNEL_ERROR_CANNOT_ALLOC_PHYMEMLOW) error. As of right now, only Firmwares 3.60 & 3.65 are supported so you’ll have to downgrade with Modoru if you’re on a higher firmware and wish to use LowMemMode.
To grab this plugin and make use of every single bit of memory on your PSVita when playing certain games, check out this link to grab the SUPRX file and install it under the *ALL section of your taiHEN config.txt file.
Conclusion
Other than these releases, it’s now possible to emulate the StudyBox, a Famicom (Japanese NES) peripheral which utilises tapes for data/audio rather than floppy disks and has around 50 pieces of software available for it.
The post PSVita & Switch Releases: RussellNX gets released for the Switch allowing for the creation of homebrew GameMaker Studio 2 ports & LowMemMode plugin for the Vita allowing you to multitask with certain apps while playing games using extended memory! appeared first on Wololo.net.