Inclusion of SBI files in the dat?

[SoulReever]

I was just wondering - is there any plans to include the SBI subchannel files in the dat for each game/disc?

Many thanks.

[F1ReB4LL]

Nope, because you won't be able to read them from the CD again with the same checksum, so the checksums for these files are useless.

[Jackal]

Nope, because you won't be able to read them from the CD again with the same checksum, so the checksums for these files are useless.

What do you mean?

[F1ReB4LL]

Have you found a way to dump subchannels correctly?

[Jackal]

He's talking about .sbi.. they can be downloaded from the site, so I think he means why don't we add those to the .dat if they are needed anyway?

[F1ReB4LL]

Cues can also be downloaded from the site, but you can get them from your own CDs as well. You can't get the same sbi files from the CDs, though, so it's totally useless to include them into the dats - you can download them from the site, you can download them elsewere, you can dump them from your own CDs, they will be different every time, but they will work (most likely).

[Jackal]

I don't see any logic in your answers.. nobody makes their .cue's manually because of the filenames etc... and .sbi only contains the libcrypt sectors, so it wouldn't be difficult to implement this in psxt001z using the fast option (if that's what you're aiming at) and then it would be possible to dump .sbi files. The point is that the dump is useless in emulators without this file. It would be the same as having to download a .cue file each time they wanted to play a game.

Then again, it's not even real dump data, and there's no such thing as a .sbi burn tool, so it doesn't make much sense to only include it for emulators. I don't think we'll ever get a way to generate these subs (it's possible, but Dremora clearly has no time).

[topkat]

It too think including the 'official' crcs of the sbi-files would be a nice ideal. It won't hurt filesize and would make the dump more 'complete'. Maybe you always get different sbi's, but why not use the ones availble here as a reference? I think hardly anyone creates these files by theirself, I even don't know how to create them and don't care because I can get them here.

Having the sbi-files in the games' archive would also help to avoid confusion when a partiular game won't run in an emulator. Is it because it's copyprotected and therefor needs a sbi-file, or simply because the emulator doesn't support that game yet or maybe it does need a special config? Without any hint, you first have to look up infos about the game...

[Haldrie]

You're theory about the sbi files being needed because of copy protection is correct. It's called LibCrypt and is mostly found on European PlayStation games (it is found on other regions as well but is not as frequent as anti-mod protection). This copy protection modifies entries in the subchannel data of the disc so that if a burned copy were made without also cloning the subchannel data the game will freeze at random points when the check is being performed.

I can see where everyone is going with this and I think many people here have lost track of what this project's actual goal is. We are trying to collect accurate checksum data from disc based games for the purpose of making a database to be used to check games that people may get by whatever means. Emulation of the dumps SHOULD NOT be considered when thinking of new ways to improve the database only the accuracy of the information displayed here. The dats are there simply as a quick way to check many images at once and and the sbi files that are downloadable are generated on the site when dumpers post LibCrypt data using a script created for the site. The only modification to the cue files that are posted in the dumps are the file names and that can very easily be done without downloading a new cue.

One thing I can suggest though is that we do need something added to the site to give us a list of the games that do have sbi files on them so that we can quickly know what games have been proven to have LibCrypt protection on them without having to look at each game separately. Perhaps we should be able to download all of them at once much like we now seem to have download links to download all cue and gdi files for all the games in the database but adding them to the dat is up to the admins at this point.

[topkat]

I can see where everyone is going with this and I think many people here have lost track of what this project's actual goal is. We are trying to collect accurate checksum data from disc based games for the purpose of making a database to be used to check games that people may get by whatever means. Emulation of the dumps SHOULD NOT be considered when thinking of new ways to improve the database only the accuracy of the information displayed here. The dats are there simply as a quick way to check many images at once and and the sbi files that are downloadable are generated on the site when dumpers post LibCrypt data using a script created for the site. The only modification to the cue files that are posted in the dumps are the file names and that can very easily be done without downloading a new cue.

Sorry, but I still don't understand the problem you have with this small and simple addition.

AFAIK, providing the subchannel-data where needed is already mandatory when submitting a dump of a protected game. Thus this data is already stored in the db and viewable on the disks' page. There would be no improvement/change to data and/or the dumping/submitting procedure at all, it just means to alter the 'create-dat-script' to include the crc-hashes of the sbi-files.

Above said, I can't think of a reason why incorperating the sbi in the dats would harm the goal of the project.