PS3Hax Network - Playstation 3 Hacks and Mods

As most of you will already know, a while ago there was a guide on how to hack your trophies. However, some people found that guide a bit too hard to follow and it didn't include steps on how to include a timestamp to your trophies to make your trophies look more legit. This guide is made for those people that needed an extra hand or who want to add a timestamp to their trophies.

I know that a lot of people frown upon hacking trophies and I'm sure I'll get a few flames in this topic but I would much appreciate it if you would just click the back button in your browser instead of posting something that makes you look like a 12-year old. (No offense to any 12-year olds.)

I am also not responsible for any damage you do to your trophies, your PlayStation or your PS Network account. As far as I know there isn't a way to sync your trophies to the PSN but if there is a way, or when we find a way to do so, I do not know what will happen if Sony finds out your trophies have been hacked (if they can find that out.)

Applications

Now then, let's get started. First off I would advise downloading and installing all the required applications for this guide. Here is the list of all required applications and a few examples.

An FTP client
An FTP homebrew for your PS3
A hex editor
The PlayStation 3 Trophy Timestamp Generator by Inaudax
Any PS3 game with trophy support

For the FTP client I use Filezilla, available for Windows, Linux and Mac OSX (source code is also available for compiling.) Available here or by using “sudo aptitude install filezilla” on Ubuntu.

As for the FTP homebrew I advise blackb0x' FTP tool. It's very simple to use and works without a hitch. You can get version 1.1 here.

Next we have the hex editor. During the tutorial I will be using Ghex (Linux, gnome) but I have also used Hex Editor Neo for Windows which can be downloaded here. KDE users can use Okteta.

The PlayStation 3 TTG can be downloaded right here from ps3hax.net.

If your hex editor does not show you the decimal value of the hex number you can simply use this converter.

Quick FTP tutorial

This is a short tutorial for those who haven't set up an FTP connection with their PS3. If you already have you can simply skip this part.

First of all put the blackb0x pkg file on a USB stick and install it on your PlayStation like you would install any other pkg.

Once that's finished, open the blackb0x homebrew and you should see a simple screen with an IP on there in big red numbers.

Now back to your computer, open up Filezilla or your preferred FTP client. If you're Using Filezilla simply go to File -> Site Manager. Click on New Site and in the host text field put in the IP that is shown on your PS3.

This screenshot should help you out.

http://img688.imageshack.us/img688/1732/filezillao.png

No other options should be changed. Just press connect and it should connect to your PS3 without a problem. If it doesn't, make sure the blackb0x homebrew is running and that your PS3 and computer are both connected to the same router.

Getting the trophy file

Below is a pretty elaborate way of saying: copy /dev_hdd0/home/usernumber/trophy/NPWR#/TROPUSR.DAT to your computer. If you don't have a clue what that means, read on, otherwise just do that and skip to the next part.

Now that you connected your PS3 with your computer it's time to get the correct trophy file to edit. On the main Filezilla screen look to the right center, it should say Remote site: /.

/ is the root of your PS3, kind of like the C:\ of your Windows installation. To find your trophy file, first go to dev_hdd0. Next open up home and inside that folder should be a few other folders named by numbers. For example mine has -0000001, 00000001 to 5. I'm not sure what the - one his so if anyone knows, feel free to enlighten me. The other ones belong to your different accounts. If you only have one account you'll only have 00000001. So here you can choose which account you would like to have hacked trophies for. If you're unsure what number belongs to which account, just enter any directory and inside it you should find a file called localusername. Copy it to your computer and open it with a simple text reader (eg. notepad) and it should have your username in it.

Once you've chosen your account, open the directory belong to it and then open the trophy directory. This contains all the directories with the trophy data of all your games. It could have some directories starting with _BU_. I'm not sure what these are but don't open them. They seem to contain trophy files but when you change them, they do nothing on your PS3.

Now you get to choose which game trophies you would like to edit. I don't know if there's a way to find out which game belongs to which NPWR# so it's just trial and error. Open a directory, copy the ICON0.PNG file to your computer and open it. It's the icon of the game so you can easily tell which game the directory belongs to. If it's not the game you want, try another directory until you find the one you want.

When you found it, copy the TROPUSR.DAT file to your computer.

Important: I would strongly recommend you to back this file up somewhere in case you did something wrong or you need to replace the original file when we get access to the PSN again.

Editing the TROPUSR.DAT file

Activating the trophies

If you've never edited a file in a hex editor all the numbers might seem confusing and intimidating but it's actually pretty simple once you get the hang of it. If you've never learned about hex numbers before, it's pretty simple. A hex number consists of two characters and can run from decimal 0 to 255. 01 hex equals to decimal 1, 02 hex equals to decimal 2, ... 09 hex equals to decimal 9 and 10 hex equals to decimal 16. Wait wut???

Well it's simple, after 9 comes a, b, c, d, e and f. So 0a equals 10, 0b equals 11, 0f equals 15 which means that 10 equals 16. Simple, right? You'll probably already have seen this in the first or second year of high school depending on your school of course.

Anyway, back to the trophy editing. If you're using Ghex or Okteta, resize your window so that there are 16 numbers on one line (excluding the addresses eg. 00001FA0) as it makes it a lot easier to edit. Hex Editor Neo does this automatically.

First we have to look for the location of the trophies. This is actually the hardest part. Simply scroll through the file until you see a pattern of 06 in the fourth column. On the same row in the eight column should be number 60 and right below the number 06 should be another number which increases by 1 every few lines. The number below the 06 is your trophy ID and it starts with 00. In my example I am editing the LittleBigPlanet trophy file. LBP counts 70 trophies with all the add-ons. Seeing as the trophy IDs start at 0 we do 70-1 = 69. Converting that to hex gives 45 so the ID of my last trophy will be 45 so if you scroll all the way down the file I can see the number 45 in the fourth column somewhere in the last rows. In my case it's the sixth row from the end, I'm not sure if it's always the same.

Here's a screenshot to help you understand.

http://img801.imageshack.us/img801/7969/trophyid.png

The red circles indicate the 06 and 60 hex numbers to orientate yourself on.
The blue circles below the 06 numbers indicate the trophy ID number starting with 00. Every few lines it goes up by one until the maximum amount of trophies.
The green circles are the activation numbers. 01 00 01 10 means that the trophy is activated. 00 00 00 00 means that it is not. In the screenshot an additional two zeros have been circled but it is not necessary to ever edit those.
The yellow circles on the row below indicates the time stamp. Another mistake on the screenshot, the 40 and 00 after 51 should also be circled. The only numbers that shouldn't be edited are the two zeroes before the timestamp code. (The ones in the first and ninth column.)

Now that we know where we are and what the numbers around us means it's time to actually activate the trophies. First we need to change the total number of trophies achieved and tell the file that we got 100%. To do this, go to the first 06 (below it should be 00, the ID of the first trophy) and go up 9 rows. This row should be filled with hex numbers different from zero. Go up another two and this row should also contain some hex numbers different from zero, unless this is a clean trophy file with no trophies already achieved. Now go up one more row and change the value in the fourth column to the total number of trophies. So if your game has 50 trophies put in 32, which is the hex number for decimal 50.

Now go to the row below that one and change it to ff ff ff ff 00 00 ff ff. This means that we got all the trophies required for the platinum trophy. It doesn't actually mean that we got 100% because in my LBP trophy list it still shows up as 72% because of all the DLC.

Below is another screenshot to help you understand a bit better.

http://img837.imageshack.us/img837/4135/alltrophies.png

The first blue square should have the value of the total number of trophies in hex. So 50 trophies equals to 32. Use a converter to find out the hex number.
The second blue square indicates whether we all the trophies and should be changed to ff ff ff ff 00 00 ff ff.
The third blue square is simply there to orientate yourself upon. It should be 9 rows above the first 06.

Now we're going to actually activate all the trophies. This is a bit tedious because we have to activate them all one by one. Let's take a look at the first screenshot again.

http://img801.imageshack.us/img801/7969/trophyid.png

See the green circle? If the trophy is unactivated the hex numbers inside the circle will all be zeros. Just look at the hex number 60 and right below that number simply change he following numbers with 01 00 01 10. Also do this with your already activated trophies! For some reason some trophies have a different activation code but just to be sure change them all to 01 00 01 10.

Do this for all the trophies and they will be activated. However, because we activated them this way they won't have a timestamp so let's take care of that now.

Adding time stamps to your trophies

For this part we'll be using the PlayStation 3 Trophy Timestamp Generator by Inaudax. This program requires the Windows version of .NET to run so Linux users will have to install the Windows version of Mono through Wine and then use Mono to open the program. To open a program with Mono use this command:

Code:

wine /home/ymo/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/Mono-2.8/bin/mono.exe PS3\ Timestamp\ Generator.exe

Put that command in a .sh file in the same directory as the .exe for future use.

This program simply take an inputted date and returns you the corresponding hex numbers. So all you have to do is pick any date and time, press the generate button and insert the hex numbers in the correct location in the TROPUSR.DAT file.

Important: Make sure that you input the date completely and correctly. The hour uses a 24 hour clock, seconds also have to be filled in and days and months with a single digit have to have two digits. So January is 01 and not just 1. Also don't put in dates that don't exist like 31st February because it won't generate anything.

When you have the hex numbers simply insert it in the TROPUSR.DAT file. Let's have another look at that screenshot.

http://img801.imageshack.us/img801/7969/trophyid.png

See the yellow circles below the trophy ID? These are the hex numbers for the timestamp. The first two zeros should never be touched and neither should the ones between the two timestamps. As you can see, the two sets of numbers are different for normally activated trophies but for our hacked trophies we simply put the same set of generated hex numbers twice.

For example if we want to make a trophy look like we got it on the 5th of February in 2009 at 14:59:12 we simple change the row below the row containing the trophy ID number from 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 to 00 e1 22 2c 24 d8 f0 00 00 e1 22 2c 24 d8 f0 00.

It's as simple as that.

Putting the trophies on your PS3

Once you're done editing the file simply save it (remember to backup your original, don't overwrite it!) and upload it back to your PS3 through the FTP connection. Overwrite it on your PS3, exit the FTP homebrew and start the game you edited the trophies of. Once the game is loaded, check your trophies and it should show you all the trophies with timestamps.

Final words and credits

As I said before, I am not responsible for any damage to your PS3, your games or your PSN account. It shouldn't damage anything at all and certainly not when you backup your original file like I said but as far as I know no one knows whether Sony can trace this and ban your account. Personally, I don't think they can but you never know.

Also, be smart when hacking your trophies. A lot of games have trophies which are awarded for completing a certain chapter. Unless you use downloaded savegames it's very unlikely to unlock the trophy of completing chapter 6 before unlocking a trophy awarded for completing chapter 2 for example.

And as a very final note I would like to say that I hope you liked my guide. If you find any errors or have constructive criticism don't be afraid to post or leave me a PM. This includes dead links so I can put up new ones. This guide can be edited and posted anywhere as long as you credit me and put a link to the original version found on PS3Hax.net.

This guide wouldn't have been possible without:

Vssiky from NGU with his original guide.

Inaudax for his great and simple Timestamp Generator application.