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How to Read Game FAQs on a PlayStation Portable

In the spirit of How to Read Web Comics on a PlayStation Portable 8Bit Joystick.com presents a brand new tutorial suckas.

Now that Sony added a decent web browser to the PSP with the 2.0 firmware update it could be super cool to use the PSP as a PDA text browser to read HTML documents saved to the Memory Stick Duo. This could be super cool if you put a couple FAQs and walk-through guides on the PSP so you could use it as a hand held reference when you are playing other game systems or if you are between PSP games. It makes things much easier now that you can read normal HTML text and image files instead of having to convert everything to an JPEG file.

I am going to walk you through how to make a PSP start page and link to a formatted game FAQ that are both saved to the PSP.

For this tutorial I am going to create and edit the HTML in NVU the cross platform, free and open source visual HTML editor. NVU is out on Mac OSX, Windows, Linux and if you wanted you could download the source and compile it to run on a Linux PS2 or a modded Xbox Linux distro if you are super k00l. You can use your favorite HTML editor or you can hand code it if you are hard core like that.

For this tutorial I am going to start with a downloaded Game FAQ from the best damn resource for Game FAQs and walk through on the net GameFAQs.com. I am going to start with one for Grand Theft Auto : San Andreas for the PS2. Download it to your computer and open it up in a text editor.

Now we need to make a directory of your hard drive and call it pspfaqs. Then start up NVU and make a new HTML file called template.html in the pspfaqs directory.

Then in NVU type out:

Page Title
Start Page

Body text

Start Page

Then open up the CSS Editor from the Tools menu. Un-check the expert mode and create a style for the body tag. Change the background of the background to a light gray, add some margins and format the text and save the style sheet. This should be pretty legible on the PSP LCD screen.

My style sheet looks like
body { margin: 4px;
font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;
font-size: 1em;
line-height: 1.1em;
color: rgb(0, 0, 0);
font-weight: normal;
background-color: rgb(204, 204, 204);
}

Then select the Start Page text and hit the link button.
Create a link to :
file:/pspfaqs/start.html
This is going to be an absolute link to the start file in you are going to create in your PSP Memory Stick Duo. Do that again for the lower Start Page text. Save the template.html and then save it as start.html in the pspfaqs directory.

The template.html file is going to be the starting point for future files and the start.html file is going to be the jumping off point that you are going to bookmark from your PSP web browser.
Change the page first line and the page title tag to something like Jake's Groovy PSP Start Page.

Change the first line in the body text to the name of the first FAQ. Highlight that line and hit the unordered list button.

Create a directory in the pspfaqs directory for the name of the FAQ and make sure not to put any spaces or punctuation in it. pspfaqs/gta_sa_faq

Open up the template.html file and save it in that new directory and call it the name of the FAQ with no weird punctuation or spaces. So the file is
pspfaqs/gta_sa_faq/gta_sa_faq.html. Then link to this document from the start.html and make sure to use a relative link. Like a href="gta_sa_faq/gta_sa_faq.html".

Next go back the FAQ in your favorite text editor. I am using TextWrangler. Some time these FAQ authors do some weird things and use a whole bunch of empty spaces for formatting. Do a search and replace for three presses of the space bar and replace it with a blank space. This will go through the document and find and delete any unnecessary and egregious space bar presses that will make some nasty HTML.

Then go through and cut out some gratuitous ASCII art or ASCII maps that are hard to read. Also look for weird characters and use the search and replace as needed in order to clean up the document.

When you are done cleaning select all the text in the text editor and then past it into the body text of the FAQ. Before you do that make sure you are in Normal mode in NVU. This will format the paste text and insert the br and p tags as needed.

Save the page and then run the Markup Cleaner under the NVU Tools menu and save again.

Now we need to turn the content index into a index with links to various anchors in the document.

Scroll through the document and select the text for the title for each section. Like Story for example. Then select Named Anchor from the Insert menu or hitting the Anchor icon. Don't put an anchor on every place just hit the chapters headings. OK save your work after a few minutes of putting in the anchors and go back to the content index at the top of the page.

Now select the chapters titles and hit the link button. Instead of selecting a file or typing in a location click the down discovery arrow in the Link Location section and select the correct named anchor you just made. Wash Rinse Repeat as necessary. Save everything and quit NVU. Then open up the files and try them out in your favorite web browser. All the links with the exception

You might want to open up the faq.html file in your favorite text editor and run some search and replace commands to get rid of some funky HTML special characters that are used for un-needed spacing and stuff. If there were less H4R04 T3Xt formatting the world would be a better place.

Now do a USB Connection sync with your PSP and copy the entire pspfaqs directory to the root directory of your PSP Memory Stick Duo. Disconnect the PSP after transfer over the file and start up the PSP Web Browser you got in the 2.0 Firmware upgrade.

In the address bar enter file:/pspfaqs/start.html then select the heart icon to set this as a bookmark so you will never have to type this out again using that damn cell phone like interface on the PSP.

Set the text size to small so the formatting will not get screwed up and take a look at your spiffy new PSP start page with that link to your indexed game FAQ. You can use the forward and back button to move around your little PSP portal page and the FAQ.

When you want to add more pages and information to just add it to the directory and link it from the start page. You can use these and link to locally save pages with screen shots, images, maps, pR0n and other fine pieces of digital information.

This will get easier with time but it is pretty cool that you can use the PSP to store and browse locally saved document. This way you don't have to get up off your ass and get off the couch to go and read a FAQ or look up some codes.

This entire experience or writing this tutorial made me want to watch the Futurama episode "Fear of a Bot Planet". It is the line about Fry choosing a large properly formatted data file over a puppy when he has to pretend to be a robot.

Jake at August 30, 2005 Games

Comments

Posted by: k0an at September 1, 2005 10:51 AM

Posted by: 8Bit Jake at September 1, 2005 7:33 PM

Posted by: dave at September 2, 2005 2:00 AM

Posted by: vladimir at February 23, 2006 6:57 AM

Posted by: jmb at April 2, 2006 7:58 PM

Posted by: Thai boxing in Maryland at December 16, 2006 6:18 AM

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