Credits

History

Despite being a relatively new Custom Firmware for the PSP, ARK has quite a history that goes back to the early days of the PS Vita scene.

ARK is a CFW that started as a port (more like rewrite) of PRO CFW to the PS Vita (named PROVITA) created by the original Team PRO members (Coldbird, Liquid Snake and Neur0n). After the original team left, the source code of PROVITA was handed over to me (Acid_Snake) and my long time scene friend qwikrazor87.

We quickly began a huge process of rewriting and restructuring code, more specifically a much more robust dynamic patching algorithms that would work on any 6.6X based firmware (including all Vita's ePSP firmwares). Thus ARK-2 was born.

Soon after, qwik, thefl0w and I began working on PSX exploits, which resulted in TN-X and ARK-3 (never publicly released).

Because the original PRO CFW hasn't been updated or maintained in a while, and it has become a little bloated and hard to work with, I decided to start working on porting ARK to the PSP since the core elements of the CFW are compatible with PSP 6.60 and 6.61 with minor changes.

After lots of work getting the same ARK binaries to properly work on both PSP and Vita, I am proud to announce that the release of ARK-4 is finally here!

Credits

• Team PRO (the original developers of ARK): Coldbird, hrimfaxi (aka. Liquid Snake) and Neur0n.
• The Ancient Gods of the PSP Scene: mathieulth, davee, Proxima, zecoxao, among other tinkerers.
• qwikrazor87 for being such a genius and all his hard work with kernel exploits and ARK-2.
• Acid_Snake for everything that he has done for ARK and continued improving it alone the way, without him the CFW scene would have not had amazing accomplishments as it does now for both the PSP and the Vita.
• meetpatty for his excellent work in fixing bugs and adding important features like cIPL and DevKit support as well as porting Time Machine and Despertar del Cementerio.
• Krazynez for his amazing work on Advanced VSH Menu and other bugfixes and features.
• SilicaAndPina for her great work unlocking pspemu with ChovySign, NoPspEmuDrm and ps1cfw_enabler that serve as the base for ARK on PS Vita.
• TheFl0w (aka. Total_Noob) for his advancements and research in CFW development and overall contributions to the scene.
• Codestation for his incredible work improving CSO speeds and creating the ZSO format.
• pyroesp for his excellent work improving VSH Menu and refactoring code.
• TheSubPlayer for all the wonderful themes made for the custom launcher.
• UnkownBrackets (maxcso) for his help understanding the DAX format and Inferno speed hacks as well as creating the CSOv2 format.
• Zer01ne, noname120, astart and other devs that have blessed me with their knowledge and wisdom.
• balika for his research in porting M33 to modern firmware that has helped improve compatiblity in ARK.
• hrydgard for the PMF player as well as being an inspiration for the custom launcher.
• Every other giant shoulder we are standing on.