LittleBigPlanet Series Custom Servers and the How-To’s

Shortened version of the LBP subreddit guide: https://www.reddit.com/r/littlebigplanet/comments/1rgchc5/playing_online_littlebigplanet_in_currentyear/ **THIS WILL MOSTLY COVER PS3.** The guide for PSP and Vita are Work-In-Progress. Before we begin: because of an exploit called force-join, custom servers have implemented a "join key", which is a password that your friends must share with you to play together. Because of this, dive-in isn't supported until a better fix to the force-join exploit is found. You can of course change your join key depending on who you wanna play with. It is advised not to share it publicly. All the main games have custom servers. Karting and the portable consoles have some too. PS4 has LBPOnline, but that one's kinda controversial so I won't address it here. In PS3, PS Vita and PSP you’ll need to jailbreak (hack) your console. You'll also want a usb stick and a computer (for Vita you can get away without those). >PS3 and RPCS3 I won’t go into the details here, but for the PS3 there are two methods, Custom Firmware and Hybrid Firmware; if you don’t know what that means, if you don’t truly know what you’re doing and/or are only doing it to play LBP, go for the Hybrid Firmware (PS3HEN) method, because incorrectly installing Custom Firmware risks bricking your console, that is, turning it into an expensive paperweight. Here's a guide Mr. Mario made for PS3HEN: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ze3UMdMakvk Then you’ll need to patch the game with the Refresher app on your PC. Here’s a guide by LBP Union, which also talks a bit about jailbreaking: https://www.lbpunion.com/post/how-to-patch-littlebigplanet-ps3-for-project-lighthouse/ Try reading all of it because it has a lot of answers to troubleshooting. You can also patch the game with a PS3 homebrew app called LittleBigPatcher: https://github.com/LittleBigPatcherTeam/LittleBigPatcher-for-Custom-Servers-PS3-Homebrew Just be aware that 1-if you then disable syscalls you'll have to restart your PS3 if you wanna patch again 2-you must NOT alternate between using Refresher and this app as it will break the patch; if you were using the other and wanna use this one or viceversa you have to first remove the patch and then patch with the other one. If you’re emulating on RPCS3, you only have to patch the game with Refresher, change a couple of configs on the emulator and create an RPCN account. Here’s LBPU’s guide: https://www.lbpunion.com/post/how-to-play-littlebigplanet-online-with-rpcs3-patching-guide/ Also read the troubleshooting section of the PS3 guide, some things might also apply here. And, of course, be sure that your game works before patching. >PS Vita For jailbreaking, I'll leave the Vita Hacks Guide: http://vita.hacks.guide/ Currently the Bonsai custom server is the only one supporting PSP Vita, although unofficially, in the sense that patching to play on Bonsai will work but there are some security patches that custom servers have applied to the other games that haven't been applied to this one yet. So there's no official documentation, but I'll paste a guide from Softgirlsoph in Bonsai's Discord server: >>STEP ONE: First make sure your lbp is on the latest update then go onto your pc and download this https://github.com/LittleBigPatcherTeam/LittleBigPatcher-for-Custom-Servers-Vita-Homebrew >>STEP TWO: Then download filezilla if you don't already have it. Then go on your ps vita and go onto vita shell, click start and switch it from USB to FTP then click select and type in the ip that is shown on your vita into filezilla then connect. When on filezilla go onto the vitas directory then go on uxo, then app, then drag in lbp patcher and wait for it to download >>STEP THREE: Then after it installs go onto vita shell and find the in file in uxo, then app and install it. Then click on lbp patcher and click on install fagdec.vpk and then install it. >>STEP FOUR: Go on this youtube video and skip to 17:55 and follow everything up to 18:58 discard everything else in the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KLcvl60SrU&t=1206s >>STEP FIVE: Then go on lbp patcher and select your url and obviously Put bonsai then click on patch games, then select browse games for title id and select your version of lbp vita then click on Patch! (LittleBigPlanet main series) >>Then its done. Hope I didnt miss anything >PSP Currently the Bonsai custom server is the only one supporting PSP. Although the most modern custom firmware for the PSP is ARK-4, Bonsai recommends installing an older one called PRO-C because ARK-4 hasn't been tested enough to know if it works correctly on PSP. The Bonsai docs currently link to the pspunk.com page, but it now only shows a guide to ARK-4. So I'll leave the archived version, but take it with a grain of salt: https://web.archive.org/web/20240426171502/https://www.pspunk.com/psp-cfw/ Also read the requirements carefully. For the rest, follow Bonsai's guide from "Step 2": https://docs.lbpbonsai.com/psp.html >List of custom servers **BEACON**, by LBP Union Beacon Website: https://www.lbpunion.com/beacon/ LBPU Website: https://www.lbpunion.com/ Discord Server: https://discord.gg/lbpunion The biggest one right now, targeting the majority of users. It has the vanilla experience of online. Some features like "Recent Activity" aren't supported. They support the PS3 main games; their support for LBP Vita is currently off because of security concerns. URL for patching: http://lighthouse.lbpunion.com/LITTLEBIGPLANETPS3_XML **BONSAI** (aka Refresh) Webpage: https://lbp.lbpbonsai.com/ Documentation: https://docs.lbpbonsai.com/index_md.html Discord Server: https://discord.gg/xN5yKdxmWG Has some more features than Beacon (like Recent Activity), and a heavier focus on mods. Those who use Beacon will be probably ok with Bonsai as well. It also has a kind of hidden feature called play by hash to play levels from the original servers archive: https://lbp.lbpbonsai.com/playhash They have servers for the PS3 main games, LBP Vita (unofficially for now because of security concerns) and PSP. They're also working in PS4/5 support, for which you would have to jailbreak. URL for patching: http://lbp.lbpbonsai.com/lbp *PLAYBREDUM* LBPK/Modnation Discord Server: https://discord.gg/zhady3Qbj LBPK: lbpk.playbredum.ru Main LBP (russian): playbredum.ru They're currently the only project that supports LBP Karting. There's been some criticisms regarding that it's based on custom server code which is unfinished and so could lead to security concerns; as with all the other projects, play at your own risk. They also have a normal LBP server which is based on Bonsai server software. I guess you'd go with that one if you're living in Russia and your connection gets blocked with the other ones. *INFINITE* Website: https://infinitelbp.com/ Discord Server: https://discord.gg/E3yJwBHRJ6 Quite similar to Beacon as it uses pretty much the same software both for their webpage interface and their behind the scenes software. They seem to have a Discord Bot that uploads levels from the archive to their servers when requested. I can’t say much more about Infinite because I haven’t used it, but I must mention they have a bad reputation concerning security of their servers. They support the PS3 main games and LBP Vita. URL for patching: http://infinitelbp.com/LITTLEBIGPLAENTPS3_XML