How to play LBP 2 Cross Controller DLC in 2022

[Aodir]

As you may know, the remaining old LBP titles had their server shutdown around last year, including LittleBigPlanet 2. At the time I was mostly worried about the Cross Controller DLC as those were the only "online" trophies I was missing, or so I thought. After some quick testing, it turned out that this DLC simply uses your local Wi-Fi connection between your Vita/PS3 instead of actual servers, and thus the 100% was still obtainable for me. Happy days.

Earlier this year I decided it was time to clean it up, so I wrapped up everything except Unidentified Feathered Object, which if you're unfamiliar with it, requires at least a second player (on now forced local couch co-op) or more and surprisingly decent coordination to be done. At the time I didn't have a partner so knowing this would still be obtainable later on, I left it undone waiting for an opportunity to have someone come over and try to do it with me.

 

Today the opportunity came, I set up the whole thing only to find an error message on the LBP Cross Controller app on my Vita. Making sure everything was set up correctly, I quickly found this reddit post of someone who had the same issue, who in turn had linked a GitHub discussion in the comments. While mostly not understanding what was being said there, the last comment did mention that in theory a simple DNS change could solve the issue as the app was only trying to check if the servers existed at all.

THE SOLUTION 

 

This reminded me of the CRT approved @Dante_MS ''Jumped In'' solution for the PS3 Saints Row games which I had used in the past, so I quickly went on to try this in hopes that it would let me use the Cross Controller app normally (spoiler alert: it did). If you follow his instructions, simply replace the Saints Row server (sr3.hydra.agoragames.com) with the LittleBigPlanet Vita server (lbpvita.online.scee.com) sourced from the GitHub discussion linked above and use the same IP (127.0.0.1). The rewrite section on nextdns.io should look like this:

 

Spoiler

 

Keep following Dante's instructions, but when connecting, you want to set the Primary DNS given by nextdns.io on both your consoles, making sure you're using the same network on both of them (it may be that you only need to set this on the Vita, but using it on both consoles worked for me at first try). Open up both games and connect as you would normally, voila, it's done. You can now play normally and earn all the Cross Controller DLC trophies except the one that requires online community levels, as you would before.
 

Edited November 6, 2022 by Aodir

[the_sultan999]

WHAT AN ABSOLUTE MASTERMIND!! Thank you so much for sharing this??

[shary96]

THANK YOU FOR THIS! This DLC has given me nightmares for years, the mandatory PS Vita has always precluded me from starting it, since I don't have one. Thank you for sharing ?

[HuntingFever]

@MMDE Can this be added to the approved servers list please ?

[Aodir]

3 hours ago, shary96 said:

THANK YOU FOR THIS! This DLC has given me nightmares for years, the mandatory PS Vita has always precluded me from starting it, since I don't have one. Thank you for sharing

 

I had a look at your trophy list and was both happy and sad that you can wrap up most of the DLC but still be left with one unobtainable Glad it'll help you in some way though! I also saw your post in Husky's PSNP+ unobtainables thread, it is indeed odd that there have been recent achievers as the issue seems to have started back in August but I guess they probably figured this out before me and just didn't make a post about it. 
 

1 hour ago, HuntingFever said:

@MMDE Can this be added to the approved servers list please ?

I have already DM'd Squirlruler from CRT with the same request and was told he'd forward this thread to the other members to discuss approval, it's basically the same method as Saints Row so I'm sure it's alright, but I do think it should be on that list for more visibility.

[MMDE]

Let's see if I understand this correctly. You set up a DNS server, that tells Vita that the old LBP server address is localhost (127.0.0.1)? AKA, that the game contacts itself?

 

If that is all this does, then it's pretty much already approved in terms of how it was for Saints Row as well.

If it on the other hand requires some patch of the game or run CFW Vita then it will never be approved. If it requires some simulated server, I would need to review it etc.

Edited November 8, 2022 by MMDE

[Aodir]

1 hour ago, MMDE said:

Let's see if I understand this correctly. You set up a DNS server, that tells Vita that the old LBP server address is localhost (127.0.0.1)? AKA, that the game contacts itself?

 

If that is all this does, then it's pretty much already approved in terms of how it was for Saints Row as well.

If it on the other hand requires some patch of the game or run CFW Vita then it will never be approved. If it requires some simulated server, I would need to review it etc.

Correct, that's about it. It's exactly the same as the already approved Saints Row method but using the LBP Vita server address instead. No patches or any other extra stuff needed.

[MMDE]

45 minutes ago, Aodir said:

Correct, that's about it. It's exactly the same as the already approved Saints Row method but using the LBP Vita server address instead. No patches or any other extra stuff needed.

 

If that is all, and nothing else is required, I don't see any issue with that.

[AmazingNoeder]

On 11/8/2022 at 8:03 AM, Aodir said:

Correct, that's about it. It's exactly the same as the already approved Saints Row method but using the LBP Vita server address instead. No patches or any other extra stuff needed.

I hope that I'm wrong but....

I had the exactly same issue and i read the exactly same Reddit,months agoo when i did some dlcs 

People say that to only "upload" the character on saints row there's a loot of issues,so how does this would work playing a whole game using 2 different devices?

Did you tested?

Another thing that i hope i just read it wrong, didn't the guy that fixed the issue said that he needed to edit the EBOOT?

Which means using a cfw ps3 to edit the own game files wich is against the rules?

Unfortunately i highly believe that you need to do this to work @MMDE 

And if the EBOOT stuff isn't required i wonder if this would be easily functional only doing the dns part

Btw....how people earned the dlc trophies after server shutdown and before this reddit.....

[Aodir]

10 hours ago, AmazingNoeder said:

I hope that I'm wrong but....

I had the exactly same issue and i read the exactly same Reddit,months agoo when i did some dlcs 

People say that to only "upload" the character on saints row there's a loot of issues,so how does this would work playing a whole game using 2 different devices?

Did you tested?

Another thing that i hope i just read it wrong, didn't the guy that fixed the issue said that he needed to edit the EBOOT?

Which means using a cfw ps3 to edit the own game files wich is against the rules?

Unfortunately i highly believe that you need to do this to work @MMDE 

And if the EBOOT stuff isn't required i wonder if this would be easily functional only doing the dns part

Btw....how people earned the dlc trophies after server shutdown and before this reddit.....

 

Have you read the thread?

 

To sum it up:

LBP2 Cross Controller Vita app requires a network check before being able to function normally over local Wi-Fi.

This was not affected by the LBP shutdown last year because it never required servers, again, local Wi-Fi.
It stopped working properly since August (couldn't find earlier reports), apparently due to DNS issues.

Using approved Saint's Row method with LBP address instead solves the issue.
All on OFW systems, no edits involved other than changing DNS in your network settings.

 

10 hours ago, AmazingNoeder said:

People say that to only "upload" the character on saints row there's a loot of issues,so how does this would work playing a whole game using 2 different devices?

Did you tested?

Answering your actual question, there's zero issues gameplay wise due to it's local Wi-Fi nature, no servers involved thus no issues at all. You're just bypassing the network check telling it the server still exists to let you play normally as you would before, much like Saints Row where you're making the game think you're still uploading a picture somewhere.

[AmazingNoeder]

3 hours ago, Aodir said:

 

Have you read the thread?

 

 

Yes

And people said things like this, people who were testing and making it work

"Yeah, the reason it's failing is because of a bad DNS query. There is a record, but the record has no IP addresses. There's a (small) chance it will work if we override DNS, but it's probably better to try patching the EBOOT to see what happens."

 

"Okay, to summarize:

"LBP Cross controller depends on the old PS Vita servers

The DNS entries for the old servers no longer have addresses, causing LBP Cross Controller to fail to connect

Patching the cross controller app's EBOOT will resolve the issue

No changes to Lighthouse or UnionPatcher were required

Cross Controller does not actually use the server; it just simply wants to know that the server exists. Either that or this is a leftover of LBPV."

 

Is like one time they say,that you just need to check if the server is there,and other time they say that you need to patch the EBOOT to make it work,it will give you an error if you don't 

That's why i ask, and why i want to hear people saying that it's easy and you just need to make the saints row way and will work flawless 

[Aodir]

57 minutes ago, AmazingNoeder said:

Yes

No, you haven't.

Read the solution, it's literally the already approved Dante's procedure but using LBPV address instead of the SR3 one. Nothing else changes. I didn't even bother writing proper instructions and linked his thread instead since it's already so well explained. All on OFW, no edits, no special patches, no special code, just a simple DNS change.

 

Quoting the GitHub discussion is useless here, since it's irrelevant to my thread other than it being referenced as the source of the LBP address, which to be fair, could have been sourced from anywhere else. They themselves didn't even come to this conclusion, only mentioning that in theory a DNS solution could be possible, which is what made me attempt Dante's solution in the first place.

 

CRT has already chimed in on this so you're welcome to try it yourself.

[Craig_Partizan]

Really appreciate this post and everyone's effort to try and fix the issue.  Would it be possible for anyone to try and do a step by step in layman's terms? i tried following the Saints Row guide and my eyes glazed over by about step 3. There are some super clever people out there, but if anyone also has the patience to provide a good step by step to be able to play the cross controller pack i will eternally be grateful 

[Fake2556]

After a few tries I got this to work. My issue was that on the cross-controller app on PS Vita, it would always say please wait while connecting endlessly. Downloading a new cross-controller LBP app fixed this (maybe I had a older version or one from a different region?)

 

I did pretty much everything explained here.

 

- Went to my.nextdns.io and then settings

- Added lbpvita.online.scee.com and 127.0.0.1 to the new rewrite section (and saved)

- Went back to setup

- Followed the IPv4 method (so made sure my laptop was using the same wifi network as the vita and ps3, and clicked link IP in the linked IPs block)

- On the Vita I went to my network settings and went to advanced

- Then instead of automatic for DNS I choose manual and added the first DNS server in the linked IPs block from the nextdns site and 0.0.0.0 in the next field. Then made sure I saved and connected to this on the vita

- On the PS3 I went to my network settings and did the exact same thing.

- Opened LBP2 on the PS3 and opened the cross controller dlc

- Opened the Cross-controller app on the Vita and hit connect

- Done

 

Didnt work the first few tries but after redownloading the cross-controller app on the Vita it worked