i wanted to try out the ps4 LCE.. had a look around found a few posts about if you have a disc containing 1.0 version you can play it by not updating, and something about an 'editions' button that only sometimes shows up or something. in the bedrock verison of the game. i don't have a disc copy of the game i have the digital version, and i brought it after they changed to bedrock. so out of luck but like i do know my playstation internals.. the bedrock version was just an update to the game, their the same title id and everything, this means that my license for bedrock edition is also a license for LCE edition, because their .. according to the PS4 the exact same game.
all i needed was a way to somehow install an older version from my digital bedrock edition and it should work?
from my previous work on vita, i knew title updates are downloaded from an XML file at gs-sec.ww.np.dl.playstation.net princess of sleeping has a nice tool to find it for any game; https://princess-of-sleeping.github.io/PS4-HTML-Tools/Title-Update-Checker/index.html the PS4 and Vita, and probably even PS3 all fetch this particular XML file over HTTPS so not much i could do there. but the actual files downloaded are over plaintext HTTP..
so.. i actually do have OMSK setup on my ps4 currently, but that is cheating.. so instead i setup my ps4 to connect to a fiddler http debugger proxy server. deleted minecraft and attempted to redownload it
might be a bit hard to see, but there is 2 json files downloaded, which contain links to the PKG files
and then right after that, the base game and update packages respectively.
i found on orbispatches.com they have archived all the update JSONs ever released for the game, along with the links to the pkgs for it which are actually still active on sonys servers and everything.
so i setup fiddlers autoresponder to replace the latest version JSON with the v1.95 one.
that way the ps4 should try download the v1.95 PKG instead of the latest one, and tried again
and well the ps4 did start to download the package, but it failed to install at the end. giving a generic CE-37732-2 which is just a 'file is corrupt' error. i was totally expecting this to just not work and the ps4 to be checking the file you downloaded really was the latest version, but i did notice something else in the network logs. a second PKG for the latest version, ending in -DP.. taking a look at the title update XML
you can see this is labeled as "delta_info_set" .. i guess this is also a new addition on the PS4. a "delta update" is a set of specifically what has changed between one version and other,
amazingly.. the orbispatches site also archived all the old delta PKG's too. so i setup a second autoresponder rule to change the new -DP pkg to the old -DP pkg as well. and redownloaded minecraft again
and this time. amazingly.. it actually installed. and like works.
i'm honestly shocked that this did work. it really shouldnt. iirc i tried something simular on PSVita years ago and it didnt work, but i guess the change to JSONs that have links to PKGs rather than direct PKGs makes all the difference or something, i dunno.
for anyone wanting to try this out yourself manually, keep in mind there are 3 versions of Minecraft on PS4, for different regions. and you will need the v1.95 update json + DP pkg for yours to pull it off.
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if you don't want to deal with all that, i also updated one of my DNS servers to do basically all of this for you
you can just set your ps4 dns server to 205.185.116.201
and redownload minecraft, it should show up as approximately 1.7-ish GBs and install LCE 1.95, atleast for the US/EU/JP versions of the game.
please only use this dns for downloading minecraft and change it back right afterwards i have to proxy all the connections to PS4 CDN to swap out just a few packages and will use alot of bandwidth on my server, i might have to remove it if it gets used too much >_<
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i'm not sure if anyone else in the ps4 scene was aware of this already but this has actually some neat implications outside minecraft, like yeah you can play LCe but you could use a simular method to downgrade basically any game/app on the PS4. to any version you want. which i think is kinda neat.
perhaps an actual 'ps4 app downgrade' tool could be useful i dunno.
== things to note :
- ps4 tries to download the latest update every time you start the game. you have to manually go in and delete it before it updates it.
- i wonder if this can be used to install kiosk demos too?
- packages have to be signed by sony, and a stock ps4 verifies that signature, so this can't be used for custom anything.
it would probably be like technically possible but i'm not setting up another DNS server or anything too much effort.