Install & First Boot

The RiptOPL menu and OPL core are in RIPTOPL.ELF. Neutrino and PS1 launching also need their companion folders. Extract the installable package, choose a loader, and copy the files needed by your source/core.

What is RIPTOPL.ELF?

RiptOPL is a downstream fork of Open PS2 Loader compiled to a single PS2 ELF binary. The standard build includes GSM video-mode handling (including the hardware-confirmed forced-progressive 1080p mode), DS3/DS4 pad emulation (PADEMU), Virtual Memory Cards (VMC), PS2RD cheats, and parental controls in one file. There are no per-feature variant builds to choose between for those; the one ELF does it all. Some build flags are left off by default. In-game screenshots (IGS) and right-to-left (RTL) language support are not compiled into the standard loader folders in the unified package — the Makefile ships EXTRA_FEATURES ?= 0 and both flags follow it. To get IGS or RTL, use a ready-made -extra1 loader from RIPTOPL-VARIANTS-*.zip or build with make EXTRA_FEATURES=1. DualSense / DualShock 5 (USB) support ships as a ready-made RIPTOPL-<version>-<SDK>-ds5.ELF for each available SDK flavour inside RIPTOPL-VARIANTS-*.zip. The standard loaders already include 1080p; its picker is gated behind a triple confirmation, and holding Triangle + Cross during console boot forces 480p for the menu only, on displays/connections that accept it. You only need make DUALSENSE=1 if you build your own DualSense loader — check the Releases page for current assets.

ℹ Private config, shared data

RiptOPL's master settings use settings_riptopl.cfg (with migration from conf_riptopl.cfg). That filename is separate from stock OPL's master config, but conf_network.cfg, app lists, per-game configuration and support files can still be shared. Favorites import from uOPL/wOPL is one-way: the next write saves RiptOPL's own OFAV format to favourites.bin, which those loaders cannot read back. Keep an original copy if you use them too. The settings home follows boot-directory discovery or Custom Settings Path; do not assume it is always mc0:/OPL/.

Release channels

Choose current development or a preserved development snapshot. Neither is a universal compatibility guarantee; check the release notes for the exact build and available files.

Channel	Tag	When to use
Rolling (Latest)	`rolling`	Latest code from the publishing branch (`rebuild/main`), rebuilt on every push and published as GitHub's full, non-pre-release Latest release. Best for eager testers; it may be unstable.
Current Fan Favorite Build	`current-fan-favorite`	Preserved development snapshot selected after positive feedback; compatibility is setup-dependent.

See Releases for the full asset listing and pull instructions. The short version: download the RIPTOPL-<version>.zip installable package, unzip it, and start with APP_RIPTOPL-PS2DEVPINNED/RIPTOPL.ELF when that best-effort flavour is present.

ℹ Already have RiptOPL installed?

This page is for a first install. To update one you already have, skip the package: the release carries a single loose RIPTOPL.ELF (the -OFFICIALROLLING flavour) whose filename and link never change. Download it and overwrite the RIPTOPL.ELF you already have — POPS/, EMBER/, neutrino/ and your settings stay where they are. Use the full package instead if you want a pinned flavour, or if any of those companion folders are missing.

What is inside the installable zip?

The RIPTOPL-<version>.zip package contains:

APP_RIPTOPL-PS2DEVPINNED/RIPTOPL.ELF — #1 recommended primary, built with a digest-pinned ps2dev SDK.
APP_RIPTOPL-OFFICIALPINNED/RIPTOPL.ELF — #2 recommended official pinned control.
APP_RIPTOPL-PS2DEVROLLING/RIPTOPL.ELF — #3 moving ps2dev:latest canary and the required-to-compile flavour.
APP_RIPTOPL-OFFICIALROLLING/RIPTOPL.ELF — #4 moving official ps2homebrew:main canary.
POPS/ — the single canonical release folder for POPSTARTER support. It contains POPSTARTER.ELF, the SMB externals, PATCH_5.BIN, and every loose BDMA usbd.irx.* / usbhdfsd.irx.* pair, including .ilink. No BDMA pair is embedded in RIPTOPL.ELF, and there is no duplicate release-root POPSTARTER/ folder. Only POPS.ELF — Sony's PS1 emulator — is not distributed here.
EMBER/ — the bundled external Ember PS1 core, unmodified and ready for the user-supplied BIOS and games.
neutrino/ — the bundled Neutrino external core, shipped extracted as a drag-and-drop folder (neutrino.elf + config/ + modules/) used by per-game Neutrino launching and network boot (UDPBD/UDPFS) (pre-populated with the UDPFS config). Copy the whole folder to a resolver location. Ordinary non-MMCE setups may use mc0:/neutrino/ or mc1:/neutrino/; for MMCE games using GameID card switching, use the MMCE game device instead (mmceN:/neutrino/, or under its Prefix Path). No separate download is needed.
Five .url shortcuts — PS2-Servers, udpfs-server, OrbitPS2 Manager, OPL PS1 AIO Converter GUI, and PS2RD CHT Manager. These are links to the maintained external tools; the tools themselves are not embedded in the RiptOPL package.

The final GitHub asset set contains archives by purpose (including the separate experimental RA package): the unified package, exact source snapshot, variants, and the language/debug packs when those optional jobs produce them. Bare loader ELFs and build/checksum manifests are not separate public assets; standard loaders are inside the unified package, and DualSense loaders are inside RIPTOPL-VARIANTS-*.zip.

Getting RIPTOPL.ELF onto your PS2

RiptOPL requires a way to boot unsigned ELFs on the PS2. The two most common are FreeMcBoot (FMCB) on a memory card and FreeHDBoot (FHDB) on an internal HDD; FreeDVDBoot is a separate disc-based entry point. Any method that can launch an ELF works.

1. Download the package

Go to the Releases page and grab the rolling development build or preserved current-fan-favorite snapshot. Download the unified RIPTOPL-<version>.zip installable package (the archive without LANGS, VARIANTS, DEBUG, RetroAchievements, or src in its name) and unzip it locally.

2. Copy RIPTOPL.ELF to your boot location

Use the ELF from APP_RIPTOPL-PS2DEVPINNED/RIPTOPL.ELF inside the zip when present; otherwise use the next available labelled flavour in the documented order. Where it goes depends on your boot method:

FMCB — copy RIPTOPL.ELF to a folder on a device that your launcher can access, such as a USB drive or memory card, then add a FMCB menu entry pointing to it. A common convention is mass:/APPS/RIPTOPL/RIPTOPL.ELF or mc0:/RIPTOPL/RIPTOPL.ELF.
FHDB — copy into an HDD partition the same way FHDB expects its launch targets.
Other launchers — place the ELF wherever that launcher is configured to find it; RiptOPL has no path requirements of its own.

The ELF filename itself does not matter to RiptOPL, only to your launcher's menu entry.

3. (Optional) Place the Neutrino folder

Copy the bundled neutrino/ folder (drag-and-drop: neutrino.elf + config/ + modules/, pre-populated with the UDPFS config) to a location RiptOPL can keep available through the launch handoff. For ordinary non-MMCE setups, mc0:/neutrino/ or mc1:/neutrino/ is supported. For MMCE games with GameID card switching, put the folder on the MMCE game device: mmce0:/neutrino/ / mmce1:/neutrino/, or under your configured MMCE Prefix Path. Auto probes the active game's prefix and device root before the memory-card fallbacks; Game's Device requires that co-located copy. If Neutrino resolves from mcN: on the MMCE slot, RiptOPL deliberately skips that slot's GameID switch so the loader is not displaced, which means the per-game card switch is not applied for that launch. A full custom path can still be set with neutrino_path in settings_riptopl.cfg. See Neutrino Core.

4. Prepare your storage device

OPL expects a specific folder layout on whichever device(s) you plan to load games from. You do not need to create these by hand — RiptOPL auto-creates them once you enable that device — but it helps to know what they are:

DVD/      ← DVD5 and DVD9 ISO images
CD/       ← CD-based game images (blue-bottom discs)
ART/      ← cover art images
CFG/      ← per-game settings files
VMC/      ← Virtual Memory Card images
THM/      ← themes
LNG/      ← language / translation files (see Languages)
CHT/      ← PS2RD cheat files
APPS/     ← homebrew ELF files (see Apps)

For the APA/PFS internal HDD, a usable configured data partition takes priority, followed by existing +OPL (root), then __common/OPL/. No partition is created; see HDD setup. For exFAT HDD (BDMAssault) and all other folder-based devices (USB, MMCE, MX4SIO, iLink, SMB), the folders live at the root of the device.

ℹ Auto-creation on device enable

When you enable a device mode in OPL settings and exit back to the game list, OPL automatically creates any missing folders on that device. Nothing is created on a fresh first boot, because every device ships off. You do not need to pre-create DVD/, ART/, etc. manually — just enable the device, save settings, and the directories will appear.

First boot walkthrough

Launch RIPTOPL.ELF

Boot through FMCB, FHDB, or your chosen launcher. On a fresh install you land on the start menu — no game-list tabs exist yet, because every device ships off. Enable a device and its tab appears, rendered by the Coverflow theme (RiptOPL's built-in cover-art carousel) once you have games in the right folders.

Enable your device

Navigate to Settings → Game Sources. Enable the storage device(s) you want to use. Nothing is on by default: turn USB on and set the BDM tab's start mode to Manual or Auto, then save. Games in DVD/ and CD/ appear after the first scan. For SMB, HDD, MMCE, MX4SIO, iLink, or network boot, enable the corresponding toggle and fill in any required details (IP address for SMB/network boot, etc.).

Save settings

Go to Settings → Save Changes (or the equivalent save action in the settings screen). This writes settings_riptopl.cfg to the config path and auto-creates the device folders. From this point on, RiptOPL remembers your preferences across boots.

Launch a game

Back on the main list, your games appear under the device tabs. Highlight a title and press Cross (or Circle for Japanese-layout controllers — the confirm button follows standard OPL behavior and is configurable). The game boots via OPL's built-in core by default. To use Neutrino instead, open Game Settings → Loader Core → Neutrino for that title. See Per-game Settings.

Opinionated defaults

Unlike upstream OPL — which ships with most features off and expects you to enable them — RiptOPL boots with a set of opinionated defaults that are on from the very first launch, before you have saved any settings. You can change any of them under Settings at any time.

Setting	Default	Where to change
Widescreen (16:9)	ON	Interface
Cover Art	ON	Interface → Artwork Settings
Notifications (popups)	ON	Interface
PS2 Logo	ON	Game Launching
Sound effects (SFX)	ON (volume 90)	Audio Settings
Boot sound	ON (volume 90)	Audio Settings
BGM (background music)	ON (volume 90)	Audio Settings
USB, iLink, MX4SIO, Internal HDD (exFAT)	OFF	Game Sources
Every start mode (HDD, MMCE, BDM devices, network, Apps, Favorites)	Off	Game Sources
Video mode	Auto (0)	Interface (menu only)
Theme	<Coverflow> (built-in)	Interface
Write Operations (rename, delete, VMC creation)	ON	General & System
Show GameID Barcode (Pixel FX)	On (POPSTARTER only)	Interface
Network Connectivity	Off	Game Sources

ℹ Start modes

A fresh install ships with every device Off, so no device tabs appear until you enable one in Game Sources. Once a device is enabled, pick its start mode: Manual keeps the tab visible and only populates the game list when you navigate to that tab and explicitly trigger a scan — no automatic background scanning on boot — while Auto scans that tab when OPL starts.

Config file: settings_riptopl.cfg

If you previously used an older RiptOPL build that saved as conf_riptopl.cfg, the new build automatically migrates your settings the next time it saves — you do not need to rename anything manually.

The config file is discovered and written in this priority order (first found wins on read; saves always go back to the same path it was read from):

The folder RIPTOPL.ELF was launched from (its working directory) — this is the config home
Only when the boot path cannot be determined does OPL fall back, in a fixed sequence, starting with the config.path redirect pointer file in the current working directory (the Krah bootstrap — it stores the directory of the last saved config and is rewritten on every save)
then mc0: / mc1: explicitly, then the boot device (mass: or hdd:), then MMCE, then BDM devices, then the BDM/internal HDD (hdd0:__common/OPL/)

Everything else — cover art (ART/), themes (THM/), VMC images (VMC/), per-game config files (CFG/), and favourites.bin — lives in the shared OPL/ folder structure and is read and written by any OPL-family build that understands those formats. RiptOPL will import an existing favourites.bin from wOPL or uOPL on first launch.

Cover art at a glance

All artwork lives in one place: the ART/ folder on the device the item is on. There is no second location and no fallback folder — if a cover is not appearing, the filename is what to check, not the path.

Only the key — the part before the suffix — changes with the kind of item:

Item	Key	Example
PS2 game	The game ID	`ART/SLUS_012.34_COV.png`
PS1 game (VCD, POPSTARTER)	The VCD's name	`ART/Spyro 2 (Ripto's Rage)_COV.png`
PS1 game (Ember)	The PS1 disc ID	See PS1 Games
App	The ELF filename	`ART/MYAPP_COV.png`

The suffix says which image it is — _COV is the cover, _SCR and _SCR2 are screenshots, _BG a background, _ICO an icon. Which of them a given theme actually draws is up to that theme; see Theme Engine for authoring, and Coverflow for what the default theme uses.

ℹ Many small files can be slow to open

On a slow device a folder of loose images costs one file open per cover. Cover Art .tar Archive (Settings → Interface, off by default) is an opt-in loader that also reads art from a single ART/art.tar alongside the loose files. See the Settings Reference.

Next steps

🚀Getting StartedEnd-to-end first game guide 🔌USB / MX4SIO / iLinkFAT32 & exFAT mass devices 💽Internal HDDAPA/PFS & exFAT (BDMA) ⚛️Neutrino CoreExternal core per-game + network boot 📦ReleasesRolling vs tagged, asset list, checksums 🔧Settings ReferenceEvery menu option explained