The VG Resource

(11-10-2009, 12:34 AM)DJGameFreakTheIguana Wrote: [ -> ]I ended up asking this in the request area, but what the best way to rip Mame sprites? I'm trying to rip this game called Crude Buster, but using animget to take the shots and trying to cut them out is kinda hard and time consuming, plus some of the colors on the sprites match the Background.

(11-10-2009, 08:39 PM)DJGameFreakTheIguana Wrote: [ -> ]Aww man, I never knew what the hell that was. Thanks man. I Figured out some of the controls, but how do I get the sprites to come up? All I'm getting is 2 parts of the Background, letters, and life bars.

(11-14-2009, 10:29 PM)koopah Wrote: [ -> ]Ok I tried ripping Rhythm Heaven with Tahaxan (I can't get past the first stage on an emulator >_> and it made more sense to use it) and I can't use these files:

I extracted them and I don't know what the heck I'm doing. I know what most of the files are but I don't know how to USE them.

(04-09-2009, 07:47 PM)Kosheh Wrote: [ -> ]yarr, I wrote the plugin -w-
you're welcome tSR

So I guess this means I have to explain everything.

1) Get Tahaxan. Tahaxan's made for its user-friendliness (read: spriters)
2) Upon opening it there's a "plugins" folder. Stick RHYTHMHEAVEN.XML in there. Tahaxan recognizes the game by its ID and enables rippage to commence.
3) In Tahaxan, once RH is open start by opening up the grapharc directory. Then, choose any stage from the list.

In any of its subfolders (or sub-sub) typically it'll be broken down like this

name.NANR <-Nintendo Animation Resource.
controls animations on-screen. It pretty much tells the sprites what to do.
name.NCBR_LZ <- "CB" stands for "character background". In RH, this is pretty much all the foreground animations. Compressed; this is why you're using Tahaxan.
name.NCLR <- "CoLor": Just the palette.
name.NCER <- not quite sure what this does again - it does something for the character layer.
name_bg.NCGR_LZ <- "Character Graphic". By now you've probably realized the two are backwards. This is the background image.
name_bg.NSCR_LZ <- "Screen Coordinate". This tells the NCGR how to display.

you'll also have some folders:
"prologue" - the intro, not the training part. off the top of my head, this contains an NCBR of moving characters in the intro sometimes and the game's name, and an NCGR of...well, the game's intro screen
"epilogue" is the ending scenes. Easy because there are no NCBR files.
training parts sometimes have an extra folder.
"v#" are just the different variations of the game you'll see in Remixes and "part 2"'s you'll see ingame.

"LZ" signifies LZSS compression, but Tahaxan - and my plugin - take care of that for you.

Continuing, when opening a file in Tahaxan, the order is usually

NSCR -> NCGR -> NCLR
[screen cords] -> [graphic] -> [palette]
but sometimes you won't always have the luxury of the screen coords

So this means backgrounds are easy to rip
Characters, however will be much trickier, but I'll explain it as best I can.
When you click an NSCR, it tells the program the tilewidth and tile height of each image. Yay!
When you click NCBR -> NCLR, it can't guess the tile height or width, so you have to input it yourself...and usually you have a ridiculously high number.
You'll need a calculator for this part.
Most character images in Rhythm Heaven come in three sizes:

Small (16 pixels wide) [e.g. Idol's hands]
Medium (32 pixels wide) [e.g. Idol's head]
Large (64 pixels wide) [e.g. Idol's legs]

Divide the absurdly huge number it asks for by any of these three numbers. Then input it in Tahaxan when prompted like:
16x????

You'll notice when doing certain sheets some parts will appear squashed or stretched. It's easiest to do the math with the three different numbers (16, 32, 64) and then save all three sheets that you obtain with this method, then separating the sheets according to what came out clearest.



whew

shawn you better rip the idol game next - "ami" as it is in the game's filestructure

EDIT: might wanna warn you, sometimes Tahaxan will just get cranky and crash on you. don't say i didn't warn you.

(11-14-2009, 10:54 PM)Gabby Jay Wrote: [ -> ]

(11-14-2009, 10:29 PM)koopah Wrote: [ -> ]Ok I tried ripping Rhythm Heaven with Tahaxan (I can't get past the first stage on an emulator >_> and it made more sense to use it) and I can't use these files:

I extracted them and I don't know what the heck I'm doing. I know what most of the files are but I don't know how to USE them.

Kosheh made a plugin to view the sprites from the game
http://shawnpwns.anet-hosting.com/heaven...HEAVEN.xml

(11-15-2009, 07:44 AM)koopah Wrote: [ -> ]Hm I keep getting a 404 message.

(12-03-2009, 01:49 AM)DJGameFreakTheIguana Wrote: [ -> ]I doubt that the tool I'm about to ask about exists, but someone on another forum who's started doing genesis rips asked about it, so I'm testing his luck, as well as my own: Is there such a tool for genesis emulators with layer control, that can change the color of the backgrounds one the layers are disabled, making sprites with the same shade as the background color easier to rip?
Also, is there a tile program that works with genesis emulators?

(12-11-2009, 12:06 PM)Original_Xavier Wrote: [ -> ]How Do You Rip From WiiWare Games?