Very nice, got these up! How are you doing this exactly? He gives you screenshots from his system and you manually cut out stuff from them?
That sounds hard to do with the graphics as complex looking as they are. Very nice stuff!
Just for information, I'm dropping this project since there are too many things which bug me. The smoke animation from the chimneys is a pain in the ass to remove, if not impossible. Then you have a shitload of animals floating around and also immobile NPCs.
I will search for an easier RPG to approach. My current favorites:
Sword of Mana (GBA) & Magical Vacation (also GBA)
- I've never really ripped from a GBA game before, so I could use some hints what to do and how to get the stuff from the RAM (tile-ripping, I've seen that at the Pokemon sprites from Mighty Jetters).
Star Ocean 2 (PSX)
- I played it until disc 2 with these 5 dumb dungeons (field of love, strength and so on). Seriously, why do I have to know in advance that I have to go through 5 fricking huge dungeons with no storyline or whatsoever. I'm currently really unmotivated, but at least it's easy to rip from.
Chrono Cross (PSX)
Someone requested the portraits, so I googled for the game and found it rather appealing to me. Not sure about the backgrounds and sprites, if there are too many complications, I will not rip from it.
Magical Starsign (DS)
No idea how easy this game can be ripped. I hope it will be better than Black Sigil, which is currently impossible.
Are you planning to rip characters from Star Ocean 2, or backgrounds?
Either way, that'd be awesome. I loved that game.
Characters are impossible for me (I'm ripping with epsxe and VRAM), but the environment, battle backgrounds and enemies are very easy.
I have saves from every place in the game (until you have to enter these five dungeons on disc 2). If you want something specific, tell me (or I give you the savefile).
By the way, Summon Nights 1-3 (GBA) looking also very good. So many good RPGs to rip from...
I don't think I can't help with the extremely in-depth/complex stuff with GBA ripping, but hopefully, if you can't figure out Tile Molester or Tile Layer Pro (which is the program I used for PMD because I was too dumb to know how to use TM back then), you can find some info on TM online (I can't link due to not being on a CPU, but Ragey's Flying Omelette website has LOTS of useful advice).
You should look into a few PSX RPGs, there's some pretty cool ones still not ripped.
I'm now going to look into Samurai Spirits RPG.
Or you could look into some PSP games?
Are there any tools for PSP? I just found a few for Final Fantasy 1 and 2, but I have no idea for the rest. There is also no good emulator around.
Samurai Spirits RPG is awful, forget about this. The RAM shows lots of screwed up stuff. Sprites, tilesets, battler... it's just horrible (Tried the ice overworld and Nakururu).
Have you some other PSX-RPGs in mind?
Langrisser IV and Tear Ring Saga - there's a translation of Langrisser IV, and Tear Ring Saga had one going but looks like it was dropped or something, but the sprites are easy to extract since they're just TIMs... But I don't know any names.
Also, Chocobo's Magical Dungeon 2...
Saiyuki: Journey West
and Legend of Kartia
I really, really want to rip Vandal Hearts, but I can't get the palettes for the sprites.
My emulator is broken though, so not sure what to do.
I have not too much experience with TIM extraction, always used VRAM. Tear Ring Saga is in Japanese and if you can't find any names, it would be wiser to put them all on one sheet labeled with "Characters" and "Portraits".
- Langrisser IV and V are looking very good, I will keep both in mind.
- CMD2 looks too uninteresting, seems to be 3-D.
- Saiyuki: Journey West has cool sprites and so has Legend of Kartia.
When I looked on Youtube after these games, I found a video of Thousand Arms (English), maybe I will try this game first.
Edit: Mind to send me a epsxe quicksave from Vandal Hearts? Maybe I can help you with the palettes.
I've found the files for Vandal Hearts' palettes, so there's my next project! All palettes are minorly different so it'll be a lot of effort, but by ho!
edit: OH! And Tim ripping is super easy - use PSicture to rip from the game's ISO, and it'll find everything - and if that doesn't work, just check the disc for the file you reckon has images in it, and open those in PSicture instead.