The VG Resource

Hey, decided to make a new thread instead of use SuperAj3's thread, partly because I'm likely to submit sprites from other PL games than The Last Specter. However, if a mod thinks I should use his thread instead, feel free to move this post to it.

I initially ripped these so that I can base my graphics for Puzzel off them, and I might even use them as temporary placeholders. However I also enjoy ripping them in general, and it's nice to contribute towards rips for this awesome game, since I haven't seen any puzzle sprites from any of the series.

You can see my sheet at the bottom of the post.

These are my first ever DS rips, so if I've done something wrong or missed anything, feel free to point it out. I also wasn't sure what to use as a background, if anyone has better suggestions that's fine too.

This was pretty heavy, biggest sheet I've done so far. If anyone's wondering, my method is disabling layers with iDeaS, screenshotting, then cropping with GIMP. Not sure if this is the best method, but I'm comfortable with it and decided to see how it went, since that's how I do my Genesis rips. They look all right to me, and I enjoyed it, so yeah

By the way, I was thinking that this could go under another heading, "Puzzles". Later on, stuff like puzzle-specific graphics could go there, such as background images, and sprites that appear only in one puzzle. These could be grouped, something like 10 puzzles to a sheet.
Also, graphics that appear in certain types of puzzles (like pegs and ropes, tetris blocks, etc) could all go on a single sheet. I realise that the multichoice buttons are in this sheet, but I decided to include them. If anyone thinks I should leave them for the puzzle-type-specific sheet, that's fine.

Phew, got all that out of the way. Well, I hope you enjoy my rips!

Below are all my current sheets for ease of accessibility.

The Curious Village


The Last Specter


London Life

Cool, can never have too much Layton!
I suggest a background that's somewhat dull, easier to see what's going on!

Thanks

I see what you mean. It was kinda hard to choose the right background colour, since there're so many different colours going on in the sheet. This is the one iDeaS uses when disabling layers, but I'll see if I can find something duller.

Green is actually okay as a background color, but if you'd really like something better and can't find your own, look at redblueyellow's sheets and borrow the dark teal color he uses (other people use it so it's good). I also suggest going into the color mixer thing and just play around with the brightness, greyness and hues to get a much broader variety of colors, and you'll likely find one that contrasts well with the sheet content (I highly suggest that you don't use default colors unless they're green, magenta or cyan). I have to get creative sometimes to find a color that's easy enough on the eyes, yet the sprites remain crystal clear (check out some of my Pokémon Mystery Dungeon sheets, namely Hoppip Family - I couldn't use my usual bluish shade because it blends in with Jumpluff's colors).

Also, yes screenshotting is like, the default method of ripping and most of us do it (including myself with some things), so it's cool. I'd like to recommend trying DeSmuME instead of iDeaS as well because it's got lots of cool features (even if the tile and map viewers are useless). I use it for ripping from M&L: PiT since it won't run on NO$GBA (not sure if Layton will run on it either, though I'd give it a shot too). And do whatever you feel is best with your sheets. I've never played a Layton game so I can't offer any suggestions for organizing and what to put on what sheet and whatnot.

Well, I'll have a look at some alternative colours. I'll also check out redblueyellow's sheets and see if anything fits. If I don't upload a new version in 24 hours, you can just use this one.

By the way, the reason I use iDeaS is because it's the only emulator I've heard of that can disable layers. I'm unsure if I'd be good at all with ripping without layer disabling, since with it I can just use GIMP's Color Select tool and remove the green or whatnot.
However I will check out DeSmuME and see how it is. I'm fairly sure NO$GBA can't disable layers, and even though it's fast, Professor Layton doesn't need a fast framerate for ripping.

EDIT: Heh, just Googled "desmume layer disabling" and apparently it can. I'll check it out tomorrow.

That's the thing, with DeSmuME you can speed up or slow down the game (with the "Increase Speed" and "Decrease Speed" hotkeys that you can custom set respectively). It's extremely handy being able to pause the game and go one frame at a time with "Frame Advance".

Wow, that's cool. I'm totally using that.

By the way, while playing some puzzles last night I realised that I'm missing quite a few images. So you can forget about that 24 hour thing, I'm gonna be getting these sheets over a couple of days.

I knew something was missing, I think I was just fooling myself that I had it all

There's actually a program called Tinke which can view the graphics of the first game... Maybe you should look into that?

I certainly will. I probably won't get onto the first game's puzzle graphics for a while, but if Tinke does what you said it does, I might get round to it sooner than planned. Thanks!

EDIT: Well, I checked it out and it made me realise just how much puzzle images I've missed. Of course, I'm ripping from a different game, but in terms of graphic components they're not that different.
I'd better get onto it. It may take a while though, this time I'm gonna double-check that I've got everything.

Sorry about the double post, but editing my other post wouldn't show a new post in the thread, which I think is necessary in this case.

I've been checking out DeSmuME (64-bit version, since we recently upgraded), and it's nice so far. Overall it's much nicer than iDeaS, faster, and has a heap of tools. I haven't figured out how to move frame-per-frame yet, though.
However, I've come upon a wee problem. Similar to the Genesis palette issue, which Jetters will undoubtedly recall, I've figured out that DeSmuME gives slightly different palettes to iDeaS. The thing is, I'd like to keep all my sheets consistent, not only among myself, but also among all other NDS sheets on the site (the majority of which I'm assuming we ripped using DeSmuME). Another thing is that, if I were to rerip my already half-finished sheet, it would be a hell of a lot of work. However, if necessary, I would do it.

So, does anybody have any suggestions? Should I rerip the whole sheet, or is there a quicker alternative?

There is a setting for it under the backlight setting, something like poppy bright.

You need to go under Config > Hotkey Config. I thought I mentioned this before, but you can assign the "Pause" and "Frame Advance" commands to any key of your choice (as long as it doesn't conflict with your game controls or another emulator key) like so:



As you can see I have my Pause set to "W" and my Frame Advance set to "V". This is right next to my game controls (which you can see here), making it convenient and easy for me to stop the game at any time. You can set these in such a way that is most comfortable for you. Anyway, you first need to pause the game. Then, you can hit Frame Advance and it will advance one frame. Keep pushing it each time you want to advance one frame. You can either keep pressing the key to keep advancing in frames, or you can hold it down and it'll continue playing frames until you let go. This is invaluable for games that move so quickly that it makes AnimGet miss some frames like it did for me with M&LiT.

Sorry, I just felt the need to spell it out. Hope you can get it working now!

Thanks for that. I probably would have figured it out, I hadn't really looked into it that much anyway, but you saved me a few steps.

(02-09-2012, 07:47 AM)Dazz Wrote: [ -> ]There is a setting for it under the backlight setting, something like poppy bright.

I can't find anything of the sort. You're probably thinking of NO$GBA, that's got backlight settings and whatnot.

I think I'll just rerip. It'll take long, but it'll be satisfying when it's done, I'm sure.

If you're still thinking about using Tinke to rip the first game (or to make your life easier), this is how it looks like. You won't have problems with palettes either since it reads it from the ROM itself.

Basically, it's easier to use Tinke for the first game for Layton (as compared to Inazuma and its multiple experimenting with Palette, Tile, Map xP) as you only need to press the View button and save/screenshot the image immediately. Last Specter is still not working right with this program atm (and that includes London Life). I already viewed some of the images using the latest version, and it gets everything, even the individual buttons and small objects... of course I'll leave that to you.

Oh yeah, just to note, some Japanese stuff are still left in the English version. IDK why they didn't remove it or something. xD;

Yeah, I had a look at The Curious Village in Tinke, and it is indeed very nice. It's a bit of a pain that The Last Specter doesn't work with it, but no big deal.

I did notice the Japanese stuff they left in. It may just be my ROM, but I couldn't manage to find English counterparts of some bits. For example, I think I recall the Input Number interface having Japanese buttons, with only Back being English. But it's probably the fact that I didn't look hard enough, I wasn't really into it that much.