The VG Resource

I am trying to rip LEGO Battles, and when done, LEGO Battles: Ninjago

I'm currently hard-ripping the first one, I tried some direct-ripping, but no luck getting the various tools to open files.
I can probably get everything through hard-ripping, it's just tedious and time-consuming, so I'd like to try direct/fast-ripping, if I can...


I also did a quick test of the second, and hard-ripping will be even more difficult than the previous, especially because some major changes happened between the two games. The map and tile viewers in Desmume, for me, are proving quite worthless on this game, because the pallets are entirely wrong. That is going to make nearly every major part of Battles: Ninjago much more difficult to rip than its predecessor.

Please help, I have looked at the tutorials, and still no luck.
I am new to ripping sprites from anything other than web games, particularly, flash.
Handheld and console games are quite different.
I only barely have learned enough to do some hard-ripping, and I'm sure I could improve on that at some point.

Anyways, for the first game, I can get by with hard-ripping.
The second one, I'm really not sure. It will be quite difficult without being able to rely on the map or tile viewers, especially when i get to ripping tiles!

But really, hard-ripping is tedious and error-prone

I have legitimately no idea what you mean when you say "hard-ripping" or "direct-ripping," but could you post some example files that you're trying to rip?

(08-11-2015, 05:46 PM)Daxar Wrote: [ -> ]I have legitimately no idea what you mean when you say "hard-ripping" or "direct-ripping"

I assume by hard ripping, he means taking a screen capture from the game he's planning to rip from and extract the sprites from that
and Direct-ripping is ripping directly from the files

"Hard-ripping" refers to ripping by the method of taking screenshots of the game playing in an emulator and removing the background (either with background layers disabled or, if that isn't possible, manually erasing the background). Even with programs like AnimGet that can automatically take screenshots it can be a tedious process, especially if the sprites have many frames. "Direct-ripping" probably refers to ripping directly from the game's files.

Hard-ripping is often the easiest (or sometimes the only feasible) option for ripping from consoles, particularly older systems like SNES and Genesis, if tile rippers are insufficient or the effort of ripping tiles directly outweighs that of hard-ripping. Nowadays modern systems like the Wii U and 3DS (and even the Wii and DS) have explorable file systems with actual files you can extract and convert, so it's not as abundant, but when ripping from old systems hard-ripping is still a popular and viable method.

(08-11-2015, 08:18 PM)puggsoy Wrote: [ -> ]"Hard-ripping" refers to ripping by the method of taking screenshots of the game playing in an emulator and removing the background (either with background layers disabled or, if that isn't possible, manually erasing the background). Even with programs like AnimGet that can automatically take screenshots it can be a tedious process, especially if the sprites have many frames. "Direct-ripping" probably refers to ripping directly from the game's files.

Hard-ripping is often the easiest (or sometimes the only feasible) option for ripping from consoles, particularly older systems like SNES and Genesis, if tile rippers are insufficient or the effort of ripping tiles directly outweighs that of hard-ripping. Nowadays modern systems like the Wii U and 3DS (and even the Wii and DS) have explorable file systems with actual files you can extract and convert, so it's not as abundant, but when ripping from old systems hard-ripping is still a popular and viable method.

yep

anyways, i've tried consoletool, i've tried tinke... i believe on tinke, lego battles shows-up as 41% recognized...
I don't remember what consoletool was, but it was probably less...

My problem, though, is what files are not recognized...
the palette and animation files, from what i can tell, are being recognized...
but, the cell and screen files (think that's what they're called???) aren't...
So, i've basically got a color swatch, and an animation file with no assets for any given sprite...
Not exactly useful...
I'm kinda new to this, though, so maybe I'm doing something wrong, and there is a way to open these...but I have yet to find it... I also have tried exporting the player card folder and running them through oil of vitriol, and same issue... at least a third to half of the required files aren't recognized...

For those wanting to see some of my efforts:
http://marsmissionwiki.wikifoundry.com/p...te+preview

This is the current target of my rips...

I could provide screenshots of what it looks like in consoletool and tinke, since there might be something pretty significant I'm missing... if anyone wants to see that?

I wasn't asking for a preview of what you've done. I asked for some files you're trying (and failing) to rip sprites from. If you have a file that's not recognized by tools you're using, I'm asking for those. Preferably a few different ones, and a few of each, to get a good cross-section of the file types.

(08-12-2015, 04:47 PM)Daxar Wrote: [ -> ]I wasn't asking for a preview of what you've done. I asked for some files you're trying (and failing) to rip sprites from. If you have a file that's not recognized by tools you're using, I'm asking for those. Preferably a few different ones, and a few of each, to get a good cross-section of the file types.

oh ok

i'll get to that when i return...gotta go afk so my mom can use her computer...

(08-12-2015, 05:09 PM)DarkGrievous7145 Wrote: [ -> ]

(08-12-2015, 04:47 PM)Daxar Wrote: [ -> ]I wasn't asking for a preview of what you've done. I asked for some files you're trying (and failing) to rip sprites from. If you have a file that's not recognized by tools you're using, I'm asking for those. Preferably a few different ones, and a few of each, to get a good cross-section of the file types.

oh ok

i'll get to that when i return...gotta go afk so my mom can use her computer...

this should be the main palette:
<deleted files because no longer relevant>

No promises, but it should apply to most of the unit and item sprites, if not all of them

these are the sprites:
<deleted file because no longer relevant>

and these...
<deleted file because no longer relevant>

are the player cards, which each have their own palettes



This is what I see when opening the rom in Tinke
ignore the UI_ExtraColors, that's a palette for the UI, which is trivial to hard-rip. I simply opened that so I can extract the full color palette for it. I've had to UI mostly ripped since 2014, when I initially started this rip. (then my computer decided to crash...only recently recovered my files)


Anyways, will this suffice for now?

Just looking at the file extensions, they should be very to easy to rip with Tinke.

I can probably take a look at it when I get home from work tomorrow, but for now trying opening the files in this order: NCLR (p on the keyboard), NCBR (g), NCER (if any).

1. Open the palette file per normal method (spacebar). Sounds like these show up in Tinke as readable files.
2. Go to a NCBR file, and press g (graphic file). This opens the file with the corresponding palette from step 1.
3. There are most likely some NCER files in there as well. If so, open them with spacebar. If not, not to worry. All the sprites will be available from the NCBR file, you will just need to manually separate them in Paint or another image editor.
4. Since there seem to be NANR files (animations), NCER files are most likely somewhere in the rom. You can check the files by viewing the Hexadecimal and looking for headers, but it isn't necessary.

Good luck!

(08-12-2015, 09:21 PM)redblueyellow Wrote: [ -> ]Just looking at the file extensions, they should be very to easy to rip with Tinke.

I can probably take a look at it when I get home from work tomorrow, but for now trying opening the files in this order: NCLR (p on the keyboard), NCBR (g), NCER (if any).

1. Open the palette file per normal method (spacebar). Sounds like these show up in Tinke as readable files.
2. Go to a NCBR file, and press g (graphic file). This opens the file with the corresponding palette from step 1.
3. There are most likely some NCER files in there as well. If so, open them with spacebar. If not, not to worry. All the sprites will be available from the NCBR file, you will just need to manually separate them in Paint or another image editor.
4. Since there seem to be NANR files (animations), NCER files are most likely somewhere in the rom. You can check the files by viewing the Hexadecimal and looking for headers, but it isn't necessary.

Good luck!

tried that
no luck

since the files are "not recognized" , it won't open them...
all i really know about the ncbr files in here is they have the header PMOC ,whatever that's supposed to mean

I also have noticed I have an outdated version of Tinke (0.8.2.0) , but I cannot find ANY downloads for the 0.9.0.0 version. Wondering if that has anything to do with it?

The ncer files appear to be very close to the nanr files, actually...i've found them...
but, those graphics files just...IDK WHAT...

Yeah, if you'd like to give this a shot yourself, please do, tell/show me if anything different than my results should happen. also, the latest version of tinke would be nice, seeing as i just cannot find it.

https://github.com/pleonex/tinke/releases for the latest version of Tinke

well, tried that

recognized file percentage has actually dropped to 38% (not that i notice any difference)

And....
STILL not recognizing the ncbr or ncgr files

As you said, these files have a PMOC header, which makes them harder to use. Unfortunately just chopping that off with a hex editor doesn't really help, they're still unreadable. They don't seem to fit any of the specifications I'm finding online though, it might be some unique modified version.

I don't really have any ideas on what to do about it, but just figured I'd point out that they're not regular NCGRs.

(08-13-2015, 10:22 AM)puggsoy Wrote: [ -> ]As you said, these files have a PMOC header, which makes them harder to use. Unfortunately just chopping that off with a hex editor doesn't really help, they're still unreadable. They don't seem to fit any of the specifications I'm finding online though, it might be some unique modified version.

I don't really have any ideas on what to do about it, but just figured I'd point out that they're not regular NCGRs.

yep...

me either...
Crack the format is only solution other than give-up on them that I can think of, but I'm certainly not capable of that!
Wish I knew how to do that...seeing as lots of gamedevs create special formats

They are compressed (PMOC is COMP backwards )

You can use this to decompress.

Run it.
Drag onto window.
It will decompress them.
They are regular NCGR files now.

Some are weird and are not actually compressed, but still have the "COMP" header.
This should auto remove the header, but if it doesn't you can just manually delete it up until it has the "NCGR" magic. Or you can upload the file and I can fix the program to do it.