[Tutorial] Ripping with Tinke (NDS)

[Avegaille]

I think it's time that I wrote this tutorial for those who are interested in using this program. I'll put a couple of games that work so far with Tinke as examples for this tutorial.

What you need:

- Tinke - rev136
- NET Framework ver 3.5 (you won't be able to use Tinke without this)
- Your choice of picture editing software (Paint, Photoshop, etc.)
- The ROM of the NDS game you want to rip (don't ask me for ROMs, k? )

Official site (where the code is so you can compile it yourself): http://code.google.com/p/tinke/

Tutorials in here:

Sprite Ripping (let's use 999 as an example):

- Once you open up Tinke, you will get an Open box, and this is where you choose your ROM. After that, you'll see something like this:



*I suggest deselecting Windowed at this point as to avoid a lot of windows on your screen once you start ripping. But for this tutorial, I will use the Windowed function.

- As of the moment, this program works with only the sprites/mugshots for 999, so let's focus on that. Go to char and you will see a long list. Just choose one of them and click View. You will see something like this:



There are two ways for this. You can either choose to Print Screen this and Paste into your picture editing software or click Save.

(NOTE: Clicking Save for 999 will result you with a black background if you use .bmp . Be sure to change the type of file to .png to allow file transparency.)

It looks easy, right? You can browse through the game that Tinke is compatible with and you'll find a lot of images (depending on what you see).

Here's another game with a much complicated step. Pokemon Platinum. For this example, we're going to mess with the Battle Interface.

- Go to battle -> graphic. You will see some .narc files, right? Select the first one and click Unpack. You should have something like this:



See those icons after the file names. File1 and File2 are both Map files, while File3 is a Tile file, and File4 is a Palette file.

- For this to work, we need a Palette file first. So, you can select File4.RLCN and click View. You should see something like this:



(if you deselected Windowed, this should be by the side of the main window. Something like this.)

- You can choose to close the palette window if you want. After that, we go to File3.RGCN and click View. You will get something like this.



Looks weird, doesn't it? You can close this window if you wish, but if you deselected Windowed, you can ignore this step. We'll go to the last step, which is the Map. In this case, there are two maps, so I'll just go with the first one.

- Select File1.RCSN and click View. You will see something like this.



Oh, but wait, it looks weird. That's because the width is 512. We need to change that to 256. Once you do, you'll see the real thing. File2.RCSN is the separated thing (of the buttons or something). You can also click on View for that and you should see something like this.



You can Double-click the image to see the full resolution and you can either Print Screen or press Save. Either method works.

The order of this method is always Palette -> Tile -> Map. Some games don't show which is which (like Inazuma Eleven) so you have to experiment with these 3 functions through Open As.

Now, let's go to Texture ripping. As of the moment, I have only tested this with Inazuma Eleven. We'll use Inazuma Eleven 3: The Orge for this one.

Texture Ripping:

NOTE: I suggest using the Windowed feature when ripping Textures.

- Open the ROM and go to data_iz -> model -> char. You should see a lot of .pkb files. Unpack pbf.pkb and you'll get this huge list. For now, let's go with File0.pac_ and press Unpack. You'll see something like this.



You will see that single file.

- Now, click View and you should get this window. It'll look like this:



Um, yeah, you can play around with this if you want with your mouse, but it'll look weird. You see that Show Textures button? That one is what we need to press... and then you'll see this:



Oh look it's Endou's face. XD You can choose to either use Save Texture or Print Screen and Paste to your image editing program.

Sound Ripping:

Well, this is delayed tutorial... anyway, time to put up the sound ripping (or previewing) feature of Tinke. We'll use the dub version of Inazuma Eleven 2 Firestorm, because I can. As of this time, I can only say that .SAD and .AXD files are supported by the program... unless there are other types of sound files out there...

- Open up Tinke and go to data_iz -> sound -> en. You should see lots of .SAD files (no, they're not sad, mind you). Lucky for us, Tinke converts this with ease as if we're playing it from a media player. It should look like this:



- Click View and you should get a window with a play and stop button. You can listen to the sound/music from there. Note that if you don't stop the player before previewing the next file with View, the first file you open will continue to play in the background until it is over.



- Click Export to Save As .wav (Wave file). From here, you can look for your own .wav to .mp3 converter. And you're basically done.

NOTE: To export/convert multiple .SAD or .AXD files, first select the folder where they belong, Press R and choose the folder to put them into. It'll convert it into .WAV files.

NOTES:
- When opening Tinke for the first time, it'll be in Spanish. You can change it back to English via Languages but you will have to close the program after that before it'll take effect.

- Keep experimenting if you are able to unpack some of files of a ROM. You might just find things others haven't found.

- Hotkeys for your convenience (thanks to pleonex for telling me the new additions as of rev 135) :
- P -> Palette
- T -> Tile
- M -> Map
- D -> Unpack file
- X -> Expand node
- C -> Collaps node
- Spacebar -> View button
- R -> Export multiple "supported" sound files

- You're pretty much out of luck if Tinke can't even unpack some of the files. A lot of games are compressed and such. But if you wish to have a specific game be supported by Tinke, you can try contacting the programmer (pleonex) yourself through the link I put out.

[Garamonde]

This can rip textures too? Fascinating! Thanks for this tutorial, this will be helpful.

[Avegaille]

It can but it might depend on the game or something. xD

I'll work on the sounds next, but I think anyone could figure that out easily... *bricked*

[John2k4]

A note for viewing graphics; you may need to manually increase the image size for graphics files that don't have an accompanying screen data file with them (make them taller and/or wider so you can see everything), since it only exports what is visible.

Great Tutorial - I've been using Tinkie all day to work on my Pokemon editing!

[Avegaille]

Thanks dude, and yeah, I should add that under notes or something. xD

[puggsoy]

Is there any way to mass-export sound files? Suppose I have a folder full of .SAD files (50 or so), and I want them all out in .WAV format. If I extract the folder I just get them as .SADs, and I don't want to go exporting every file individually.

Right now I'm looking if I can convert them after extracting them with an external program, but if Tinke has the functionality to do this that would be awesome.

[Avegaille]

Is there any way to mass-export sound files? Suppose I have a folder full of .SAD files (50 or so), and I want them all out in .WAV format. If I extract the folder I just get them as .SADs, and I don't want to go exporting every file individually.

Right now I'm looking if I can convert them after extracting them with an external program, but if Tinke has the functionality to do this that would be awesome.

Unfortunately, you have to do it the hard way... OTL

You need to export them individually if you want .WAV files. Folder extraction (and insertion) only works if you really want to replace dub voices with the original Japanese voices (provided that they do have the same file names, chances are they will be (with IE anyway)).

But yeah, I think another external program might be helpful for conversion of .SAD files to .WAV xD

---

Then again, there's always another option of asking pleonex... couldn't hurt to try. *bricked*

[puggsoy]

Hmm, the only thing I could find that could convert them properly was a library called vgmstream, which is especially created for decoding video game sound formats. It had a test program along with it, but as it was a command-line program unfortunately I can't use it for mass-conversion, which is what I'm looking for in the first place.
It converted it properly though, and it has a massive range of formats. In the future I might look into making a program which uses the library, I'm sure it would help a lot of people.

Anyway, for now I guess I'll have to use Tinke's built-in function. If you could tell me how to contact pleoNeX that would be cool (preferably email), maybe he'll consider multiple export. It would be handy for other file types as well.

[TGE]

Hmm, the only thing I could find that could convert them properly was a library called vgmstream, which is especially created for decoding video game sound formats. It had a test program along with it, but as it was a command-line program unfortunately I can't use it for mass-conversion, which is what I'm looking for in the first place.
It converted it properly though, and it has a massive range of formats. In the future I might look into making a program which uses the library, I'm sure it would help a lot of people.

Anyway, for now I guess I'll have to use Tinke's built-in function. If you could tell me how to contact pleoNeX that would be cool (preferably email), maybe he'll consider multiple export. It would be handy for other file types as well.

VGM stream is a drag 'n' drop program.

[puggsoy]

Oops, forgot to try that.
However, if you drag 'n' drop, any output is named dump.wav, so I'd have to rename every file. Also, if the .SAD file has a Loop value of true, the resulting .WAV file has the sound looped a few times, whereas Tinke gives you it once (a looped version is optional).

[TGE]

If you use it with CMD, you can change how much it loops and the name of the output file. Again, I cant get it to work for me.

Oops, forgot to try that.
However, if you drag 'n' drop, any output is named dump.wav, so I'd have to rename every file. Also, if the .SAD file has a Loop value of true, the resulting .WAV file has the sound looped a few times, whereas Tinke gives you it once (a looped version is optional).

[Avegaille]

Anyway, for now I guess I'll have to use Tinke's built-in function. If you could tell me how to contact pleoNeX that would be cool (preferably email), maybe he'll consider multiple export. It would be handy for other file types as well.

Ways to contact him are either through GBATemp, his site where the code is... or even here (he has an account here You can see it in the thanked by of the first post). I don't have his email though, but the Google Codes or even his source codes give a hint of what his email is.

[puggsoy]

I've seen him on GBATemp, but I'd rather not make an account unless it's necessary. I'm guessing that his account here is rarely used, since he's got 0 posts (although I could try PMing him).
Anyway, Google Code gives me his email after entering a CAPTCHA (the "..." is just against spambots). I'll see if he's up for it.

Thanks!

[puggsoy]

Success! He emailed me back and gave me a link to rev 136-4 (which I think is the latest). To export multiple .SAD or .AXD files, select the folder with your files, press R, select output folder, and it'll export all the files in that folder. Might want to add that to the tutorial, Avegaille.

In addition, while I was waiting I made my own program that can mass-convert sound files from games, which uses that library vgmstream that I mentioned earlier.

[Avegaille]

Success! He emailed me back and gave me a link to rev 136-4 (which I think is the latest). To export multiple .SAD or .AXD files, select the folder with your files, press R, select output folder, and it'll export all the files in that folder. Might want to add that to the tutorial, Avegaille.

In addition, while I was waiting I made my own program that can mass-convert sound files from games, which uses that library vgmstream that I mentioned earlier.

I added it, along with the link of the latest versions... Thanks for the info... xP

And ooh, interesting... 8D