[Tutorial] DS Ripping Guide

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DS Ripping Guide by redblueyellow

So you want to learn how to rip from the DS? Well look no further! In this guide, you will find the information you need to be able to happily rip from your favorite DS games. I will mention multiple tools and programs in this guide, and all link will be available in the “Helpful Links” section.

Table of Contents:

1. Introduction
a. Emulators
b. Ripping Tools

2. Part 1: Sprites
a. “Hard Ripping”
i. Tools
ii. Save States
b. Tile Ripping
i. Tile Molester/ TileGGD
c. Straight-from-the-game Ripping (“Speed-Ripping”)
i. consoleTool
ii. Tahaxan
iii. Tinke

3. Part 2: Textures

4. Part 3: Sound Effects

5. Part 4: Models

6. Part 5: Miscellaneous
a. Fonts
b. Helpful Links
i. Downloads
ii. Tool-Specific Tutorials and Helpful Sites

7. FAQs

8. Conclusion and Credits

Introduction

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When it comes to ripping, the DS is arguably one of the easiest systems to start with. Emulators such as DeSmuME and No$GBA glide through gameplay with relative ease and compatibility, and there are numerous tools tailored specifically for the DS that allow for some games to be ripped in a matter of clicks.

Of course, some games are easier to rip than others, so there are multiple methods to get to the final product of a complete sheet. This guide should provide to be a helpful reference towards DS ripping or a good first step on your path to ripping success.

Emulators

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Some of the more common DS emulators include No$GBA, DeSmuME, and iDeaS, among others.

1. No$GBA
What started out as a Gameboy Advance emulator that eventually supported DS games. Although it plays through the games well, it’s functionality with sprite layers and backgrounds is extremely limited. Good for playing the newest DS release of your choice, but that’s honestly the bulk of its use.

2. DeSmuME
When it comes to hard ripping sprites from a game, this is a great emulator to choose. With a functional OAM viewer (sprites), layer disabler (backgrounds), tiles, and hopes for eventual 3D model viewing capabilities, DeSmuME has almost everything to make hard ripping relatively simple.

Also, DeSmuME allows for save states to be used, so you can go online (Gamefaqs tends to have a good selection of save states), download a save state and be transported straight to the end of the game without having to play through the whole game.

As for playing through games and fluidity, it can be slow at times depending on the game, but it is definitely a great option. Although I have yet to test it out, some versions come with wifi capabilities which can help to access certain sections of a game.

3. NeonDS, iDeaS, DSemu and Dualis
All of these are DS emulators, none of which I have tried out. If needed, I will check them out and write more in this section, but as of now I’m just recognizing they are available.

Ripping Tools

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Because there are tool-specific sections later in this tutorial, this section will be very simple and concise.

Once you get into ripping tools, you start to lean towards Speed-Ripping. The general idea of ripping tools is to open up the DS game and search through the files for the sprites, backgrounds, sounds, etc. By far the fastest method of DS ripping, but the reliability can be a bit spotty. Results can range from sprites being perfectly organized by character, to having all files being crammed into one, unknown-compressed file. It may take a bit of tweaking to get the final result, but it is highly recommended to give it a try before heading to hard-ripping.

Part 1: Sprites

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Usually the main reason to rip from a game is to find the game’s sprites.

”Hard-Ripping”

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A few years back, when DS ripping was fairly new, the only way known to rip from the DS was “hard-ripping,” or ripping straight from the emulator. You would play through the game, and either take screenshots or use the OAM viewer whenever the desired sprite shows on screen. While it is not the preferred method of ripping, it does work to get most of the sprites, with a few exceptions.

Tools

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Let’s start out with an example, how about “WarioWare Touched!”?


Open up the game in your preferred emulator, I tend to use DeSmuME. Start playing through the game, and once you get to the sprites you are looking for, go to the OAM viewer.


Notice how all of the sprites that appear on the screen are shown, with the background removed. This helps speed up the process of ripping, since there is a solid background behind the desired sprites. Just make sure the background color isn’t used in the sprites! Now you can print screen the OAM Viewer and get the sprites.

Now let’s say you wanted to rip the backgrounds instead. Go to the Map View this time, and all of the backgrounds should be in plain view.


Just print screen and you should have the backgrounds as well.

There is also a more efficient way, using the Layers option. Using the same example as above, we’ll try and get the sprites.


Instead of using the OAM Viewer, this time we will remove the background layers. Go to “View Layers” under the Tools menu, and click the “Main BG 0” option.


Viola! Now we can play through the game without having to keep referring back to the OAM Viewer.

To make it go even faster, use AnimGet to screen capture as you play through.

Unfortunately, this method always leaves a solid black background, so if the sprites have solid black as well, it could end up ruining the sprites. In such a case, it’s best to stick with the OAM Viewer.

NOTE: Look back at the Map View, see the highlighted text saying “Main Background 0”? Does the background look familiar? When removing layers, the layers you remove correspond to the background titles in Map View.

There are other tools such as the Tile Viewer and Palette Viewer, but for the sake of not dragging on, I won’t get into them.

Save States

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While it may not be directly related to sprite ripping, a save state can help to get to a specific point in a game where a character, boss or other object appears. There are multiple file formats; .dst, .duc, and .sav.

1. .dst
This type of save state is opened by simply going to the “File” menu and selecting the “Load State From…” option.

2. .duc and .sav
Technically called backup memories, these formats are most commonly found on save state websites such as gamefaqs. In order to open them, load a DS rom, wait for the white screen to appear, indicating that the rom has loaded, and select “Import Backup Memory” under the “File” menu.

If you’re have a game in mind that you want to rip from, go to the game’s Gamefaqs page and look under the “Saves” tab. Make sure the save is from the same region as your game, and you should be set. If there aren’t any saves available, try a quick Google search.

Tile Ripping

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Unfortunately, my knowledge of tile ripping is very limited. I will eventually expand on this topic more, but for now you can skip it if you would like.

Tile Molester/ TileGGD

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The premier tile ripping programs, they can open up any file as an image or palette, and allow you to form sprites (if the correct file) or random pixels (if you have no idea what you are doing ). Since I have more experience with TileGGD, I will base the below on it.



You start out with two options; opening up a file as a graphic, or opening up a file as a palette. Once you open a file for each option, you can start editing (if the file acts as both the palette and graphic, you only have to open with one option).

Let’s start out on the graphics side of things.
Under the “Image” menu, you have Format, Endianness, Mode, Skip Size, Width Skip Size, Height Skip Size, Zoom, Set Tile Size, Copy to clipboard, Go to offset, and Reload as. The main options you will need to worry about are Format, Mode and Skip Size.

1. Format
A fairly simple concept. The two selections that you will need to worry about are 4 Bit per pixel and 8 Bit per pixel. 4 Bit per pixel is mostly used for sprites, while 8 Bit per pixel is used more for backgrounds.
2. Mode
Not much to say, it’s either Tiled or Linear. I haven’t found a reason why it might be one or the other, just try out both and see which shows a clear image.
3. Skip Size
Used to line up the pixels to show a clear image. 4 Bytes is usually a safe way to go, but mess around with the image a bit, and you can change it from this:



To this:



Now that you have the image set up, let’s go to the other side of things, the palette! Under the “Palette” menu, you will see the Format, Endianness, Mode, Colour Order, Skip Size, Alpha Settings, Set Tile Size, Copy to clipboard, Go to offset, and Reload as. Since palette is a fairly simple concept, the only thing you need to know is to skip through the palette and find the right colors that match up.

Straight-from-the-game Ripping (“Speed-Ripping”)

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Now for the heart of this ripping guide. If there’s one section I would suggest you read, it would be this one. Because of ripping tools, you can cut a few days of ripping into a quick hour.

There are MANY tools used for DS ripping (too many to count), but today I’ll be focusing on consoleTool, Tahaxan, and most importantly, Tinke.

ConsoleTool

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What you will need:
-Java: http://www.java.com/en/download/index.jsp

Before I start, here are some of the icons you will need to know:
- DS rom
- Folder
- Unrecognized File
- Palette File
- Graphic File
- Cell File
- Screen File
- Texture File
- Model File
- Sound File

Console Tool is a nifty program that opens up DS roms, so you can view the files inside. While it works well with viewing sprites, because it uses a single-screen system, where a file you open covers the file tree you are working with, it can become a tedious program to work with. Nonetheless, it can still function well, so it is worth mentioning.

With Console Tool (and most all DS tools), in order to correctly view sprites you have to open the files in a certain order. This order is as follows:
Sprites: Palette, Graphic, Cell , ,
Backgrounds: Palette, Graphic, Screen , ,
Models: Texture, Model ,

Once one palette/ graphic/ cell/ screen/ texture/ model is opened, it is used for all file orders following it, until another palette is opened. For example, let’s say I want to view the sprites of the penguin enemy from Drawn to Life.


You may be asking, “If we need to open up a palette file first, then why isn’t there one shown?” This is because for Drawn to Life, they palettes are stored in a different folder, not shown above. In this case, the palette’s file name for Pengoon is “palObj_w1_2D.NCLR” because Pengoon is an enemy from World 1. No problem though, as we will open up the files as usual; palette, then graphic, then finally cell. When we open up all three files, it shows up as this:


Looks like it worked! From here, you can cycle through the frames, and start ripping your first sheet.

NOTE: You may notice that along with the .NCBR and .NCER files, there is a similarly named .NANR paired with each group of files. These .NANR files are animation files, which will be discussed later.
Anyways, now that we got that working, let’s try the Star Baki from World 2.

Here we have it, just open up the graphic and cell files and…


Wait, this doesn’t look right! The palette looks all screwed up! No worry, just go back to the “Palette” folder and open up “palObj_w2_2D.NCLR” along with the graphic and cell files.


There we go. Just remember to open the files in order, reopen each specific file corresponding to each sprite, and you should be fine.

Before I talk about Tahaxan, it’s important to mention that while ConsoleTool may lack in the sprite viewing department, it shows excellent models (Version 3.1). Without going too far into explanation, here is a quick example from Viewtiful Joe: Double Trouble!

Tahaxan

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A ripping tool that has gone a bit off the map because of lack of updating and difficulty finding a decent online download. Although I won’t be spending a whole lot of time talking about it, I thought it would be worth a mention. To my knowledge, it was one of, if not the first DS ripping tool of its kind. Pretty awesome, huh?

What you will need:
-Nothing!

Important Icons:
- Folder
- Unrecognized File
- Palette File
- Graphic File
- Screen File
- Text File
- Sound File

Before you start asking any questions, here’s a quick screenshot of Ivy the Kiwi:


There are a few things that you may notice right off the bat.

First of all, the usual .NCER files show up as unrecognized, what is that all about? Unfortunately, the most recent version of Tahaxan is from 2008, so while it may not be the most resourceful tool around, it is a helpful tool nonetheless.

Second, the file icons seem strikingly similar to those of ConsoleTool, why is that? I’m not completely sure why, but an educated guess leads me to believe that Tahaxan is an earlier version of ConsoleTool. Just a small observation.

NOTE: Unlike ConsoleTool, Tahaxan’s file order is reversed. This time, to correctly view sprites, the order is as follows:
Sprites: Graphic, Palette ,
Backgrounds: Screen, Graphic, Palette , ,

Tinke

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The moment you have all been waiting for! I don’t mean to put it on such a high pedestal, but this tool is kind of a big deal. Let’s start off in similar fashion to the previous sections, with what you will need and the icons.

What you will need:
-.NET Framework 3.5

Important Icons:
- Folder
- Unrecognized File
- Palette File
- Graphic File
- Cell File
- Animation File
- Screen File
- Image File
- Texture File
- Model File
- Sound File
- Compressed File
- Pack File
- Font File
- Text File
- Unimportant Icons

Although a lot of the icons have been recycled through each of the tools, Tinke has an immense amount of new ones to see, most notably the Animation, Image, Compressed, and Pack icons. These four alone have helped widen our reach to rip new games, with easier, faster, more efficient methods.

Similar to ConsoleTool, Tinke’s file order starts with the palette, and works its way up to the final file. There is one very minor tweak:
Sprites: Palette, Graphic, Cell, Animation , , ,
Backgrounds: Palette, Graphic, Screen , ,
Image: Image
Models: Texture, Model ,

The animation file allows for you to see the sprite’s animation, simple enough. The image file is basically a condensed version of the palette, graphic and cell files…
Another nifty feature of Tinke is hotkeys. Instead of moving your mouse to the “View” button every single time you want to see a sprite, just push a certain key on your keyboard!

Hotkeys:
Spacebar – view file
P – open file as palette
T – open file as tile (graphic)
M – open file as map (screen)
D – decompress file
C – collapse folder
X – expand folder

With Tinke, the files that are normally considered to be an unrecognized format can be opened as if it were any old .NCLR or .NCGR file. This allows for games with odd file formats to be ripped with relative ease, the trick is to know which files to open.

Anyways, to start out, I’ll go with an easy example. We’ll be ripping from Keroro RPG: Kishi to Musha to Densetsu no Kaizoku!


Let’s take a quick look at the screenshot. See in the middle on the right hand side, where it says “Recognized files: 58%”? This means that of all of the files available in the rom, 58% of them use one of the “important icons” from above. This is good!

Also notice that for all of the files pictured above, they use all four of the icons corresponding to sprites. So let’s open a few up and try it out!


Awesome! You may notice that I only opened the files up to “TalkChara_00_00.NCER”. This is because I wanted to show something, notice directly under the sprite the drop down bar “CellAnime0” and to the right of it, “of 6”? This means that in this group of .NCLR, NCBR, and .NCER files, there are multiple sprites. You can either cycle through the sprites through the drop down bar, or see them all at once by clicking “Show all banks”.

I won’t go into the “OAM Editor”, as most of the sprites that you will be viewing will be pieced together properly. Instead, let’s look at another DS game. This time, how about Pokémon Black? We open the rom and see…


HOLY CRAP, 99% recognized files?! This will be a piece of cake! I feel like ripping the accessories from the Pokémon Musical, so let’s find those, shall we? They’re sprites, so I’ll look for those sprite icons, I’ll be done in no time!

Anyways, to save endless searching (believe me, the Pokémon games need a lot of searching) we stumble across this folder:


Well this is stupid, I spent my whole day looking for these accessory sprites, and none of the sprite files ended up being them. I’ll just open up these conveniently placed texture files, and…


WHAAAAAAAAAT? This isn’t a texture, it’s a sprite! How did this happen?

Some files, specifically texture and model files, that you may think are one thing end up being a completely different thing. In order to prevent looking over sprites that you could have ripped, open up any and every file that seems important, you never know what you may find.

Now that we’ve gone through a few easy examples, let’s step it up a notch. How about Naruto Shippūden: Shinobi Rumble?


18%, that doesn’t look too good. :/ Instead of just skipping this game, I’ll open up the seim-obvious choice of the “battle” folder, then “graphics” folder, and see what files there are.

Well, crap! Nothing’s here! I’m just gonna give up and…

WAIT! Before you leave this game and assume that you can’t do anything, remember the hotkeys. Let’s just start with the first file in this folder and use the P hotkey.


NOTE: When using hotkeys, open files in the order of palette, graphic, map (P, T, M)

Okay, so it looks like we’re getting somewhere. Notice how there is a group of colors that look similar, all in a line? This means that there is a palette hidden in this file, “Action80x80.5txb”. Despite it being an unrecognized file by Tinke, it has the potential to actually be something of use.

Also notice that there are a few colors before the group of similar colors that seem a bit out of place, along with the colors after the similar colors. To fix this problem, go to the “Start byte:” and change the number in the box! Let’s try the number 24, just because.


Okay, so that works. Now that we have the palette working, let’s try opening the same file (“Action80x80.5txb”) as a graphic. Let’s press the T key then!

NOTE: When tweaking the “Start byte:” section, always go by even numbers. Each row is 32 “bytes” or numbers, and each complete box (all the colors shown in a box) is 512 bytes. Also a thing to note, if there is only one row of colors that seem to matter, you can switch the “Depth:” section to “16 / 16 (4bpp)” in the drop down bar. The “256 / 1 (8bpp)” option is for palettes that use a complete box, or at least more than the first row. Try messing around with it, and test what happens.


So this doesn’t look too good… If you read the note above, though, you will know that it would be smart to change the “BPP:” section to “4bpp (16 colors)”.


Hmm, doesn’t look any better. Let’s take a moment to think of anything else. Since I’m using this as an example in the guide, there has to be something that comes out of this file. So we’ve got “Image pattern:”, “Offset:”, “Width:” and Height:” left, along with a few other options. But if we look back at the file name “Action80x80.5txb” we notice that part of the name says 80x80. In case you were wondering, this is a helpful tip to change the width to 80. Also, for the sake of speeding up, let’s also change the offset number to 24 (the value we used to fix the palette earlier before). The result is this:


Aha! We got it to work! Unfortunately, not all games are as easy as these first three examples have been.

NOTE: Not all files are this conveniently named, nor does every palette have the desired color chain in the first 512 bytes. Clicking the “Display all palettes” button allows you to see every color in the palette, and determine how many bytes you need to skip to get to the desired outcome.

NOTE: A rule of thumb that can help you determine what width and height to choose: The only thing that matters is the width. While height allows you to view all of the sprites in the file, width lines up the pixels to form coherent sprites, instead of jumbled messes. Because the average tile size is 8x8, the most (if not ALL) of the graphics are going to have a width of a multiple of 8 (the most common being 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, and 512). When an image looks like the sprites are stretched by 2x, or shrunk by 2x, a good idea would be to change the width by 2. This is by all means a learning process.

NOTE: “Image pattern:” has two options, Lineal (supposed to say Linear) and Tiled. This is essentially the same as in TileGGD, whichever shows clearer images, use that.

These next 2 examples may be a bit shown a bit faster than the last 3, but I’m sure you’ll keep up.

Keroro RPG: Kishi to Musha to Densetsu no Kaizoku:


So we’re at a random sprite group right now, and while one section of the image looks good, the others seem to have the wrong palette. To fix this, use the “Num palette” option to cycle through the palettes. All of the correct palettes are available, there’s just all not available at the same time. This is most common with images that contain bulk amounts of sprites, or is a collaboration image.

Bomberman Land Touch:


Yet another example of a game that despite having a low recognized file percentage (1% ), is perfectly compatible for ripping. I’ll just cut right to the chase and say that the .dscr files are palette files (at start byte 16), and the .dsir files are graphic files (width = 32) With this information, we get this:


Although the sprite isn’t perfect, it is clear that with a bit of tweaking in paint, a clear image can be made. This is because with files that don’t have a normal format, they have a chance of being composed of tiles.

NOTE: When looking for files to test for palettes and graphics, keep in mind the extension of the average palette and graphic files, .NCLR and .NCGR. File groups that have similar extensions have potential to be hidden sprites. Files with the letters, p (Palette), c (Color) or l (coLor) can be hints of possibly having palettes, while files with the letters, g (Graphic), or i (Image) may hint to being graphic files. Similarly, c (Cell) and s (Screen) are common as well. As usual, it’s best to test around and try all possibilities.

FINAL NOTE: In the version of Tinke provided, once you view a sprite in Tinke, it is automatically added to your clipboard. This means that instead of print screening every time, or exporting each image and adding them to a sheet, you can view a sprite in Tinke and automatically paste it into a sprite sheet. Try it out!

FINAL NOTE: Some games that may seem incompatible with Tinke have game-specifc tools. Tools like these will be under the “Helpful Links” section of this guide.

FINAL NOTE: Unfortunately, not all DS games work with Tinke. For those that do work with the above methods, ripping should be a walk in the park. For the games that don't work, however, you will have to resort to "hard ripping." It still works just as fine as Tinke, but takes quite a bit longer.

Part 2: Textures

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These next 4 parts of the guide will be condensed and relatively short. This is because there is either not enough information to for a more extensive section, or because it is so simple.

If you are hoping to rip the textures of a game, the main tool you will need is Tinke. Just open up a rom, look for the texture or model icon and open the files. Once you see the textures, export. You’re done!
I’ll show you an example for good measure.

Viewtiful Joe: Double Trouble!:


Textures are stored in either texture or model files. In this case, the models contain both the textures and the models, so in order to see the textures, we click the “Show textures” button, located in the bottom right corner.


Now just click the “Save texture” button, and you have the textures for Viewtiful Joe.

You may have noticed that I decided to use the same model as an example for both ConsoleTool and Tinke. Notice how ConsoleTool shows the model a lot clearer?

Part 3: Sound Effects

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Yet another simple section. With Tinke, those pesky .sdat files can be opened, and the sound files inside can be extracted.

The Legendary Starfy:


Here we have “sound_data.sdat”. Just click the “View” button (or spacebar) and up comes another file tree, pictured on the right side of the screenshot. The folder you want here is “SWAR”. Inside will be tons of sound effects, which for the most part, will be named fairly well to recognize.


Wait, I don’t see the music note icon like I was expecting! I see this stupid pack file icon, this isn’t supposed to happen! Instead of staring at your monitor confused, just click one of the pack files. Notice how once you click a file, the “Unpack” button becomes highlighted? This means that you can click it, and click it you will!


WHOA, WHERE DID ALL THOSE FILES COME FROM?! Those are the sound files you were looking for! Once you click a file, the play button (indicated by a blue triangle, above the red square button) will become highlighted. Now you may play the sound, and save the file to your computer.

NOTE: When looking for sounds to rip, take note of the pack files that contain certain sound files. “BGM” or “BG” stand for background music. These are the instrument sounds that when mixed, make the video game music. What you want is “SE” or sound effects.

Part 4: Models

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Probably the shortest section in this guide, unfortunately. To my knowledge, it is currently impossible to rip the models from DS games. Although you can view them in ConsoleTool and Tinke, this is only good for viewing, and not extracting.

If anyone has knowledge they would like to share regarding this topic, it would be greatly appreciated!

Part 5: Miscellaneous

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Here we are, the final stretch! In this section, I will cover the bits and pieces that may be left of a game, meaning the fonts, and anything else I can think of.

Fonts

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Here I will share my limited knowledge of fonts. These can either be disguised as sprites, where a group image will contain all of the letters for a font in one image, or in an actual font file. Unfortunately, I can’t find an adequate screenshot to provide as an example, but when I do, I’ll be sure to add it here.

Helpful Links

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Here I will provide any links that I deem helpful to ripping, or important for this guide.

Downloads

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Oil of Vitriol (by Barubary) (used to open .NCLR, .NCGR, .NCBR, .NCER, .NSCR, .NANR, .NMCR, and .NMAR files)
Glycerin Map Viewer (by Barubary) (used to open .NCLR, .NCGR, .NCBR, .NCER, and .NSCR files)
No$GBA
DeSmuME
DeSmuME Wi-Fi
AnimGet (takes screenshots during game emulation)
Tinke (by pleonex)
ConsoleTool
Tahaxan
CrystalTile2 (interesting ripping/ hacking tool)
Puggsoy's Video Game Sound Converter

Tool-Specific Tutorials and Helpful Sites

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Tinke tutorial by Avegaille
Tinke website
Tinke GBAtemp thread
Console Tool thread
GameFAQs search

FAQs

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Now for the section that I’ve looked forward to the most. You can image how hard it was to have to wait until the very end of the guide to get to write this beautiful section, but that’s the unfortunate reality of a guide.

Q: I noticed that nowhere in this guide did you mention DSiWare games. What about Shantae: Risky’s Revenge, Mighty Flip Champs!, Cave Story, and Photo Dojo?
A: There is currently no method of ripping from DSiWare games. Believe me, I’ve looked into ripping from Shantae: Risky’s Revenge quite a bit.

Q: Well that sucks. 3DS games can be ripped from, right? I just got done playing Kid Icarus: Uprising, and those portraits are freaking amazing!
A: Nope, there doesn’t seem to be any method of ripping from 3DS games, either.

Q: Whatever. I noticed that you missed something huge in your explanation of (insert subject here). Also, the way you explained (insert subject here) was extremely confusing, and I had no idea what you were talking about. Is there anywhere I can send a hateful email explaining my disgust towards this guide?
A: Well of course! I highly encourage anyone to give any comments, concerns, feedback, questions, or anything that you can think of that can help this guide become more completed. My email that you can contact me at is [email protected], or feel free to send me a PM on the forums!

Q: So I read the whole guide. It’s nice and all, but now I want to rip sprites. What games are good to start out with?
A: First of all, let me just say thank you for reading! Here is a quick list I came up with of some games that will act as good introductions to DS ripping, separated into categories of increasing difficulty:

Easy:
-Keroro RPG: Kishi to Musha to Densetsu no Kaizoku
-Shining Force Feather
-Drawn to Life
-Ivy the Kiwi

Intermediate:
-Pokémon Diamond, Pearl, Black, White, etc.
-Rune Factory 3: A Fantasy Harvest Moon
-Drawn to Life: The Next Chapter

Hard:
-Tsukibuto
-Death Note: Kira Game
-Inazuma Eleven 3: The Ogre

Q: Wait a minute, those are all games you ripped from! I was looking for games that I could rip to submit! Where’s a list of those games?
A: I guess I can list some of those too. I suggest you look at some of the games above for some experience, as well though.

Easy:
-Any games from the Cooking Mama Franchise (Cooking Mama, Camping Mama, etc.)
-Brave Story DS
-Last Bullet
-Monster Puzzle

Intermediate:
-Tantei Jinguuji Saburo DS: Akai Chou
-Tokimeki Memorial Girl's Side 3rd Story
-Pururun! Shizuku-Chan Aha-* DS Drill Kokugo
-Naruto Shippūden: Shinobi Rumble

Hard:
-Bomberman Land Touch, Bomberman Land Touch 2
-Danny Phantom Urban Jungle
-Wi-Fi Taiou - Yakuman DS

Q: How long did it take to write this guide?
A: I first thought of the idea of writing a guide in early 2012 (I think), but I didn’t actually start writing until the beginning of summer. One of the more difficult steps was actually thinking of what sections were needed. After that was determined, I gave myself a few weeks of thinking of different topics to bring up in the guide while I ripped games for summer updates. Made a mental list, and started back up on writing mid August.

Q: ROMS!!!! WHERE DO I FIND THEM?!
A: That’s up for you to find out. Just use Google, and you should have your questions answered.

Q: So now that the DS guide is done, do you have any plans for other system ripping guides? GBA? Mobile Phone? PSX? Wii?
A: I don’t think I have the knowledge to write a guide for any other systems! If anyone does have extensive knowledge of a system, and is looking for someone to help write a guide, PM me! I might possibly think about it.

Conclusion and Credits

*

Welcome to the end! Despite being my first guide, I feel like it turned out quite well. Thank you for reading, and happy ripping!

Looking back at how I wrote this guide, I noticed that my tone seems a bit immature/ unprofessional/ too conversational (if anyone can think of a better word for it…). I sincerely apologize if this guide is difficult to read because of the way it is written.

Credits:
-pleonex, for making the amazing tool known as Tinke
-Barubary, for making so many of the awesome tools mentioned in the Helpful Links section
-Anyone who contacts me about an error, suggestion, etc. If it makes it on the guide, I’ll add you to the credits.

[Previous]

Since you like those icons so much, this here should contain most of them:

famfamfam silk icons

See, developers who aren't too artsy themselves often use icons made by artsy people.

Thanks for writing this guide, though!~


As for models, it's taken them a while to figure out the format but now we finally have a few working viewers - I'd guess it's only a matter of time until they have exporting options, too.

[puggsoy]

Oh wow you linked to VGSC

Anyway nice tutorial, I'm not really experienced in the area of tile ripping so I'll probably use this if I ever do that.

[Garamonde]

BOMBERMAN LAND TOUCH!!!! I tried ripping from it with Tinke earlier this year but gave up because I didn't think any of the files could be opened. I'm gonna try to rip everything I can find from this game if that's okay with you.
REDBLUEYELLOW I LOVE YOU!!!!!
*ahem* Okay with that aside, I have some questions. First off, you told me over PM that you could use a button to export multiple sound files. Well, it didn't work meaning I still had to save them individually which is tiring. Any way around this? Also, why are the actual sound files never named? I always have to name them myself, is that what you did with your sounds?
Back to Bomberman, I managed to assemble the sprite from your example.



And I assume those pixels at the top-left don't mean anything?

That's all I can think of ATM.

[puggsoy]

First off, you told me over PM that you could use a button to export multiple sound files. Well, it didn't work meaning I still had to save them individually which is tiring. Any way around this?

Exporting multiple sound files is possible but there isn't a button for it. What you do is select the folder where the files reside, and press R, then it'll give you a dialog to choose where the files go.

Unfortunately this doesn't work with sounds within SDATs. You'll have to export those one-by-one. This kind of sucks since a lot of games use SDATs, however I'm the one who requested multiple sound exporting so I'll ask him and see if he can add it for SDATs too.

[redblueyellow]

@ Mighty: Yeah, the R button is supposed to be a hotkey for exporting multiple sound files, but since I have yet to have it work properly, I felt that removing it from the guide would be good temporarily.

Also, I noticed you saw the Bomberman Land Touch section. The stray pixels in the top-left of the image are just filler pixels, they seem to be in every sprite that uses tiles, and they don't mean anything that I've seen.

Also, thanks for the replies guys! I honestly ran out of time with trying to get all the specific details in the guide, so I'll be updating it a lot to polish it up.

@puggsoy: Yep! I felt that the program could be a big help if anyone wanted to dive into sound ripping. Hope you don't mind.

[puggsoy]

'Course I don't mind, I'm honoured that you find it helpful. The more people use it the better, vgmstream is a fantastic thing and I think a lot of people will benefit from VGSC wrapping it in a GUI.

wow that sentence sounded nerdy

[Garamonde]

Question again RBY, is BLand Touch! hard because you have to piece together tiles or because of file structure or something else? Because I can't find the right palettes for other graphics even if they seem to have the same number in the names.

[redblueyellow]

If I remember correctly, Bomberman Land Touch is hard because it uses a lot the difficult aspects of ripping. (unrecognized files, tiles, possibly hidden palettes?). Try checking the palette with "Display all palettes" there might be multiple palettes in the file.

[ewtHOTD]

I need help
I can not rip the backgrounds and tile set of the match
Adventure time: ice king Hey why d'you steal my garbage
if it is not asking too much could you make a video
to be easier to understand
(I do not think it right because I am Brazilian and I can not speak English I used google to translate )

[Previous]

Hello ewtHODT. Please don't use changed fonts and colours for your posts, it makes them look out of place and tends to make them harder to read.

The game you're asking about uses an unusual compression method and cannot be ripped as easily as many other games and this guide does not cover the very game-specific tricks necessary to rip from it.
Greiga Master managed to rip the sprites from the game, but I do not know if he also ripped or would be able to rip the backgrounds and tilesets, too.

[senjen]

awesome tutorials btw have you tried using 3D via printscreen in ConsoleTool and Tinke to see if it is possible to extract the models?