Tool recommendations?

[Emma]

I'm looking to start ripping, and I was wondering which tool(s) you would recommend for ripping from GBA games?

Specifically, I'd like to get all the item sprites from Final Fantasy Tactics Advance.

[puggsoy]

Well typically if you're hard ripping the most-used emulator is VBA, as usual you just disable layers, take a screenshot, crop and such and put them on a sheet. I haven't actually done it myself before but I can't imagine it'd be much different than NDS ripping with DeSmuME.
I'm not sure if you've ever ripped before or how much you know about it but if you need more detail on how the process would go just say.

There might be a way to rip them directly from the ROM too but I know nothing on that front.

[Dazz]

It's always game dependent, but if I recall with GBA I would usually give a go on Tile Molester (Plus) to start off, to see how that goes.
http://www.romhacking.net/utilities/515/

There's a tutorial for it somewhere, I believe one in the ridiculously outdated tutorials section of tSR.

Otherwise, if nothing comes up, it would likely be easiest to screenshot rip... But that would be a massive hassle with item icons, so you'd want to look into some cheats to hack items into your save file so you get all the icons in as few screenshots as possible.

[Garamonde]

I figure FF would be one of those games that wouldn't be data-compressed, unlike SOME games (grrr Bomberman Jetters GBA ), so I'd say tile programs like that would probably work yeah.

[Emma]

I'd also like to try my hand at a couple of SNES games (namely Magic Knight Rayearth and Sailor Moon: Another Story) so assuming they're not compressed I could use Tile Molester for those too, right?

[Previous]

FFT in TiledGGD:


Looks like (unlike several other graphics in the game), character and enemy tiles and item icons are not compressed. Don't ask me about palettes, though!

When ripping using VBA (OAM, Map and Tile Viewer are your friends), keep in mind the game has colour options (LCD A, LCD B, TV or something). I think I used the default option when I did my FFT rips.

[Emma]

Ugh, okay, so I have it open and I found the actual tiles but none of them look right? Like. Ugh, what am I doing how do

like the tiles for the items (i assume) are all split? like there's half the tile and then the other half is next to it?

(what am i doingggggg help me oh my god)

[Previous]

Use the arrow keys left/right to make the view less wide (16 px / two tiles). Up/down change the height.

[Emma]

I... don't get it? Up/down/left/right just moves everything by row/pixel/whatever when I try.

[Previous]

That's weird. You can check the Menu -> Other -> Shortcuts to get a list of them.

[Dazz]

Hold in shift and press left, up, down left or right.
(TileMolester, Previous. Not TiledGGD. I find TM to be a bit more simple of an introduction to tile ripping.)

Sometimes the graphics look a little weird, so you gotta fiddle them about a bit too using + and - on the numpad.

[Emma]

Alrighty, so I've reached this point (via much use of adjusting the offset etc), but... Now what? (Using the flan because it's the easiest sprite to make sure I've got right, I guess.)

Spoiler

[Previous]

I think you're lucky and these are rather simple:



If you can, work with an 8x8 or 16x8 grid.


Would you mind telling me the palette offset? :>

[Emma]

Aha! Thank you, that makes a lot of sense. I was hoping not to have to do too much work, sigh, but ah well.

(I would... if I knew what that meant? Oh man what am I even doing dfjgkhgkjh)

[Previous]

I'd have been interested in the position of the palette data within the ROM, though as far as I can see, TM doesn't really that anywhere.


I don't think it'd be too hard to come up with a small tool to automatically rearrange the sprite pieces.


PS:

Found the palettes at 0x40F290+ :-)