Need Tile Ripping Help

[stardustandsunshine]

I'm sorry if this is the wrong place to post this--I checked the rules and I thought this was the most appropriate place.

Anyway, I'm really stuck. Someone asked me to attempt to rip sprites from "Harvest Moon: Welcome! Wind's Bazaar" for the DS because I had previously done some sprite sheets for another Harvest Moon game. That one was just a few that someone else had missed, and I got them by playing through the game and doing screen shots, but for a variety of reasons, I don't want to do it that way this time. (For starters, the game isn't out in English yet and I speak absolutely no Japanese at all.)

I'm running into a problem, though. I used NDSTool to open the .nds file and get the stuff inside out, then opened faces_data.bin in CrystalTile2. (Judging from the file names, that's most likely where I'll find what I'm looking for.) I got a long string of black squares in a grid, with smaller green squares inside, which I think is what I'm supposed to be looking for, but I don't know what to do from there.

I also tried opening the .nds file in Tahaxan, but I'm not getting much further with that. I did find one image that was long and narrow like a sprite sheet, but I tried every single palette I found and with all of them, it was either solid black or solid medium gray with a black outline. I think the program just doesn't know what to do with Harvest Moon games, because it had a question mark in front of faces_data.bin, and I got pretty much the exact same thing when I opened another Harvest Moon game. I *know* the other file has useable images because someone else already extracted them.

And I saw somewhere that Tile Molester was compatible with DS games, but I couldn't get it to open a single .nds file on my hard drive, only the GBA one, which is nice, I don't think that one's been done yet, but it's not what I wanted.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I have no experience with tile ripping and don't know anything about coding or anything too technical, so this may not even be possible for me, but I'd like to try.

[Omegakyogre]

I always use Tile Molester, but Tile Molester can't open .nds rom images.
You have to use NDSTool to extract the files out of the rom, then find the individual files that contain the sprites from which you will be ripping. Use Tile Molester to open THOSE files instead of the rom image.

Once you've done that, it's hit-and-miss testing time: you have to change the Codec with which you're viewing the file around until you find one that shows up a 'sheet' that looks like a bunch of jumbled, miscolored sprites rather than just garbage pixels.

At this point, you have to "byte forward" until the sprites line up into pieces, and then you'll have to "decrease width" (it's a button) until the pieces line up into full sprites. Then you find the palette somewhere in the file, and once you do that you're golden...

I won't go into more detail because
A- Chances are there will be some hiccup or problem in one of the steps I've already said
B- You may not want to use Tile Molester
C- I don't know if Tile Molester will be a decent option because I don't know what the inside of the Harvest Moon rom looks like (and it DOES make a difference; how it's organized, that is).

Welcome to the fun, patchwork, held-together-with-duct-tape world of program tile ripping.

[stardustandsunshine]

Thanks, that was extremely helpful. I didn't know Tile Molester would open the broken-apart files--I thought it needed the whole ROM to work. (I was wrong before, BTW. I can't get NDSTool to work for me, it just flashes a small black DOS-style screen and that's it. It was DSBuff that I used to open the .nds file.)

I think I might finally be getting somewhere with Tile Molester, or at least further than I was with CrystalTile2 or Tahaxan. In 4bpp, I'm getting some things that could be faces (or, when I do the bytes forward thing, possibly a tree, or Marge Simpson on acid), I can see what might be the outline of a woman's hair (it's even red, which is the right color) in one part and the guy with the turban in another, but it's still random pixels, just slightly more organized than they were before. I guess I just need to keep playing with settings? I think I've found the palette, there's one in the same directory called "people_pal_data.bin," but if it's the right one, how do I use it? I tried to import a palette using "all supported formats" but it wasn't there.

I know nobody's going to be able to give me step-by-step instructions because Harvest Moon doesn't seem to be organized like most other games, but I'm still kind of lost. I don't mind doing the work, but it frustrates me when I'm stuck and can't figure out the answer on my own.

[Omegakyogre]

Sometimes the palettes are inside the files themselves.

So, you've byte forwarded and lined up the sprites somewhat. Now you need to 'decrease width' until you see full, stand-alone sprites ripe for the pickin'. If you think you've found an external file which might contain the palette, you're going to have to edit your tm_spec.xml file to have it include .bin files (or whatever format) in order for it to be "supported."
I don't have it open right now, but you might just be able to copy one of the other file type blocks and replace the extension with your desired one, or it might be as simple as adding it to a list in the file.

MAKE A BACKUP OF THE FILE FIRST. Especially if you're unfamiliar with code in general.

By the way, this should be discussed in the "Spriting/Ripping Questions" sticky in this forum, if I'm not mistaken.

[stardustandsunshine]

Actually, there's a very good reason why I didn't post this in that topic: It was created a little less than 24 hours *after* my original message. But since it's there now, I guess that's where I'll go.

Thanks again, you've been a tremendous help! I think I'm almost there, the blobs are recognizable now, but still not right. If I could just get everything else figured out, I could deal with not having the palette, since I have someone willing to do screenshots for me and I could just recolor each psychedelic LSD-colored sheet to match the screenshot (although it would be nice to be able to do it the "right" way)