SNES Ripping Tutorial with bsnes-rawpalettes & vSNES

[Barack Obama]

SNES Ripping Tutorial with bsnes-rawpalettes

Contents:
1.0 What is this and how do I use it?
1.1 Download links
1.2 Game / save / screenshot / code directory
2.0 Emulator setup
2.1 Window size
2.2 Filters
2.3 Configuration for colours / ingame controls / capture keys / etc.
2.4 Inserting codes
3.0 How to rip sprites / tiles / maps / palettes
3.1 Tile Viewer
3.2 Tilemap Viewer
3.3 Sprite Viewer
3.4 Palette Viewer
3.5 Effect Toggle
4.0 How to operate with regular Savefiles & Quicksaves
4.1 Regular Savefiles
4.2 Quicksaves
5.0 Afterword

1.0 What is this and how do I use it?
The SNES emulator bsnes+ gives you brighter colours than the original palettes and the true colour mod bsnes-rawpalettes fixes that.
Nothing else gets changed.
Copy the mod files into the main directory of bsnes+ and overwrite everything. If the old .exe remains, delete it and use the new one.

1.1 Download links
bsnes-plus (base)
https://github.com/devinacker/bsnes-plus
bsnes-rawpalettes (true colour mod)
https://mega.nz/file/W1oFyaSZ#UclkXPCVQK...Eh1dKfp4qo
Source for bsnes-rawpalettes:
https://www.vg-resource.com/thread-41182...#pid675404 (Random Talking Bush)

1.2 Game / save / screenshot / code directory
It's all in the same place, the CHT-file is created the first time you put in a code for a game (see 2.3).
You can open it with a text editor and see which codes you have for this game.
SMC = game rom, SRM = game save, BST = bsnes quicksave, CHT = text file for codes, PNG = screenshots

Also, please don't start the emulator and manually load the ROM in, just click on the ROM to directly launch it in bsnes-rawpalettes.
Right-click on the ROM, select "Properties", then "Open with", then choose bsnes-rawpalettes and check the box to always open it with this emulator.

2.0 Emulator Setup
Now we're talking about the setup for the ripping process, you don't want to deal with tiny windows or screwed colours.

2.1 Window Size
I'm sitting here at an UHD monitor (2160p), therefore I'm using Scale 3x. Anyone else below that should be fine with 2x. Just try around and find what's best for you.


2.2 Filters
Don't use any filters, as they will decrease the quality of your rips significantly.
Same goes for Smooth Video Output which needs to stay unchecked, as it will smear the entire screen.


2.3 Configuration for colours / ingame controls / capture keys
Settings - Configuration ... gives you a few tabs to play around with, but the most important ones are video and input, the rest isnt' really important.
It's just important that your colour adjustment (contrast, brightness, gamma) is always 0% and that you set up keys for capture screenshot, pause & frame advance.
Ah yes, and the ingame controls of course. Controller Port 1 "Gamepad" refers to gamepad and keyboard, so you can set up keys for either one of them.
Personally, I find it easier to use the keyboard instead of a gamepad, but that's up to you.

Not so important configurations

2.4 Inserting codes
Pretty straightforward, Tools - Cheat Editor gives you everything you need.
Some codes only work for a specific version of the game, like USA, Japan, Germany, Europe, etc.

A good code source is https://gamehacking.org/ , you can even request codes on their Discord server (IF someone is willing to help you, but my experinces so far were positive).

3.0 How to rip sprites / tiles / maps / palettes
Tools - Debugger - S-PPU lets you use various viewers (Tile Viewer, Tilemap Viewer, Sprite Viewer, Palette Viewer).


3.1 Tile Viewer
The tile viewer shows you tiles and sprites. Most importantly, activate the Magenta colour for the background. This way you ensure that the colours don't clash.
You can also zoom into the tiles (1x, 2x, 3x, etc.) and check the box for auto-update, which means the contents of the tile viewer change depending on what is going on in the game, otherwise it stays frozen from the moment you open it.
The upper palette bars show the palettes for tiles, while the lower ones are for sprites. The first palette bars are usually for simple things like menu bgs or elements with very few colours or stuff that is used everywhere. It changes depending on the game.


3.2 Tilemap Viewer
My favorite tool, I work a lot with this viewer to create maps for a lot of games. It's also so much better than vSNES, since it auto-updates the map as you move around to capture it.
Just make sure to activate the magenta colour for the background and check the box for the auto-updater. Layer 3 isn't used that often, it's mostly layer 1 and 2 that are important.
Things like Custom Screen Mode, Override Tilemap or Show Grid can be ignored, as I see no use for them. You're welcome to try around, though.
How it should look like (complete map part):

How it should'nt look like (broken map part, divied into 4 pieces)

This viewer depends a lot on walk through walls-codes, since you have to position yourself in a way that the map doesn't appear broken.
The big strength of this viewer is the fact, that you can just put the captured screens right next to each (without overlap)
Because usually, to create a map you would make screenshots where parts overlap to make sure they connect to each other.
My advice: Go to the top left corner of the screen, move from the top to the bottom and everytime the viewer shows you the full map part, stop right there and switch between layer 1 and 2 to capture it.
If you have a few garbage tiles on the edges (usually from other map parts), move carefully towards them and let the auto-update correct it. Then you can capture it.
In case it doesn't correct (can happen at the end of the map, when the map part is a tad smaller than one screen), just cut the garbage tiles off.

3.3 Sprite Viewer
For ripping sprite animations, activate magenta colour for the background so the colours won't clash. And of course, auto-update so your viewer reflects the ingame happenings. Show Screen Outline is rather annoying and can be unchecked.
This is the moment where you need the contents of 2.2, which are pause and frame advance. Not sure what you're using to capture these frames, but I'm using SnagIt 8.2.2 (Build 225) from 16 February 2007 (which is ancient stuff).
It's one of these neat tools where you set up one button on your keyboard, press it and then mark the area you want to capture. The image is then saved to a predefined folder on your harddisk.

Btw, the checked boxes are sprite parts, this way you can also erase sprites which are on other sprites or just blocking your view. If you click on a sprite, you can see its part in the list (picture 2).

3.4 Palette Viewer
Useless, you have all of this in Tile Viewer, therefore you can ignore it.


3.5 Effect Toogle
The path for Effect Toggle is same as in 2.3, it's just on another tab as the Cheat Editor. Personally, I wouldn't use this one, as the other viewers are way superior.
The functionality is a combined sprite viewer / tilemap viewer, but with less control. You cannot change the background colour to a non-clashing pink and also can't erase sprites on other sprites.
You can deactivate certain layer parts and certain sprite groups, but it's rather useless. The other viewers at least give you the ingame screen as a bonus to orientate yourself, while here you edit the ingame screen itself.




Map ripping with Effect Toggle is also not advised, since the emulator always cuts it off at the map borders. The tilemap viewer on the other hand will always show you the full thing, so use this one instead if you want to rip maps.

4.0 How to operate with regular Savefiles & Quicksaves
As described in 1.2, SRM is for regular saves and BST is for quicksaves. You can freely move these around to other folders, as you can only have one regular save file and 10 quicksaves at a time.
The name of the save must always be the name of the ROM, so if you have Terraniga (Europe).SMC, then your saves are Terranigma (Europe).SRM and Terranigma (Europe).BST1, Terranigma (Europe).BST2 and so on.
You can only rename the quicksaves, like BST9 to BST4 to have quicksave no. 9 as quicksave no. 4, but the rest of the name has to stay the same.
Usually saves from one region-defined rom doesn't work with another region-defined rom, for example you can't use saves for Terranigma (Japan) from Terranigma (Europe). In some cases though, it works out and the saves are usable, but it depends.

4.1 Regular Savefiles
The savefile you create ingame (SRM). In Terranigma's case, you start up the game, choose your save file from a menu (picture 1) and start at the last save point (picture 2), where you can save again (picture 3).
These saves are only useful to create quicksaves, after that you don't need them anymore.


4.2 Quicksaves
The gold standard for saves. You can use them in a matter of seconds, save and load at any point in the game and you have 10 quicksave slots at a time before you have to overwrite them or copy the files into another folder for later use.


5.0 Afterword
I hope you enjoyed this tutorial.
bsnes-rawpalettes is by far the most powerful emulator to rip from SNES games, also because it always provides true colours in contrast to bsnes+, snes9x or zsnes.
The only other alternative for true colours is actually a tool called vSNES, which works with zsnes quicksaves ( and I think also snes9x quicksaves, but I haven't tried it).
vSNES will also get its own tutorial, just for the sake of completion and for people to see how it compares to bsnes-rawpalettes.

[Barack Obama]

SNES Ripping Tutorial with vSNES

Just for the sake of completion, it has minor advantages / big disadvantages towards bsnes-rawpalettes.
Another tool (which I won't cover) is YY-CHR, which has different versions (an older and a newer one): https://www.romhacking.net/utilities/119/ & https://www.romhacking.net/utilities/958/

Contents
1.0 How it works and what it can do
1.1 Download link
1.2 Interface
2.0 The 3 viewer tools
2.1 PalViewer
2.2 MemViewer
2.3 SceneViewer
3.0 How to work with the viewers in combination
3.1 MemViewer & PalViewer
3.2 PalViewer, MemViewer & SceneViewer
4.0 Afterword

1.0 How it works and what it can do
vSNES 2.91 is a tool which imports zsnes (and maybe snes9x) quicksaves to extract backgrounds, tiles, sprites and palettes in true colour.
Both vSNES (SceneViewer) and bsnes-rawpalettes (Tilemap viewer) can also view mode 7 backgrounds, deactivate wobble effects (for example: wavering fog) and see through hardware-generated screen tint.

1.1 Download link
https://www.romhacking.net/utilities/274/

1.2 Interface
Click on the folder in the upper task bar to select a rom and then select the corresponding zsnes quicksave (ZST 0, ZST 1, ZST 2, etc.).



2.0 Introducing the three viewer tools
Called PalViewer (Palette Viewer), MemViewer (Memory Viewer for raw tiles / sprites) and SceneViewer (Background / Sprite Viewer), these three tools are supposed to be used in combination with each other.

2.1 PalViewer
Shows you the palettes stored in the quicksave, you can also recolour single colours by clicking on them.
This will affect the MemViewer and if you want to revert the change, just reload the quicksave.


2.2 MemViewer
Here you can see all tiles and sprites stored in the quicksave. You can use different decoders, but usually it's 4-Bit. FX is rarely used (Star Fox).
With window offset, you can turn the page to see more of the VRAM / WRAM / ROM contents (which you can also select).
ROM is bigger than WRAM, WRAM is bigger than VRAM. Their contents differ heavily from game to game.
Window Size just determines how much you can see in pixels (16x48 means 16 pixels wide and 48 pixels tall). 16 pixels width is usually the best for viewing sprites and tiles but again, it sometimes depends.


2.3 SceneViewer
Very powerful viewer, as it shows you the current screen (picture 1) and background (Picture 2) from the quicksave, the corresponding sprites and allows you to erase sprites which block other sprites (picture 3-4).
The "invert" feature is also useful, as you can show all previously erased sprites and vice-versa. With "show all" you can just revert any change you did before. This is also the case when you reload the quicksave.
If you want to change the background for sprites in SceneViewer, just click on the bottom right and choose "custom".



3.0 How to work with the viewers in combination
These viewers are supposed to work together, here is what you can do with them.

3.1 MemViewer & PalViewer
Changing colours in the PalViewer palette bars leads to a colour change in MemViewer as well.
You can use that to change the background to a non-clashing magenta.
Selecting a palette bar in PalViewer also recolours all tiles and sprites in MemViewer.


3.2 PalViewer, MemViewer & SceneViewer
Hovering over a sprite or tile in SceneViewer changes the palette in MemViewer and also make the square cursor in PalViewer jump to the corresponding palette.
This hovering action also makes MemViewer jump to the corresponding sprite or tile.


4.0 Afterword
An old but still very powerful tool which provides true colours just as good as bsnes-rawpalettes, but its strength relies more in tile ripping since you can easily search quicksave / rom internals better (WRAM, ROM) and generally have more options in terms of viewing certain parts.
Since it is not an emulator, it needs external quicksaves to get anything done. This makes the ripping process for bigger maps very tedious and slow, same goes for sprite animations.
And since the providing zsnes emulator is very wonky and just not good on the technical side anymore (adjusting screen size, for example), I can only recommend the zsnes / vsSNES method if you want to take a deep dive into WRAM / ROM areas, since bsnes-rawpalettes can't change the viewing area (width x height) for these.
VRAM viewing on the other hand is just as good as in vSNES.

[Barack Obama]

Both tutorials have been finished.

I will use this post as a changelog, in case I change something.

[Hattok]

Thank you SO MUCH for this tutorial and for informing me on the color differences!