Super Nintendo ripping tutorial (ZSnes & VSnes)

[daemoth]

1st way: In-game Snapshot - Fast but unreliable
Emulator used in the tutorial: ZSnes
The straightforward way, just play the game and press the snapshot key when the sprite is shown. You can set the snapshot key in the Misc Keys menu. You can also press the keys "1" to "5" to disable the emulator layers so only the sprite you wanna rip is captured.
The 5th layer often have the characters and object. Heres an example:

Press "6" to restore all layers.
You can also take a screenshot of everyframe displayed by pressing "F1" and then selecting "SnapShot/Incr Frame".

2nd Way: VSnes and the Sceneviewer
Sometime, the sprite you want to rip is partially covered by another sprite in the same layer, or is scaled by the game engine. So, if you want to have the full and original sprite, you cant just take a screenshot. You will need to see the content of the save state.

First, play until the wanted sprite is shown and take a savestate. Zsnes default keys are: F2 to save, F3 to change the save/load slot, F4 to load.Then, with VSnes, select your rom and savestate.
The most important tool in Vsnes is the Scene Viewer.
In the layers section of Scene viewer, you will find 3 types of graphics: Regular background, Sprites and Mode7 Background.

-Regular background: as the name suggest, those are mostly backgrounds. At the bottom of the screen you can press the buttons BG1, BG2,BG3 and BG4 to switch between the different layer of background. Click the floppy disc icons, at the bottom right, to save what is displayed.

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-Sprites: Sprites are mostly characters, objects, animation and cursors. Things that can move and appear over the background. When you mouse over a sprite, the layer will be highlighted on the right. By clicking the highlighted checkbox, you can disable sprites which overlay others. Also, on the bottom right, you can change the color of the background. Using the default black background will often lead you to lose the sprites outlines.



-Mode7 Background : Used with 3D effect, like the world map. Very useful since its the only way to get the top down view of those world maps. 


3rd Way: Memviewer, Ram and Rom
Theres still a frame you cant get? Well, try the Memviewer in conjunction with the Sceneviewer.
Open the Memviewer.   When you mouse over a sprite in the Sceneviewer screens, it will be displayed in the top left corner of the Memviewer screen, as loaded in the ram. Press the "+" and "-" buttons to move manually through the ram. 


You can also click the Rom radio button, at bottom left, to see the rom directly.
While navigating through the rom or ram, you will notice the sprites doesnt have the good colors. This is because it has the wrong palette loaded. Open the PalViewer  and you will be able to change the palette manually. Click the first color of a row to assign that palette to what is displayed in the Memviewer.


Tricks to get the sprite to appear:
-Pro action replay codes can help you get unlockables easily. ZSnes support those. Gamefaqs.com has a bunch  of those codes.
-Download save game from google. A lot of ppl upload their end game save, which can... save you a lot of time.
-Hacking and modding tools can do the same thing, although those are more for the really popular games. ".ips"  patches are supported by Zsnes and VSnes.
- Font and tilesets can be really easy to rip with vsnes. This is because, when a single letter or tile is displayed, the whole font or tilesets is loaded into the ram.
-Going through the rom directly with VSnes or YYCHR is the most reliable way to get every single frame of a sprite, or even unused sprites. Be aware though that some graphics maybe compressed. Although there are ways uncompress them, its far easier to just use other ways described above.