Paraemon's Comprehensive Ripping Project Thread [Expansion Station]

[Paraemon]

How do you even rip this? Are you using a Walk-Thru-Walls code or an editor where you can see the full map?

Where possible - which is the case with the final versions of Sonic 1, 2, 3 and &Knuckles - I make use of a Disassembly Map as a base, fix anything that's broken, then identify any and all animated aspects to those maps. I use Debug Mode, Slow Motion and Unlimited Time cheat codes to make extraction of these elements possible. A fast animation requires frame-by-frame checking in the game, where as slower animations allow me to - with hazards - catch each of the frames at a faster rate.

In the cases of Launch Base and Sandopolis, and eventually Flying Battery as an example that'll be repeated in certain Chaotix rips, the external/internal views are placed on the right side of the disassembly, after the main body of the map has reached its end. The process in that case is to find the specific area and separate it so others can insert the version they wish to use.

Once I've tackled the animated parts, it's on to the cycling palettes, should a stage have any. I prioritise those to ensure that they're sorted out for the final product. Then it's just fixing the palette.

In the cases of the Prototypes, Sonic CD and Chaotix, I have to make use of two emulators - one that has a plane viewer so that I can grab the foreground/background as needed, and the other so that I can manipulate the palette that the viewer for the first one displays. As with the other games, Debug Mode is used, but slow motion doesn't work in CD or Chaotix, so I use/will be using Animget.

That being said, there has been a case where certain elements - particularly the prototype Hydrocity Act 1 and Launch Base Act 2 backgrounds - haven't be so easy to get, and required Debug Mode and gently adjusting coordinates to acquire them. This was the original method I had for Sandopolis Act 1's rip, before learning that the heat haze was a programmed feature and I could cut out the parallax via screencaps of the plane viewer.