12-12-2024, 11:18 AM
WARNING: Long post incoming...
To put it lightly, your method is okay (something that I did myself starting from around 15/16 years ago) and there's no easy way of ripping from the Genesis. Since the ROM route is often compressed, in many cases you have to be a programmer as only selected games have the ability to decompress using decompressors that may or may not be in command line and using something like TileMole-ster or YY-CHR to view them, even then you still need to put the palette on. I'm not sure if Alien Soldier is one of those, the common ones are "Nemesis" used in many early Sega games, Rob Northen for some latter UK/EU developed games. Only selected games on the Genesis you can view all the sprites in the ROM, much of the time it's just the playable characters, a few things maybe the Sega logo (but that can be compressed too) or even worse nothing or garbage... Both compression based or like Virgin games a mess...
It's the case of preference but there are two emulators that I'll use. BizHawk and Exodus. BizHawk uses the GenesisPlusGX core and can also rip from Sega CD too. Like GensKMod, there's an option to make the background pink and it has a background viewer, it had been my go to one for a while. Exodus is more in depth but Genesis only and needs a decently powerful enough computer to run, plus a forced blur on the gameplay screen so capturing is out of the window. Currently using Exodus to double check and partially re-ripping on the athlete from Olympic Gold. Both of these have a tile viewer and a background viewer, they also have the same palette too unlike GensKMod where the palette is a bit off from what I can remember (had a cheat sheet back in the day). Downside to both is that there's no sprite viewer so you have to arrange the tiles yourself. A shame that BlastEm and Ares don't have sprite ripping functions as they are the go-to emulators for the Mega Drive of the former and the 32X for the latter.
If you do use BizHawk or Exodus, I can share a tip. While GensKMod (plus various Gens forks) can get rid of the black background and is useful for basic ripping, this can be annoying on the other palette entries as it only affects the first and not the other three. Not good if you want to rip title screens, cutscenes, rip from the tiles not using the first palette or anything else where you still get black on black. You could hack the ROM or see if you can use HivePAL but just came up with an easier way.
Using Bizhawk: Go to Tools, Hex Editor. This is where it gets a bit trickier. Go to Memory Domains and then CRAM. CRAM is the palette. Since the VDP Viewer and the Hex Editor are split, you would have to do a bit of guess work to find a colour that is not shared.
![[Image: genpalhack1.png]](https://i.postimg.cc/26RCvWJQ/genpalhack1.png)
The selected entry is in pink while the other entries are green-blue, just to show which values are the ones to edit. Double click on the pink entry and type a hex value. 0038-003A-003C are good ones as it is a bright green. Then right click and go to Freeze or press Space, this will turn it light blue. Now this won't change on the VDP Viewer, it will still have its original palette values so you have to go to Emulation, Reboot Core for the changes to take effect. If that doesn't help, try closing and reopening the ROM. Some games may have hard coded palettes. This is the result using Spider-Man: TAS as an example and yes, this works on tiles too:
![[Image: genpalhack2result.png]](https://i.postimg.cc/W3GT73LQ/genpalhack2result.png)
Warning: Do not press Hard Reset! This will undo the change and the black on black returns. If you need to restart the game, either Reboot Core or Soft Reset.
Exodus also has the ability to change palettes this way as well, less buggy and more instant too. You just have to select Debug -> Mega Drive -> VDP -> Palette to view plus Debug -> Mega Drive -> VDP-CRAM -> Memory Editor to edit the palette. The values are different though.
Also some artwork is designed to use only a black background and will look off.
So yeah... No simple way like with NES, some Game Boy and some PC/Mobile ripping.
To put it lightly, your method is okay (something that I did myself starting from around 15/16 years ago) and there's no easy way of ripping from the Genesis. Since the ROM route is often compressed, in many cases you have to be a programmer as only selected games have the ability to decompress using decompressors that may or may not be in command line and using something like TileMole-ster or YY-CHR to view them, even then you still need to put the palette on. I'm not sure if Alien Soldier is one of those, the common ones are "Nemesis" used in many early Sega games, Rob Northen for some latter UK/EU developed games. Only selected games on the Genesis you can view all the sprites in the ROM, much of the time it's just the playable characters, a few things maybe the Sega logo (but that can be compressed too) or even worse nothing or garbage... Both compression based or like Virgin games a mess...
It's the case of preference but there are two emulators that I'll use. BizHawk and Exodus. BizHawk uses the GenesisPlusGX core and can also rip from Sega CD too. Like GensKMod, there's an option to make the background pink and it has a background viewer, it had been my go to one for a while. Exodus is more in depth but Genesis only and needs a decently powerful enough computer to run, plus a forced blur on the gameplay screen so capturing is out of the window. Currently using Exodus to double check and partially re-ripping on the athlete from Olympic Gold. Both of these have a tile viewer and a background viewer, they also have the same palette too unlike GensKMod where the palette is a bit off from what I can remember (had a cheat sheet back in the day). Downside to both is that there's no sprite viewer so you have to arrange the tiles yourself. A shame that BlastEm and Ares don't have sprite ripping functions as they are the go-to emulators for the Mega Drive of the former and the 32X for the latter.
If you do use BizHawk or Exodus, I can share a tip. While GensKMod (plus various Gens forks) can get rid of the black background and is useful for basic ripping, this can be annoying on the other palette entries as it only affects the first and not the other three. Not good if you want to rip title screens, cutscenes, rip from the tiles not using the first palette or anything else where you still get black on black. You could hack the ROM or see if you can use HivePAL but just came up with an easier way.
Using Bizhawk: Go to Tools, Hex Editor. This is where it gets a bit trickier. Go to Memory Domains and then CRAM. CRAM is the palette. Since the VDP Viewer and the Hex Editor are split, you would have to do a bit of guess work to find a colour that is not shared.
The selected entry is in pink while the other entries are green-blue, just to show which values are the ones to edit. Double click on the pink entry and type a hex value. 0038-003A-003C are good ones as it is a bright green. Then right click and go to Freeze or press Space, this will turn it light blue. Now this won't change on the VDP Viewer, it will still have its original palette values so you have to go to Emulation, Reboot Core for the changes to take effect. If that doesn't help, try closing and reopening the ROM. Some games may have hard coded palettes. This is the result using Spider-Man: TAS as an example and yes, this works on tiles too:
Warning: Do not press Hard Reset! This will undo the change and the black on black returns. If you need to restart the game, either Reboot Core or Soft Reset.
Exodus also has the ability to change palettes this way as well, less buggy and more instant too. You just have to select Debug -> Mega Drive -> VDP -> Palette to view plus Debug -> Mega Drive -> VDP-CRAM -> Memory Editor to edit the palette. The values are different though.
Also some artwork is designed to use only a black background and will look off.
So yeah... No simple way like with NES, some Game Boy and some PC/Mobile ripping.