SNES Ripping Tutorial with bsnes-rawpalettes & vSNES

[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.