How I Rip: A Video Tutorial

[Dunkelschwamm]

I figured that my speed and efficiency couldn't just be skill so it must be my technique. As such, I've made a fairly detailed video showing the process of ripping one of the games I submitted sprites for. Here's the link:

How I Rip

Here's the video description:

This is an instructional video on how to rip retro first person shooters. In this video I use:

XWE - The extendable wad editor for Doom. It also edits Build Engine games, Wolfenstein engine games, pak files that are associated with Quake, System Shock... a bunch of stuff.

Game Maker 7 - Though there are alternatives, this is what I use. In the video I say that Game Maker 8 wont work, this is because of the Opacity function in the sprite editor. When ripping Wolfenstein engine sprites this isn't a problem as they're all the same size- 64x64. However, if you're ripping from a Doom engine game or anything like that, all of the sprites will be different sizes, and when the maximum size expands in Game Maker 8 for sprites, you're left with a checkerboard which makes it ages more difficult to use this method. I'm sure there's alternatives to using this program, but this is what I use and it works.

MSPaint - Any image editor will do, but nothing beats the speed and simplicity of good ol' microsoft paint.

Now to answer the questions that are sure to come up:

Yes I use Game Maker and yes I like it. You don't have to and I'm not forcing you to and yes I know of alternative programs and yes I have tried them and no I don't prefer any of them over Game Maker.

Yes I use Windows 7. I also have a Mac but it doesn't suit my needs well- that's not to say that it's a worse operating system- so I use my Windows much more often than my Mac. Also I don't care if you think that XP is better. I have one of those in my room too and I had a Vista but it got a virus and died.

Yes I'm using Cam Studio. There's probably much better recording programs that won't give me those black flashes every now and then. That's great, except that I've already recorded this and already know of much better programs, I just can't be bothered to download them.

Yes I know I'm ripping from a mod of an old game. That doesn't make it crap and in fact I enjoyed it more than most current generation, commercial games that I've played.

Also I used Windows Movie Maker because Adobe Premier butchered the picture quality and After Effects screwed up the bass in the music. I really couldn't care less if I was using it incorrectly.

Now that I've got all of my bases covered, enjoy and hopefully somebody found this video useful.

Hopefully that covers everything and hopefully I've opened some sort of magical door that leads to a wondrous world where everybody is an efficient sprite ripper and there's never a shortage of submissions. Barring that, hopefully somebody at least finds the music I attached to the video entertaining

[GrandmasterJ]

How are you not president of the world? Everybody would vote for you, twice and at the same exact time, even in their sleep.

[Dunkelschwamm]

I'm probably president of the world already and don't know it yet... man, I'm a terrible president.