Ripping Questions

[Carpaccio]

Well, I tried all day. I suck at this...I can't find it for anything!

[Deathbringer]

Here are some offsets (they're already decimals) for Kirby Super Star Ultra which might also work here:
264656
4811912
4820104
4844680

If they don't, can you upload you savestate somewhere, I'll have to try searching manually.

[Carpaccio]

Unfortunately none of them worked...So...here's this...
Click Here for Save State

I sincerely appreciate all the effort.

[Deathbringer]

Here are some clusters I found:
40087C
400C7C
400E7C
491064

You might want to use TiledGGD, only because even though the sprites use a couple rows for the palette, you would have to manually figure out the offset and change it just to view it separately.

[Carpaccio]

I'll give it a shot. Thanks!

...TiledGDD seems complicated at first but after messing around with it a bit I figured it out. This should get easier, though perhaps more time-consuming.

Also Desmume's palette viewer makes it easier to know what one is looking for...

Edit: Except when it doesn't work right...(and the fact there's no way to export it.)

Edit2: Curses...it works for some but not for others...ah well...I'll use the old reference method until I figure this out further.

[Carpaccio]

New post for new topic of research.

Pocket God again...yes I'm still trying...this is ridiculously difficult for seeming so simple. Really, they're easy to view in Tile Molester and such, but I don't know if the accursed things even have palettes in the files!
Take a Look

[Garamonde]

I know this is a stupid question but I don't know what to do or what to look for.

Basically I can't figure out how to make Tile Molester accept .TPL palette files. I read this but it confuses me:

Spoiler

New problems arise in the fact that having palettes when viewing things are much more important, as graphics for those featured consoles can have 256 colours, which you just can't go plucking from an emulator screenshot and applying wherever necessary. But Tile Molester's palette finding ability is a monster. You can make custom colours (a requirement for when you can pluck the palette from the game, as the default palette for 4BPP graphics is terrible), import a palette from inside the file or from a save state, although it's very picky on what it can choose and doesn't allow you to use .pal files.

Thankfully, that's where the modified .XML file comes in! Replace the "tmspec" file that comes in the normal Tile Molester download with this one and .pal files will be among the recognised files if you import an external palette! This file's pretty darned hard to find, so hopefully the download here will help make it less. Thanks to Raccoon Sam for sending me it and his unnamed buddy for sending it to him!

In addition, Sam's upgraded it to support more than just .pal! It allows you to make use of the following file types:

Nintendo DS Color Resource, .rlcn

Oswan Save States, .wss

Richard Bannister's Oswan Save States, .frz

FCEUltra Save States, .fc?
Genecyst/Kega/Gens Save States, .gs?

NESticle Save States, .st?

ZSNES Save States, .zs?

Tile Layer Pro palette, .tpl

Windows Palette, .pal

[Yawackhary]

I don't know if your TileMolester already accepts them but go to Palette -> Import from -> Another File (find the palette file) and it should recognise the TPL file. If it doesn't you need to replace the tmspec.xml file. The tmspec.xml file is in the same folder as where you saved TileMolester.

[Garamonde]

I meant that when I browse for the palette and open the folder with the TPL file, it isn't there (so it's not a supported type I guess). I don't know what to replace the XML file with.

Also when I shrink the canvas (Shift Left/Right), it doesn't change much (like it said some sprites would assemble themselves if you did it right), therefore TM doesn't seem to do anything that Tile Layer Pro can't do in that regard, unless I'm not doing something right. I'm also viewing GBA tiles if that makes any difference.

EDIT: Nevermind this post. The sheet's already been submitted, so no worries.

[ticktock]

Ok, so I'm utterly new at all this and could use some help!

I'm trying to rip some sprites from the NDS game Valkyrie Profile (Covenant of the Plume). After looking around, I ended up using DSLazy to poke around the .nds file, which gave me a bunch of .cpk and .bin files that I've no idea how to process. Tahaxan gives me the same thing (minus the .bins). TileMolester doesn't recognize them and neither does Noesis (which says that in can extract them, but ends up producing nothing).

I then tried poking around the rom using DeSmuMe's tile viewer, but the viewing window is too small for me to recognize what I'm looking for, and the only way I think I can grab anything from it regardless is screengrabbing, which doesn't seem ideal. Disabling layers to get the animations of the sprites via AnimGet didn't help too much either, as I disabled all layers I could in DeSmuMe (leaving only the Main GPU and Main Bg 0 layers, else the screen I wanted would turn black) and the sprites were still inseparable from the background layer.

I could try and edit out the background from the AnimGet screenshots, but that's looking tough considering the game's sprites are kinda muddy and blend into the background easily. They don't exactly pop.

So I was wondering if there was an easier way of working with the .cpk files I've got? I'm not sure how far it'd get me (the entire .nds file is 128mb in size, but the unpacked .cpk files are ~63mb which seems off to me, but then I only started trying to do this today), but it'd save me a lot of editing work for a result that probably won't be ideal.

[Dazz]

Hmm... Barubary is a pro with file formats and stuff, but I can't say that you're likely to have any luck with that game in particular. I'll ask him to take a look next time I talk to him...

[Dazz]

Double post: No doubt Barubary is about to post but



I love that guy...

[Barubary]

To unpack the .cpk files, look for a program called 'CRI Packed File Maker'. (use the two icons in the top-right corner to unpack existing cpk files)

A lot of the resulting files are again archives, and none of them have an extension. Use this program to unpack them; just drag & drop the output folder onto the program (it may take a while for the program to finish though).

The sprites in the game are stored in the default Nitro file format, so those files can be viewed using Oil of Vitriol. Note however that sometimes the extensions are not entirely what is expected. One of the archive formats used only supports extensions of length 3, so the 'R' can be missing from the extension. (eg: 'NAN' instead of 'RNAN' and 'ECN' instead of 'RECN')
If you drag a group of 3 or 4 files with the same ID and with an extension ending in N onto OoV, you should be fine.

[ticktock]

That is absolutely what I needed, Barubary - I'd actually tracked down the CRI program and unpacked the .cpk files since posting here yesterday, but I had no clue how to handle the archived files it produced (or whether or not I'd done the right thing). Your archive unpacker did the trick and I've managed to get all the sprites I wanted using OoV. Thanks for helping me out - I really appreciate it.

And yeah, Dazz - I think CotP has some neat little guys in the game, so I'm looking forward to playing with what I've managed to rip.

When I get a bit more free time than I do now, I'll see if I can knock a few sprite sheets together for submission as thanks.

[Magma MK-II]

How many programs are there that can extract sprites from PC games?