Ripping Questions

[puggsoy]

As Shade said there's no real defined line as to whether ROMs themselves are illegal. I think that, for the most part, if you own the actual game then it should be fine. Downloading just to rip from seems OK too, if you don't intend to really play it.
Downloading them just to play while not owning the game can get you into trouble, although to be honest I'm not too clear on the subject myself.

You shouldn't use NO$GBA. It's the fastest and most accurate emulator, true, but as it has no layer disabling or other technical options, it isn't the best for ripping sprites. I'd suggest DeSmuME, it does take more processing power (and can run kind of slow), but you should be able to get to the points you want and rip the sprites.

[LinusHomsar206]

Short Version: NES Pallet Editor is being a butt with my pallet findings. But, i'll need a long version, sooo...

I'm using YY-CHR, to find the offset for the pallets on NES Pallet Editor, but they don't work! How do I get the pallets? I'm ripping items from Dig Dug on the NES. All I find are 00 and the glitched(?) "no pallet set" pallet. I'm in serious need. The thing that throws me off, and forced me to make this thread, is that the NES Pallet Editor also has two 0s after the 0x part. Thus, it displays in the utility 0x00?????? instead of just 0x?????? in YY-CHR, so it might just be my Dig Dug ROM.

I'm super confused and such, and this is just emberassing. I don't wanna have to play the whole game, even though formerly I mastered it. You see, I got rusty over time, so I need to re-master it. The reason I got rusty was because I had issues with MAME (which i recently fixed ) and my trusty Plug & Play had a loose cord; making any movement that wasn't the button/joystick cause severe static. It bothered me so much. In it's early stages, it was easily fixed with tape at the part with the cord exposed. But now... Not so lucky.

So, can I please get some help?

[Garamonde]

Merged your thread into this one as it's basically a ripping related question.

[Carpaccio]

Hey guys, me again. I was wondering if someone could take a look at this freaking thing I've been wasting my night over for days. I can get graphics to show fine in various texture finders but unfortunately, the palettes are nowhere to be found, and no matter what I do, Tile Molester and TiledGGD do nothing to change the palettes at all. Can someone else help me out?
Click Here

[//X-Gluon//]

Um...I just have a question.

I have long used AnimGet to rip from MAME games, but I have recently discovered that the .bmp format used by AnimGet messes up the palettes ever-so-slightly. It's not all that noticeable, but they're messed up.

What I'm saying is, is it OK if I post sprites ripped with AnimGet here, or do the palettes have to be 100% accurate to the in-game versions? (This particularly applies to shifting "glow" palettes, which tend to turn up in the games I rip).

[Shade]

Um...I just have a question.

I have long used AnimGet to rip from MAME games, but I have recently discovered that the .bmp format used by AnimGet messes up the palettes ever-so-slightly. It's not all that noticeable, but they're messed up.

What I'm saying is, is it OK if I post sprites ripped with AnimGet here, or do the palettes have to be 100% accurate to the in-game versions? (This particularly applies to shifting "glow" palettes, which tend to turn up in the games I rip).

I've noticed the same problem. I'm pretty sure the palette has to be completely accurate to be submited, unfortunately.

Although, if I open the screenshot in Paint for instance, the palettes are fixed so I think it's just the program your using to view the screenshots that's messing it up. You could try puggsoy's program to fix the palette as long as you can get the correct one initially. I haven't used it myself yet so I don't know for sure. (Sorry puggsoy! )

LINK!
https://dl.dropbox.com/s/twycgfe3gvcc24p...up_1.4.exe

[Garamonde]

I'm pretty sure the palette has to be completely accurate to be submited, unfortunately.

Uhhhhhhh what?

No it doesn't lol, or we'd be without a LOT of sprites on TSR.

Keep in mind that there is no real way to have the colors be 100% perfect to the actual game data and on the actual system etc., as emulators don't emulate things flawlessly and sometimes even tools might alter them sliiiiiightly cause of how color algorithms or whatever work. HOWEVER don't worry yourself over that as I could be wrong as well and the current methods available to get the sprites are as close as we can get and I think that's good enough honestly.

[Shade]

I'm pretty sure the palette has to be completely accurate to be submited, unfortunately.

Not completely sure.

Well, no matter what the sites standards are on the matter, do you not agree that if //X-Gluon// knows the palette is slightly messed up that he should fix it? I feel it would be different if someone was completely unaware of the fact. Also, there's no way of knowing for sure if the colors are wrong, so why not go with the one originally displayed in the emulator? Not the one that the picture viewer clearly changed.

If it still doesn't matter, don't mind me, I'm sure you know what the resources except and don't except being "Mod" status and all. : p

[Garamonde]

Well yes, if they are different from the emulator. I thought you meant otherwise, since the emulator's colors aren't perfect either.

No worries.

[puggsoy]

I've also noticed that AnimGet messes up colours a bit, and it is annoying. For this reason I avoid using AnimGet if possible and usually use frame-stepping when I can. As MJ (Axle) said, emulators and tools don't always get it right, but chances are it's the closest you'll get (and depending on the game/console/emulator/tool, it can actually be perfect).

Anyway, as Shade said you can swap the palette with a correct one using Palettifier. It isn't required, but it doesn't hurt either

[Davy Jones]

As far as I know, Animget doesn't do anything to the colours when you're using it with epsxe (just checked the Water Dragon sheet from Lunar SSSC).

I think everything older than PSX has messed up colours, especially the SNES. I've used three emulators and got three different palettes for some backgrounds (vSNES, bSNES, zSNES, etc.).

[ZTO]

I need a little help here, I'm trying to rip from Super Robot Taisen OG Saga - Endless Frontier but some strange things came up.

I extracted the data.srl and inside there was a full set of files as expected,
so I looked up graphics and found that they are all stored as .pk1 and .pk2.

The question here is how do I change these into a rippable format?
Is there some tool I need for that?

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/gowv...DA1fA&dl=1

[Garamonde]

Merged your thread into this one.

[Shade]

I need a little help here, I'm trying to rip from Super Robot Taisen OG Saga - Endless Frontier but some strange things came up.

I extracted the data.srl and inside there was a full set of files as expected,
so I looked up graphics and found that they are all stored as .pk1 and .pk2.

The question here is how do I change these into a rippable format?
Is there some tool I need for that?

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/gowv...DA1fA&dl=1

Hrmm, I'll check it out real quick. Give me a second.
EDIT:
Well, I checked for you and I can get to the sprites themselves through some image adjustments, unfortunately though, I can can't get the correct palette.
Here's an example.

So yeah, if anyone else can get the right palette it would definitely be possible.

[puggsoy]

I looked into this, but those .pk1 and .pk2 files are tough nuts to crack. I found this thread, and I know how to use the files found within them (this page explains the formats), but I asked Kosheh and unfortunately he can't remember how he decompressed them.

One thing I will say is that I would expect any palette data to be in NCLR/RLCN files. Most likely they're probably somewhere in the .pk1/.pk2 files as well, but if anyone finds any outside of them then it might help.

EDIT: Crud, OK, took a closer look and they may not actually be compressed (after unpacking them in Tinke). The format looks a bit strange but I may actually be onto something here. Can't promise anything and it'll probably take a while (school and whatnot) but it might not be as hopeless as I thought.

EDIT2: By the way, after seeing ZTO's other thread in QIT, I feel I should explain this; the LZ10 encryption Kosheh mentioned in the above thread is how the files are initially encrypted in the ROM. Tinke can easily remove this encryption by selecting the file and clicking "Unpack", giving the decrypted version. This counts for .pk1, .pk2, and .pk files. With Tahaxan, upon extracting it'll ask you if you want to decompress the file; say yes.

I think that after they've been decrypted, they're in their original form, just in a strange format. That's what I'm currently investigating.