OAM Viewer

[witheea]

Hello all! I'm new to ripping sprites (to be honest, I'm still so new I've never done it!) and I don't have any idea where to begin. I've read a few articles around the interwebs and it seems like the best way is using VBA's OAM Viewer (I'm working on GameBoy Color games right now). However, I can't find a decent tutorial anywhere on how to use it.

I'm not sure I'm posting this is the correct thread but I couldn't find one that sounded appropriate, please feel free to relocate to the appropriataton if necessary.

Thanks for any help!

[Garamonde]

The OAM Viewer displays every sprite currently on-screen on its own for you to scroll through, and you can save them individually, so even sprites that are covered up by another can be ripped easily. Some large sprites will be in pieces though so you must save them all and put them together.

It's one of the best emulator tools in ripping history. But you can also disable layers and take screenshots of the sprites as well. But there's AnimGet for that. It may seem confusing at first seeing all these different "Viewer" tools and stuff but after working with it for some time you should get the hang of it. I wish you luck.

[witheea]

This may be a completely stupid question then but, is there not a way to just pull all the sprites from a game automatically? I mean, you have to actually pull them as you play it? That seems EXTREMELY laborous.

[HandToeKnee]

Sprite ripping is laborious however you do it. I rip using layer disable and AnimGet mostly, and I've used Tile Molester a few times, too. As for pulling sprites from a game automatically, well to me that kind of defeats the whole point. I can spend what seems like an age ripping a single character from a game, but it's all about the satisfaction you get when you've finished you sprite sheet. Especially when you see your hard work uploaded on The Spriters Resource for everyone to enjoy.

But that's just my opinion

[Garamonde]

Really, it's not that bad (but it depends on the game you're ripping of course), you just need patience sometimes. However there are tile programs such as Tile Molester like ant mentioned, YY-CHR and etc. that let you view the game's graphics including every sprite of the characters and such, as tiles that you'd need to put together, but occasionally it ends up being more trouble than if you ripped them the old fashioned way. As far as I know, there isn't a way to do that, but you can also ask any questions you have about ripping here.

For the most part I do just use AnimGet and disable the layers (if you use AnimGet you might want to stop it before it gets up into the thousands of screenshots, since they take a while to save). It does usually take time, but it's not too hard. You just play through the game and get as many sprites as you can find, and if you find more later you can always update your sheet. It might seem tough/annoying at first but you should get the hang of it. This is all coming from someone who really enjoys doing it and is used to it, but I do think you'll find it's not too bad once you try it.

Sorry for all that.

[HandToeKnee]

OH MY GOD!!! That reminds me of the time I left my computer to make a cup o' tea and forgot AnimGet was still running. By the time I got back, my PC had CRASHED! I had to do an entire sheet all over again

So yeah, like Mighty Jetters said, don't leave AnimGet running longer than you have too

[Superliger]

I sometimes use AnimGet the only draw back is that it saves the active window as BMPs which can take a lot of room up. I found this great site http://faststone.org/download.htm one of the programs has a converter that can convert entire folder for you if you wanted it to and have it save them in a different location as well and it keeps the orginal files, hey it beats resaving them one by one. The converter gives you great info such as how long it will take the size difference from the orginal file to the new file and total size difference of all the files you're converting at the time.