Hello, everyone :)

[Lunais]

Hi! I'm a long time fan of TSR, but haven't visited the forums before- so here I am!

A little about myself:
I live in Washington and work in the Games Industry. In my free time I've been making Indie-game that's been in development for a few years now. I'm a long time hobby sprite artist too (I did my avatar a couple of years ago~)! I may have an obsession with video games :o

Anyway, I joined up because I was hoping to start contributing some sprite rips! Is there anything I should know before starting?

Anyway, nice to meet you all

[SKELTON S. SKELETON]

Hello (Hello) (Hello) Hi, Hola, Yo, Aloha, How Are You


welcome to tsr home of the spriteurs and pixelarte

[puggsoy]

Welcome to the Resource, Lunais! Always nice to see a new ripper

All you should really do before submitting sprite rips is read the forum rules (obviously), and read the Submission Forums for beginners and Sprite Sheet Guidlines. Once you've read those and have made a sheet, you can go ahead and make a submission thread, and submit sprites! If there are any problems or improvements that can be made to your sheet we'll be sure to point them out. Also if you have any questions don't hesitate to ask

Anyway, hope you enjoy your time here and submit some sweet sheets

[Virt]

Welcome to the resource! If your avatar is any indication, you're a great spriter. I can't wait to see what sort of stuff you rip.

[Previous]

Hi Lunais, welcome to the Resource Community!



I've used that name in some forum RPG a few years ago. For some weird lizard-man character.

[Garamonde]

Welcome to the resource! If your avatar is any indication, you're a great spriter. I can't wait to see what sort of stuff you rip.

He may not have made his avatar though.
And yes, just do the things puggsoy suggested, and you should be fine. c:

[Virt]

Welcome to the resource! If your avatar is any indication, you're a great spriter. I can't wait to see what sort of stuff you rip.

He may not have made his avatar though.
And yes, just do the things puggsoy suggested, and you should be fine. c:

He said in his post that he made his avatar. :I

[Garamonde]

L-Look I only skimmed through his post okay :I

[Kami]

...Heh, never spected mighty to skim through a topic.

Welcome to the forums Lunais.

Also watch out for Meta, He bites, but only when he's in a bad mood.

[Lunais]

Thanks for the warm welcome, guys

I do have a question, actually: I'm trying to rip some sprites from Castlevania Order of Ecclesia. I'm using Tahaxan to grab the files from the rom and TileMolester to grab the correct sprite offsets. Unfortunately, I don't know how to get the correct palette from these sprites. I tried following this thread (DS Vania Rip Project) but the megaupload links are broken.

The following files are the ones that I'm looking for:

Get this Tile Molester file and replace the old one in the program's main folder:
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=M3TBQJYF

This will enable you to read the save states directly.

Next, you will need to strip your rom bare. This means going to the end of the file in a Hex Editor and deleting ALL of the FF variables you see at the end (may take a while as there are quite a few).
Save it.

Next:

Download THIS file to the same folder as your No$Gba emulator.
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=KJLJ0I8C

This file decompresses the save state files (.SNA) so they can be read by Tile Molester for palettes. This DOES however add on about 3 megs to the files so be careful.

Does anyone know of alternative locations of these files? If not, does anyone even know the names of the files? That at least would help me find them through google :/

Thanks in advance, and thanks again for the warm welcome

[Phaze]

Hey there, this guide seems to mention a way to save No$GBA save states in their uncompressed format via ini file editing, would this do or must you need that decompressing utility? If so I could try looking harder.

[puggsoy]

Not sure about those files Lunais, but you may want to check out redblueyellow's DS Ripping Guide. It may or may not help your situation, but it's possible that it could save a few steps and maybe even the need for those files: Tinke in particular since it's basically like a better version of Tahaxan.

[Lunais]

Awesome! Thanks for the tips I might already have some leads- I'll report back with my findings if they pan out.

Hacking skills engage!

[Lunais]

Alright, so made some progress:

Turns out the first file, the one that goes with No$Gba, is just an edit to the already existing NO$GBA.INI file. The changes that needed to happen was just change the follow line:
SAV/SNA File Format == Compressed
into
SAV/SNA File Format == Uncompressed

Simple enough! The second file (for Tile Molester) is where I'm having issues. Based on my research, the file is an addition to the file that already lives with Tile Molester, called "tmspec.xml". The change to this file is something similar to the following XML:

<palettefilter extensions="sna" colorformat="CF01" size="2048" offset="4196476" endianness="little">
<description>No$GBA Uncompressed Save States (*.sna)</description>
</palettefilter>

Which is simply a specification saying how to read the palette information from the savestate file. I've verified (through a HexEditor) that the palette starts at the offset of 4196476 (VPAL at address 0x00400870), and has a size of 2048 bytes. Buuuut, I still can't seem to find any useful information in the savestate. My guess is I have the colorformat field incorrectly filled in.

I'll have to look into it more. If anyone has any tips, feel free to chime in