Zelda: The Minish Cap Tile Ripping Proyect

[Raccoon Sam]

Looks fantastic!
HOWEVER, a grid that's width is 16 blocks would give way more pretty results, given you DON'T remove the black blocks. Check out this sample:


Even so, I am not entirely sure if that's all the tiles. I think there's still something missing, and block arrangement instructions must be read from another offset ALSO to get the rest.

EDIT: yeah I'm pretty confident that the layer 2 block instructions are stored somewhere else. I mean, that's all the blocks Link can be in front of; what's missing are all the blocks link can hide behind, like tree tops etc.
EDIT EDIT: Also, what about animated tiles? Would that require four separate SGMs?

I'll look into this later today, hopefully finding the layer 2 block instruction offset

[puggsoy]

Ah thanks, I wasn't sure what the proper width would be. 16 looks great:

   

I also noticed and fixed a bug related to tile fipping. It looks really nice now

I did feel like there were some tiles missing, so you're probably right about the different layers. It would be awesome if you could find those.

As for animations, I think it might be a case of needing separate SGMs, yes. With frame stepping you should be able to get savestates at all the frames though, and just grab the tiles that have changed.
It would be better if we could rip EVERYTHING straight from the ROM, but I imagine that'd be a difficult task, much more so than with Trip World.

[Raccoon Sam]

Actually, I know at least three cases of attempted Minish Cap editor development because all of the authors described the formats (level, tile, etc) as "very simple."
I know there's compression involved, but (don't quote me on this) it's all standard GBA LZ77/Huffman.
Who knows, maybe one day we'll get a completed Minish Magic, but since we can't really speed up their hacking efforts, the best we can do is make our own tools to cater our needs.

[Ailos]

This is really awesome i went out for a day and i come back seeing all those nicely ripped textures ;O

For the 2nd layer that is the things link can hide trough i found those sprites they are stored in different layers or backgrounds
i'm not sure but this might help:
   

For animations i think i can get them from the tile viewer as i can go frame by frame searching for animations on VBA then replace the parts in a 16x16 tile

EDIT: forgot about viewing the same zone using Tile Viewer
   

EDIT2: btw i just noticed that the logs are red in your sprites
EDIT3: a wild sprite just appeared

   

[Raccoon Sam]

Okay, not sure at all, but maybe 0x1B032?

[Ailos]

i think the method for animation is okay here got a 16x16 animated water tile

   

EDIT: just found that there's another animated piece in here
can see the 2 pixels that don't move? well those are supposed to move forward then go back

   

[puggsoy]

Okay, not sure at all, but maybe 0x1B032?

Tried this, no dice. I've made a search-ish thing in my program that goes through and tries it out with every chunk of 0x4000 bytes, one after the other. Hopefully that should provide results.

[Raccoon Sam]

Okay but it's not necessarily $4000 bytes. Guess we'll have to see

EDIT: goddammit there might be a set for layer 3 items as well!! I mean, assuming the layer 3 stuff (clouds, mist etc.) is also composed of 16x16 blocks.

[Ailos]

It might be possible that they are 16x16 but i had no time to check it's almost 1 am here

   
the grey things are the same as used in the minish forest just that they have some sort of alpha transparency but as i said i got no time to check them at the moment

[puggsoy]

While looking for the other layer, I found this...

   
Yup, the graphics data for the entire area at the frame that the state was saved. I had a lot of trouble with this, because it took me ages to realise that I had to read it as 8x8 tiles linearly, not arranged in 16x16 like the other graphics. I had to guess the width though, and I don't see a way to know the height either, or in fact the length of the data at all. I found it at 0x2147F, maybe Sam can find some more info on it.

In any case this should be helpful. One big difference is that the logs are actually brown here, as they should be, rather then red/orange.

As for other layers, unfortunately I didn't find anything.

[Raccoon Sam]

That's only Layer 1 data though, so there's got to be the definitions for the Layers 2 and 3 there somewhere!


EDIT: Yes, the logs should be brown. I guess the red logs shown in your rips are just unused tiles.. or misrendered tiles? Maybe the tiles that look funny are in fact incorrectly loaded layer 2 tiles? Dunno.

[Ailos]

Logs are stored in layer 1 at least what he got

   

maybe try searching first using 0x0600E81C?

i tried ripping straight from these but it's complicated as i have to get link to that part of the map and then download the tileset for the area check if there are any new tiles and move again the zones you get on the map view are actually the size of the screen so you don't get that much data into one image :/

[puggsoy]

Unfortunately there isn't even an address of 0x0600E81C in the save state, it's only $B4B8E bytes long. I'd assume that that address refers to the ROM.

Although, speaking of the ROM, I did find the source code for an unfinished attempt at a Minish Magic program. It's in C#, and even though I've never actually used that language, it's not extremely confusing and I have ported code from it before. I might be able to find out more information through it, since the progress the guy made seemed to be going fairly well.

By the way, just a heads up: I'll be absent starting Saturday, that's Friday in the US (I'm UTC+12). I'll be gone for at least two weeks, although it could be a bit longer. So during that time I won't be able to help with this, sorry!

[Raccoon Sam]

Puggsoy: The Minish Magic editor is a very very early prototype, and doesn't include any editing capabilities nor layer 1 viewing. It's more or less the same as your tool
I used it as a reference to see if our tile rips were accurate, though, so that was of big help.
EDIT: Coincidentally, the author of Minish Magic contacted me a few hours ago. I had sent him a message with my problems regarding Minish Magic a week ago, and now I pointed him into this thread. Hope it'll be of any help

[puggsoy]

Are you sure? I downloaded the code from Spikeman's post here. The .exe doesn't work for me, but the screenshot looks promising.

EDIT: Ah, OK then. Hopefully he can assist.