Paraemon's Comprehensive Ripping Project Thread [Expansion Station]

[Paraemon]

I’ve always really liked the Launch Base background and the story it tells you without using any words. Great work so far!

Thanks man!

I agree, I put it down to the presence, or lack thereof a la Knuckles, of the Death Egg. The difference in proximity in Sonic's Act 1 and 2 is a fine mechanic for the story.

I've elected for an alternate course of action for the 2.5D water graphics in Launch Base. My original thought was that the graphics should be placed in-between the open-air and underwater sections, but that became a fallacious notion* due to the unknown combined vertical height of the objects on a sprite sheet. So, much like the Hydrocity update shows, everything else will be done, and then the water will be investigated.



The underwater section of Act 1 is below the dividing line. Here, though, I took the opportunity to jump in the VDP Viewer, curious to see if the upper sections - namely, the "candle-lit" arch,  of the background had an underwater palette, and lo, they do. I'm less convinced now that those lights are candles, which I believed was the case, but instead glowing crystals.

* Launch Base Act 2 has two lots of the water graphics, differing between the characters you play as. That will slow the final Launch Base sheet.

[Superjustinbros]

Really impressive work with ripping all these backgrounds.

[shadowman44]

I don't know if this is the right time to ask this but, when and how are the unused/beta graphics going to be handled? Are they going to be put into one big sheet or separate sheets for each type? (tile sets, objects, characters etc)

[Paraemon]

Really impressive work with ripping all these backgrounds.

Thank you! 

I don't know if this is the right time to ask this but, when and how are the unused/beta graphics going to be handled? Are they going to be put into one big sheet or separate sheets for each type? (tile sets, objects, characters etc)

When: As I move further with the respective sheet that those unused graphics are on, and read further to double check I've not fallen short. Beta graphics... I assume you mean like the Sonic 2 graphics cropping up like in prototypes earlier to 0408? I can add them, though they'd look out of place, and they fall into a specific category in the next answer.

How: If they can be acquired by cheats and/or debug mode, then I'll get them that way. Reading through TCRF and seeing terms like 'ID' and 'Offset', or a lack of sourced information about how/where they're found beside the obvious point of the game they're from, makes it harder to have that sprite. I tried to get the Slot Machine sheet completed, but that remains in stasis since I got no response.

Q. 3: It depends on the sheet, but they'd be sourced to where they respectively go. For example, the teleporter objects that crop up in debug mode in the Lava Reef boss act will be included in the Lava Reef sheet, as would the teleporters from Sky Sanctuary appearing on the SSZ sheet.

Characters would be split down to:
Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Robotnik, Egg-Robo, Mecha Sonic, Animals
Super Sonic, Hyper Sonic, Super Mecha Sonic
Badniks to a respective Zone-based sheet excluding Egg-Robo above
Mini-bosses to their respective sheet
Bosses to their respective sheet

Tile sets... let's call them the Zone sheets. We already have Hidden Palace and The Doomsday Zones completed, and work is currently being taken out on... well, it'd be easier to list the Zones not being worked on at the moment: Angel Island, Carnival Night, Lava Reef, Sky Sanctuary and Credits. Zone-specific objects would be placed on their respective zone sheets; as mentioned earlier regarding the teleporters, those found in Lava Reef go to that zone's sheet, Hidden Palace already has its teleporters, and Sky Sanctuary will have its own version added.

General Objects, Fonts & Title Cards, Competition Mode etc will gain their own sheets. I won't predict how many that will come to, but we will see later on.

[Paraemon]

And here's today's update. I wanted to get more done today, but I've just felt at a total loss on where to begin.

Delving into the Angel Island intro sequence. Turns out the ocean's surface is animated.



And I noticed that these had never really been ripped, so I went ahead and snapped them up. The final version(s)* will have two backgrounds to account for a color clash with the light blue one.

When the large S3K logo fades in, so do the three heroes, so they'll have those palettes inserted to their respective sheets when the time comes.



* Should I keep the logos on one sheet or two?

[Ton]

I always really liked the ending where they’re all around the logo. Nice work, as usual!

[Paraemon]

Thank you as always! 

Started and finished a thing today. I'll do the other one for tomorrow and submit both then.

[Superjustinbros]

Really nice rip of Sonic 3 Standalone's ending.

[Paraemon]

Really nice rip of Sonic 3 Standalone's ending.

Thank you.   

For some reason, though, it's just appeared on TSR. It wasn't finished.  But, it's fine, I'll submit the final version when I get around to it (this weekend, I pray)! I've stalled the S&K endings sheet, the ocean's surface is a massive bother, be it in the prologue or epilogue, so I need a hell of a lot of time to work on it, which I don't have because it's midterm season.

Today's update is a look at two certain sheets  in dire need of having actual work done for them. I've already broken down the parallax in both and animations in the latter.

Here's a look at one WIP.
Here's the look at the other WIP. The static Sun is recolored into RAW palette from the static Plane Explorer of Gens KMOD.

And here's a whole other teaser related to TCSRP! It's actually quite simple to work out how things are pieced together in this game, it's just the design of the game that likely puts people off. So, Challenge Accepted. Plus, I think we can all agree, this needs the biggest overhaul.

Miscellaneous Stuff.

I added Sonic CD to the first post the other day, as I've worked out how to be able to rip from it now. I'm in particular looking forward to taking a crack at the Special Stage backgrounds, since they have something not seen in, well, any other game as far as I can tell: Semi-Panoramic Multi-layered Parallax.

Back in the summer, and in the last few weeks, I've found some oddities that I didn't think existed that I wouldn't have encountered if not for playing around in Debug mode or using cheat codes.



This TV appears from messing about with Debug in Launch Base's miniboss. I'm not sure what the orb is from, but it replaces the S icon.



More messing around with the Debug in Sonic 3, this time, it turns out that Knuckles is possessed by the spirit of the Egg Lord. Found trying to acquire the Death Egg graphics without seeing the first boss, but ending up having to resolve the game by getting in the Egg Mobile.



This is from trying to insert a ring multiplier cheat code in Sonic 3. In-game, it pushes the HUD to being half on-screen, and appears in the proper format on the title screen if that's loaded up.

[Ton]

Oh no! I thought that was the final sheet! Sorry! I can fix it when it's all set.

[Paraemon]

Oh no! I thought that was the final sheet! Sorry! I can fix it when it's all set.

Dude, it's fine.   I just didn't expect it to be there when it hadn't gone through the proper channels.

[Paraemon]

Today's update!

Working on the Special Stage from Sonic 3 (and by extension, Sonic & Knuckles). Don't mind the VDP information in the upper right, that's there for me. The 8th set of starry backgrounds are exactly the same as the first, but included for practicality since the floor differs and, from my attempt in the summer, there's 17 versions of the floor. The left starry background is the actual one, the other is hidden beneath a layer.

[Paraemon]

So I keep changing which sheet I'm working on because if I focus on one from start to finish, I feel I'll just burn out on it before finishing it and won't feel like going back to it.

I've stalled the Get Blue Spheres sheets because of content issues. I can work out where to put things, but I still have way too much empty space to deal with.   

Here's Sky Sanctuary and Marble Garden's backgrounds. For Sky Sanctuary, the background loops, and is auto-scrolling as opposed to parallax, but the topmost sky block, I think it's between 512 and 1024, maybe even 1536, pixels in height, which is impossible to tell since parts of the stage raise and sink.

Marble Garden on the other hand, I had to use KMOD to extract the skies and recolor it into the raw palette (same with SSZ). At least now, I can make movements into the transition frame palettes from the end of Act 2 - the temple section won't be touched since it's isn't affected by the transition (at least, the architecture isn't).

 

[Ton]

Wow, I never knew these were so complicated. Awesome!

[Superjustinbros]

All the excitement of seeing all the layers of parallax.