PSX: Ripping and Transparency

[TLaurus]

Hello,

I've been using PSX-VRAM Viewer to experiment with tile ripping, but I've run into an issue I can't find information on.

If a game's tiles use RGB black in the tile interior, and the background color in PSX-VRAM is also black, is there any way to figure out what the original transparency was? 

So far I've managed to get by with tabbing between active emulation and screen shots to manually figure out some transparencies, but I'm down to an opaque overlay I have no ability to reference in-game.

Any good work around?

Thanks!

[Barack Obama]

- Where can I find a tile/sprite which is displayed with ingame transparency?
PSX-VRAM doesn't show transparency, so you can't find it within this viewer. What you can find is the exact same tile/sprite without transparency.

- Where is the palette for tiles/sprites, no matter how they are displayed ingame?
Usually, when browsing the palettes within PSX-VRAM, these colours are stored within a certain area together with other palettes for sprites/tiles, mostly for these which are currently loaded into the RAM and also viewable. You can actually go from one palette to another in one click and only need your reference screenshots to figure out the correct colours for each element.

- I found the tile/sprite which I want to rip and also the correct palette for it, but the black background in PSX-VRAM blurs the element (which also contains black) with the viewer!
You can use false palettes to figure out the outline of a sprite or tile. This wrong palette shouldn't have black in it, so you can paste your sprite/tile, with the black background being transparent, on your sheet. Then you do the same thing again with the real palette and paste it over the element with the wrong colours. If now some colours from the fake palette shining through, because the real one has holes in it due to the black being erased (you always have to make black transparent), you can just edit these false colours to pure black within the respective palette.

- The transparent tile/sprite has more one than one possibility in terms of palette within the viewer and looking at reference screenshots doesn't help!
In this case, please state the game title, the tile/sprite you want to rip and use an online media hoster like mega.nz or mediafire.com to upload your VRAM file. I will take a look at it.

[TLaurus]

Thanks for the feedback. I was able to get what I needed with the 3rd question.