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Struggling to rip sprites from .apk
#1
Hello! Over the past day or two, I've been trying to rip sprites and textures from a mobile game that I used to play, but I feel like I've hit a brick wall. I've downloaded the APK and looked through everything I could, but I'm stuck. I was hoping my experience in ripping textures from PS2/PS3 games for personal projects would carry over in at least some capacity but this is entirely new territory for me and I haven't been able to get much done.

The APK in question is Big Win Racing by Hothead Games
Goal: Extracting all sponsor/fictional company logos 
Bonus Goal: Maybe even getting their official names (as some logos don't have any names on them) and car color palettes + liveries too, but that seems like a totally different area of expertise..

Here's what I've been able to find on my own:
- I've looked through the entire APK and didn't find much. The /assets/ folder contains three files, two of which are .mp3 files named "content" and "scripts". Looking through them with HxD shows that there's definitely files hidden in them, but I wasn't able to find any headers/footers for filetypes that would be relevant to me (not ruling out the possibility that I could have missed them, though).
- I have no idea if the files are encrypted or not, as I have no idea how to differentiate between them.
- I'm fairly confident that the game was not made in Unity.
- I'm worried this might be one of those situations where I would need the OBB file to actually find what I'm looking for, because if that is the case, then I really am stuck because I don't have any Android devices to obtain the OBB file from.

Any and all assistance is appreciated. Thank you! Cute
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#2
Hey! I see a bunch of filenames with the extensions '.ktx', '.pvr' (edit: and '.dds') in content.mp3. Those are three common texture formats that would probably contain the sprites you want, and you could use something like Tacent View to convert said textures. Unfortunately, I don't know how to decompress that .mp3 file, so your best bet would probably be to go somewhere like ResHax (link in signature) and post the mp3 file there for someone to have a look.
applecuckoo - ripper of sounds, sprites and models

Places to get help:
DYKG/VG Resource Discord - This is where most of the ripping experts on the VG Resource hang out these days, so you should probably start here. Any requests to rip stuff (i.e. "Please rip sounds/models/sprites from game X!") are only allowed here as per the rules.

ResHax forum - Another forum that is home to most of the reverse engineers who were on the old ZenHax and XenTax forums. A great place to get help for any mysterious files. I'm also there under the same username.

And remember, always upload example files. That way, people don't have to dig in and fetch them for you.
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#3
(07-07-2024, 04:42 PM)applecuckoo Wrote: Hey! I see a bunch of filenames with the extensions '.ktx', '.pvr' (edit: and '.dds') in content.mp3. Those are three common texture formats that would probably contain the sprites you want, and you could use something like Tacent View to convert said textures. Unfortunately, I don't know how to decompress that .mp3 file, so your best bet would probably be to go somewhere like ResHax (link in signature) and post the mp3 file there for someone to have a look.

Ohhhh, I see! I didn't realize those first two were texture formats (and I definitely missed the .dds files when I was looking thought it lmao).
I'll head over to ResHax and see if anyone there has insight. Any suggestion on which area of the forums I should send it to?
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#4
Probably 'Game Archive' - I should note that the .dds files seem to be just fonts, so the .pvr and .ktx files are probably what you're looking for.
applecuckoo - ripper of sounds, sprites and models

Places to get help:
DYKG/VG Resource Discord - This is where most of the ripping experts on the VG Resource hang out these days, so you should probably start here. Any requests to rip stuff (i.e. "Please rip sounds/models/sprites from game X!") are only allowed here as per the rules.

ResHax forum - Another forum that is home to most of the reverse engineers who were on the old ZenHax and XenTax forums. A great place to get help for any mysterious files. I'm also there under the same username.

And remember, always upload example files. That way, people don't have to dig in and fetch them for you.
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Thanked by: lumbud84
#5
(07-07-2024, 07:51 PM)applecuckoo Wrote: Probably 'Game Archive' - I should note that the .dds files seem to be just fonts, so the .pvr and .ktx files are probably what you're looking for.

Sounds good. Just posted a thread there. Thank you again!
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#6
Update: Thanks to a member of the ResHax forums, I was able to extract everything from the two .mp3 files via a QuickBMS script and look through all of them with TacentView. However, these files somehow contain literally everything in the game except the ONE thing that I've been trying to find: the sponsor logos.
I attached two of the files that include "sponsor" in the filename, and these are normally where the sponsors would appear on the cars during gameplay (the sponsor logos appear in a few other places too, but I haven't attached those here). They don't have the sponsors contained in them, and instead consist of these weird gradients that I can only assume mean that they're taking a texture from another file and warping it to fit the sprites, which makes perfect sense.
The only problem is, those textures are nowhere to be found.
I don't know if the sponsors are on one giant sheet or if every single sponsor has its own separate texture file, but either way, the file(s) for them are not here.

What do I do now?
Do I need the OBB file? Is this a dead end? Am I missing something?

any help is appreciated ;v;


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#7
Yep, those gradients are vectors to project the textures in data/textures/cars to the 'psuedo-3D' chassis. It's worth noting that some of the textures are made up of two parts, a main colour layer, and a mask layer. For example, here's 'MyClub.ktx' combined with its mask - it's completely transparent and might be worth noting:
[Image: xNit9ZP.png]
applecuckoo - ripper of sounds, sprites and models

Places to get help:
DYKG/VG Resource Discord - This is where most of the ripping experts on the VG Resource hang out these days, so you should probably start here. Any requests to rip stuff (i.e. "Please rip sounds/models/sprites from game X!") are only allowed here as per the rules.

ResHax forum - Another forum that is home to most of the reverse engineers who were on the old ZenHax and XenTax forums. A great place to get help for any mysterious files. I'm also there under the same username.

And remember, always upload example files. That way, people don't have to dig in and fetch them for you.
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#8
(07-08-2024, 03:52 AM)applecuckoo Wrote: Yep, those gradients are vectors to project the textures in data/textures/cars to the 'psuedo-3D' chassis. It's worth noting that some of the textures are made up of two parts, a main colour layer, and a mask layer. For example, here's 'MyClub.ktx' combined with its mask - it's completely transparent and might be worth noting

The issue is that the only files present in data/textures/cars are the textures they used for cars in the promotional images, which don't appear in the actual gameplay. The way these appear in-game implies that there's a file (or multiple files) that all of these are being pulled from (example image provided), but I can't seem to find where they're being pulled from anywhere in these folders.
I did notice that a ton of the files had an associated mask layer, but I have no idea if there's anything I can actually do with that info.


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