The Mugen Fighters Guild - my experiments in sprite ripping; a melvana story

MellyInChains

my experiments in sprite ripping; a melvana story

New #1 February 15, 2012, 04:11:20 am

i'm a gay trans lady
to hell with this site, find me at mffa or w/e

so yeah. ever since i've done that shitty manual ripping of billy two moons a few years ago and tem(A) just ripped everyone from tattoo assassins in return...i've become curious. what exactly hasn't been...how to put it, thoroughly researched in terms of sprite ripping? what methods are there? what's the most efficient way of doing this? etc etc etc etc

over the years i've been through trial and error of doing this stuff with several games i could think of with several platforms. it's been an interesting experience at any rate, and i know i have a bigger list of games i've ripped and/or attempted to rip from...but my head's starting to hurt and i feel shakey (coincidence with that word lolol) so i'm just gonna list off anything that comes to mind right now, and if anyone else is interested, then hey.

my main method as of now is to use animget and color select with 0 threshold using GIMP

A

B
Battle Monsters
Platform: Sega Saturn exclusive
Character: Strawbelly Jam (Drethdok)
Progress: Ripped everything, DrKelexo ripped everything else from the rest of the roster, sans The Big 4, Deathmask and Kuja (Skythe)
Problems: Even though this was eventually manually corrected in Fighter Factory, Strawbelly's primary palette has 0,0,0 tones in it that blend in with the black background that comes from Yabause direct sprite rips. The reason why Deathmask and Kuja have not been ripped is because of this exact problem, and both of their palettes have 0,0,0 tones in it. And no, manual ripping from SSF wouldn't work.
Products: Sheet

C

D
Dragoon Might
Platform: Arcade exclusive
Character: Jaoh
Progress: Ripped majority of sprites, still working on it as it's a current WIP
Problems: Lifebars obscure most air sprites, also the game features a rather touchy zoom-out function that makes ripping some sprites difficult. While we're at it it's a pain in the ass to rip sounds from too. Somebody help meeee
Products: Sample

E

F
Fighters' Impact
Platform: Arcade, also available on PSX
Character: Dr. Wiz
Progress: Ripped intro
Problems: It's a 3D game, what the hell was I thinking?
Products: Intro animation

G
Gokuu Densetsu
Platform: PSX Exclusive
Character: Rasetujo
Progress: Most of her sprites
Problems: Nothing noticeable so far aside from having to fix the aspect intro if absolutely necessary
Products: Sample

H

I

J

K
Kasumi Ninja
Platform: Jaguar exclusive
Character: Angus McGreggor
Progress: Ripped I THINK everything?
Problems: None.
Products: Sheet

King of Fighters '99
Platform: Genesis pirate, also on SNES
Character: Cycl
Progress: Ripped I THINK everything?
Problems: Scaled incorrectly because I'm an idiot. Also the GensKMod 0,0,0 thing.
Products: Sheet

L
Lord of the Rings: Return of the King
Platform: Genesis pirate
Character: Aragorn
Progress: Ripped I THINK everything?
Problems: At the time I was not aware of a GensKMod build that turned the layerless background into a bright pink and not the usual 0,0,0 black, making ripping this way easier if I did it again. Also scaled incorrectly because I'm an idiot.
Products: Sheet

M

N

O

P

Q

R

S
Stimpy's Invention + Stimpy's Invention Beta
Platform: Genesis
Character: Ren Hoek
Progress: Ripped beta-exclusive sprites (the ones with less 'shading' for lack of a better word) and sprites that were not already ripped by aperson98 seen here. I haven't worked on Stimpy in this case though.
Problems: None.
Products: Sheet

T
Top Fighter MK 2000 VIII
Platform: Genesis pirate
Characters: Joden, Ali
Progress: Ripped I THINK everything?
Problems: At the time I was not aware of a GensKMod build that turned the layerless background into a bright pink and not the usual 0,0,0 black, making ripping this way easier if I did it again.
Products: Sheet, albeit in alternate palette for above reasons. Ali's sheet, which I somehow forgot to rip the liedead sprite.

Twin Goddesses
Platform: PSX Exclusive
Character: Prince Goldrush
Progress: Ripped various sprites, stopped due to masa(somenumbers) releasing Goldrush shortly after I started progress
Problems: Lifebars obscure most air sprites.
Products: Sprite sheet

U

V
V.R. Fighter vs Taken 2
Platform: Genesis pirate
Character: Lee Chaolan
Progress: Ripped I THINK everything?
Problems: At the time I was not aware of a GensKMod build that turned the layerless background into a bright pink and not the usual 0,0,0 black, making ripping this way easier if I did it again.
Products: Sheet

Violent Vengeance - The Universe Hero
Platform: MS-DOS
Characters: entire roster sans sub and final boss
Progress: Ripped stance sprites
Problems: M. Buseuti (the green alien) has dark green tones that blends in with the shadows that are also bright green for whatever reason.
Products: Sheet

W
Way of the Warrior
Platform: 3DO exclusive
Character: Shaky Jake
Progress: Ripped stance sprites and some more sprites
Problems: Finally got 4DO to boot up at all, and it has a more unaltered display as opposed to FreeDO. However, this game's sprites have this weird edging that blend in with the background anyway. Despite that, they can pretty much be ignored with sufficient results, albeit being kinda rough-looking. Of course there's the zoom-out feature, but both characters jumping into the air seems to keep the camera at the same distance. Haven't ripped everything yet but I'm excited to see what I can get using this method, as it may actually make WOTW characters possible now! Also random fact, this was ripped on the hidden Taj Mahal stage. Dunno why I stated that.
Products: Old terrible and ghetto as hell stance animation, WIP sheet

WWF In Your House
Platform: Sega Saturn, also available on PSX (although not very emulatable)
Character: Ahmed Johnson
Progress: Ripped various sprites
Problems: Even if I'm using Yabause's direct sprite ripping, there's still so many sprites to rip that it would be kinda pointless to rip absolutely everything and not immediately make something out of it. Also walking animation is two different sprite sections lol
Products: Sprite sheet, stance animation

X

Y

Z

Last Edit: June 30, 2012, 02:21:33 am by MelvanaInChains

Cyanide

Re: my experiments in sprite ripping; a melvana story

#2 February 15, 2012, 04:23:18 am

Legendary XIII
I am the eye of the storm to come!

In the old days where you could not actually disable the BG at all we used a tool called PCX clean which would take an image and remove all colours not in the palette. I replicate this in PSP7 by doing the following.

Reduce the image to 256 colours. Save the palette
Edit the palette to remove every colour not included in the sprite (this is quite time consuming) Save this palette as something else
Use image robot to apply the first palette, then apply the second palette over the top with Maintain Indexes checked. This will apply palette one, then replace all the unneeded colours with those on palette 2. Image robot allows me to do hundreds of sprites at once.

This cleans off the background in a batch method. I used it pretty successfully in Bleach DS 2 while ripping.

If you get the right BG this is really easy.

In M.U.G.E.N there is no magic button

They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance.

Bastard Mami

Re: my experiments in sprite ripping; a melvana story

#3 February 15, 2012, 04:29:44 pm

as ar as dragoon might goes as well as a few other mame fighting games I made a custom build of mame that allows for layer/object disabling.

MellyInChains

Re: my experiments in sprite ripping; a melvana story

#4 February 15, 2012, 07:43:25 pm

i'm a gay trans lady
to hell with this site, find me at mffa or w/e

Cyanide said, February 15, 2012, 04:23:18 am

In the old days where you could not actually disable the BG at all we used a tool called PCX clean which would take an image and remove all colours not in the palette.

i've heard of that too (i believe mass uses the same method) but it seems using gimp's color select on drawn sprites works just as well. i may have to experiment with that regarding digitized sprites though.

立ち絵(たちえ~ said, February 15, 2012, 04:29:44 pm

as ar as dragoon might goes as well as a few other mame fighting games I made a custom build of mame that allows for layer/object disabling.

ooh really? well be sure to throw me a line about that, because lifebars obscure a LOT of stuff in certain games

also added more entries. i should note i ripped some of benkei's sprites from blood warrior but i seem to have lost the file??

XGargoyle

Re: my experiments in sprite ripping; a melvana story

#5 February 15, 2012, 08:49:39 pm

Hedgehog Whisperer
Red Bull addict

I assume you've never used Artmoney, right?

XGargoyle: Battle posing since 1979
http://xgargoyle.mgbr.net
http://www.pandorabots.com/pandora/talk?botid=e71c0d43fe35093a <-- Please click that link
http://paypal.me/XGargoyle <-- Donations welcome!

MellyInChains

Re: my experiments in sprite ripping; a melvana story

#6 February 15, 2012, 09:16:26 pm

i'm a gay trans lady
to hell with this site, find me at mffa or w/e

not yet, no. i handed dragoon might to a friend of mine (jz specifically) and he got most of the velocities and such (even found out the game has an X-float thing going on) but no luck in terms of sprite-related issues

Last Edit: February 15, 2012, 09:21:42 pm by MelvanaInChains

XGargoyle

Re: my experiments in sprite ripping; a melvana story

#7 February 15, 2012, 09:22:16 pm

Hedgehog Whisperer
Red Bull addict

if your friend got the velocities, he may be able to find the X/Y position of the sprites, meaning you can virtually place your sprites in any place of the screen. With more knowledge you can also find the X/Y position of the background tiles/sprites/lifebars, and then you can move them elsewhere outside the screen, in particular for those emulators that don't disable layers

MellyInChains

Re: my experiments in sprite ripping; a melvana story

#8 February 15, 2012, 09:25:31 pm

i'm a gay trans lady
to hell with this site, find me at mffa or w/e

ooh, that'd be useful especially for the zoomed-out sprites, and because a few other people apparently have been looking for a way to rip from the same game, so if i can get jz and i to figure that out i can also give 'em a holler

thanks for the info, i've heard of how powerful that program was but i didn't know it could do things like that

XGargoyle

Re: my experiments in sprite ripping; a melvana story

#9 February 15, 2012, 09:30:31 pm

Hedgehog Whisperer
Red Bull addict

Artmoney lets you do whatever you want as long as you find the right addresses.

Also, I suggest checking the links of this post: http://mugenguild.com/forumx/index.php?topic=138429.msg1509961#msg1509961

rukifellth

Re: my experiments in sprite ripping; a melvana story

#10 February 16, 2012, 12:52:36 am

Currently working in 8 bits...

Well I've never seen anyone trying to rip from Monster Maulers/Mashers whatever the name. XD

It was a pretty fun Red Earth/Warzard esque game which featured a Moai, Ducker and the Brain Golem from Gradius as bosses...

Bastard Mami

Re: my experiments in sprite ripping; a melvana story

#11 February 16, 2012, 01:21:19 am

kwsk

MellyInChains

Re: my experiments in sprite ripping; a melvana story

#12 February 16, 2012, 03:33:53 am

i'm a gay trans lady
to hell with this site, find me at mffa or w/e

thanks again for the linkz gargoyle, i'll try seeing what i can do when i start diverting my full attention to making jaoh again

rukifellth said, February 16, 2012, 12:52:36 am

Well I've never seen anyone trying to rip from Monster Maulers/Mashers whatever the name. XD

It was a pretty fun Red Earth/Warzard esque game which featured a Moai, Ducker and the Brain Golem from Gradius as bosses...

looked it up, looks pretty bizarre. might try ripping some stuff if i got nothin else to do

立ち絵(たちえ~ said, February 16, 2012, 01:21:19 am

kwsk

...?

Neo Leo

Re: my experiments in sprite ripping; a melvana story

#13 February 26, 2012, 02:19:36 pm

I am Neo Leo! Hear me roar!

rukifellth said, February 16, 2012, 12:52:36 am

Well I've never seen anyone trying to rip from Monster Maulers/Mashers whatever the name. XD

It was a pretty fun Red Earth/Warzard esque game which featured a Moai, Ducker and the Brain Golem from Gradius as bosses...

The heroine:
http://mugenchara.blog.shinobi.jp/Entry/1843/

The gorilla:
http://mugenchara.blog.shinobi.jp/Entry/1591/

Get the best Leo (by Cray) here: http://www.infinitymugenteam.com/infinity.wiki/mediawiki/index.php?title=Leo:_Final_Mix

MellyInChains

Re: my experiments in sprite ripping; a melvana story

#14 February 26, 2012, 07:10:02 pm

i'm a gay trans lady
to hell with this site, find me at mffa or w/e

alright so here's the deal, i'd add these to the list but i didn't really start and i've been up all night and i'm not sure if i'm actually awake or just dreaming, so lessee

i checked out the mortal kombat 1+mkt kano spritepack courtesy of sprite ripper, and it's got all of his mkt exclusive moves and stuff along with his unused stuff, pretty cool....

but none of the other things that are to mkt scale are included.

seen here is a comparison showing why this is a problem. if you wanted to use the mkt extra content, this is the situation right here. all of the extra content, but none of the actual essentials. so really this is what you end up with. i've tried ripping this using my standard saturn technique and the game itself is so fucked up half of the sprites seem unrippable. so i dunno. gonna try it out with the playstation version later.

there was other stuff to go here but fuck it, i'm at my wit's end right now with other shit

Last Edit: February 27, 2012, 06:39:35 pm by MelvanaInChains

MellyInChains

Re: my experiments in sprite ripping; a melvana story

#15 February 27, 2012, 06:41:41 pm

i'm a gay trans lady
to hell with this site, find me at mffa or w/e

playstation version is acceptable and is up to scale. more to come later.

also i should note that i'm doing something really stupid. this unemulated mysterious jaguar 'gem' has a high-quality (sorta) gameplay video of it up. so i'm saying 'screw it' and ripping sprites from it for the hell of it, just to see how bad it comes out. so far, my expectations have been met.

another random note, might attempt ripping lotus master from martial masters. because he's cool.

MellyInChains

Re: my experiments in sprite ripping; a melvana story

#16 March 11, 2012, 06:08:00 pm

i'm a gay trans lady
to hell with this site, find me at mffa or w/e

NGI inspired me to start ripping rasetujo to completion. it was actually incredibly easy to do, and thus first post updated

....aside from a few pixels here and there but i just overlooked those and i don't really got time to fix it right now. but yeah there's that.

XGargoyle

Re: my experiments in sprite ripping; a melvana story

#17 March 11, 2012, 06:25:12 pm

Hedgehog Whisperer
Red Bull addict

spritesheets are really useless if you want to use the sprites for mugen

MellyInChains

Re: my experiments in sprite ripping; a melvana story

#18 March 11, 2012, 06:49:39 pm

i'm a gay trans lady
to hell with this site, find me at mffa or w/e

so i've been told....but i thought up a silly method to experiment with accurate alignment, so i'll see how that goes i guess

XGargoyle

Re: my experiments in sprite ripping; a melvana story

#19 March 11, 2012, 06:50:50 pm

Hedgehog Whisperer
Red Bull addict

Artmoney: find the position X and Y of the character, and freeze the values.

MellyInChains

Re: my experiments in sprite ripping; a melvana story

#20 March 19, 2012, 06:05:32 pm

i'm a gay trans lady
to hell with this site, find me at mffa or w/e

rasetujo completed, will upload the sheet later when i get home. she's also almost done as a mugen character, so there's that.

found another game i was afraid wouldn't be able to get ripped...but it's very easy. enter the only character anybody remembers kasumi ninja for

also gonna look into seeing how artmoney works with this...the emulator i'm using completely screws up the code entries (pressing the '2' key will input '22', so on so forth), so the only way i'm going to be able to rip demon gyaku (the other one is a simple palette swap so i'm not concerned with him) is to either beat everyone in arcade mode and fight the cpu....or just hack him with artmoney so i can play as him.

lastly, kasumi ninja does something with it's sprites (at least angus here) that haven't seen a digitized fighter do before, aside from sorta kinda mortal kombat 3. notice how the colors for the skirt, hair, etc are very clearly seperated? tested out a new palette with these sprites, it's perfect and very easy to alter as opposed to the messes that are gokuu densetsu, survival arts, etc. i'm just sorta surprised at how impressive kasumi ninja is graphically....but nothing else is really that good

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