Ripping Sprites - Technique...
 

Just some images to show how I grab AM mode sprites...

Single-page format available here

And how to get ST mode sprites.
 

ST mode sprites... and eliminating the 'mask' to find the correct palette.

When I ripped sprites with this tool, I never used the color finder thingy, I always took the colors from a screenshot and transferred.... fast and easy.

useful so made it sticky

Might be worth going into more detail and also cover the other modes (SP)

Just make sure you keep things separate... sprites are the 3 or 15-color stuff that require no masks, while moving objects that are blitted are called bobs (Blitter OBjects). ;) Also, ATtached mode sprites are signified by AT.

This thread is a good initiative, ripping will help preserve Amiga graphics. :)

I agree completely... we are REALLY talking about BOB's / aka blitter-objects. And I totally understand about the masks... when I mentioned masks in another thread.. it caused some momentary confusion among others. But that's a given.. not everyone knows about masking then copying data using blitter...

But what can we do???...

Most people refer to them as sprites (which is the only reason I have) and most people will be looking for "amiga sprites" rather than "amiga bobs" or "amiga blitter objects".

I can see people looking for "ripping sprites" but "ripping bobs" is very unlikely.

I totally accept your point... you are technically 100% correct... but to the average Amiga user... sprites are... "the graphics that move over the background".

Maybe if we just keep an acknowledgement to that somewhere... and explain that these 'sprites' are really BOBs.!?!

Well, back when home computers either had or didn't have a sprite chip things were easily defined. There were no sprites on the ZX Spectrum, while the TI-99/4A did (crappy though it was). Also, on the arcade games side of it, the power of 2D games was pretty much defined by the capacity of their sprite chip.

Since then, terminology has slackened, usually by laymen who don't care how the stuff gets on the screen, as long as it moves and parts of it is transparent. Indeed, some programmers, even though they know they're blending RGB pixels on a fixed buffer with a chip that is not a sprite chip, think 'it moves, it's put on top of the background, let's call it a sprite'.

In fact, even I have bowed to the majority when programming on PC, they just don't get it if I don't call them sprites. But since the Amiga had both a sprite chip and a blitter chip, on the Amiga we should call sprites sprites and bobs bobs, I think.

Ah, method. Thanks for the tips - this will be indeed helpful...

but...

perhaps you can include the keys and shortcuts being used to "increase bitplanes" and "change palettes" and "the other stuff" - you know what I mean? :D

and soon this will become a FULLY TUTORIAL :agree :bowdown

Thanks dude,
Olli K.

P.S.: And thanks for the Nuclear War rips.

I had a go at a tutorial for ripping `sp` mode sprites.

nice, but the images should be a little bit bigger just to let newbies see what happen..;)

@ x-to

I totally agree, it was a rush job but if the content is ok then I`ll sort out the image sizes.Thanx for the feedback.:great

o.k. Had another go at a turorial for `sp mode` ripping.

Much better gifgit :)

I might attempt on of the other modes a little later :)

@ bippym.:great

Thanx, it seems weird that I can rip most games without any hassle but I find it difficult to put what I`m doing into words.( I just normally get on with it, but having to explain what I`m doing for the benefit of someone else is really hard,so I enlisted my ten year old son and told him what I was doing to see if he understood.The little S**T understood better than I did.Bloody kids!);)

A good method is either to get files from Amiga or PC version and try to unpack them, open them with gfxrip to see if something looks like GFX, then use screenshot / UAE color info to recolor it within gfxrip.
wrip (whdload package) can be applied on a ADF diskimage, so if the files are packed using ATN!/IMP! or RNC! it will extract them and you'll only have to unpack and start the rip.

This method avoids scanning through the memory, and also ensures that everything is aligned.

Sometimes a little C proggy is needed to extract sub-files using size/offset information contained in the files, but the result is worth.

Track2File by Mr.Larmer/WT also scan disk/ADF/File for xfd crunched files and unpack them.

The link in the first thread ( http://ipdb.ath.cx/_pubtest/tagl/ripguide/ ) doesn't seem to be working for me. Can anyone else get it to work?


Regards,
Lonewolf10

It's useless with http://www.archive.org/web/web.php because images are not visible.

Thanks for trying, s2325. They do archive images aswell, but I believe much of the content has to be manually indexed first. Therefore most images/files associated with archived webpages aren't viewable by the www audience :(

Edit: LOL, the images are (I believe) attached to the first two messages in this thread.


Regards,
Lonewolf10

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egXVIvPZMTI

look how fast it is possible to rip sprites..;)