Jurassic Park - possible to 'rip' level maps from the game?

[laffer]

I've seen lots of really cool maps on HOL, and I assume these have somehow been 'ripped' from the games even though I admittedly know nothing about stuff like that.

However, there aren't any gamemaps of Jurassic Park on the site and I was wondering - is this simply because no one has gotten to it yet, or is it very difficult to get the maps from this game?
Are there plans to do this later sometime?

The reason I ask is I decided to try and map it myself, the most awkward way possible - by taking screenshots and joining them in MS Paint
Since the game scrolls (not single screens), that makes it even more work... and since I had to try my best to line the shots up as well as possible to avoid 'clipping' (didn't do this perfectly at all, would probably have taken many times as long if I was aiming to make it 100% perfect)... it turned out to be way too much work.

So I'm probably not going to do the rest of the top down maps this way, and especially if they will be easily ripped from the game someday anyway

So I'd really like to know, if anyone has any idea that is.

I'm posting the map I just finished if anyone wants to have a look.

First, here's a normal shot from the game so you can see the 'zoom level' and get an idea of the scale -


And here's the map (the original image is 6113x4345) -

[TCD]

Well, there's Joe Maroni's LvlRip : http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?p=200840#post200840
You can find it on the file server in 'Misc/The Zone!/L'.

[laffer]

I'll have a look, thanks.

[TCD]

Didn't have a look at the whole 'map' when I answered, so let me put the 'Looks really good for a MSPaint joined game map ' here Would be nice to see some more gamemaps on HOL

[laffer]

Thanks

By the way, I'll just ask this in case someone with some time on their hands should be reading this thread - it would be really cool if someone could have a look at the game only to check whether or not it's possible to rip the maps from this game and if it is - how much work it would be.

The reason being I kind of want to create maps of more levels the same awkward way (MS paint, copy and paste) if there is no easier way possible.
But it's not motivating at all to do that when I suspect there might very well be a much faster and more accurate way to do it, that would also give better maps.

[TCD]

I'll let Cody and Joe know and point them to this thread. Hope they can give you some advice how to do it with the least effort (and headaches )

[laffer]

Thanks

[dlfrsilver]

If the files were ripped out the disks, yes, i think you could indeed get the tiles and map data in order to bring out full maps

[CodyJarrett]

I've tried before but didn't get very far with it. I found the tiles which are 32x16 but I wasn't able to find the map data. It's possible that it's a bit more complex than other games due to the background and foreground tiles. I'll look into it further (Joe will be able to tell us more).

[MethodGit]

I was led to believe that doing anything much in the way of hackery and/or ripping would be fiendishly difficult due to the OTT protection the game has. Am I just overexaggerating?

[Codetapper]

To rip maps you take a memory snapshot and work outside of the game, therefore there is no hacking required. The problems are locating the map data and converting it back into a useable format for the map ripper!

[Joe Maroni]

i´ve found the map data, but still need to understand the format...


shouldn´t the thread moved to sprites forum ???

[CodyJarrett]

I've moved it to the HOL data forum.

[laffer]

Originally Posted by Joe Maroni

i´ve found the map data, but still need to understand the format...


shouldn´t the thread moved to sprites forum ???

Cool! I sadly have no idea how any of this works but does this mean this might be possible in the future?

Would be really cool to have the maps of this game

In any case, at least I can know for sure now that this isn't something I could ever figure out so you (and others in this thread) have saved me going through a lot of trouble for nothing

[StrategyGamer]

Originally Posted by laffer

Would be really cool to have the maps of this game

+1!

[Joe Maroni]

It is more difficult then I thought. I have already manipulated the collision bit and able to walk on each part of the map.

map data seems to consist of two parts in memory...or perhaps 3....i need to check something more....

[Joe Maroni]

ok...i´ve think i´ve got it....

this was a little bit difficult and there are still some wrong placed tiles in the map...

i´ll make it perfect tomorrow and uploaded the map to HOL because i can´t upload such a big file here at EAB....

details about how i´ve done them and how the map was generated will be explained if you like to know it...


have fun with it...

[TCD]

Just in case you wonder what Joe is talking about : http://hol.abime.net/828/gamemap

[Codetapper]

Joe: Please explain away, with all the technical details in excrutiating detail for us techies!

[Joe Maroni]

i hope my english is good enough to make it understandable....


ok, step one was finding the tiles...:

start the game until first level is loaded....save an uncompressed savestate and load it with gfxrip

locate the tiles and find out the size of the tiles(pic 1)

note the values on top of the window...really important are those values:

Siz: X = 32
Siz: Y = 12
Vis.X = 23

playing with the palette you can see that 23 tiles are displayed in a row and there are 23 rows with 23 tiles each row....

this means that we have to save 529 tiles(23*23). it is necessary to save the tiles in one row...you will see it later....

search correct palette (in my savestate i used the AGA version) (pic 2)

press P and type in field "Pictures in X:" the value 529

now we know how much tiles are used and what format the have....
the reason that the offsets can´t be stored as 8 byte values (maximum 256) makes us believe that they must be stored as words....

next step will be locating the map data...


TO BE CONTINUED....