Ripping arcade sprites

[mcgeezer]

I had a bit of time today and thought I'd have a game of Super Sprint.

I then thought I'd try getting hold of the car sprites for an Amiga conversion.... in the end I made a Youtube video showing how to rip some sprites in a rather unorthadox way.

It might be of use to someone sometime.

[ Show youtube player ]

Geezer

[Retro1234]

There is an Amiga version http://hol.abime.net/5903

[mcgeezer]

Originally Posted by Retro1234

There is an Amiga version http://hol.abime.net/5903

Its an atari st version running on an .amiga.

[WayneK]

It was pretty interesting to watch, but I really don't understand why you didn't just screenshot the VRAM/Tile memory from the MAME debugger and write a little python script or something to stitch all the frames together :P

[jotd]

maybe the palette. I didn't watch all the video but I suppose that McGeezer takes advantage of an even background to snip the sprites and rework them (and also the fact that you can 360 with your car, there's no scrolling, ...). I did the same with Bagman remake since there was no background.

And using a python script to create exact crop of each image with the same coords over and over until it's perfect isn't a bad idea either.

This is possible only with games with a few frames. Try to do that on Street Fighter II with the background, scrolling, and all

But when it's possible it's way easier than to try to figure out how the planes/colors are organized. Remember that this isn't an amiga game. I ripped Jim Power sprites using data file, from composite sprite data (not bitplanes) to png and it was really time-consuming already.

[mcgeezer]

Originally Posted by WayneK

It was pretty interesting to watch, but I really don't understand why you didn't just screenshot the VRAM/Tile memory from the MAME debugger and write a little python script or something to stitch all the frames together :P

Yeah, I could have done that as I'm pretty good with Python but it would have took me a bit longer I think.

Originally Posted by jotd

maybe the palette. I didn't watch all the video but I suppose that McGeezer takes advantage of an even background to snip the sprites and rework them (and also the fact that you can 360 with your car, there's no scrolling, ...). I did the same with Bagman remake since there was no background.

And using a python script to create exact crop of each image with the same coords over and over until it's perfect isn't a bad idea either.

This is possible only with games with a few frames. Try to do that on Street Fighter II with the background, scrolling, and all

I ripped the Rolling Thunder sprites using the same method because the MAME debugger enables you to switch off the background tile maps, makes things much easier to grab.

I'll see if I can get the entire sprite set and I'll post it here.... give me something to do I guess.

[spiff]

We have the rom files, and from the mame source we know the graphics location and probably the format.

Shouldn't it be possible to do a raw-read script?
something like
Starting at location 0x02000 ->
Step width * colour depth ->
Step height * colour depth
byte switch?
save tile

[redblade]

Originally Posted by spiff

We have the rom files, and from the mame source we know the graphics location and probably the format.

Shouldn't it be possible to do a raw-read script?
something like
Starting at location 0x02000 ->
Step width * colour depth ->
Step height * colour depth
byte switch?
save tile

There is a tool for that called Turaco-CL. But no Amiga port or output to IFF yet.

[jotd]

if you can output png, then converting to iff isn't a problem.

[redblade]

What freeware gfx tool do you use to convert to IFF? I don't know how MAME writes the PNGs if does 4bitplanes for 16 colours or defaults to 8bitplanes?

[mcgeezer]

Originally Posted by redblade

What freeware gfx tool do you use to convert to IFF? I don't know how MAME writes the PNGs if does 4bitplanes for 16 colours or defaults to 8bitplanes?

xnconvert - it's featured in my video.
https://www.xnview.com/en/xnconvert/

[malko]

You can also use GIMP with the IFF plugin : https://blitterstudio.com/gimp-iff-plugin/

[WayneK]

If you are ripping them from a VRAM/tileram screenshot, the cars are centred in each 16x16 (or 32x32, whatever) meta-tile already.
Python has Pillow (fork of PIL, Python Image Lib) which I think a few lines of Image.crop and Image.paste in the right places would produce the correct result in a few minutes :P

[jotd]

Pillow is exactly what I use for all image manipulations. I used it to convert bitplanes from and to PNG preserving palette order and all.

[SteveMoody]

Probably a bit late for you now but if it helps i can post the tiles directly from the arcade version if you want them.

[mcgeezer]

Originally Posted by SteveMoody

Probably a bit late for you now but if it helps i can post the tiles directly from the arcade version if you want them.

Thanks Steve.... already have them.

Here's what SS would look like on an A1200 Hi-Res Interlaced Amiga.

[ Show youtube player ]

I'm interested to know if people love/hate/don't care about the interlacing. I personally think it looks OK.... certainly playable in a game of SuperSprint.

If I have enough DMA time I could drop it down to OCS mode and into 16 colours but keeping the playability side of things.

[jotd]

Supersprint arcade has a very high resolution. It would look like the ST version if downgraded lores... And we already have the ST version...

Keep the interlace and hires

[malko]

Don't know where the flickering we can see on the video comes from, but without it just stay with the max resolution.

[Tigerskunk]

Why use IFF format if you can convert directly to raw ILBM??

[Valken]

I watched the video and thought it was brilliant.

Is there a way to rip console rom tiles this way such as SNES or even old Macintosh games under emulation on a PC?

It would allow us to port graphics over to an Amiga based game if possible.