Amiga sprites restoration project

Originally posted by tomcat666
Sorry Captain HIT... I currently don't have the time to rip the Turrican graphics nor to port the tool to Amiga (it is a C++ Allegro source... if some1 wants to port ... I can give him the source).

But some1 else here might be able to help you out with it...

Oh, that's sad

But maybe someone else could do this in this forum? I don't have knowledge about
coding myself. But you could send me source, maybe some friends of mine could
port it, but i'm not sure.

[CodyJarrett]

I've put the GFX Ripper in the Zone...

[tomcat666]

Well, I had around 80% success rate with ZX Spectrum stuff and around 50% with CPC stuff (since they store their graphics in similar planar order) - the C64 games normally store the graphics in different order, since the c64 video memory has different layound (complete 8x8 array instead of first 8 pixels of first row, etc. as on ZX and CPC)... the tool is primarily aimed at amiga, but it does have some success with other systems. I have been able to rip out quite some CPC games with 4 colour sprites with it !

I will re-put it into the zone tommorow (dont have it here).

[tomcat666]

Thanx Cody !

Hmm, I think I made a newer 1.02 version, but now I am not sure... Will re-check tommorow and upload the newest if there is one.

[BippyM]

The problem with the amiga is that the rippers have to be loaded generally after you reboot, so the data in memory isn't 100%

With this method the results are 100% guaranteed, and really you don't need it on an Amiga if it is already on PC and you have a PC

As for the idea of incorporating it into WinUAE, this would be great and would remove the need for scanning states, as you'd be able to simply scan the Amiga's memory directly

[Amiga1992]

Originally posted by bippym
With this method the results are 100% guaranteed, and really you don't need it on an Amiga if it is already on PC and you have a PC

But our friend CaptainHIT has no Pish-E!

Welcome aboard captain.. Seen your icons... Love your icons...

Thanks Cody, got the arc, but i couldn't use it, i thought the source was included.
Hey tomcat, could you put your source into the zone too please? Thanks.

And hi to Akira! Seen my icons? Which icons? The ones made for WHDLoad?

[RetroMan]

Hmmm, this could be a bit tricky but how about this :

- make a mem dump on your Amiga (there must be a way to do it, or not ?)
- then run a MSDos Emu on your Miggy (like PCTask for example)
- use the gfx ripper from tomcat666 on the mem dump

May this work at all

[BippyM]

Okay, I seem to have found the gfx from gods, but cannot get the colours, even though I have loaded the palette

[Amiga1992]

Originally posted by Captain HIT
And hi to Akira! Seen my icons? Which icons? The ones made for WHDLoad?

Indeed
I made a couple icons for action! but I take so much frigging time to make them, they kind of fired me. Right, Codetapper?

Originally posted by RetroMan
Hmmm, this could be a bit tricky but how about this :

- make a mem dump on your Amiga (there must be a way to do it, or not ?)
- then run a MSDos Emu on your Miggy (like PCTask for example)
- use the gfx ripper from tomcat666 on the mem dump

May this work at all

I know it doesn't
I get the mem dump with WHDLoad easily, there's no problem.
Only problem is: I have PC-Task with no System installed. And tomcat666's
ripper is Windows only. So i need to install Win95 at least on that too.
Why bothering? I better go out and buy me a PC. But i won't do that because
i want to spend the money for the AmigaOne with OS4.


Akira: Ah, now i remember where i have seen your nick, no not from Akira the Amiga game :-)
In the readme file from Codetapper's installs I don't he fired you
Maybe i was online at the moment and he asked me instead of you
And we're not all perfect, i had some things fucked up in icons too (not my fault,
the OS3.9 icon.library's or IconEdit's fault i think). And Codetapper remade those icons by himself,
but he still credited me on some of his installs. Kind of him, thanks ;-)

So, i wanna that little gfxripper ported to Amiga, is there any skilled coder? :-)

[Amiga1992]

I just take too much time because Im very busy I only made 3 icons for action! : one for the Sonic the Hedgehog demo, one for Strider and one for Magnatron.

[Frog]

@bippym : you can use chipsaver (on aminet) to prevent your memory being corrupt after a reset.
ExoticRipper also feature a Chip2Fast option using the command Boot

@Captain Hit : You can try to rip a gfx using HrtMon. There's some info on Codetapper's site http://zap.to/action
Sprites are harder to rip.

BTW i suggest to use Bplripper (on aminet) it handle AGA pictures.

[Djay]

won't the software version of Action Replay rip graphics on-the-fly?

[tomcat666]

Bippy, I tried ripping gods myself - last 5 minutes, and you did not get the right graphics out ;-)

The palette cannot be found with my program, so you have to edit it by hand (main sprite uses 16 colours and the background uses the other 16 colours).

On a 512k amiga if you take a snapshot (with uae) when the first level start you will find the main sprite graphics at 242426 , X Size : 32 , Y Size : 48 , 4 bitplanes.

When you save it out you can save 9*3 pictures in the same file and you will get the 27 animation frames of the main animation (you can save the others into different files - there is a lot of main sprite animation).

Anyway, when you edit the palette by hand in some paint proggy (paint shop pro here) - you can do that by taking the SCREENSHOT of WinUAE while it runs the game and then just picking the right colours from the screenshot and setting the ones in the ripped graphics.

Here is what you end up with..

Originally posted by Frog
@bippym : you can use chipsaver (on aminet) to prevent your memory being corrupt after a reset.
ExoticRipper also feature a Chip2Fast option using the command Boot

@Captain Hit : You can try to rip a gfx using HrtMon. There's some info on Codetapper's site http://zap.to/action
Sprites are harder to rip.

BTW i suggest to use Bplripper (on aminet) it handle AGA pictures.

I've tried HRTmon already. I haven't used any chipsavers or something else. Just loaded the memory dump into it. I've found all of the Turrican 2 sprites and gfx, but i dunno why, the screen was 1bit, only grey and black, couldn't change it. I'll try harder today. The gfx are stored alltogether in different modulos. Some are 32x32, some 16x32 etc. Will be a hard work if i want to rip 'em all with HRTmon. I just thought tomcat666's ripper would be the easy way. But it seems i'm on my own.

[BippyM]

Ok tomcat here is one for you...

I have tried Bloodmoney and can rip the odd sprite (With incorrect colours tho!!)

Now here is the puzzle... Bloodmoney screen is 32 colours, and I have found the walker (at-at type things). They are blue and have found them fine (48x48 cols) now look at the picture and you'll see that every 6th walker is fine (correct colours etc..) the frames in between are the extra frames if you up the bitplanes to 6 it all fits nicely but colours are wrong and would suggest bloodmoney uses 64 colour gfx (Which it doesn't!!)

Ideas m8

[tomcat666]

Very simple. If you are a games programmer - especially on the amiga - you know that most games that use bobs (and not sprites) have another special bitmap called MASK - the mask has zeros where the sprite is transparent.

If you look at the blood money bobs (like your walker) in 1 bitplane (2 colours) mode you will see that there are first 5 bitplanes for the picture and then there is the MASK. To properly rip them you have to ignore the MASK - i.e. you have to skip it.

For this you either use the R/F keys to set the skip value or press the 'H' key and enter 288 as the skip value. VOILA the graphics are there and correct ;-)

Here is the pic :

[BippyM]

Cheers you learn something new everyday

Right I have a feature request (Not that it'd be needed) In the action replay gfx ripper it is posible to lock certain planes and move the others about, can you add this, so say you lock 4 planes the 5th would still move

and while I'm on it any chance of writing a MOD/Sound ripper this would be cool (Could use that Exotic Ripper for the Amiga using the save states )

Cheers m8

[tomcat666]

Well, it would be a nice feature, but would also mean a major rewrite of the thing... so not in the near future... but someday when I have enough time on my hands I might do it. So far I haven't needed a feature like this...