Amiga sprites restoration project

[Joe Maroni]

ok, i´m still waiting...

[Ironclaw]

me too

[tomcat666]

Okie, found some time. Unfortunetly Bat-Man is not a good sprite ripping example because :

1.) The sprites (even in the same animation) are not the same size
2.) The sprites have some random data (which can even be code or something else) between them - not always the same.

Because of this you would have to rip most of them one-by-one . Which with the number of sprites in Bat-Man is not an easy task.

But for the sake of tutorial on how to rip sprites here is something :

Find the spot in the file which is in the first picture (bm1.gif) and select 32 pixels in X size. You will see each sprite is repeated 3 times : first two are in the same bitmap and the third one is in its own bitmap. So the main Bat-Man sprites use 3 bitmaps to be drawn in a standard Amiga Sprites mode (SP). Altough when the Amiga uses sprite multiplexing it could use 4 bitmaps to get 16 colours, but it seems this either uses some trick to use only 3 bitplanes or it just doesn't use the last bitplane... no time to check

So now you have got to picture 1 ... now align the sprites Y size so that you get all 3 bitmaps in line. Check picture 2.... this is how it should look.

Next bring the size in X direction to standard Amiga sprites size : 16 and set the mode to SP. Also set the colour depth to 3 bits. This will show you the screen in picture 3. Basically you are done with the first half of the Bat-Man sprite. You can save it to disk now if you want.

The problem with Bat-Man is that even the second half of the sprite is not the same size as the first half so you cannot just skip some bytes and save them as a combined sprite. You have to repeat the steps and get the next half of the sprite next.

Then you load both halves into PSP or some other gfx program, combine them together (you will see that the right part is much smaller), save the screenshot with UAE so you can rip the colours, adjust the palette of the combined sprite to match the colours from the screenshot and you get the finished sprite (8 colours) ...

With Bat-Man it would be A LOT of work to do this since it uses different sprite sizes and "garbage" between them. This is just something that can't be done in a ripper. But with many other games you will get lucky and most sprites will have the same size...

Hope this helped ???

[Joe Maroni]

phew...seems to be a hard job...

thanks for all...

[Ironclaw]

Well, I got the same result too from Batman, that's why I asked how it was done... so nothing new learned here, thanks anyway.... It's faster ripping them by hand from the game. I already have all Batman's sprites as I ripped them like a year ago for use in my Kung Fu 4 parody.

[Ironclaw]

Here, dug them up: (only ripped the ones I needed then)

[tomcat666]

Why did you want a step-by-step guide on how to rip splitted sprites if you already did it ? I think I said before they were different sized ... sometimes it is just faster to do it by hand, depends on the game and how they are stored.

[Joe Maroni]

look......

[Ironclaw]

Originally Posted by tomcat666

Why did you want a step-by-step guide on how to rip splitted sprites if you already did it ? I think I said before they were different sized ... sometimes it is just faster to do it by hand, depends on the game and how they are stored.

I want to rip the sprites using your ripper cause it's faster if you can get the whole sprite sheet in one go. Most games are pretty easy to rip but some, like Batman, are splitted, so I wanted to know how to combine them. I just gave you the batman savestate so that you could explain how to combine the sprites. As I said earlier, I don't want the sprites, I just want to know how to combine them. But as you now have explained, it's not possible, just one by one, so in this case it's faster to rip them by hand....

I thought any sprites could be ripped with your program, now I know that if I see more of the same type in a game, I will just rip them by hand instead.


edit:

nice spites x_to..... but wrong colors... ... but of course you know that.. anyway:

[Joe Maroni]

i saw this, after i´ve posted the image...

how did you find the palette...???

or did you combined the bitplanes in a different order..??
and did you use the ecs or the aga version...??

even turrican could be ripped, but hard to find/sort the bitplanes in the right order...

[Ironclaw]

I never look for the colors, I just take a screenshot from the game and transfer the colors.. like this:

http://www.retrogaming4ever.com/Pictures/Ripping.jpg

tomcat has explained several times that he does the same thing.

[tomcat666]

>I want to rip the sprites using your ripper cause it's faster if you can get
>the whole sprite sheet in one go. Most games are pretty easy to rip but
>some, like Batman, are splitted, so I wanted to know how to combine them.
>I just gave you the batman savestate so that you could explain how to
>combine the sprites. As I said earlier, I don't want the sprites, I just want
>to know how to combine them. But as you now have explained, it's not
>possible, just one by one, so in this case it's faster to rip them by hand....

Ahh, sorry for the sarcastic reply - I tought you wanted a step-by-step about how to combine the single sprites. Maybe someone can still find that post usable Unfortunetly if all sprites are not the same size and the gap between them (or the separate bitmaps) is not the same then you cannot rip them in "bulk" as you would want

>I thought any sprites could be ripped with your program, now I know that if
>I see more of the same type in a game, I will just rip them by hand instead.

Yeah, if the sizes/gaps differ (even by some odd bytes) you cannot do much with my ripper, so it might be faster to just rip them by hand. Altough it still might be faster with my ripper since you don't have to search for the correct frames...

I haven't found many games that are so impossible as BatMan Returns is ... so normally you are in luck ;-)

I ripped the whole first level of Cadaver with a lot of patience ... most of the objects (apart from Wall and Floor tiles) are different sized (in normal Amiga mode, not sprite mode though).

We should really make a site with the rips one day :-) Amiga graphics are one of the best out there. I would say even better than console stuff...

[Raislin77it]

another question,if u can tom :O)
i'm in trouble ripping gfx from alien breed tower assoult and trauma zero, because they are for cd32 so, the gfx mode are little different compared to standard amiga format (i think)
can u add support for cd32 gfx ? (if u have time naturally )

[Ironclaw]

I have not looked, but I think it should be the same as for any other Amiga 500 game. There shouldn't be any difference between Amiga500/1200 games and CD32.

[Raislin77it]

ummm... i don't think so, the alien breed tower assault gfx is in a kinda of format different
compared to ab2, the same was for trauma 0, and this evening i have problem with lionhearth gfx too
probably the game process the gfx in memory before putting it on to the screen
maybe it's my fault ;o)

[Frog]

you shouldn't have any problem with cd32 games, it's the same "construction" as ordinary amiga bitplane. But as you think, some game can process the gfx in memory before putting them on screen. I think you're talking about "chunky bitmap" on cd32 using akiko chipset (chunky2planar) for example (it's used for 3d games). But i don't think the games you mention used this kind of format.

You can also see some bad Atari to Amiga conversion where they used Atari bitmap style. Check on the disk for files with extension .PI1 .PC1 .NEO, you can used st2iff available on aminet. (some games still used Atari extension but they're no more in this format) There's also some datatype for Degas and Neochrome on aminet.

[Raislin77it]

ok thx frog, i'll try

[Joe Maroni]

if there will be a new evrsion of the tool next time can you build in more palette handling..???

its so hard to restore the colors....

[Ironclaw]

It's easy if you use Paintshop Pro... as we said earlier.... for me it just takes... 1 min....

[tomcat666]

It is REALLY easy to get the colours using PSP - just take the screenshot in WinUAE and then copy the colours to the ripped sprites. Even if the game uses 32 colours for sprites it only takes a few minutes. I know the palette searcher could do with more than those 2 options, but I am just not gonna be bothered with it when you can do it REALLY fast in PSP.
As for the CD32 stuff ... I definetly won't be doing a chunky mode, since it is not worth for 1 or maybe 2 games that supported it. The rest should be rippable the same way as all other ECS/AGA games are.

Sorry