Ripping Sprites?

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Jorichi
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Post » 09 Jul 2013, 14:45

I want to rip sprites from a NES game. I can't seem to find a correct/complete sprite sheet from.
Actually, I'm pretty sure there isn't a 100% complete tileset of it out there.
It's usually the first three levels from the same guy.

So I went out and tried to get the sprites myself.
For as far as I have looked there seem to be two ways of doing this:
1. Get an emulator and take screenshots of the game, where using frame by frame as a tool to get animation steps.
2. Rip them directly from the ROM with programs such as YY-CHR and such. Then rearrange and color the 8x8 sprites yourself.
Method 2 gave me fifteen banks with each having 512 8x8 sprites, so that method seemed to be a lot of work.
With some intensive research I found a different, but complex, method where you'd get a print of an entire level, but it gives a completely wrong color.

So this rose several questions:
1. If using the emulator, which emulator is the best to use for this? One that can hide the background and uses the correct colors the NES displays.
2. In what way would the method of ripping directly from the ROM be a better choice than the emulator?
3. There seems to be no actual 100% accurate color palette of the NES, or am I wrong? The RBG values seem to be slightly different for each different palette I see.
4. If I were to take the sprites from the map ripping method, how can I assure myself I have the right color to replace the wrong one with?
5. Which program is best to be used for the ROM ripping process?
6. Is it possible to rip music and sound effects from the ROM and convert them to a .mp3 or .ogg? If so, what program would be the best to do that?

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TheSeek
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Post » 09 Jul 2013, 16:27

This site gives, in addition to the palette image, the RGB values, both in decimal and hexadecimal. I dunno if these are the correct values and how to verify this, but it's a start point.

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Jorichi
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Post » 09 Jul 2013, 16:34

Ah yes, that's certainly a step in the right direction, thanks!
At least I can correct the colors of the maps, it's a start.

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Mr.Q.Marx?
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Post » 09 Jul 2013, 16:50

FCEUX has the option to use diiferent pallettes and disable the backgrounds or objects so I've always used that.
I've always viewed the benefit of the ROM method as finding sprites that are unused in the finished game. Normally that's running sprites of the main character.
I think I tried ripping nsf files from a game and converting the nsf files to wav at one point but that was a while ago. I have a feeling I was following youtube tutorials.

EDIT:
ripping, converting to mp3 (guy's kinda a jerk)
Franpa wrote: @ Mr. Q. Marx, you do realize no emulator has the correct NES palette right? It's all guesses and estimates to what it should be, most emulators have notable differences in the palettes they use. Probably the most accurate is the one FirebrandX made, based on running a actual NES on a modern LCD display and using special tools to calibrate and derive the colour info.

http://www.firebrandx.com/downloads/fbx2pal.zip

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Jorichi
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Post » 09 Jul 2013, 19:27

Ah thanks Mr.Q.Marx? this emulator will help with getting specific sprites I can't get my hands on otherwise.
I really needed that frame skip function to get those animation sprites.
The music and sound effects would be terrific too, but I haven't tried that out yet.

Still a little trouble with the colors though. I took the colors of a specific block from four different sources and checked to which colors these could be linked. I couldn't find a color that could be the original though. But after some research I stumbled on this:
Image
The article explains it a bit: http://ahefner.livejournal.com/11670.html
401 different colors on a single screen. Somehow I have a feeling this has something to do with it.
The colors that I'm working with seem to be a lot closer to some of these then any ever could on the palette that TheSeek linked:
Image
(The big boxes are the NES palette colors and the lines in between are colors ripped from a specific block from four different sources).
The emulators really tend to screw up the colors, for as you can see the four different sources are quite different in color.

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