Marvin626's PSX Sprite sheet tutorial!

This is the first part of sprite sheet tutorials from Marvin626, SRWG-W Member.
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Ripping sprites from Psx SRW games using Agemos Vram viewer and MSpaint

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With this method you can rip any graphic from a Psx game through seeing the Psx internal Video Ram (Vram), any sprite can be ripped by this method

i will explain only the method for SRW sprites, but it's not so hard for other games and sprite formats.

For this tutorial you'll need this

1.- the Epsxe Psx emulator...
2.- a game (can be a gamedisc or a ISO, for this example i'll use SRW alpha, my example unit will be the huckebein mk.III)
3.- Winrar (i'll explain why later ;). )
4.- MSpaint (you can use photoshop but i find this more comfortable)
5.- And obviously... Agemo's Vram viewer (you can download it from http://www.enixfans.com/html/agemo/ )




A.- Getting the Vram...

Step 1.- the epsxe emulator must work perfectly , i don't know if the GPU (video) plugin matters just to make sure use the latest PeOPs plugin, then run the game...

Step 2.- if you have a memory card save with the robot encyclopedia you will do this part easily... just go there and select the unit you want to get..

in the robot data just press F1, now you will have in the /sstates/ directory a .001 file with the game internal code number in it... this is a Epsxe Save state...

Step 3.- rename or add a .rar extension to the file and open it with Winrar, you will see in the file a 4mb file, That's the Vram file!, now extract the file and rename it '' vram.bin '' (without the quotes...)




B.- Using the Vram viewer...

Step 4.- Now the fun begins... move the file to the Vram viewer directory and run the exe...

now you should see something like this...

http://img228.imageshack.us/img228/6145/vramtut1xw7.png

the 2 screenshots at the left are the framebuffer, the garble is coded graphic data

Step 5.- use the WASD keys to move the Fov (a big red rectangle) through the file, you can see in the lower part of the screen how the sprite is decoded

in this case the sprites are at the upper right corner, you should see this ...

http://img112.imageshack.us/img112/7827/vramtut2ut7.png

the other red rectangle show how looks the decoded sprite area (the Hucky Mk. III parts)

Step 6.- now press 9 and you should appreciate a little crosshair at the upper left corner of the screen like this one ...



sorry the Fairly Oddparents reference... i couldn't resist the joke ...

take as reference the center of the cross hair and the right/down quadrant, the program uses this to read the CLUTs (palette data)
and get the colors for the decoded sprites area...

use the arrow keys to move the crosshair 16 pixels, if you hold Shift the crosshair will move 1 pixel at a time...

Step 6.- move the crosshair and position the center of it in the upper left corner pixel of the cyan square
in the 2nd photo (hucky's palette in the encyclopedia)...

http://img82.imageshack.us/img82/6853/vramtut4eg5.png

you can see in the decoded sprite area in the photo the heads and the G-I cannon are in the same color that the
frame buffer, but the other parts not...

you should take a shot of it and save the image...

Step 7.- as you move the crosshair per pixel you will see the other palette arrangements like in the next image...

http://img206.imageshack.us/img206/675/vramtut5mx9.png

this palette arrangement is the hucky's antennas...

as you may imagine, you should make a screenshot of every palette arrangement on the sheet.

this finishes the Viewer part...




C.- Editing the sheets in paint (or photoshop)...

Step 7.- you should cut from every screenshot of the viewer the decoded sheet.

Step 8.- now open a new file and put there the cutted sheets...

Step 9.- with all the sheets in place remove the innecesary parts of the sheets (those with wrong colors...) use the frame buffers to get the reference...

Step 10.- in photoshop you must change the color mode of the image to indexed to change the palette to indexed and change the background color

my background color in the rips is R:3, G:255, B:252, some kind of Cyan

once you get this you can edit the final sheet, arrange the parts and getting it ready to distribute...

now some pointers...

1.- it must be quite difficult in a standard or widescreen monitor, but if you get a 1024 x 1024 monitor you should'nt
have problem to get the screen shots of the decoded areas...

if this is your problem, move the task bar to the left to get more space and see more of the decoded area...

2.- you must always have a copy of the un-cutted spritesheets (step 8) if you lose a part for accident...