RM2K Grafix and ROMz Ripping Tutorial v1.90

Super Nintendo | Gameboy Advance | NeoGeo

PROGRAMS

General RM2K Graphical Information

There are some things that every graphic file in RM2K shares, whether it be a charaset, chipset, battle anim or faceset.

Color Depth: 8-bit (256 Colors)
File Format: BMP (Bitmap), PNG (Portable network graphic), XYZ (RM2K's own format)
Non-Interlaced

A Note About Color Depth – Contrary to popular belief, 256 colors is a lot. If you cannot make a game with 8-bit grafix, you most likely do not know how to use a grafix program. RM2K is a 16-bit program, which means at any one time you can show 16-bit colors! If you don't believe it, just look at the NeoGeo. The NeoGeo was a 16-bit system with 8-bit graphics. Every sprite was in 8-bit color, but combined together they gave the appearance of a 16-bit game. The same principal applies to most Playstation games as well (although PS2 handles 32-bit graphics much more easily).

Importing Graphic Files

Whenever you want to use a non-RTP graphic file of any kind (sound files are not necessary to import in this way), the safest method of importation is to use RM2K's own Raw Material Editor. First, load up RM2K and click on the TOOLS pull-down menu. Select Raw Material Editor.

On the left you will see a list of directories. Click on the directory that pertains to the file you are importing (eg. Chipset for chipsets, Charaset for charasets, Backdrop for battle backgrounds, etc.), then click Import. Locate the graphic file you want to import and double-click on it. A preview window will appear with three zoom options. Locate the one-color background tiles on your map (refer to the Chipsets tutorial) and click on that color. When it starts flashing click Done. Repeat this process for all graphic files you want to import then click OK.

This tutorial does not cover all graphic file types used by RM2K. All file types are covered in the Help File.

Charasets

The charaset is perhaps the most important feature in RM2K, moreso than the chipset. An RM2K game can be made without any chipsets, relying entirely on panoramas – but I do not recommend making such a game. Charasets are the most versatile files in RM2K (i.e. they have many uses).

Every charaset file has the same dimensions.

As you can see in the template (it is a working template, so feel free to download it), the charaset is divided into eight sets of character frames. Each grid in each frame serves a specific function, but foot orientation seems to be of little importance in any frame except in the center columns, which must be feet together.

Each sprite is surrounded by a background color. This color must be the same throughout the entire charaset graphic.

Chipsets

The chipset graphic is the most complicated file used by RM2K. The file can be thought of in seven parts.

This tutorial will not cover the functions of each area in detail, but will cover them briefly.

Section A is the most commonly misunderstood section, it seems. For clarification of each frame read the Help File under the heading Details of the Chipset Graphic.

Section C is also complex. The section is broken up into twelve 3x4 sections. The lower three rows consist of a 9-chip gridwork of one type of flooring with 8 chips for the border and a central borderless chip. The middle chip in the top row is the most disputed chip in the chipset graphic – nobody seems to know how it works. For clarifity's sake, the top middle chip will be referred to as a floor chip, while the other chips are ground chips. Any ground's borderless chip (see above) placed in this slot makes it so that ground will not change when the floor is placed over that ground. (Normally, if a floor is placed on a ground, the ground will show its borders, resulting in two side-by-side borders – very unsightly.)

Section E is in the lower layer within RM2K and tells RM2K where to show the panoramas on any given map.

Section F must remain one color and that color must be the transparent background color for the chipset.

Section G is the only section that can have transparent grafix. If imported incorrectly, this Sections & G will overwhelm the others.

 

Battle Anims

The battle anim graphic contains the frames of the battle animations used to represent attacks in RM2K.

The height can be anywhere from 96 pixels (1 to 5 frames) to 480 (20 frames).

Each frame is surrounded by a background color. This color must be the same throughout the entire charaset graphic.

Super Nintendo ROMz Ripping

What is "ripping"?

"Ripping" stems from the phrase "rip off" and refers to the act of copying grafix from other games on another system for use in a personal game. The most commonly ripped systems are the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (for RPGs) and the NeoGeo (for fighting games and shooters), although now the Gameboy Advance is gaining popularity. If you have never ripped graphics or sounds from a game before, there are some things you should know.

About the SNES9X emulator – There are two popular emulators for the SNES, ZSNES and SNES9X. For this tutorial, and for your own good, the steps for ripping grafix will pertain solely to ROMz played on ZSNES. In the case that a ROM does not work on ZSNES you can use SNES9X. In such cases, or if you are simply insane, ripping grafix from SNES9X can be done by hitting the Print Screen button on the keyboard, usually next to the F12 key, and pasting the image into a grafix editing program (any will do) before editing out unwanted pixels one at a time. That was the easiest explanation for ripping SNES grafix, but most people that rip that way are of questionable sanity.

The SNES's graphic engine functions on five sprite layers. Layers one and two deal with the background, layer three deals with some foreground and menues, while layer five contains the sprites (layer four is rarely used). An understanding the role of each of these layers will help when ripping grafix.

All layers are active when a ROM is loaded. To disable a layer hit the corresponding key on the keyboard (not the keypad).

To begin, run ZSNES and load the game you want to rip. Play to a point in the game that has the graphic(s) you want to rip then hit F1. This will bring up a special menu with various handy options. All you should be concerned with are the screenshot commands – Save Snapshot, Snapshot /Incr Frm, Incr Frame Only. If you are ripping static events such as chairs, walls, bushes or chests, Save Snapshot will usually suffice (in the case of Secret of Mana, with its animated trees, you wouldn't want this function). Snapshot /Incr Frm is rarely used, simply because of the typical framerate used in SNES games. In conjunction with Take A Snapshot, you should use Advance Frame to advance the frames in an animated sprite. The reason for this is quite simple: Save Snapshot and Snapshot /Incr Frm both save the screenshot to a file (if you are using PaintshopPro or IDraw, set File Format to PNG as this will save disk space) and saving every frame will make sorting through each shot for relevant frames needlessly tedious.

So, where do layers fit into all of this? People that use SNES9X must edit out each unwanted pixel by hand, but ZSNES9X is much friendlier. If you want to rip a character sprite or anything on layer 5, press keys 1, 2, 3 and 4 to turn off those layers, thus leaving only layer 5 visible. When you take the snapshots only those sprites in layer 5 will appear in the shot, surrounded by a background. In most cases the background is one color not used by any other graphic, but occasionally the background uses the same color as another graphic or is comprised of a gradient. Gradients can be a bitch and there is no way around them. Things get tricky with layers 1 and 2. Often times half an impassable object will appear in layer 2 (the same happens in RM2K – you can make upper layer chips impassable – so think of layer 2 on the SNES as the upper layer in RM2K's chipsets) that also appears in layer 1. This gets further complicated by the fact that layer 1 objects in such cases are often surrounded by many other layer one objects, and vice-versa. As such, while the half in layer 1 will be quite simple to cordone off, the half in layer 2 may have chips from layer 1 under it that will need to be removed manually (this isn't as tedious as the poor SNES9X users, however). This is a minor problem that can often be taken care of quite easily.

Ripping Music and Sounds from SNES ROMz

When it comes to snagging music from SNES games, the safest thing to do is search for a MIDI file of the song you want. However, there isn't always a MIDI file available. In that case the next best thing to do is go to Zophar's Domain, scroll down to the Utilities section, then download either SPC Tool (not tested) or ZD-SPC (tested and much loved) in conjunction with SPC2MID (not needed if you have SPC Tool). After that, look around on the main page again for SPC files and search for an SPC file of the game you want music from. There is an excellent chance that the song you want will be in one of the numerous ZIP files available for download.

If you still can't find the song you want, hit F1 in-game and select Save SPC Data. The problem with this method, as is the case in many other emulators, is that any sound effects present in the background will be heard over the recording and the song will often only record from when you started recording, which could be mid-song. The timing is a problem you must deal with on your own, but the sound effects can be dealt with similar to grafix layers. If the game you are playing has a sound test, consider yourself lucky.

NOTE: I wrote this tutorial based on my experiences with ZD-SPC and old versions of ZSNES, so it is quite possible that the SPC dumps in ZSNES v1.36 will dump only the dominant sound (the background music in most cases) separate from the sound effects. If this is indeed the case, sound effects may only be rippable with a sound test. I will leave this up to you to decide, since NeoGeo sound effects are more favorable for me.

Once you have saved the SPC data to your hard drive, load up your SPC player to listen to the music. Next, run SPC2MID or SPC Tool and convert the SPC file to a .mid or .wav file. If you convert to a .mid file, load the .mid file in a MIDI editor and spruce up your song file. Be sure to test the MIDI files in RM2K.

Gameboys

When ripping images or sounds from any of the Gameboy systems, excluding VirtualBoy, by and far the best emulator to use is Virtual Boy Advance v1.3 or later. Earlier versions lack most of the useful tools included in this updated version. Although it runs excruciatingly slow on many old computers, speed is not of the essence if you intend to do any ripping.

Setting Up VBA

One of the greatest features of VBA v1.3 is the TOOLS pull-down menu. However, your first order of business is, of course, to set up your game controls. Go to the OPTIONS pull-down menu and select Configure under the JOYPAD menu item. Click on each space, then press the desired key until it is registered. When you have finished setting your controls, click OK. Now, goto the TOOLS pull-down menu and select Configure... to set the emulator's hotkeys.

If you play like I do, you might have Ctrl set to some button, such as A, B or Start. In my case, I have Ctrl set for Start and X set for A. In the older versions of VBA this would cause the emulator to shut down if I hit both buttons and the same time. With v1.3, however, you have the option to set ALL the hotkeys, including Ctrl+X. So, go through the list and check that none of your button combos will cause any trouble. The quickest method is to find a command that has no hotkeys assigned to it, then test out every combination you might use by pressing the key combos and clicking Apply. If the combo is in use by any command, a message will appear telling you what command uses those hotkeys. Simply locate that command and re-key it or remove any hotkey association.

For the sake of this tutorial and any possible use you may have for ripping sounds or music, hotkey F11 and F12 to ToolsRecordSoundStartRecording and ToolsRecordSoundStopRecording respectively. If you plan on making AVI movie files from your games at all (maybe from the RPG Maker series?), hotkey ToolsRecordAVIStartRecording and ToolsRecordAVIStopRecording as well. All other hotkeys are optional, although also of important notice are OptionsSoundChannel1, OptionsSoundChannel2, OptionsSoundChannel3, OptionsSoundChannel4, OptionsSoundDirectSoundA, and OptionsSoundDirectSoundB.

Ripping Sounds

Ripping sounds is a tad tricky. Recording starts when you press the F11 key (in the case of this tutorial as stated in the above section) and stops when you press F12. The sound file will then be saved to whatever directory you have designated as a WAV file. The drawback to VBA's sound recording method, as opposed to ZSNES's way, is that background sounds WILL be copied over the music, and likewise the music will be copied over the background sounds. If you want to get around this, test each sound channel, 1 through 4 and Direct Sounds A and B. Generally, channel 4 is percussion while 1 and 3 are bass line. The Direct Sound channels are typically a blend of all the treble parts. Channel usage may vary, so test each channel before you rip songs. After you finished ripping the song to a .wav file, open the file and edit out the unwanted parts (silence, premature recording, extra recording, etc.). After that, save the file to a lower sound quality. Odds are your file will be 1Mb or so. In many cases this will cause RM2K to freeze up (at least on my computer), so it is necessary to reduce the sound quality, and thus the file size as well. Lastly, there is no need to fret over emulation speed – VBA will always record at 100% speed.

Ripping Movies

First, if you don't know already, AVI files are large, even without sound. VBA will record movie files without the sound, which means sound will have to be recorded separately and timed perfectly (via editing). To retain your sanity, it is probably best to record using DivX compression. There are better compression formats, however, but DivX slowed the emulator down to 50% in comparison to 25% with Cinepak at 100% compression. However, a lot of people still don't have DivX installed (stupid modem people) so consider using compression you know people will have or put a warning in your RM2K games about what codec you used when making your AVI files. Recording .avi files is done the same way as ripping sounds.

Ripping Grafix

Grafix ripping with VBA is tedious. You have three TOOLS options at your disposal.

All background maps are 256x256 pixels, but the images themselves are rarely that large. Sprites are typically sliced into three or four parts at a time, so when you save them to a file and edit those files in a grafix editor, you will have to splice the images back together. If you do not have the patience for such a process and would rather edit screenshots pixel by pixel (as you would with SNES9X), under the FILE pull-down menu select Screen capture... to save the current screen to a PNG file for editing.

NeoGeo/Arcade

Ripping from the NeoGeo ROMz can be time consuming, but it is one of the most rewarding endeavors in my opinion. The NeoGeo games, as well as many arcade games, are often gorgeous in their artwork and filled with excellent sound effects and music. For NeoGeo ripping you should use NeoRageX. For other arcade systems it probably does not matter. MAME performs screenshots if you hit F12. Hitting F4 brings up tile maps on some games (very good thing).

The NeoGeo has so many layers that editing sprites with NeoRageX is like living in a dream realm. Run NeoRageX and load up a game you want to rip. Play to where you can rip the grafix (2-player or Practice mode in fighting games is great for this) and hit the Tab key to pause and go to the GUI (Escape will close your game, so do NOT hit Escape). Click on the Shots Factory to load up NeoRageX's own screenshot function. On the right is the current screen that you paused at and on the left is a grid with Xs. Along the bottom are three options, Save Shot, Show Background and Next Frame. The grid shows what sprite layers are in use at any given time. That's right, there are more than five layers. The Last Blade series went up to 14 or 15 layers when I last checked! Think of layers in NeoGeo games as pictures in RM2K. Start by unchecking each box. As you click on a box a part of the picture on the right will disappear. If what you wanted to rip disappears, then re-mark it so it reappears. Continue unchecking everything until only the sprites you want to rip are left showing. When you are all finished, click Save Shot to save the screenshot to a file. If you are in mid-motion (which you usually are in an SNK game, especially fighters), click Next Frame until the picture changes again. Note: As the frame changes so will the layers in use. If your sprite was in layers 3 and 4, three frames later it may be in 6 and 8. This prolongs the ripping process, but it is only a minor irritant and the greater scheme of things.

Ripping Sounds and Music from NeoGeo ROMz

Ah, where would the world be without NeoGeo music? Go to Zophar's Domain and scroll down to the Utilities section to grab NeoJukeBox. Run NeoJukeBox and load up the ROM that you want to rip from. Search through all the sound bytes until you find what you want to rip, then save that sound as a WAV file. Unfortunately, this will take you a long while unless you happen upon a sound byte list, since there are something like 1B channels and FF slots. If you don't know hexadecimal, that's a lot of sound bytes.

Ripping Sounds and Music from Arcade ROMz

I have not yet begun to mess around with ripping sounds from arcade ROMz. However, I stumbled upon an interesting feature while playing Bubble Symphony on MAME. It had trouble loading and told me to go to the Setup menu. Now, in NeoGeo games that never happens, so I looked around for a Setup button (F2) and hit it. I was brought to a wonderful screen with a sound test option! Now, all you need is a way to save those sounds. I can't help you there.

Programs