graphics extract psx game

[deftonesrule]

do any of you know a way to extract graphics from a psx game like textures and meshes or whatever ?

thanks in advance

[deftonesrule]

or nes / snes games ?

[amatsuhikari]

bump, I want to know, I want to exatract saga frontier sprites

[Ultima]

AFAIK, there was no standard for textures and whatnot on PlayStation games, so there's no universal way to do so.

[Gamesoul Master]

As for SNES and NES games, I've seen some utilities that can extract various types of graphics from savestates, but I haven't found any that can extract graphics from the ROMs themselves (although I've seen a few utilities that can extract one or two types of graphics from a *specific* game...). I'm hoping to find some of these utilities soon, but hoping more that somebody has already found some and remembers where they got them (and tells us, of course). Writing programs that deal mainly with graphics isn't one of my strong points yet.

[Firehawke]

.TIM is the official Sony texture and image format for the PSX-- it's used for sprites and for textures on polygons.

.RSD and .TMD are used as model formats on the PSX. RSD is an oddly split format with a bunch of subfiles that the RSD links to (think like a .CUE/.BIN type of thing-- the CUE is the linker between all the .BIN and WAV files.. RSD does the same for a host of other files in its format.) TMD is a pretty standard, well-understood format that's well-supported: there are a ton of tools out there to actually rip these.

*** Unfortunately, even if you know the format of the mesh, you still have to figure out how to extract it from the game. ***

Many-- if not ALL but the first generation-- games actually tend to store the meshes and textures in compressed data libraries that were wildly different depending on the company and generation of code (newer code generally having better compression and being a LOT harder to pull anything out of-- FF8, for instance, packs just about everything into a single file!)

No easy options here.

Edit: Basically I found my old documentation on the subject and reread all of it, then came back and cleaned up this post to be accurate to said docs.

[pSX Author]

Hardly any games use TMD or TIM - they are not "official" file formats - just formats used by some Sony example code.

[Firehawke]

Huh. The documentation I'd found stated that the standard libraries considered those "default" formats. I seem to recall Ridge Racer definitely uses them-- the more I read up on the Sony libraries, the more I think Ridge Racer was definitely designed around porting what arcade code they could and just using the Sony library set to handle as much other stuff as possible (the memory card code, I think, is using a generic Sony UI that I've never seen used anywhere else.)

[Gamesoul Master]

Everything I've found points to .tim pictures being the "most common" format that games use (although the files are often embedded, I noticed, and therefore you wouldn't know it's .tim format). Haven't found a game that uses .tmd yet.

Anyway, I've only managed to find one utility that can scan for, display, and save some graphic file formats in a playstation game (it can do all of those, but it's the only program that seems to be able to do *any* of those, except for the few game-specific utilities). The program is PSicture, found here: www.zophar.net/utilities/psxutil.html

I've been playing around with the program a bit, and it's really hit-or-miss with it. Some games it can find graphics for, some it can't. Try Final Fantasy VI (from Anthology), and you'll be in for a pleasant surprise. Unfortunately, most games I tried with cool sprites or other graphics wouldn't cough up anything for this program. It's plugin based, but the site that hosted this program (and all the plugins they developed for it) is down, it seems, and Zophar's Domain only has 2 of the plugins (one for FFI (Origins), and one for FFVIII). Has *anybody* found any other utilities to extract graphics for *any* system of games?!

[Firehawke]

Well, the positively ANCIENT NES emulator called Nesticle (everyone knows this one, right? It was THE emulator way back when...) has the ability to pull up the sprite tables, making it possible to actually edit the sprites. I THINK it might be possible to save sprite data, but even if not you can use the good old screencapture-and-stitch method.

For arcade games, there's Turaco..

...and that's about all I can think of at the moment. There used to be a fairly large selection of these things. Hey, did you try GameCopyWorld/MegaGames? I seem to recall they used to have a very large selection of PSX tools-- they might have the plugins you're looking for.

[Gamesoul Master]

Thanks for the tip, but unfortunately they didn't have anything of use.

NES seems to be one of the only console systems that has a couple decent utilities to this purpose. I've found 4 utilities to extract images from Playstation games, but they all extract the same image files, so I have 3 too many. Turaco... I'll have to check that out if I decide to gather any arcade games.

The basic concept that many utilities are not achieving is that people need to be able to extract the images without using advanced techniques that less than 1% of the target group even knows how to do. The screenshot/stitch approach is classic, but even that is a little too much for many people.

[Firehawke]

Well, you have to understand that developers do their absolute best to PREVENT this sort of thing, and it takes some fairly complex tools to try to get anything out of a lot of the newer games as a result. Also, it really looks like there's a lack of interest in creating sprite/mesh/artwork/etc ripping tools in general.. so people do the "easy" rippers but never take it any further.

[Gamesoul Master]

It's actually quite odd, because you'd think there'd be more tools on the RPG Maker 2000/XP sites and forums. I've had to use the screenshot/stitch for a lot of my graphics (since they're so much nicer than the pixel art I've been doing, and pixel art takes way too long). Maybe my little thread will help to spark a *little* more interest...

[pSX Author]

firehawke said:

Well, you have to understand that developers do their absolute best to PREVENT this sort of thing, and it takes some fairly complex tools to try to get anything out of a lot of the newer games as a result. Also, it really looks like there's a lack of interest in creating sprite/mesh/artwork/etc ripping tools in general.. so people do the "easy" rippers but never take it any further.

Nah - no one tries to prevent data from being extracted, its just difficult because all games have their own formats. There is no way to make a generic graphics ripping tool.

[Gamesoul Master]

Well, one can be made, but it's the same as trying to emulate a system. At first compatibility wouldn't be that good, but with development (like with the utility I have, PSicture), compatibility can be increased. PSicture uses plugins to increase compatibility, and I'm under the impression that it was going along quite well, but now the site is down and I can't get at the plugins, and noplace else seems to have them anymore either. Only difference is, there's less of a standard for graphics formats, so more development for individual games has to be done.