Ripping stuff from sierra games ?

[Muttley]

I use 'scumm Rev' to get images for my games but would like to work on a police quest game based the sierra games is there a utility to get the backgrounds and characters so I can use them ?

[Darcness]

Well, sadly I haven't come across any program specifically made for ripping graphics from the later Sierra SCI games.

You can take a look at http://www.bripro.com/scistudio/ and get SCI Studio, which can rip graphics from the earlier EGA SCI games.

[Radiant]

Google for Sci Decoder, it also does the earlier VGA games. For the later VGA games, you're out of luck - but if it's backgrounds you want, Screen Thief will suffice.

[Muttley]

screen thief ? how does that work ? i saw something but wouldnt that hav the char in the image ?

[scotch]

Yes, but you take a screenshot, move the character to somewhere else and take another shot, then combine these two shots in your image editing program so no character is visible.

[Chicky]

damn Scotch, that's exactly what i was about to post. Ohwell, another wasted post 

[Muttley]

whats a good 'Free' image editing prog? cause i just took a screenshot but it came out a big black blob

[Radiant]

whats a good 'Free' image editing prog? cause i just took a screenshot but it came out a big black blob

GIMP.

[InCreator *unplugged*]

whats a good 'Free' image editing prog? cause i just took a screenshot but it came out a big black blob

Well, that's what happens if you try to rip an image from DOS game while using win XP.
For some games, at least.

Start game under DosBox, then minimize it to a window and grab whole screen.
Then cut game window out in editing program and rescale to 50% (if your desktop is 800x600 and game is 320x200), because if dosbox runs in window, it doubles window size automatically....

Difficult stuff to explain, hope you understood... Or found a way to work around.

[Muttley]

yeah got dosbox sussed. use 'ctrl F5'. only prob now is how to do the char sprites any ideas would be appreciated.

[Nacho]

As far as I know, as there is not a propper ripper, you'll have to make the old "capture and delete spare pixels" system.

[Snarky]

What I've done in the past is to record the screen as a video (using Camtasia), then export each frame to an image (using a video player that does screen captures), import each image as a layer in Photoshop, and diff them against the background to isolate the sprites. (I hide all layers except the current frame and the background, set the layer blend mode to "difference", set the magic wand tool to "use all layers", use it to select the black area, delete the selection, and set layer blend mode to back to "normal".)

It's not (quite) as tedious as it sounds, and I can reliably capture every frame of any animation. It's probably overkill for walkcycles (just grab a bunch of screenshots until you have every frame), but it's good for one-time animations that can't be repeated over and over.

[Muttley]

cant do the vidio idea. might try the multiple screen-shot.  a rather tedius job tho removing the char and deleting arount it. I probably wouldnt bother with it if this is the case.