Kii.re Project—Ripping GAME CGs, sprites, then processing them

[Guest]

I put up a new post on my blog about Checkmate's Kii.re project.

[Guest]

[15:57] <qberty> Well...maybe I could write something that would allow you to shove 'em together.

[15:58] <&Aaeru_> a way to shove the detached faces onto the bodies?

[15:58] <&Aaeru_> sometimes they come separate

[15:58] <VDZServer> Tsukihime is pretty minimal in art, still 237 different sprites

[15:58] <VDZServer> Aaeru_; yes

[15:59] <qberty> AnimED does it automatically.

[16:00] <qberty> there is NOTHING difficult about fusing a jpg and a msk into a png transparent.

[16:00] <qberty> But I guess an Automatic tool would be useful

[16:00] <VDZServer> qberty; generally, if a game has artifacts and such problems, it goes beyond that

[16:01] <qberty> took me like an hour to do YMK's chars.

[16:01] <qberty> Artifacts are removed with the fusion of the alpha channel.

[16:02] <qberty> as long as you HAVE the alpha channel

[16:02] <qberty> then it's as simple as taking adding the alpha channel of the mask to the alpha channel of the image with artifacts

[16:02] <Checkmate> http://i.want.tf/to/that/av31W.jpg done in Photoshop and I didn't do anything just leave Photoshop to automated the task. I'm done here, bai

[16:02] <VDZServer> For example... http://xomf.com/g/fhmxs

[16:03] <VDZServer> One of the Remember11 background, the Awazumi hospital (I think that was what it's called). The image is split up into tons of weird parts. Final image is a direct screenshot

[16:03] <qberty> hmm.. that's different indeed.

[16:04] <VDZServer> All of Remember11's backgrounds are saved like that. It's really weird

[16:04] <VDZServer> Likely related to various effects Remember11 uses

[REtransInternational]

Shanzhai's "open BOM" concept but for VNs? Could be interesting...

Should be encouraging people to upload their own creations there too?

Here's a bit of info you might want to pass onto them:

The edge effects are not a bug; they're deliberately there in order to make the image compressor more effective by giving a "lead-in" to the actual data. If you're visually seeing them appear in your images it means your extraction process is dropping the alpha channel. If your extractor is outputting transparent PNG directly there should be no issues since the lead-ins are 100% transparent. This will streamline the process and create smaller filesizes, making better use of your bandwidth. We may be able to work with you to implement this; contact us for more information.

[Guest]

Someone shared me this interesting thing they wrote https://github.com/minirop/arc-reader

Apparently it is a better version of "ethornell" for the extracting/repacking for BGI (Overdrive/Mangagamer) which directly outputs to .png files (and not .TGA)

"(didn't work yet on lscebody, but later I hope to make a better extracting tool than exwlcs.exe)"

[minirop]

Hello there!

I just made a windows binary to help "rippers" with BGI games : download here. Work for BGI games, so several from MangaGamer: Shuffle!, Da Capo, and the OverDrive games (Edelweiss, KiraKira, Deardrops, etc.).

Should work on Japanese games (there is a small list on wikipedia)

FYI:

- data01xxx.arc = scripts

- data02xxx.arc = characters & events

- data04xxx.arc = voices

- data05xxx.arc = musics

- sysgrp.arc = images of the menus

- others = we don't care

For the NEXTON (liquid, score, BaseSon, etc.) games (using lcsebody), like We Love Master, Harem Party, Koihime Musou, etc. you can use exwlcs.exe. (warning: it extracts all files is the same directory as himself, and lcsebody contains EVERYTHING, except sounds/musics most of the time).

Enjoy you rip \o

ps : in fact, I've already ripped all the game I named.

- Da Capo, Da Capo 2, Deardrops, Edelweiss (+ Eiden Fantasia), KiraKira (all ages & R-18), Go Go Nippon, Harem Party, Koihime Musou, Kotori Love ExP, Magical Teacher, Shuffle!, Soul Link, We Love Master!. (if I don't forget any)

[Guest]

For the NEXTON (liquid, score, BaseSon, etc.) games (using lcsebody), like We Love Master, Harem Party, Koihime Musou, etc. you can use exwlcs.exe. (warning: it extracts all files is the same directory as himself, and lcsebody contains EVERYTHING, except sounds/musics most of the time).

Enjoy you rip \o

ps : in fact, I've already ripped all the game I named.

- Da Capo, Da Capo 2, Deardrops, Edelweiss (+ Eiden Fantasia), KiraKira (all ages & R-18), Go Go Nippon, Harem Party, Koihime Musou, Kotori Love ExP, Magical Teacher, Shuffle!, Soul Link, We Love Master!. (if I don't forget any)

That's so awesome~ I hope we can make use of some of these real soon. people are in need of making some fun skits with the Da Capo charas! (especially martin with Minatsu)

[REtransInternational]

Someone shared me this interesting thing they wrote https://github.com/minirop/arc-reader

Apparently it is a better version of "ethornell" for the extracting/repacking for BGI (Overdrive/Mangagamer) which directly outputs to .png files (and not .TGA)

That's exactly the "direct to PNG" process mentioned above. Much better than discarding the alpha channel and trying to recreate it later.

[REtransInternational]

Imagemagick could be used to do the mask/combine.

According to that link, Crass (appropriate name...) source code is available, perhaps it could be modified to output PNG?

RGBA BMP is also a defined (but rarely used) format.

[qberty]

I still just see this as a serious waste of bandwidth and loading times.

In retrospect, the only use for this project I can think of that would be efficient is maybe online browser based visual novels. Otherwise, local files will still be everyone's main choice.

Even if this project IS utilized by some browser based visual novels, depending on the server that the novel is hosted on, it would be making constant connections through the VN's server than to the Kii.re's server for the image. If the VN doesn't make constant connections to grab the graphics it needs and only caches it all at once on the server for future use, then that STILL defeats the purpose of this being such a widespread service.

It's a cool idea, i'll give you that, but it just seems like this would only be useful for porters, translators and visual novel reverse engineers. If it's used once, it would not need to be used again. That kind of kills the idea.

[Bu-Bu San]

with those ones you can just use crass or any software that can rip images from packaged files

because there is no encryption

Someone shared me this interesting thing they wrote https://github.com/minirop/arc-reader

Apparently it is a better version of "ethornell" for the extracting/repacking for BGI (Overdrive/Mangagamer) which directly outputs to .png files (and not .TGA)

[REtransInternational]

I still just see this as a serious waste of bandwidth and loading times.

In retrospect, the only use for this project I can think of that would be efficient is maybe online browser based visual novels. Otherwise, local files will still be everyone's main choice.

Even if this project IS utilized by some browser based visual novels, depending on the server that the novel is hosted on, it would be making constant connections through the VN's server than to the Kii.re's server for the image. If the VN doesn't make constant connections to grab the graphics it needs and only caches it all at once on the server for future use, then that STILL defeats the purpose of this being such a widespread service.

It's a cool idea, i'll give you that, but it just seems like this would only be useful for porters, translators and visual novel reverse engineers. If it's used once, it would not need to be used again. That kind of kills the idea.

I saw this more as a repository/archive, not an active content host.

[qberty]

I saw this more as a repository/archive, not an active content host.

That's what I figured too. I'm trying my hardest to actually see a real-world benefit of this service to be efficient. It's an imageboard. It's not small footprints like pastebin.com, it's high quality graphics. For archival purposes, sure it's a neat idea. For actually USING those high quality graphics in a practical way, not so much.

I'm not bashing the idea, it IS cool to have clean graphics like that all in one place, i'm just finding it very hard to see how useful it'd be.

[Guest]

I think it is like imageboards like konachan.com or yande.re

they load too slowly and the images are too big to be able to stream content real-time imo.

they are useful for VN creators who want the sprites so they can write stories using existing characters.

otherwise it's just Checkmate adding to the moe universe in a way that is within his expenses. no other reason.

[shcboomer]

Expensive is the right word...

[REtransInternational]

If you want massive parallel processing on the cheap, why not get your fellow forum friends to pitch in and share their spare CPU cycles. Although it might've been cheaper for him to buy hardware than develop a distributed client...

Those connectors look pleased.