Hey Everyone, So I was thinking about perhaps looking into getting a Snatcher remake done. However, after looking for assets and resources I quickly found that while translated scripts were easily available, assets like art, music, sound, and sprites were not. Does anyone have any ideas where I might find such things, can provide, or indicate how to extract them myself from a copy of the game?
There are some iso readers that let you look at disc contents Perhaps you can take a peek in whatever version you want to work with. I can't think of their names though.
You aren't going to get to see a bunch of raw material within the disc just for anyone to view. Which version/system port are you planning to base this off of anyways? If it's a disc version then you can possibly rip the audio by doing an ISO + mp3 rip of the game. Kinda forgot how that's done now, but not hard. For art/sprites you'd probably want an emu that disables layers so you can get each specific background you want without anything else in the way, not sure about getting separate frames of animation within backgrounds though, probably would involve lots of photo snapping I'm going to take a wild guess, a port for DS?
Bramsworth: Yep, my new found interest in DS programming has fueled the fire! But as to your suggestion, I did consider using an emulator to try and get all the art I need, but I don't exactly want to have to play the whole game manually to do it. I'd prefer rips if it's already been done before. If I can't find anything easily accessible, I might just port some of my older GBA demos and see how that goes for the time being. Fun!
What system would you be remaking it for? Pc? I could "possibly" Do new music.(Arrangements of the original tunes, Or ask some friends in the remixing community if a possible album or group project to redo the soundtrack maybe) If you are looking to port the original music format, then using Midi's of the original music, or streamed files of the MSX soundtrack , considering it's a DS remake, a more FMSynth or chiptune sound would work best.
Probably not much luck finding all the content ripped already. The people at http://www.spriters-resource.com/ are good at ripping lots of stuff, though they tend to do specifically sprites and not backgrounds that often. You can try requesting on their forums to do the whole game, but I don't know how well what request would be met :lol: Good luck!
I'd be more for just Updating the mix and the samples with more modern versions of the same instruments. But that's just me*shrugs* If it was a remake ya know. Like remakes of other games.
If I did the remake, I don't see why I couldn't just use sampled music Compressed as MP3's. DS ROM sizes can be pretty big already, and with DLDI patching, size is really limited to just Memory Card space. Sure, it wouldn't be as efficient as synthesizing it naively but it would be a fast way of getting authentic music running from the start. Hrm, but as for assets, that might be a problem. I'm pretty sure I'm not the first person to ask about a remake, but it seems most projects don't share data files or post them (if they even have them at all).
If push comes to shove, couldn't you just take screen grabs from an emulator? The majority of the game is stills with some light animation. Should be enough to re-make art from, unless this is more of a port than a remake. Eager to see your progress either way!
I'd love to jump on this project. The engine would be so easy to write and I'd be happy to rearrange the music and up-color the sprites as well. PM me?
Heh... Well before everyone gets caught up in Snatcher fever, lets ask some realistic questions first before peoples hopes start getting too high (^_^); Preface: I am not a Snatcher expert. 1. Which version of snatcher is regarded as the best? 2. Who knows the game inside and out. Ie. Is able to do speed runs on demand, knows all the secrets, owns most major versions, etc. 3. If you fit the bill for number 2, has the time (and will) to settle down with a version of the game and do mundain tasks such as ripping assets? Like Nanoseq pointed out, the game engine is basicly like any other choose your own adventure or dating sim, so really the hard part (and most boring) is asset collecting (--_--)zzz ZZZ Z Z Z ! I don't blame anyone if they feel its a waste of time to volunteer for a project that might not even get off the ground, but I am genuinely interested in trying for at least something - regardless of how complete or successful it is. EDIT: Hrm.. It might also be easier to start off with a simpler project first as well. Something just to find out what pitfalls there would be if a major attempt was done.
How about just reverse engineering the formats (if not already done) for whatever version you want to recreate and then convert them to the appropriate new formats? Anyway, if you want to grab them via an emulator without playing through the entire game, start to play with the memory and just see if you can easily force load the backgrounds, then dump the vram for every now background/sprite set you need or something. Besides, if you're gonna rebuild a game, you should really familiarize yourself with the structure of the version you're recreating anyway, so saying you don't want to play through it is rather counterproductive and doesn't sound too promising Out of curiosity, does the Genesis DS emu support SegaCD? [edit] Full reverse engineering and documenting would be kinda cool. All the way down to how the game handles events and such. Especially if you'd be able to pull off and put together something ala. scummvm and other similar utilities that aren't quite emulators ) [/edit]
@Carnivol: Heh, I know. It sounds kind of counter productive to not want to play though the game. Like my edit from the last post says, perhaps I should attempt a smaller project or demo of sorts just to see how things turn out first. Then I'll know more about if I have the drive, quality, skill, or time to pull this off (programming wise). Thanks for all your suggestions everyone. I'll have to give this more careful thought.
I think generally all around the PC-engine and Sega Cd ones were the most well regarded and that the PSX and Saturn versions were quirky with weird borders or something. If you can get an Artist on board, why not just have them basically trace the original images and repaint them digitally in a higher resolution? Music would still be a grey area, depending on what is wanted and/or needed. I would still be interested highly if it calls for arrangements . Example of something typically I record for Dwelling of duels http://dod.vgmix.com/past/2009-10-october/04-BONKERS-PokemonGold,SaGa3-Victory-DoD.mp3 while that's a rock song, I can pretty much do pretty much anything. I've got some FM Drum kits , Mega Drive Soundfont's and stuff like that, if more "game" like sound is desired as well. Would be an interesting combination.
Regarding the PSX/Saturn releases a lot of the art was redone, and in my opinion, for the worse. There was also CG added to those versions.
yes, I remember the CG. And I liked the art(for the most part). Did not like the borders. The art in the SCD version always seems a bit too restricted. Dunno they both seem like they could have some improvements done.
