Getting gifs from .dat

[Gatts]

Hi guys! I've got an interesting ig getting gif's from Viper games by myself. I found a simple extractor which extracts all the files form sgs.dat to chosen dir. And it's size 144k only. But I wanted converter not extractor. That's why I downloaded Graphopholic from here (big thanks). But it can't convert *.anm to *.gif either...
So I wanted to ask - which is the easiest way to convert *.anm to *.gif OR to get all bmp's together easily... which tools do u use?

And... I wanted to ask... how much games in Viper series and is there possibility to get 'em in English?

[Hyperguy]

Hi guy!

Tell me about that extractor you mentioned.  You've got me curious. :3

Otherwise, the reason why you can't convert .anm files to gifs is because the formats are way different.  The best you can do is extract single animation frames from the sgs.dat files and then reanimate them using a gif animator.

Personally, I use ImageReady, which is part of Adobe Photoshop, for reanimating Viper animations from the individual animation frames I extract from the SGS.DAT files.

ImageReady is THE program for making gifs.  It's got many, many useful features inherited from Photoshop, like a history, a wide assortment of tools, and automated tasks.  It also has many features unique to ImageReady all of which relate to animation.  The real icing on the cake is it's optimization tool.  You can make a gif that would normally be server hundred KB in file size much smaller using ImageReady's various optimization options, and can even preview your gif in browsers before you finish it.

Also, a lot of the Viper gifs have large areas of blue that need to be made transparent in order for the gifs to animate correctly, which can be done with a few steps in Image Ready.  I'd use nothing else for animating gifs, though I have tried many other gifs programs before.

Anyhow, there's around 45 Viper games total.  You can find a semi-complete list of them here:

http://hyperguy.net/index.php?page=The_Complete_Viper_Games_Listing

Of the give or take 45 Viper games that were made, four of them have been released internationally. Viper V16, Viper M1, Viper Paradice, and Viper Limited Edition.  They were translated in a couple of languages, including Engrish, Italian, and French.

[JG]

Yeah I want to know about that non-Grapholic extractor as well.  Especially if it has source code with it. I could do fun things if I could only reverse engineer the .win and .anm files but I don't have access to the encryption/compression method(s) used in them.

[AnimeFan]

ImageReady is THE program for making gifs.  It's got many, many useful features inherited from Photoshop, like a history, a wide assortment of tools, and automated tasks.  It also has many features unique to ImageReady all of which relate to animation.  The real icing on the cake is it's optimization tool.  You can make a gif that would normally be server hundred KB in file size much smaller using ImageReady's various optimization options, and can even preview your gif in browsers before you finish it.

Ulead GIF Animator also works well. It has a 'merge layer' option for combining the transparency image with the background shot.
You can download it at  http://www.ulead.com/ga/runme.htm

[Sesshoumaru]

ok i got that Ulead Program im so lost i dont get on how to merge the backround to the images that got the blue backround can someone help me out

[AnimeFan]

ok i got that Ulead Program im so lost i dont get on how to merge the backround to the images that got the blue backround can someone help me out

I'm using version 3 of ulead. Hopefully the newer version should work the same. The blue background that you see is the transparancy. There should be a box that says 'transparent index'. Click on it and then change the transparent index number near the box until the blue transparancy turns black. Try using number 12. Highlight the background image and the image with the transparancy using the mouse and the ctrl key on the image names and then under the 'layer' menu, you should see a 'merge images' option. Click this and the two images become one. Remember that the background image has to be behind the transparancy image. It's the same technique that the cell animators use to make cartoons.

[Sesshoumaru]

ok im still having no luck i got version 5 and i cant find those opitions and when i try to view the help file it wont let me so im still lost thanks for the help anyway

[AnimeFan]

ok im still having no luck i got version 5 and i cant find those opitions and when i try to view the help file it wont let me so im still lost thanks for the help anyway

I found a site that has version 3. Look near the bottom of this page and follow the previous instructions that I gave.
http://www.filelibrary.com/Contents/Windows/133/28.html

[Sesshoumaru]

Thanks Alot That Works Ok Now I Got one More Question How Do I Do Ones With A Black Backround Instead Of Blue?

[AnimeFan]

Thanks Alot That Works Ok Now I Got one More Question How Do I Do Ones With A Black Backround Instead Of Blue?

A white rectangular box will surround the image. For the images where the mouth is just moving, you have a small box surrounding the mouth with a black background. For those images you don't need to set a transparency. Just align the x and y offset so that the image is in the right place and merge it with the previous frame. When you are finished making the gif and are happy with the result, goto the 'Optimization wizard' option under the 'File' menu  and save these setting:

Create a global optimized palette: NO
Analize color usage: YES
Remove redundant pixels: YES
Keep all comment blocks: NO

Then go to the 'Optimize with presents' and it will reduce the gif size with no degredation.

[Sesshoumaru]

Ok Thanks Alot It Works

[Sesshoumaru]

ok dont know why but i try using grapholic on Viper Guynaroc RPG and it keeps saying a error

[JG]

Guynarock and M5 both give me that problem.  Either the cd image we've used is bad, or there's some minor switch in the .anm formats of those files that grapholic doesn't like.  I've been able to work around the bad anm files in M5, but not in Guynarock, hinting that the disc image is bad.

[Sesshoumaru]

which i dont get cause the game plays fine

[Sesshoumaru]

so how did u get around it with viper m5?

[JG]

Grapholic blows up at the first .anm file it can't handle, so I wrote myself an app to break the data file into its component files (like .anm and .win), then rebuilt the .dat without any bad files I come across. I keep repeating the process, removing one bad .anm at a time until I got about 90% of them decompressed through Grapholic.

[Sesshoumaru]

ok i got no idea how to do that stuff what can i do to get it?

[Sesshoumaru]

WTF Now I Finnaly Got Viper M3 and it has like 5 .dat files and not 1 works on graphloic y me all i want was the pics from m3 and m5 was that so much to ask for

[JG]

M3's engine is AGS, not SGS.  I don't know how to extract the images from the AGS data files.

[Sesshoumaru]

aw thanks anyway i just got bad luck i guess man this sucks only 2 viper games i cant get the picture from so i can make gifs