VGMaps

General Boards => Mapping Tips/Guides => Topic started by: tahvoo on May 31, 2016, 08:30:34 am

Title: Unstitching?
Post by: tahvoo on May 31, 2016, 08:30:34 am
Does anyone know of a way to unstitch a map that has already been created? I know there has been algorithms and rudimentary programs made to stitch screenshots together to create a map... But I am wondering if there is something that does the reverse? ie Is there a program that can unstitch an already created map into individual high-res screenshots?
Title: Re: Unstitching?
Post by: JonLeung on May 31, 2016, 08:54:50 am
Well, you won't be doing it from an image straight from VGMaps.com.  These image formats (.PNG mostly, but also .GIF and .JPG) definitely just keep what you see, there's not going to be any "history" that you can dig through.  All you can really do is crop out a section that matches the resolution of the screen (like a 256 x 224 chunk out of a NES or Super NES map, for instance - which obviously won't have any HUD stuff).  Unless you want to go to the trouble of contacting the mapper and requesting their work files.
Title: Re: Unstitching?
Post by: Trop on May 31, 2016, 09:33:56 am
You could unstitch by grid like Jon said but then you would have transparency contamination all over.  Of course if you were going for the original game look that wouldn't matter.
Title: Re: Unstitching?
Post by: tahvoo on May 31, 2016, 10:50:04 am
Is there an updated version of "Revned's Slicer" that allows for more expansion on the size of tile dimensions? The message board enititled "Recommended programs to assist your mapping" has a dead link for his "Slicer/Splicer". Only the second link provided for "2008-Slicer" works. Perhaps this would address my issue?
Title: Re: Unstitching?
Post by: JonLeung on May 31, 2016, 11:06:11 am
I remember using Revned's Slicer and Splicer tools.  For the Super Kid Icarus maps (for April Fools' Day quite a few years back) they were handy in chopping maps into 16 x 16 squares, then replacing them and splicing them back together.  In that way it was like a tile replacement tool.

The Slicer by itself would still just cut an image into 16 x 16 squares, which might be good if you want individual tiles (assuming the original image is correctly aligned to begin with), though that sounds different than what you're looking for in the original question, which sounded like you wanted screenshots.
Title: Re: Unstitching?
Post by: Revned on May 31, 2016, 01:18:44 pm
You can find the slicer tool here (https://github.com/revned77/mapping-tools/blob/master/tile-slicer), but you might have to manually crop the source images beforehand since it doesn't support starting offsets (like if the map includes a border or padding).

Command line usage:
java -jar tile-slicer.jar slice -w <screen width> -h <screen height> <map filename> <output directory name>
Title: Re: Unstitching?
Post by: tahvoo on May 31, 2016, 02:21:57 pm
Do you know if its for Mac or PC? I seem to be having trouble getting it to work on a Mac...
Title: Re: Unstitching?
Post by: Revned on May 31, 2016, 06:44:50 pm
It should work for both, and I even made it on a Mac. What happens when you run it? It assumes the output directory exists, but otherwise it just worked fine for me.
Title: Re: Unstitching?
Post by: TerraEsperZ on May 31, 2016, 09:36:24 pm
I'm trying to understand what's the intended purpose for this. Unless a game has absolutely no visible UI elements and no parallax scrolling, there's no way you can actually "recreate" the screenshots it was assembled from because they would almost certainly have been edited or cropped in some way before being used.