Ripping from MAME is not so hard

[bWWd]

Here is how i did it :

Paste all your sprite frames into on big spritesheet then pick background colours and change them to white colour , if you are done then change white to pink or whatever bright colour and thats it.
I posting it cause not everyone know about this way.If someone have other ideas how to rip from games which wont let you disable layers then post here.
If you character have white colour on them then change it to "almost white" then after changing background white to pink you can change this "almost white" to white again.

[baritonomarchetto77]

This trick is good, but problems arise when your sprites color are massively used on the background and objects-enemyes and so on (i also used this way in the past, with some problem).

Anyhow, considering the lack of good "tools" (ad-hoc programs) its probably the best way in this moment 

[Orochi_X]

I use cheat engines (either M.A.M.E's built in engine or programs like artmoney if the emulator doesn't have it's own) to disable layers.

Also , I'm suprised (knowing you from my M.U.G.E.N days) that you didn't mention pcxclean. I'll have to dig up my old stuff but from memory you clean one sprite and run the rest through pcxclean. It will compare the images with the clean one and replace any colours that aren't supposed to be there with your chosen transparent colour.

[bWWd]

yes but sometimes colours are shared with background so i think its better to do it manually and then clean some colours by hand at the end.
Its up to you which background you choose , you must choose simple one with not many colours and then take screenshots.

[lbf]

Ah this is an interesting method and now that you point it out it seems so obvious   I see how taking screenshots with a plain background is key to simplifying sprite cleanup.  Thanks for sharing.

[bWWd]

And remember , you only doin this one time per character so dont be so scared if youll see maaany sprites to clean up on spritesheet , it goes faster than you think.And looks nice at the end.

[Orochi_X]

Another quick tip...

Most paint programs have a "magic wand" selection tool. It should have a setting along the lines of "add to selection".

Enable that and keep clicking on the character until you selected all the colours he uses (you should see that he has a dotted line all the way around him).

Then , choose "invert selection". You might not see any changes but now the magic wand has selected everything but the character. You can now go crazy with the eraser/paintbrush to remove all the bg stuff and not worry about "cutting in" to the character.

Ofcourse , all the above tips will have various amounts of success , depending on how many colours the character and bg share.

[lbf]

Another quick tip...

Most paint programs have a "magic wand" selection tool. It should have a setting along the lines of "add to selection".

Enable that and keep clicking on the character until you selected all the colours he uses (you should see that he has a dotted line all the way around him).

Then , choose "invert selection". You might not see any changes but now the magic wand has selected everything but the character. You can now go crazy with the eraser/paintbrush to remove all the bg stuff and not worry about "cutting in" to the character.

This sounds like a good method also.  I think in some photoshop programs you can hold either alt or control to add certain colors to a selection while using the magic wand.

And remember , you only doin this one time per character so dont be so scared if youll see maaany sprites to clean up on spritesheet , it goes faster than you think.And looks nice at the end.

Indeed it went faster than I thought it would.  I was able rip this guy below and it took about 5min with cleanup but I see how this method could easily be applied to an entire sheet of sprite animations and it would take about the same amount of time to clean.  Either way there it seems there will be little or no complication as long as the background colors differ from the sprite colors (which seems to be the case more often than not) Excellent suggestions gentlemen

[bWWd]

good job

[Pierwolf]

my problem with mame are not the layers, but that there isn't an option to pause the game stepping frame by frame, like kawaks did.

any tricks for this?

[bWWd]

shift + p ? i dontt remember but itssomething with shift

[lbf]

yep its either p or alt+p to pause then shift+p to step frame

[Computica]

Another quick tip...

Most paint programs have a "magic wand" selection tool. It should have a setting along the lines of "add to selection".

Enable that and keep clicking on the character until you selected all the colours he uses (you should see that he has a dotted line all the way around him).

Then , choose "invert selection". You might not see any changes but now the magic wand has selected everything but the character. You can now go crazy with the eraser/paintbrush to remove all the bg stuff and not worry about "cutting in" to the character.

Ofcourse , all the above tips will have various amounts of success , depending on how many colours the character and bg share.

Yes this is like the main tool I use within Adobe it can become your best friend.

my problem with mame are not the layers, but that there isn't an option to pause the game stepping frame by frame, like kawaks did.

any tricks for this?

If you press TAB within MAME you can see all your options and set where your pause button is...

[Fish]

my problem with mame are not the layers, but that there isn't an option to pause the game stepping frame by frame, like kawaks did.

any tricks for this?

You can explain how to hide the layer in game?

[BurnKing]

it depends on what emulator your using, in kawaks i think its alt 1,2,3 and 4. however its also in the bar on the top of the window. some emulators dont have the option