#binary-format #decoder #unpacker #game-engine #game #visual-novel

bin+lib sg-sprite

Application for restoring Mages engine sprites (Steins;Gate, Steins;Gate 0, Chaos;Child)

6 releases

0.3.2 Sep 18, 2022
0.3.1 Aug 31, 2020
0.2.3 Jul 18, 2020
0.2.2 Jun 27, 2020
0.2.1 Nov 25, 2019

#673 in Game dev

Apache-2.0

21KB
426 lines

sg-sprite

Sprite layout parser for MAGES engine.

This app restores original (full and uncropped) sprites from .png and .lay files found in chara.mpk archives. Note that this parser doesn't work with mpk files directly, you need to unpack sprites beforehand. There's a good tool for this: https://github.com/rdavisau/sg-unpack

Compatible games are listed in the compatibility list below. This list will be updated as soon as I or someone else test (and fix if needed and possible) the parser for other titles. If you find out that it works (or doesn't work) with non-listed games built on mages engine, feel free to submit PR or issue.

You also can read format description here. It's based solely on reverse-engineering of s;g0 sprites and thus is rough and incomplete, but it should give approximate vision of the file structure.

FAQ

    • Q: My archive has .cpk extension. How do I unpack it?
    • A: Use arc_unpacker project: arc_unpacker --dec=cri/cpk --no-recurse chara.cpk (it can extract mpk files too: --dec=mages/mpk)
    • Q: After unpacking chara archive I see .gxt files instead of .png
    • A: GXT is a PS Vita texture format. Convert them into png before using sg-sprite with this tool: Scarlet Project.
      Converted PNGs will have (Image 0) suffix but starting from 0.2.3 sg-sprite will pick them up too, so you should't need to rename them to match .lay files names.
      Resulting sprites may have glitchy background in this case, and I suspect this is a gxt-to-png conversion issue (you can confirm it if you look into one of converted/source PNGs). Let me know if there is any better maintained converter so I can replace the link.
    • Q: I see some transparent PNGs with _oX suffix in output folder. What's this?
    • A: These are overlays. They are intended to be drawn on top of the sprite, you can do this yourself in your favorite photo editor (e.g. GIMP). They should be compatible with most of the sprites in file. Also, they have same size as original sprite, so you don't need to do any manual positioning.

Compatibility list

These titles are known to work, but others might work too (see top of readme)

  • Steins;Gate 0
  • Steins;Gate Steam Edition
  • Steins;Gate Linear Bounded Phenogram
  • Steins;Gate My Darling's Embrace
  • Chaos;Child
  • Yahari Game Demo Ore no Seishun Love-Kome wa Machigatteiru. Zoku

Install

Builds for Windows and Linux are available at Github releases

There's also AUR package available for Arch Linux.

Note that this app has no gui. You should run it from terminal (or cmd.exe on windows). Run sg-spirte --help for details on usage.

Usage example:

  • cd to directory with unpacked sprites
  • create output directory (e.g. out)
  • run sg-sprite -d out *.lay

Build

Install cargo (https://www.rust-lang.org/tools/install)

Run this command in the project directory: cargo build --release

Resulting binary will be in target/release directory

Dependencies

~13MB
~97K SLoC