2 Years of Service
reply 2
There are two alternatives to going full scale "demake" in effort to uncover and rip files.
Alternative 1) Sampling
This will only allow you to sample from the finished game, or portions of the game accessible via the engine's in-game console terminal. In Sampling audio/video including images and graphic sub components, you can do this on original hardware or by use of emulator on PC. Though emulators may not be as ideally functional, running it on PC certainly makes getting samples easier especially if you want upscaled samples.
For original hardware, use a TV you can mirror/interact with via PC. Or you can do it the old fashioned way with VCR then using VCR to transfer to digital. From there you can take audio, video or images out of the digitized video. If mirror/screenshare access between TV and PC, you can ditch VCR and take sampling using PC tools.
For emulator, use of screen caps, software such as OBS and other means are conducted in sampling. In doing this you can also run an upscaler or CRT emulation layers over/with the ps2 emulator.
For images sampled, the video resolution will be low and artifactual regardless how you do it. Take this over to a vector image editor, trace the artwork/hui/gui or what ever, in vector format. Upscale it to any size you need then rasterize it, take it to a raster based image editor and save it out as PNG for less lossy and high quality formats.
For audio sampling, there are a few ways. As mentioned before there is audio recording via digital or digital voice recorder or tape deck if feeling retro, through either AUX out methods or "hotwiring" a home theater set up to AUX input of recording method.
With VCR to digital, VCR records audio data, so conversion of that to digital gives you the audio that way which can also be extracted from the digital video file +/- worked on in DAWs.
With OBS, you can record audio data from screen view either with video or separately.
With sampling, most games on ps2 include menu sections for a "sound test" portion of game which lets you "play/hear" all SFX in the game and the game's OST. For these reasons when combined with sampling, this is partly why most community doesnt bother with ripping these files. Sampling is just that much easier and can be done with most games.
Most games also feature "concept art" galleries and again the ability to sample these has over-ridden the necessity to rip them.
For in-game console, some "unsused" content within any ps2 game can be "called up" into active play or if a file accessed through menu system+console +/- file viewers. Its complex but can be done. Problem is, you have to know what the actual asset file is called and the code syntax within the game's console system to then call it up/spawn it.
alternative 2) devtoolkit research
Most games tell you in splash screens and in game credits, what tools were used to make the game. This will not tell you the specific plug-ins or addons used by each tool but by learning the engine used and all relevant devtools that made the game, you get a better expectation on what was handled with the game's coding and file/binary architecture. By looking into these engines, their relivant compilers and how they are "packaged into end user games" on engine+devtool case basis, you can "untangle" the mystery of binary file extensions that you cannot identify. This may provide insight in how to then "decompile" those binaries.
Apologies on double TLDR posting but thought you should know the options.
With sampling removing the need to decompile certain things, this plays a large factor deal into why the hacking community did not take interest in full game decompiler "demakes". This alomg with fact most OSTs can be bought/pirated and most commercial games featured a strong amount of "official presskit" media released by the developer company (concept art, mod pack assets packs for PC versions etc).
This also was hampered by fact to actually do a proper "demake" since by ps2, most games were made with an unknown assortment of plug-ins and Addons to engines, you usually have to manually build your own devtools to fully decompile a game, and those unique DIY devtools will be unique to exclusively that game.
