Game Boy: How to make pictures of game levels?

[actualkoifish]

I am playing a GB game called Dirty Racin' and am interested in making a screenshot of the in-game map for the race tracks in this game. I have seen similar in-game maps for games like Pokemon Red/Blue and Zelda GB. Is there some particular technique for doing it? Is it unique to the game and to how it was compiled? Looking for any info.

 

[nasune]

As far as I know, easiest to most difficult is:
1. If the tracks are standard you can just use an emulator and capture the video/frames you want.
2. Use a Super Gameboy + SNES / Gameboy Player + gamecube (or one of the GBA consolizer mods etc.), and use a normal capture card to capture the video.
3. If the tracks are custom and saved you can dump the save through various dumpers and use that save on an emulator.
4. Get a gameboy capture card (like this one for example, although I don't know how well this one works)

 

[hippy dave]

Some emulators may be able to display the background tilemap as it's currently laid out, in its own window without sprites/UI on top, and extending beyond what's on screen. If you can save that image, then move around in game to get connecting/overlapping images of the entire level, then you're all set.

 

[Lostbhoy]

This may help...

https://www.romhacking.net/utilities/646/

May show you the map if you load the rom into it.

 

[cearp]

As far as I know, easiest to most difficult is:
1. If the tracks are standard you can just use an emulator and capture the video/frames you want.
2. Use a Super Gameboy + SNES / Gameboy Player + gamecube (or one of the GBA consolizer mods etc.), and use a normal capture card to capture the video.
3. If the tracks are custom and saved you can dump the save through various dumpers and use that save on an emulator.
4. Get a gameboy capture card (like this one for example, although I don't know how well this one works)

most difficult and best would be disassembling the rom in order to learn enough about how the tiles / palettes / maps / doors are stored, then make an application to print everything out

I'm very confident I saw some python script to do that to pokemon emerald(?) - but having a search now I cannot find it

- found it, it's for fire red, article is more than 9 years old but info is info!
https://medium.com/@mmmulani/creating-a-game-size-world-map-of-pokémon-fire-red-614da729476a

 

[nasune]

most difficult and best would be disassembling the rom in order to learn enough about how the tiles / palettes / maps / doors are stored, then make an application to print everything out

I'm very confident I saw some python script to do that to pokemon emerald(?) - but having a search now I cannot find it

- found it, it's for fire red, article is more than 9 years old but info is info!
https://medium.com/@mmmulani/creating-a-game-size-world-map-of-pokémon-fire-red-614da729476a

That's fair, though I would say that that's far beyond the abilities of the average user . The methods I gave earlier should be doable for anyone that is at least somewhat familiar with tech/computers.

 

[emcintosh]

WideGB lets you view more than one screen of background at once: https://kemenaran.winosx.com/posts/widegb-playing-game-boy-games-on-wide-screens

But it only expands the view significantly on one axis, and will miss any parts of the track that are sprites rather than background tiles.

 

[Jayro]

BGB has a built-in debugger, and lets you see the tilemap memory in real-time. You can also pause the emulator at any given frame.