Ripping Main Character models and outfits from Dragon Quest IX (Nintendo DS)?

[Rizuu]

Hello. Before starting this post, I'd like to say that I'm completely 100% new to ripping for Nintendo DS game. I've been trying for the past week to rip the 3D character models and textures from Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies. To be more specific, the MAIN CHARACTER models (body, face, hair) and the armor (outfits, shoes, headpieces, etc) within the game. I've tried multiple different programs such as Tinke, console tool, melonDS+Ripper, etc. Thus far, I've only managed to find the NPC files, which are in .nsbmd format. My problem lies in being unable to find the main character files or armor in any of the folders I look in.

I tried looking through the "char" folder in a rom but those don't seem to be the right file format (seems to be animations, not models).

Other programs such as MelonDS+Ripper crashes when I try to load up the rom. I DID find a .bin file with .l files inside, but not sure what programs I could use to open those. I have a physical copy of the game as well if I can use that.

There is another folder named "char_sub" which I spent all day looking through yesterday, still couldn't find the files I was looking for. The majority of programs I tried either didn't work or crash on windows 10. I was originally not going to ask for help, but this is more frustrating than I thought it would be. Please help.

 

[FAST6191]

dwc\utility.bin is usually the download play client (hence why everything is compressed and the whole thing probably does not top 4 megs). Depending upon what is in the download play it might be in there but it could be something else entirely (lot of download play being minigames and very cut down setups).

I would be surprise to see nsbmd et al used for NPCs but not for player characters. By no means impossible and maybe they wanted better rigging or animations for the player, battles or something but truly rare.

Have not got the time to look through the ROM right now though so I will have to leave it at that. What size are the BCFG files? I don't recognise the extension and being in the same folder as what are presumbly the animations (NSBCA tends to be that) has me curious. Model files tend to be on the larger side, especially for the amount of detail I imagine they want for the player characters.

 

[Rizuu]

dwc\utility.bin is usually the download play client (hence why everything is compressed and the whole thing probably does not top 4 megs). Depending upon what is in the download play it might be in there but it could be something else entirely (lot of download play being minigames and very cut down setups).

I would be surprise to see nsbmd et al used for NPCs but not for player characters. By no means impossible and maybe they wanted better rigging or animations for the player, battles or something but truly rare.

Have not got the time to look through the ROM right now though so I will have to leave it at that. What size are the BCFG files? I don't recognise the extension and being in the same folder as what are presumbly the animations (NSBCA tends to be that) has me curious. Model files tend to be on the larger side, especially for the amount of detail I imagine they want for the player characters.

The first BCFG file is 112 Bytes, with the .chr file that it's part of being 5.8 KB. When I extracted the majority of NPC models, the filesize ended up being 1.45 MB, though that's just the extracted models from the "char_sub" folder. Thing is with the BCFG files, there's a lot of them in the folder. There's other files too, but I can't open them.

Update: Upgraded my PC and managed to rip the main character with MelonDS+Ripper

 

[YetAnotherLurker2]

Is using MelonDs + Ripper the best/only way you have managed to get the character files? I've been messing with the DQ9 files for a little bit also trying to extract what I can and get some character models out. I'm also pretty knew to ROM hacking in general but have a pretty large interest in the DQ9 and it's files.

Have you found the file location of the character customization stuff. I dumped both the char and char_sub folders have used apicula trying to find stuff, but no real luck.

I haven't done much using emulators to find files yet but if that is the best way of getting some of this stuff out of the game I guess I'll slowly start learning them.

Update: I think the character files are in the pack_lv5 folder. Apicula pulls a some files like p_b002.001.nsbmd, what looks to be a player top, which I think originates from one of the chara_xx.gp2 files that are there. I still haven't worked out how to decode gp2 files though.