Usually we can get share of saled cd from internet. Here, we should thank 646757417 for his brilliant contribution, because he provides http download, some widely used tools and good infos, see http://bbs.9gal.com/read.php?tid=307913
WESTSIDE lacks enough infos about new galgames due to lag in sale. If so, we can make use of experiences based on company and archive extension (all may are the specialties of package format), then we may find available tools. If you find nothing, Crass may be a good choice.
2, Susie
Because of open structure of spi, it's used widely in japanese software world, ie. famous ACDSee also supports.
Susie don't support batch converting and it's always in trouble by spi2bmp. So we usually use third software which can load spi. Finally, we need to judge no magic archive by ourself for proper spi whatever using Susie or third software.
As same as the problems of some open source projects, spi development depends on developer's passion only. And the ability or effect of extraction is irregular. Third, some famous developers nearly stops, and Susie can be replaced by other tools.
3, Crass (Crage)
Though 痴漢公賊 stopped development, Crass is still the greatest extractor.
Crass mainly consists of Crage used in extracting, uses cui as interface, totalled supports more than one hundred galgame engines and more than thousands of galgames. 痴漢公賊 shares Crass's source code, if you are interested in studing these, it's very useful.
Crage is a very powerful command tool, has many parameters. -p, -l, -d, -o, -u, -O are most important. -p specifies single archive to extract. -l specifies required index file. -d specifies directory to extract, in which all archives will be extracted recursively. -o specifies output directory. -u specifies which cui to force use. -O specifies processing method of special galgame usually encrypted. You'd better check every cui's document then know which galgame engine need to use what parameter.
Lighting makes a gui for Crage. With it Crage is easier to use. Of course, CrageGUI include a English version.
The name is only a concept, it means a set of tools programmed by asmodean, a little like WESTSIDE. asmodean always produces tools for new galgames as soon as possible.
All of asmodean's tools are commandline. It need some basic knowledges about commandline, such as absolute or relative path, required or optional parameter, input or output. If you see them a little, with asmodean's usage, it's not hard to use these tools. In fact, we don't care about how or why these tools work, only follow the usage and then write a right command. If you want to study implement of algorithm, asmodean always releases source code, i believe you will not lose it.
The difficulty is that it's hard to deal with batch files, because asmodean's tools don't support wildcard character. We can use advanced command "for %variable in (set) do command %variable" in cmd or "for %%variable in (set) do command %%variable" in bat.
(variable is only a parameter, can be any valid character; set also is only a parameter, means file group, allow wildcard character)
After Crass is deprecated, finally w8m brings arc_conv.
arc_conv is a commandline tool with simple graphical interface, supports quite a few galgame engines to extract and a little galgame engines to repack, additionally includes find_common, find_anime, text_conv.
arc_conv is slowly developing, it seems w8m don't have enough time to maintain. The most contribution is supporting some versions of RioShiina (highest 2.48).
It has powerful setting, including specified file type search, output mode, alpha option, blending effect, buffer size, spi support and so on.
It not only supports some popular galgame engines like Majiro Script Engine, NScripter and kirikiri2, but also has own feature - simply decryption. Some companies only use simple encryption, we can easily extract their xp3 under the help of ExtractData (please open simply decryption). But ExtractData isn't the master key of all encrypted xp3, some companies do other encryptions even strongly complicated encryptions，in this case you'd better try Crass which provides many decryptions for kirikiri2 or unbeatable xp3viewer.
Starts by 鷹場狼, the newest version updated by the end of 2007.
It can automatically and properly judges archive and provides particular option for some galgame engines. And it has some features like bmp force out, xor decryption, alpha reversal.
WESTSIDE releases own Media Extractor(instead of Neko57?). It can extract any particular format determined by its plug-in.
It can config whether extraction of any file and any type and restrict strictly variable size from 0.0001 to 999999. In plug-in setting, it's feasible to enable or disable any plug-in and view advanced properties of some plug-in. The default plug-in are provided including AVI, BMP, JPG, MID, OGG, PNG, WAV, WMV.
Programmed by CrHackOS/prefetchnta. GameViewer is deprecated, QuestLAB is the successor.
GameViewer supports some games from great companies like Falcom, GAINAX, 工画堂, KONAMI. There are many features that other tools can't handle. It can extract 3D material, play multi-frame with alpha blending, show customized complicated 3D effect with D3D9's shader and view, change, flip rgb or alpha channel. These are the strong advantags for it. It aims at 3D render, so the ability as extractor isn't good as some other tools.
QuestLAB refactors according to UNIX philosophy to be a successor of GameViewer. It supports multi-architecture, multi-thread, modular function, and it's experimental. Now it hasn't implemented all features of GameViewer.
Though it is as a veteran here, essentially うさぴょん's Neko57 isn't only a extractor. It has many functions that now always is widely used, i always pick one - CRC32/MD5 check.
For extraction it can force find BMP, JPG, PNG, WAV, OGG, AVI. In fact the ability is limited, because it works only according to build-in condition code. Neko57 only judge by condition code then force output. Once files exist, Neko57 ignore anything, only force to extract.
Since 痴漢公賊 left ACG world, it's impossible to extract specially encrypted kirikiri2 galgames until xp3dumper developed by resty. At end of 2011, Amano alse develops xp3viewer which against kirikiri2, replacing xp3dumper, it's easier to extarct specially encrypted kirikiri2 galgames.
It's well-known that it's hard to deal with アトリエかぐや's cg. The writer ffv likes Berkshire Yorkshire very much, so he develops KayugaCut. It aims to be a image software that can convert and process cg, play animation, easy merge character.
It can extract almost all アトリエかぐや's galgames, here we should pay attention to select LZSS decode if needed. It is greeted that KayugaCut can auto merge cg from version 2.0。
The great auto merge is unstable when multi-cpu. Please assign to CPU0.
4, 萌衣☆Player (mei-player)
The analogous MPEG standard made by Entis. There are five classes. Ususally company respectively use eri, mio and mei to transform image, audio and video, then use noa to pack them. So we first use Crass to extract, then use mei-player to transform.
DirectMuxer is a universal multi-group composite tool.
It has important features as follow:
1, Support any number of image group composite.
2, Support Alpha Blending, Transparent Blitting, Opaque Override, Complex Composite.
3, Support task queue.
4, Support jsx output, used to create psd.
Its powerful functions consist of basic features and special configurations. The basic features as follows: delta composite, convert, rename order by datetime, search duplicate, crop by preview size, trim, prediction offset. Secondly, and special configurations as follows: preview, histroy, size adjustment, always on top, get coordinate position, use alpha, use transparent color, inverse, flip, rotate.
I don't like PicComposite's naming pattern after number/datetime, it's not convenient to check result.
4, MagickMerger
MagickMerger is a GUI for related composite command in ImageMagick.
Program is separated into Limited Auto-Merge and Easy Manual-Merge: former can according to default regular expression profiles generate batch command; latter can specify single composition including Alpha Blending，Transparent Blitting，Mask Addition，Percent Cropping，Canvas Creation.
