Ripping Rayman 1 Sprites and Maps

[sos440]

Hello everyone!

I am very glad to meet you guys. I joined this community just now, so please forgive me If I am ignorant on community standards and history.
It makes me happy that there are still a sustainable amount of people interested in Rayman 1 and eager to go deep inside the game.


Anyway, I know that this game is quite old and many people have already cracked down this game. But I have also begun to unlocking the game data very recently (2 weeks) independently of others' work, and made some progress. So I want to share this with you.


1. I successfully analyzed how sprites images and their animation sequences are stored in files, and I ripped the sprites of both Rayman 1 and Rayman Designer. Here are some examples:



Since the entire sprites (both animated GIFs and fragment PNGs) comprise tens of megabytes, I am searching for a method to share these files.


2. I succeeded in analyzing large portion of .LEV files. In particular, I can extract color tables, .MAP data, textures and events. In particular, I can convert some Rayman 1 maps to Rayman Designer's mapper version:


(Rayman 1's Jungle level 5, converted to RD Mapper version)

YouTube video for a gameplay of Rayman 1's Jungle level 4, converted to RD Mapper version

There are still a small portion of data in .LEV files which I can't still understand, but knocking off that portion seems not affect gameplay.


I know that there are considerable amount of works done on this topic. If you know any of this, please share your knowledge!

[Raymanni]

I'm glad to see you here! I'm always very interested when people rip experiment with Rayman 1.

Those sprites tho! I know people have ripped R1 sprites before, but if you managed to rip all of them with the correct palette.. I demand a download link!

[sos440]

Actually, I know how to get the palette's but still don't know which palette is a correct one.

It seems that Rayman 1's color palette system is quite weird.

Playing with R1's level files (.LEV), I found that there are 3 different color palettes in a single level file. And more weirdly, which palette should be used is NOT determined by the textures or sprites, but rather by an event object (which I call it palette changer). This item has the following sprite (which is invisible in game):



So you pass through this palette changer from left to right, your color palette changes from 1st one to the 2nd one, and likewise for different palette changers:



Although one palette works for most of the sprites and textures, for some exceptional cases it seems to manually select the correct one...

[RayCarrot]

Wow! That's awesome! Does that mean the RD tool was used to make R1? Would it be possible to do it the other way around and put RD levels into R1?

[Raymanni]

Wow! That's awesome! Does that mean the RD tool was used to make R1? Would it be possible to do it the other way around and put RD levels into R1?

I was thinking about the same thing. Could it be possible that the levels in R1 could be replaced with custom ones in the future.

[Eren]

1. I successfully analyzed how sprites images and their animation sequences are stored in files, and I ripped the sprites of both Rayman 1 and Rayman Designer. Here are some examples:

Whoah, so you also have the handstand sprites then?

[THEdragon]

Oh so that's what the number things are? I had been given a folder full of ripped R1 sprite animations and those were in there, and I'd no clue what they were!

Aye, this is really impressive! I wonder what will be done with the levels imported into the mapper.

[Raymanni]

I remember that some people replicated the R1 levels manually into designer, but this makes the process a lot easier. I would love to make some sort of revisit levels.

[RayCarrot]

Would this work for PS1 as well? Thinking if you could transfer over the PS1 version of the first phase of Bongo Hills to the PC version...

[GOT4N]

Definitely need the method aswell! :O

[MasterHero]

Nice to see this

Back when we were experimenting with the the RD files at the betillas garden community we also came across a platte changer behaviour but didn't find a way to use it.
Did you check the RD hacking topic in the wiki? Maybe this helps you or you can add information too it :-)
https://raymanpc.com/wiki/en/Rayman_Designer_hacking

I think RD was a more cut down toolset of the original tools which were used for Rayman 1 and Rayman Junior. I think they made the tools more accessible for the public and had to cut some things due to this.

sos440, can you please check for unsed animations / sprites like diving rayman, a big portal and so on?

[anaphasiia]

I succeeded in analyzing large portion of .LEV files. In particular, I can extract color tables, .MAP data, textures and events. In particular, I can convert some Rayman 1 maps to Rayman Designer's mapper version:

Does this mean Rayman 1 uses the same tile layout as Rayman Designers' PCX files? I thought the Rayman Designer PCX layout was made for Designer, since I saw the PS1 tileset before and it had a very different layout.

[sos440]

Wow! That's awesome! Does that mean the RD tool was used to make R1? Would it be possible to do it the other way around and put RD levels into R1?

RD and R1 encode data in a slightly different way, but in general they are very similar. In fact, in many cases the difference just comes from the ordering of the data blocks.
So it seems to me that most part of the game data can be transported from one to another. I have a plan to do this as well, but now I am focusing on decoding part.

Whoah, so you also have the handstand sprites then?

Do you mean something like these?

Would this work for PS1 as well? Thinking if you could transfer over the PS1 version of the first phase of Bongo Hills to the PC version...

I have no PS1 version, so I haven't tried it yet. Do you know how I get other versions such as PS1 or Layman Junior?

Definitely need the method aswell! :O

I am currently writing down the format specification of .LEV files and sprite data files. I will update them when they are done!

Nice to see this

Back when we were experimenting with the the RD files at the betillas garden community we also came across a platte changer behaviour but didn't find a way to use it.
Did you check the RD hacking topic in the wiki? Maybe this helps you or you can add information too it :-)
https://raymanpc.com/wiki/en/Rayman_Designer_hacking

I think RD was a more cut down toolset of the original tools which were used for Rayman 1 and Rayman Junior. I think they made the tools more accessible for the public and had to cut some things due to this.

sos440, can you please check for unsed animations / sprites like diving rayman, a big portal and so on?

I know that wiki page, and in fact it helped me a lot when I was analyzing .LEV files. But thank you for your suggestion!

And here are animations and sprites extracted from Rayman 1's ALLFIX.DAT:

File 1
File 2

You can find some unused sprites, but I am not sure what they were originally intended for.

Does this mean Rayman 1 uses the same tile layout as Rayman Designers' PCX files? I thought the Rayman Designer PCX layout was made for Designer, since I saw the PS1 tileset before and it had a very different layout.

Unfortunately no. They use the same data format to store texture data, but the texture list is optimized in R1 (which means that only used textures are collected and stored) while it is not optimized in RD.

For example, compare the following PCXs:

(extracted from Rayman 1 Jungle 1, type legend added for convenience)


(extracted from Rayman Designer Jungle 1, type legend added for convenience)


Consequently every map in R1 has different PCX while every map in RD (in the same world) has the same PCX:

[Eren]

Whoah, so you also have the handstand sprites then?

Do you mean something like these?

Ahaha awesome dude yes that's what I meant.

[THEdragon]

What's up with anim_0_59? It's just a bunch of round things moving back and forth diagonally, nestled in among the other Rayman animations. I remember screwing around with Rayman Advance and replacing Rayman's walk cycle with his other animations, and that one came up.

[Raymanni]

Can you also upload the Rayman Designer sprites you said you had ripped?

[sos440]

What's up with anim_0_59? It's just a bunch of round things moving back and forth diagonally, nestled in among the other Rayman animations. I remember screwing around with Rayman Advance and replacing Rayman's walk cycle with his other animations, and that one came up.

I am afraid I neither have any idea...

Can you also upload the Rayman Designer sprites you said you had ripped?

Rayman 1 ALLFIX.DAT (sprites common to all levels)
Rayman 1 RAY1.WLD (jungle sprite)

Rayman Designer sprites (common and world 1-6)

Update:

• Extracted sprites from allfix.dat and ray01.wld - ray06.wld, which consist of common sprites and world-specific sprites. This also fixes the color palette for the previous extraction for RD's jungle sprites, which incorrectly used R1's palette and consequently had some glitches.

[Raymanni]

Thank you! Does all of the other sprites have a palette mismatch?

[sos440]

Okay, it turns out I was silly.

Unlike Rayman 1 (where multiple palettes are used for each world), Rayman Designer uses a single color palette for each world.
Using that palette seems to give the correct sprites.

Since converting animation sequences into GIFs takes considerable time, I will upload them when it is done.

[RayCarrot]

Would this work for PS1 as well? Thinking if you could transfer over the PS1 version of the first phase of Bongo Hills to the PC version...

I have no PS1 version, so I haven't tried it yet. Do you know how I get other versions such as PS1 or Layman Junior?

Well, you can buy it on like ebay or find somewhere to download it.
Could the PC textures be replaced by the PS1 ones? Cause I believe the PS1 version runs in higher resolution