Using 3D Ripper DX in conjunction with 3rd Party Steam Games. - Developers

Alright, so bit of a problem here. I've tried researching this for an answer, and the bleak things I did find were of no help, so hopefully someone knows the answer. I'm trying to use 3D Ripper DX with Steam games. Examples being games like Far Cry, GRiD, Beyond Good and Evil, any game really that is launched through Steam. The problem being is that DX does not hook to the game when it's launched. I've tried launching Steam with it, I've tried adding launch parameters, ie, -applaunch 15130, to the option in DX, making shortcuts, etc. It always messes up because I reckon at first it latches to the "Preparing to launch xxxxx" and not the actual game it self. Is there any way to get this to work? And work around? Any help would be appreciated. If it helps, I'm using Vista. Maybe that's fuckin' me up. Thanks.

Vista could be the problem, because i remember having sucessfully ripped stuff out of trackmania (with Xp). Does it work with non steam games?

I've been having all kinds of trouble with Vista and ripping. Some games, such as Guild Wars, it'll do no problem. But if I try UT3, Gears of War, or anything else for that matter, it'll grab some of the textures and then crash. I did manage to install UT3 on my old XP machine, but it literally takes 45 minutes to load the UT3 Editor. I'd also like to find a way to rip from Steam games. I want to try to rip from Dawn of War 2.

Use "StartGlobal Monitoring"

[QUOTE=Lord Ned;14556426]Use "StartGlobal Monitoring"[/QUOTE] Only works on a Windows XP operating system. If you're using Windows Vista, you're going to have to use the difficult approach. Find the *.EXE of the game you want to rip from, and specify it's location in 3D Ripper DX. Also, specify any commands that the application starts with. If you try this with a steam-bought game and it doesn't work, then try this: go to your games list, make a shortcut, and check it's properties. It'll show the location of steam.exe, with the command "-applaunch ****" afterwards. Just specify the steam.exe location in 3D Ripper DX, and in the command line slot below, type in "-applauch ****"--asterisks being a number representing the game. If done successfully, your game will initiate when you press the launch button. Make sure your version of 3D Ripper DX is current however, as the latest version has compatibility for more versions of DirectX. If the program is working, a message will appear on te top-left reading "Ready to Capture." If not, your game is either running on OpenGL, or... I really don't know. Being the new operating system, Windows Vista is very difficult to rip with. Either you wait for a Vista update from the makers of the ripper, or equip a computer with Windows XP and your best graphics card and go from there.

Tried it with Dawn of War 2, I managed to get the bulk of the texture files, but no model files. I had "Capture All Textures" checked. And I think it extracted EVERY texture used in the game. Should I not do that? It took about 10 minutes, I thought it wasn't doing anything, so I closed it with the task manager. I may try again later with the "Capture All Textures" unchecked and see what happens.

You have to, have to, have to, have to have XP. Vista and up support is clunky and sometimes not worth the pain. But that's what you uncheck, though.

If all else fails, I'll just have to fire up my old pc that takes 45 minutes to boot, but it has XP! lol

[QUOTE=potemkis;14563435]If all else fails, I'll just have to fire up my old pc that takes 45 minutes to boot, but it has XP! lol[/QUOTE] That won't matter if your graphics card on your XP is way to obsolete. The ripper can only rip with the quality of the graphics playing on DirectX 9. In other words, if your DirectX is another version, or your graphics card sucks, you will not get a good rip (if any).

I can run UT3 on it, takes a while to load up- but it can run it. I can get an okay rip from UT3 with that.

figured out how to rip from Far Cry 2 with 3d ripper dx, then I found the file extractor, managed to convert .xbt files to .dds files, I have manually (with XVI32) converted about 350/500 textures not including model textures, just the environmental textures stored under _textures

Well , it works for me but when i pressed the F12 key ingame to capture.. something shows up with like capturing this can take up to 20 minutes .. And then there's a small please wait loading bar and then my game crashes.. all in 1 minute

[QUOTE=potemkis;14576089]I can run UT3 on it, takes a while to load up- but it can run it. I can get an okay rip from UT3 with that.[/QUOTE] Use Umodel to rip from UT Engine games, much easier. I also managed to rip from Guild Wars on Vista but what I got was quite bizzare...

hmm i get this error when i use the program XR_3DA.exe caused ACCESS_VIOLATION in module "C:\Windows\system32\d3d9.dll" at 001B:70E0AE37

Silver Spirit- I can rip from Guild Wars no problem, but like you said- bizarre results... I ended up stretching and pretty much reshape the meshes I ripped. It'd be nice if there was a model viewer for Guild Wars that allowed you to get a head-on shot with a reference 'T' pose... like that will ever happen though...