Extract images from running 2d-game

Question

There is a 2d-game based on Direct3D. This game has a lot of graphics and animations. What is the best way to extract animation image sequences from the running game (e.g. using memory dump)? Is there any special tools for such purposes?

Answer 1

I don't know if it can work on full screen mode, but with a desktop screen recorder tool like CamStudio you can record the animation in uncompressed avi format.
With an extra tool for video processing you can do whatever you want with the captured frames.

Answer 2

Depending on what you call 'the best'

FRAPS - http://www.fraps.com/

Allows you to capture screen shots which you can edit the frames out of.

Alternatively you may be able to use graphical debugging tools like PIX (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb173085%28VS.85%29.aspx) to capture the graphical commands and pull the textures out directly (games often disable PIX support on release though).

Or, try and pull the images directly out of the files (they have to be loaded somewhere and file formats are usually pretty easy to reverse engineer).

NB: I'm assuming by 2D game you don't mean actually really mean 3D assets but 2D game play.

Answer 3

there is a tool which can extract the resource files from many popular games and binary formats: Game file explorer.

Saves you the trouble of screen grabbing