Curious to learn the process, as someone who'd like to learn. Especially in regards to mobile games, as I think I'd benefit being able to do that all on my own. But no computer skills, lol.
Posted under General
For mobile games, it's easiest to rip from Android apps (I don't know if it can even be done with iOS). For smaller standalone games that don't require downloading of additional data, you can find everything in the APK file itself (though some games may have an OBB as well). If you have an APK on your computer, you can unzip it like a regular ZIP archive to get to the assets. In the best-case scenario, the CGs will already be in PNG or JPG format, so all you'll need to do is extract them from the archive.
If the game is made in Unity (and a lot of mobile games are), you will need a copy of Unity (you can get it for free from their website) or a third-party tool to extract the images. I recommend AssetStudio since it lets you preview the files before extracting them. You can also set a filter so it only shows Texture2D files (Unity's format for images).
All of this is assuming the assets aren't encrypted. If it is, you may be able to decompile the app to identify the encryption method in most cases, but that's probably too advanced for you at this point.
Now a lot of games will be too big to be contained in the APK, so you may need to install and play the game until you get to a point where you can download all of the data. If it doesn't download it automatically, there may be an option to let you do so. But you will need to do this on a rooted Android phone or an emulator like BlueStacks so you can access the files afterward. (WARNING: Don't attempt to root your phone unless you know what you're doing, as it's possible to brick it. It will also void your warranty.)
Huh! I see I see! While I may not have a lot of experience in regards to this sort of thing, I do have some contacts offbooru I know I can ask about for the things I can't figure out here. Thanks for the program recommendations and some good things to watch out for when making a good proper attempt at this sort of thing.
(Also don't worry, I have nowhere near the experience to know rooting one's phone was even possible until being told just now. Also, I hate iOS, and thankfully have plenty of experience with Android devices and apps.)
If you need APKs you can get them from a mirror site like APKPure or APKMirror. Pretty sure you can download them straight on to your computer without any app being involved that way too. I wouldn't run them on your phone but for asset fetching it's fine.
I think a lot of apps these days come as split APKs, which can complicate things. Not sure if they will unpack as easily as a single APK/zip.
For computer games, I have a little experience but not much. Assets get packed up in a proprietary format pretty often, and maybe there's a program to open it on GitHub or maybe not. Just search by the game name and see if anyone's done it.
Videos will often be compressed with Bink, which I hear FFMPEG has a decoder reverse engineered for now, and image files will often be .dds which will need converting. You can view them with IfranViewer.
I can't say whether this will hold across all games. That's just been my experience with it.
CrossbowArcanePlus said:
I think a lot of apps these days come as split APKs, which can complicate things. Not sure if they will unpack as easily as a single APK/zip.
In case of split APKs I can recommend AntiSplit M which can merge the parts back into a single APK. Works great for patching apps with ReVanced which requires normal APK files.
CrossbowArcanePlus said:
If you need APKs you can get them from a mirror site like APKPure or APKMirror. Pretty sure you can download them straight on to your computer without any app being involved that way too. I wouldn't run them on your phone but for asset fetching it's fine.
Those sites may also have multiple versions of the app, which is useful as later versions may remove or alter assets in the APK. I was able to find removed voice clips for collab characters in one game.
I think a lot of apps these days come as split APKs, which can complicate things. Not sure if they will unpack as easily as a single APK/zip.
I haven't had any trouble unzipping split APKs so far. I think the main issue is that some emulators won't be able to install them properly.
For computer games, I have a little experience but not much. Assets get packed up in a proprietary format pretty often, and maybe there's a program to open it on GitHub or maybe not. Just search by the game name and see if anyone's done it.
A couple other good places to look are the forums in Xentax, ZenHax, and VG Resource. The last one is especially focused on ripping sprites and other assets. You can also look up some QuickBMS scripts and see if the file type is on the list. Pay attention to who developed the game, as they may use the same format across multiple games.
Okay, so, I decided on my target game (MementoMori (Game)), and got the APK file from APKPure (though it downloaded as an "XAPK" file, which appears to be a split APK merged by APKPure itself), and immediately ran into a huge problem: my computer refuses to unzip APKs. I've tried some "APK to ZIP" strategies, but that simply hasn't worked out well.
Not sure what my error is, but I did confirm it uses Unity, which is annoying as I have no fucking clue how to run AssetStudio (or any other program of that nature, and I'm sure Unity would be a pain in the ass to learn just for the sake of ripping, but what do I know?)
Knowledge_Seeker said:
Okay, so, I decided on my target game (MementoMori (Game)), and got the APK file from APKPure (though it downloaded as an "XAPK" file, which appears to be a split APK merged by APKPure itself), and immediately ran into a huge problem: my computer refuses to unzip APKs. I've tried some "APK to ZIP" strategies, but that simply hasn't worked out well.
Not sure what my error is, but I did confirm it uses Unity, which is annoying as I have no fucking clue how to run AssetStudio (or any other program of that nature, and I'm sure Unity would be a pain in the ass to learn just for the sake of ripping, but what do I know?)
I tried unzipping it and it works fine for me. Did you try changing the file extension to .zip? You shouldn't need to do anything special to convert the file. It's unzippable in its current state, but if you don't change the file extension, it might not give you the option to unzip it.
AssetStudio is pretty easy to use. All you need to do is open the GUI version, then drag and drop the Unity files you want to load. You can then select a specific asset type (like Texture2D) from the Filter Type menu in the top ribbon.
You'll want the files in the largest folder. They should have random alphanumeric names. You can load multiple files at the same time. After you filter them, you can just use the arrow keys to browse through the images. You'll probably be most interested in the images beginning with CHR and ending with a lowercase l, but there may be others like group images you'd be interested in as well. Just be prepared to scroll through a lot of gameplay icons.
Blank_User said:
I tried unzipping it and it works fine for me. Did you try changing the file extension to .zip? You shouldn't need to do anything special to convert the file. It's unzippable in its current state, but if you don't change the file extension, it might not give you the option to unzip it.
Yeah, I meant to change the apk file to a zip file that my computer can actually unzip properly lol. The button that'd normally be to unzip the file is instead to open BlueStacks (which is counterintuitive to my goals)
AssetStudio is pretty easy to use. All you need to do is open the GUI version, then drag and drop the Unity files you want to load. You can then select a specific asset type (like Texture2D) from the Filter Type menu in the top ribbon.
Oh I got it to work afterall lol. Just need to get past the hurdle that is "my computer does not unzip APK files by itself" lol.
You'll want the files in the largest folder. They should have random alphanumeric names. You can load multiple files at the same time. After you filter them, you can just use the arrow keys to browse through the images. You'll probably be most interested in the images beginning with CHR and ending with a lowercase l, but there may be others like group images you'd be interested in as well. Just be prepared to scroll through a lot of gameplay icons.
Good to know! At the very least, I'm experienced enough to not be put off by the idea, when it comes to searching for images.
I gave Memento Mori a go with Asset Ripper (AssetRipper/AssetRipper on Github. Not an endorsement mind.) and that worked pretty well.
Looks like the characters images get put at:
/AssetRipper_export_20250722_195410/Assets/AddressableConvertAssets/CharacterIcon/CHR_*
and you can skip sorting through all of the gameplay icons. 103 folders at the moment. I think only the first image from each folder is the image you want, and the rest are crops.
Asset Ripper! This one seems to do the trick for me, even if it is a bit of a pain to download the file from (because "save raw data" apparently doesn't equal the PNG file for me?). In any case, my extraction was finally successful, and I got post #9675232 up as proof of concept that I can, in fact, extract game cgs.
Thank you guys so much. Now I can extract the pretty art from the Android app games no one cares about (that isn't blatantly AI-generated at least), because I like pretty anime art, as is typical of people on here. I feel like I levelled up today!