Here it is. My big thread! The main reason I came here: to solve the long-standing mystery of extracting graphics from this game.

As is typical for SNES games, most of it's graphics are compressed. I've asked on other message boards, and Googled with no luck for years. Nothing of use whatsoever comes up. Not even the format's name, let alone a person claiming to have discovered it, or utilities.

I've finally found tiles about a week ago. In a savestate using YY-CHR. But, copying and pasting thousands of tiles that way would be quite tedious to say the least. It'd be actually quicker to find out what format they're in, then write a batch script to dump them all to a file. I know that kind of program exists for Super Mario World, Yoshi's Island, and ZeldaLTTP, among others.

Note the word "extracting" above. I don't want to edit and reinsert them, just get the tiles out so they can be used in other projects.
It shouldn't be hard either. The data for related games like Rockman & Forte is known, it's fan translation proves that.

So, does anyone have any information on the graphics compression format in Mega Man 7?

Um... Huh? I doubt they would design an entirely new format for just one game, then never use it again.

Well, let's see where to begin. I don't know where the compressed data is stored. I'd used a savestate to view a few tiles. While it is possible to achieve my intention that way, that'll take far too long.

Do keep in mind I'm most definitely not a programmer. Finding the data's address and compression scheme might be within my ability. But writing a way to get them dumped to file isn't.

Out of all the SNES games I've looked at, I've never seen any two not made by the same company that had the exact same compression routine. Even then, sometimes games made by the same company still use different routines.

They're often times similar because the system was unable to handle any advanced compression algorithms, but rarely ever the same. There was no such thing as a 'standard' to use for compression on that platform. It'll generally be an LZ variant, a variant of Run length encoding, in some cases huffman, or a unique/custom blend of more than one of those.

Ryusui has you on the right track. It probably won't be easy for someone at your level and no programming experience, but don't sell yourself short. Everybody starts somewhere. Facing challenges is the only way we grow in our ability.

In January 2006, I thought I was fully incapable of such advanced feats as VWF or tackling compression. In March of 2006, I did both.

You never know until you try.

Googlepages is good. 100MB of ad-free, direct-linking storage space for absolutely nada.

Problem is, it's a pain in the ass to actually make a webpage using Googlepages. ^_^;

Theres a few megaman 7 graphics hacks on this very site I suggest tracking down the auther and sending him an email asking how they did it.