MAME Arcade Game Ripping Catch-All Thread

Main repo (not yet working): https://gitlab.com/richwiki101/open-arcade-media

This repository will host my work in a quest of mine to make resources (graphics and possibly audio) from coin-op arcade games more accessible.

This IRC chat log [dropbox.com] explains some difficulties and other things pertaining to this project (You may leave comments on the linked file if you wish). Key parts:

• I have some knowledge of programming (usually with the basics) with the languages Java, C++, and some of C.
  
• The easier ways to get resources from machines running in MAME is to press F4, and then cycle through the 3 screens providing palettes, tilemaps, and sprites.
  
• First, the project will focus on games from 1972 or 1978 to 1986 or 1987, so as to not get me overwhelmed with the more complex systems.
  
• Not all games expose their graphics via the F4 window, especially those that utilize a blitter. In order to make my project more complete,
  
• I am told to work with the ROM images directly by reading the MAME source code to determine which images relate to graphics, getting the bitmap size and bpp (bits per pixel) to determine the height of all the graphics stacked vertically, and then importing the images into a graphics editor program that is capable of processing raw image data.
  
• After completing the above, I usually will then have to fetch the correct the correct palette while running each machine and apply them to each sprite.
  
• If importing into a graphics editor program fails to produce any meaningful results, I might have to resort to using hex editors and possibly having to write my own program in order to get the resources another way.
  

I am not asking for someone else to do the work for me yet, but for more or better knowledge on how to work with the data of arcade game ROM images, so that I can start the project myself. Arcade game ROM images tend to be different beasts than the console game ROM images that I see mentioned much more often, and my efforts to find good tools that can work with the former bear almost no fruit. (maybe move some of this post to another place?).