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Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: Alhexx on 2001-10-03 16:24:00
Is it possible to increase FF8's screen resolution via hacking some files (perhaps FF8.exe) ? If anyone knows, please let me know,too :wink:

 - Alhexx
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: J*** H******* on 2001-10-03 22:26:00
Message.
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: ficedula on 2001-10-04 08:47:00
I've had questions about that too :wink:

Jari's right: You'd need a DirectX layer that filtered calls through, translating them into a higher res.

It'd be a LOT of work for (possibly) no end result, so nobody's taken it on yet...
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: Goku7 on 2001-10-05 04:01:00
I'm not a graphic programmer, so this is a shot in the dark:

What about updating the midi config ver. 2 program to allow for higher resolution, then adding a simple resolution scale code in the .exe that came with it?

Would that work, or am I just restating the obvious??
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: ficedula on 2001-10-05 11:42:00
No, it wouldn't work ... not that easily.

The midi program filters DirectMusic calls ... they're totally separate to DirectDraw/Direct3D so it doesn't give you any head start whatsoever using the music configurator.

You'd need to do the same SORT of thing, but to DDraw ... except DDraw is far, far bigger than DMusic, so it's a lot of work ... plus it might not even work, since DDraw is pretty sensitive to hacks.
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: Reznor007 on 2001-10-05 12:35:00
To be honest, using a higher resolution in FF7 or 8 isn't necessary. Just run 640x480 with the best level of FSAA your card supports.
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: M0T on 2001-10-05 20:11:00
Yes but the problem with that is the FSAA slows the game down, also the charecters get very blurry.
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: Goku7 on 2001-10-06 02:47:00
Well the 3dfx Voodoo5 class cards should not present a blurring problem with FSAA (they did, after all, do a better job than nVidia in not making menu screens "melt") and the newer Geforce2 and 3 cards that process 600 Gazillion triangles per second should not have a problem in the speed area.

Well, if your still interested in the possibility of getting directx to do it, then perhaps this place is a good place to learn about the inner workings of DirectX:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/nhp/default.asp?contentid=28000410

There's a lot of technical articles, but they also have examples of (I think its C++) code to tell DirectX how to do stuff.

Would that help, or answer your questions?
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: chowderhead on 2001-10-06 12:49:00
I think the biggest problem most people have with 8 is with the backgrounds and not the 3d battle mode (although the world map needs serious help, too)-so would changing the resolution have any effect on that at all?  Or are backgrounds rendered in some funky way that it might be possible to alter?
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: ficedula on 2001-10-06 22:32:00
Actually, the backgrounds would be the hardest part to do.

In full 3d mode, you just set up a camera position, and draw objects in some other 3d position ... you aren't really dealing with the exact resolution of the screen at any time, not much, anyway.

With the 2d backgrounds, you're drawing 2d tiles to exact pixel positions on the screen - so then, you ARE worried about the resolution. What'd probably happen if you forced the resolution up to (say) 800x600, is that the game would just draw on the first 640x480 of the screen, since it's sending a 640x480 image straight to the video card...

*Could* be worked around perhaps, but that'd be the biggest problem ... how to deal with parts of the game that draw to an exact pixel position on the screen...
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: Goku7 on 2001-10-07 01:49:00
There may yet be a way around the 2d background problem.  It seems to me that emulators like ePSXe can do it all the time, when they're playing ff7,8,9,etc. at 640X480 and higher.  All the textures and backgrounds in the psx version are stored below 640X480 resolution, yet when played higher than that they still fill the screen.  Perhaps ripping a page from the emulator book might work......
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: Reznor007 on 2001-10-07 06:45:00
Quote

On 2001-10-05 16:11, M0T wrote:
Yes but the problem with that is the FSAA slows the game down, also the charecters get very blurry.


And rendering in a higher resolution also slows it down...And the characters don't get blurry..they look much better.
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: ficedula on 2001-10-07 14:39:00
Yeah, emulators do it ... but they have TOTAL control over the output of the game. Everything passes through them anyway, so it's easy for them to alter stuff. On the PC, you don't ... that's the point: IF we could write a FULL DirectX layer, then yes, we'd have total control over the output (like epSXe does) so we could do stuff like that. But actually DOING that is hard.
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: The SaiNt on 2001-10-07 15:07:00
lol
emulator writers have a hard time writing the directx layer in the first place. Look at the amount of problems most plugins for epsxe have. Although the emulator emulates it properly, the plugin might not :wink:
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: Goku7 on 2001-10-07 23:20:00
Well, in that case, what about trying to get it to use another api?

I'd love to see FF7 or FF8 be played in OpenGL or even Glide! (so the neat little 3dfx splash screen is displayed before the game starts.  I really like seeing it before playing a glide game.:smile:)

If we could, then we could also go ahead and give the option of higher resoulution, since we wouldn't have to worry about trying to hack DirectX....
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: ficedula on 2001-10-07 23:57:00
Do you know what you just suggested? Exactly how are we supposed to rewrite the whole graphics system of a game we don't have source code to?

Sorry, don't mean to sound bad but ... there is NO way that could practically be done. At least a DirectX layer just means coding DLL's with similar structures to the DirectX DLL's and forcing the game to accept them ... but we can't go in and radically rewrite the EXE code to make it do totally different things (like use a different graphics API!). Not without source code, which Square aint gonna provide. :wink:
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: chowderhead on 2001-10-08 02:08:00
Is it my imagination or do I remember Halkun saying that the native resolution for the PSX was 320x240? (or something close)  So if I'm thinking straight (Ha!) when square ported ff8, they came across some of the same problems rendering backgrounds, right?  They would have had the same issues-if tiles are placed in a particular "spot" on the screen in native resolution, then they had to overcome that to get backgrounds to correctly display in higher resolutions on the PC.  

Not that it would be particularly easy to decipher how square did that, even if that is what happened.

Real life is such a drag...
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: Reznor007 on 2001-10-08 04:12:00
The PSX version runs in 320x240. When you run the PC version at 640x480 it stretches the 2d files by 2x and draws the 3d as usual. This makes the 2d look alot worse than it does on a PSX. The 3d looks a hell of a lot better though. This is also why running in higher resolution is even worse, as the 2d has to be stretched even more. Thus, FSAA is the best solution. That or completely re-render the 2d for higher resolutions.
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: Goku7 on 2001-10-08 05:53:00
Reznor: That's probably what SquareSoft did, simply re-render the scenes in the higher resolution.  Actually, It was probably easier for them to do that, since they probably still had the psx files in a decompressed form, still ready to be edited, when they decided to make a pc version.

Ficedula: Sorry for causing the choking! Still, technically, you do have the source code.  I believe its in a little file called "FF8.exe".  Actually, since the midi config runs the game using a different executable ("PlayFF8.exe") that was based on the original executable, it sounded to me like editing the source code was feasible. But hey, like I said earlier, I'm no graphic programmer.
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: ficedula on 2001-10-08 08:39:00
That aint source code. Source code is code written in plain text that can be easily understood. EXE files are compiled and are in ASSEMBLER which isn't so easily understood. Or edited. Like, you can't insert commands in because it throws off all the references in the file...

Yes, I DO know assembler but there's no fscking way you can make MAJOR changes to an EXE without the source code. MINOR changes (like the way I patched FF7.EXE to run in 32-bit colour), yes. But that's pretty small and it still wasn't easy...
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: Reznor007 on 2001-10-09 00:22:00
Quote

On 2001-10-08 00:12, Reznor007 wrote:
The PSX version runs in 320x240. When you run the PC version at 640x480 it stretches the 2d files by 2x and draws the 3d as usual. This makes the 2d look alot worse than it does on a PSX. The 3d looks a hell of a lot better though. This is also why running in higher resolution is even worse, as the 2d has to be stretched even more. Thus, FSAA is the best solution. That or completely re-render the 2d for higher resolutions.


Well, the thing is, they didn't re-render the scenes for 640x480. The 320x240 data is stretched at run time(that's how they still have the option for 320x240 windowed and 640x480 quarter-screen). To get the game to look better you would need the original scene data, and re-render that to 640x480 or higher(actually, if there were a 640x480 render available it would look great, think diablo or starcraft level 2d).
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: Sir Canealot on 2001-10-11 21:50:00
I would just like to add that on a monitor even 4x AA in my Geforce 3 looks f-ing terrible. Of corse if I out it to my TV with 4x AA it looks lovely. No detecable jaggies what so ever even when I am looking for them! Wow! TV-Out Ownz ME!
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: Reznor007 on 2001-10-12 03:33:00
On a Geforce3 use the 2xRGMS FSAA type, plus 32-64tap anisotropic filtering, that provides the best results. Sometimes on GF cards the driver will disable 4xAA without any notice.
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: ffsquall on 2001-10-25 21:45:00
hey

im new here so first of all i'll say hey

i got a quetion i was wondering if someone could answer
i have riva tnt 2 and in ff8 configurator it tells me that 8 bit plattes test had failed
so if someone knows how to fix this please reply to me
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: Goku7 on 2001-10-25 23:26:00
Joy.....I'm getting a feeling of deja vu from that question.  Shall we beat that question around the bush again??

ffsquall:  Welcome.  No offense, but you asked something that should probably belong in F.A.Q.  Several other threads have dealt with this problem.  However, since you're relatively new here, it's understandable to ask that.  I believe you'll need the Riva Tuner program to allow the card to do 8-bit paletted textures.  I really never had to deal with that (ah, good 'ol 3Dfx chipset...... :grin:) but I know the frustration the problem can cause.

[edited] 239 2001-10-26 00:27
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: Evil Squall on 2001-10-25 23:37:00
well, I have the same card, and after enabled that 8-bit palatized thingy, the game wont run at all!!!
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: dagsverre on 2001-10-26 07:51:00
It might be that the background are layered out using 3D calls. This is what is done in very many new 2D games at least. The problem with using 2D calls and then 3D calls is that it plays a little havoc on the system bus and so on. Direct3D might be emulating DirectDraw in 3D mode, this is really what I fear, however they might still have picked Direct3D for rendering the backgrounds because it gives automatic hardware scaling! Think bilinear filtering...

So, at least if I had written this, I'd do stuff like this (this is psuedo-code!):

SetRes(640, 480);
SetViewport(0, 0, 640, 480, D3D_ORTHOGONAL);
//Draw my 2D stuff using quads at a very far distance
//Things do not get smaller if they are far away in this mode
SetViewPort(-1, -1, 1, 1, D3D_FRUSTUM);
//Draw my 3D stuff, thinks will now become
//smaller the further away they are

This means that the only part that *might* need to be changed is the constants passed in to SetRes. The game will still set up a 640x480 viewport and work with that while drawing the background (not that it is guaranteed that the game uses that exact mode).

Still the problem is with hacking into Direct3D with it's hundreds of calls. I think the solution is to write low-level COM code, the kind of code we would have written from C or assembler to use Direct3D. What we do is:

Build our own low-level DllGetComObject or whatever those were called (the four global functions present in all COM dlls). Those low level functions...
- calls the original DirectX code to get a pointer
- copies the destination into it's own buffer using a simple memcpy
- changes the necessarry stuff, this will be done by casting the copied buffer into an array of functions and change the stuff at a fixed address

This way there's only work to be done per call being replaced, and the size of the lib doesn't really matter. The clue is that COM interfaces really are only a v-table (table of function pointers).

As always, I have not got the time for actually doing this. Sorry.
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: ffsquall on 2001-10-26 10:05:00
i'm not that bright
but i'll prefer english your speaking in codes

and as hurricane halmes would say "whats up with that"
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: ficedula on 2001-10-26 10:08:00
That exactly how I do the rendering on the Remake project (ortho's for backgrounds, normal frustum for 3d objects) but in my case, that's because OpenGL really is 3d only anyway...

Don't know if FF8 actually does stuff that way, though.
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: Reznor007 on 2001-10-28 02:07:00
How are you handling situations where 3d models go behind 2d objects?

I am thinking that the 2d tiles are in the same 3d space as the models, but just done as a square, and only having the z coordinate changed. And places where the 2d tile is a curved or angled edge, it simply uses an alpha value that makes it transparent, so that the things behind it will show up. Not sure if that makes sense the way I worded it though...
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: ficedula on 2001-10-28 11:25:00
Yes :wink:

Oh, details? OK...

Well, I hope you can see the 2d backgrounds consist of a number of "layers". At the bottom is the "real" background that everything appears on top of. Then there's some tiles that you might appear behind - that's the second layer. Then there might be some tiles that you might appear behind all the time - that's the third layer.

When rendering the scene, the game would do this:
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: Reznor007 on 2001-10-29 04:14:00
Ah, sounds good.

The number of layers is probably quite lower than 65,536. While I can't say for sure, it may be as low as 256(8bit). The reason I say this is because the 3d models would have their own thickness, which would take up Z space, and since the 2d tiles can't overlap the 3d models's z coordinate, they would have to have a value substancially higher/lower to compensate for any forward/backward movement the character may make.

Hope that makes sense :smile:
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: ficedula on 2001-10-29 07:48:00
Actually, the way I do it, you hardly need any layers. For example, the Wutai shop location (the one I'm using as the example field location) has 3 layers. That's it.
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: Reznor007 on 2001-10-29 13:36:00
Yeah, most scenes from 7 are simple enough that 3 passes should cover it(background, 3d, foreground). It would be fun to see how complex you could get with it though :smile:

Basically unrelated, but with the remake, are you planning on supporting video backgrounds?

And also, have you thought about implementing a scanline option? If you don't know what I'm referring to, try an arcade or SuperNES emulator, and compare the screen with scanlines on and off. This option would help FF7(and :cool: alot since it was designed for low-res TV's.
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: ficedula on 2001-10-29 14:06:00
Video backgrounds? I'd *like* to, but I haven't got that far yet. It's certainly possible, of course.

Layering system ... you've not *quite* understood how it works. In effect, all 3d models have 2 depth values; firstly, their 3d depth (used to calculate occlusion with other 3d models); secondly, their layer depth (used to calculate occlusion with 2d backgrounds). So the Wutai shop gets rendered like this:

Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: Goku7 on 2001-10-30 00:51:00
Hmmm....Video backgrounds?

For those, couldn't you write the video to the card as a texture (as opposed to directly writing the video the the memory) with alpha transparency to get both the video and the characters on the screen at the same time?  I think I read somewhere that that's how the PSX does it.....
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: ficedula on 2001-10-30 01:02:00
Yes; that's AFAIK the recommended way to do it with OpenGL. You do have to deal with the video compression manager which is NOT simple at all ... again, it's one of those things which I hope to do at some point.
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: Goku7 on 2001-10-30 01:28:00
Could QuickTime work for the video compression?  I don't know how hard the compression manager would be for the various compression algorithims, but I think QuickTime has some very fast response time (does anyone remember the speed of the movies in MYST or Riven?)

[edited] 239 2001-10-30 02:30
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: ficedula on 2001-10-30 01:32:00
It might ... the problem basically is that I've *never* done any work using any video compression manager directly, whether it be the Windows VCM or whatever Quicktime uses ... it's all just a question of getting the experience, of course.

Dammit, I should go to sleep now! It's far too late to do, well, anything, considering I have lectures tomorrow :wink:
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: J*** H******* on 2001-10-30 11:06:00
Message!
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: ficedula on 2001-10-30 11:10:00
Well, I took the next best option; I dispatched two of my minions to visit the lecture for me and report back on anything I need to know :grin:

OTOH, I think I should probably go to the one this afternoon ... going to *no* lectures during a day would be fairly bad :smile:
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: Reznor007 on 2001-10-30 23:29:00
Quote

On 2001-10-29 10:06, ficedula wrote:
Video backgrounds? I'd *like* to, but I haven't got that far yet. It's certainly possible, of course.

Layering system ... you've not *quite* understood how it works. In effect, all 3d models have 2 depth values; firstly, their 3d depth (used to calculate occlusion with other 3d models); secondly, their layer depth (used to calculate occlusion with 2d backgrounds). So the Wutai shop gets rendered like this:

  • Render 2d layer 0 (background)
  • Render 3d models on layer 0, with proper depth for each other
  • Render 2d layer 1 on top of whatever's already on the screen, possibly covering some parts up
  • Render 3d models on layer 1, with proper depth for each other
  • Render 2d layer 2 on top of whatever's already on the screen, possibly covering some parts up
  • [/list:u]

    Scanlines ... well, I know what they ARE. I'm not sure how good it'd be, to be honest - it's not exactly that easy to implement in OpenGL and to be honest, I doubt it'd improve results more than the OpenGL texture filtering already would. Check out the screenshots of the Field unit from the Remake site; OpenGL's already filtering the backgrounds quite a bit by itself.


Ah, I see. Small misinterpretation in how it was done. I was thinking it was done it one pass, but rather a multipass situation, that makes sense.

The video backgrounds shouldn't be too hard to implement. Use an open source codec(Divx probably) or any other coded that is known, and instead of writing it to an overlay for viewing, write it to a texture.

Scanlines can be implemented without too much effort. Since the backgrounds are already being stretched 2x(for 640x480), it would be easy to generate a 640x480 texture and overlay that over the entire scene. The texture would alternate each line with solid black, and a line of transparency. You could also change the alpha value of the black lines to 75% brightness, 50% and so on. Well, at least I think that would work :smile: Haven't tried it out.

For an example of scanlines in an OpenGL mode you can look at Pete's OpenGL renderer for PlayStation emulators. It is an option in there. I'm not sure if he uses the method I mentioned though.
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: ficedula on 2001-10-30 23:46:00
OK, on further reflection I guess scanlines wouldn't be too hard. I personally don't think they'd improve quality at all, but ... I suppose it couldn't hurt to put them in.

Video codec: Well, if I use the VCM (Windows Video Compression Manager) I get access to all AVI codecs. And yes, you can upload the frames as textures. I'm just saying *I* have never done this!

My time is semi-short at the moment ... I should catch up soon. OTOH, I'm downloading anime quicker than I can watch it, so I'm building up a massive backlog of stuff to watch. Which is good, of course, but drains away yet more time :wink: I'm trying to multitask by only watching anime while cooking, eating, or similar :wink:

Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: J*** H******* on 2001-10-31 03:19:00
Message!
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: Reznor007 on 2001-10-31 04:50:00
Quote

On 2001-10-30 19:46, ficedula wrote:
OK, on further reflection I guess scanlines wouldn't be too hard. I personally don't think they'd improve quality at all, but ... I suppose it couldn't hurt to put them in.


Yeah, scanlines aren't all that hard. Just make sure that if you try the method I mentioned, you use GL_NEAREST for the filtering on the overlay.

And believe it or not, scanlines REALLY help FF7. I took a screengrab once and scanlined it(painstakingly, I couldn't be arsed to write a program to do it). It looked alot better(IMO).
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: ficedula on 2001-10-31 07:05:00
My goodness ... do we have a fellow OpenGL programmer in here? You're quite right about how to do the overlay. Possibly I'll try that this afternoon.

Jari: Heh. My CD burner can intheory write at 8x, but not on my dodgy CD's ... bought a big stack of 100 shrink wrapped CDR's which only write at 2x. 'Course, what do you expect, they look sooo dodgy anyway ... but I really needed that many ^_^

Luckily our house server (Hal2k) has a nice 60GB drive solely for the purpose of storing downloads. That'll give me a *bit* more time...:grin:
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: dagsverre on 2001-10-31 07:22:00
FF8 uses Bink in RAD video tools (www.radgametools.com), meaning you'd get the resource usage of FF8 (and I personally didn't think compression in FF8 was all that bad, you get what you pay for (in resource usage in this  context)). The tools themselves are free, you have to pay for the SDK but that shouldn't really be a problem, a little TDUMP and a little ff8.exe disassembly and you're set. Except that it legally might be a problem releasing something using Bink without paying for it, perhaps they'd take action...
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: ficedula on 2001-10-31 07:50:00
Heheh. Quite. Personally I don't really see any other option than VCM, that way we get to play any AVI files we want, so we can reuse the original FF7 movies (crap though their quality was - by the time they've been through OpenGL they might look better...) and use (say) DivX's for our own movies. Or any other AVI codec you might feel is useful, for that matter.
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: J*** H******* on 2001-10-31 11:29:00
Message!
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: Reznor007 on 2001-10-31 13:57:00
Quote

On 2001-10-31 03:05, ficedula wrote:
My goodness ... do we have a fellow OpenGL programmer in here? You're quite right about how to do the overlay. Possibly I'll try that this afternoon.


I can do a little bit :smile: I haven't done anything with OpenGL in a while, I've been too busy with work and other stuff. Right now I'm starting to look into merging the SMPEG library into the MAME source so that Dragon's Lair and other laserdisc games can be supported. Whether or not I actually finish that project depends on how hard it is to get it to fit into MAME's structures.
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: ficedula on 2001-10-31 15:17:00
Well, I implemented a (very) basic scanline rendering using the method you suggested ... screenshot on the Remake site. I don't like it, but maybe it'd look nice with tweaking...

Oh; RE: Quicktime, there are Quicktime interfaces/components for Delphi, so I could playback Quicktime files in Delphi, or so it seems. Still lean towards VCM (=AVI's) myself, but it's *possible*.
[edited] 68 2001-10-31 16:43
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: Reznor007 on 2001-11-01 00:20:00
Hmm...could you try 3 different things and see how they turn out?

#1 Same settings, but with 2d filtering disabled.

#2 2d filtering disabled, scanlines at 50% intensity.

#3 2d filtering on, scanlines at 50% intensity.

I think one reason the shot doesn't look the greatest may be because of the filtering of 2d elements, which isn't really needed in a scanlined situation. Or possibly just the overall darkness...I know in emulators that scanlines do make it alot darker(different scanline intensity values make it better), but it helps the overall image alot.

It's cool you tried it out though :smile:
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: Reznor007 on 2001-11-01 00:25:00
Oh, and on a side note, the remake shots look nice :smile:
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: Goku7 on 2001-11-01 01:22:00
No kidding.  My jaw hit the floor when I saw the swirl effect screenshot.  

What'd you do, ripimport the swirl code directly from the PSX version, or did you make it from scratch?

BTW, what are the minimum system specs for the remake going to be?
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: Reznor007 on 2001-11-01 04:47:00
I'm guessing that the swirl effect is done by rendering the last frame to a texture, and then rotating and zooming that texture without clearing the framebuffer.
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: ficedula on 2001-11-01 10:34:00
Reznor: Exactly correct! I coded that up from scratch but I think it looks *fairly* similar to the FF7 original swirl.

Minimum specs ... ehehe. Whatever runs it properly ... I haven't had a chance to test it on enough computers to be sure. If it's any help, the specs for my computer are on my webpage, and I can run it at a good framerate with power to spare.
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: Reznor007 on 2001-11-01 12:41:00
Thought so :smile: And actually, I think that's how it was done on the PSX also.
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: ficedula on 2001-11-01 18:26:00
k, posted three more scanline shots up that (cunningly enough) match the three situations you suggested :wink:

Incidentally, with scanlines on, filtering really isn't needed on the backgrounds (ok, no surprise) - but in the sense that you really can't tell the difference at all. Having it on hardly changes it at all. It's images with sharp edges (like the font) where filtering is *really* noticable, even with scanlines on.

50% scanlines do look a lot better than full ones though; again, I suppose no surprises there.


Another update: I've added scanlines in as an option configurable from the console. So, while you're in game, you can change scanlines to any level of transparency (and turn them off, of course).

Incidentally, scanlines *do* slow the engine down. Nothing to be done about that ... it'd just be a cosmetic setting, if you wanted them on. Didn't take too long to do, I suppose, so I might as well have it in though.
[edited] 68 2001-11-02 01:14
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: Reznor007 on 2001-11-02 04:33:00
Awesome :smile: That's really cool that you tried it. I'll certainly use it once it's released  :cool:
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: dagsverre on 2001-11-02 13:29:00
Just curious...why are scanlines slowing it down? I would imagine it being implemented using a single quad, perhaps with some ortho settings and matrix push/pops... all in all not more than 10 opengl calls (being generous here). Which is really nothing...

What am I overlooking?
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: ficedula on 2001-11-02 14:27:00
Nothing. But that's enough to cause a slowdown.

Only noticable in the fast areas (like sparse menus) due to the fact it's a small slowdown ... but, for example, some areas that were running at 250FPS got knocked down to 200FPS with scanlines.

The field unit is so complex already that scanlines didn't affect that noticably, of course.
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: Goku7 on 2001-11-02 23:17:00
Okay, speaking of speed and polygon complexity, I have a new (or is it old?) question:

Why is it that the World Map on FF8PC has such a terrible framerate, yet FF7's world map, which is comparable in size and complexity to FF8's, doesn't have this slowdown?

I don't know if anyone's figured out why yet.....:???:

Also, for the video backgrounds, two more questions.  If QuickTime wouldn't be practical, what about MPEG compression?  It might be possible to convert the Original FF7 AVI's to mpeg, in order to save on space you could use for the new movies you're gonna include.

Second, for situations where it's not a background (as in the beginning or ending movies of the game), would it be more effiecent to use a direct write to memory or the texture (with BiLinear Filter) approach?
[edited] 239 2001-11-03 00:39
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: J*** H******* on 2001-11-03 01:53:00
Message.
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: Goku7 on 2001-11-03 02:36:00
Hmmm....interesting.  So, you're saying the "washed out" look to the movies is cleared up somewhat when viewed in 32-bit color?

As for a possible interface with playing it in OpenGL in the event that you want to try using QuickTime in the remake:  Ripping the interface code directly from either Riven or MYST; perhaps even MYST III?  Again, I don't know if the effort involved in doing that is too much, since I'm not a graphic programmer.
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: J*** H******* on 2001-11-03 02:52:00
Message.
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: Reznor007 on 2001-11-03 03:05:00
The slowdown with scanlines can probably be attributed to the fact that the entire screen is having a second pass over everything else that is done. A tile based rendering card(PowerVR stuff like Kyro) probably would run faster[/f] because it would only draw half the screen.
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: ficedula on 2001-11-03 10:14:00
Argh! OK, couple of points:

1) No point whatsoever converting the original movies, since we are going to INSIST that you have the original FF7 CD's in order to run the Remake. The game will read any movies it does need from the CD's.

2) Quicktime IS practical; remember, I posted up above that I found a Quicktime interface written in Delphi. I just think AVI support would be easier (since, for a start, we need that anyway for the originals...)

3) Method of display (direct memory write/texture) - with OpenGL you don't get access directly to the surface memory anyway. Uploading as a texture is the only method.

HOWEVER: This isn't bad because using a texture allows you to stretch the image out to full screen and apply filtering to it (with no real speed drop on a modern card). That might well sort out some of the rasterisation the original videos have.


4) Scanlines: Ish. It has to alpha blend 50% of the pixels on the screen, so that's what causes the slowdown. I emphasise that it IS a small slowdown; you only notice it on the screens that were so simple they had massive framerates to begin with (so a small change is very noticable!)

There might be a better way to do scanlines using stenciling, but that'd only speed things up when you were using full scanlines (no transparency) which suxors, basically.

Incidentally, I've managed to write all the scanline code in a totally separate plugin (the main EXE contains no code whatsoever for scanlines). That's an example of exactly how much stuff you *can* do with plugin in the engine so far...
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: dagsverre on 2001-11-03 10:17:00
OK new question then: Why are you doing things in seperate passes instead of using the Z-Buffer? (Not saying that I know this would help I only had the impression...I mean, most games output quads covering at least half the screen all the time without it hurting)

Of course, 200 fps hasn't really hurt anyone but the most hard-core Quake gamers (and I'm convinced they wouldn't have noticed without their dear FPS counters either...)
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: ficedula on 2001-11-03 10:26:00
Z buffer...? How would I use that for scanlining?

Well, I see how you could use that for solid scanlines, but I'm not sure how you'd use it for transparent scanlines (which are the only good kind).

Actually, now I think about it, it's alpha blending every pixel on the screen - half of them end up untouched due to Alpha=0, but it'd still have to start processing them - half of them get blended.
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: dagsverre on 2001-11-03 14:10:00
Hehe. Stupid me.

Well, what about putting scanlines only on the backgrounds then? Then it could be done while downloading texture to card...would that be horribly ugly?

Then there's drawing lines using GL_LINES, that might only affect half of the pixels rather than all.

Not that the performance hit really matters. Well, thanks for clearing things up for me.
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: The SaiNt on 2001-11-03 15:36:00
Dag : Are you suggesting putting a "layer" of scanlines onto the backgrounds first?
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: ficedula on 2001-11-03 16:03:00
Ah - putting scanlines on the backgrounds when they're uploaded could be done. It wouldn't be quite so nice but certainly possible.

GL_Lines, again, not so nice but possible.

But like you said, the performance hit isn't really a factor on anything but the simplest of scenes, so I might as well just leave it as is :wink:
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: dagsverre on 2001-11-03 16:05:00
I'm suggesting writing code to alter the background textures so that they are scanlined instead of...

oh...right...stupid me. (Just realized that the textures are uploaded in the smaller size and the card takes card of the resizing in real-time) Seems I should stop commenting on stuff I have little experience in.
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: Reznor007 on 2001-11-03 18:48:00
Hmm...scanlining the texture as it is loaded, and then having 3d elements drawn normally. That might be weird since you would have the 3d models cross the black line areas, and it might give off a weird effect.

But in order to be as close as possible to the original PSX version, simple half intensity scanlines is the best. A normal TV is interlaced, and this type of scanline simulates that. Since we are using the original low-res art designed for TV's, we should go this route.
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: ficedula on 2001-11-03 19:39:00
Well, the good news is I've got basic VFW/AVIFile playback working (meaning, streaming an AVI file through as a texture to OpenGL). Video only at the moment - no audio - but that's OK, I'm sure audio won't be too difficult.

There's a screenshot up of an AVI playing in it (not that you can tell much from it, but hey); specifically, a Cowboy Bebop DivX. Framerate in a 640x480 window fluctuated between 25FPS - 80FPS depending on how much was happening on screen - bearing in mind my PC isn't a real beast, I'm happy enough with that.

The BAD point is that - as we've all encountered before - TrueMotion don't have a VFW codec. So using VFW you can't access the FF7 movies. This suxors. The only way to access codecs like that is through DirectShow. So why don't I do that...? Not optimal in more than one way. Firstly ... have you SEEN the DirectShow API? The header file for DirectShow 8.1 is 1MB!? solid of source code. This is ridiculous, even accounting for the fact it must contain a lot of helper classes. Also, persuading DirectShow and OpenGL to cooperate would be "rather funky", as my uni would describe it (translation: too hard, give up and hope someone else does it).

So for the moment anyway, I'm sticking with VFW support which means the engine will playback any AVI using a standard VFW codec. This includes DivX's obviously, plus most other codecs except TrueMotion...
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: ficedula on 2001-11-04 00:39:00
Haha! Once again I spoke too soon! TrueMotion DO have a VFW codec ... just doesn't come with FF7, and you can't get it off their website anymore. Thank god for old file archives :wink:

Meaning: I CAN now playback the FF7 movies in the Remake engine using my current (AVIFile) approach. I like. Audio playback also working (terrible sync, but I can fix that).

Framerate on Truemotion files is good; above 50FPS all the time on my PC. Also nice.

Will investigate this more in the morning...
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: Goku7 on 2001-11-04 04:21:00
Warning: Possible Stupid Question Alert

Curiously, why is it that DirectX and OpenGL don't play nice together, yet it looks like a lot of OpenGL games use the DirectSound API without any appearant conflict?

On a more not-so-stupid note:  Will the Remake be taking advantage of the DirectMusic interface, or will it have the old standard MIDI interface?
Plus, is my Voodoo3 2000 PCI a modern-enough card to not have a performace hit when OpenGL is drawing the movies as a texture to the card?

[edited] 239 2001-11-04 05:26
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: Reznor007 on 2001-11-04 06:13:00
Fice, while I was at work today, I had a crazyass idea :smile:

Perhaps when doing the 50% or 75% scanline, use GL_LINEAR instead of GL_NEAREST and see what effect that has....I'm not entirely sure what it would look like.

And a V3 should be able to handle video just fine(my old V2 runs the original FF7 and FF8 fine).

Most DirectX things work great in conjunction with OpenGL, but the video related things are harder to pursuade to work together. And you CAN'T use Direct3D and OpenGL at the same time.
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: Alhexx on 2001-11-04 09:08:00
*cough* ehm...I haven't enough time to read all that crap... so could someone tell me if there is a rsolution found for my problem? (guess not..)

 - Alhexx
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: The SaiNt on 2001-11-04 09:59:00
I think we'll be running across certain problems if we go on adding features, performance.
We really have to remember that not everyone has "super" pc's out there.
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: ficedula on 2001-11-04 10:32:00
Goku: Reznor's right; you can use some DirectX stuff with OpenGL but *not* the visual parts; once OpenGL's drawing, trying to use DirectDraw/3D as well is asking for trouble. Other parts are ok; Remake uses DirectSound and DirectMusic for audio.

Voodoo3? Forget running the Remake on that at *all*. It simply doesn't have good enough support for texturing of *any* kind. If you do get it working - well, it won't look nice.

Reznor: I suspect, actually, that using GL_LINEAR wouldn't make the slightest difference. Think about it; vertically the scanline texture isn't stretched at all, so no filtering is ever done. Horizontally, it's stretched out a *lot*, but stretching a straight line ... no matter how you filter it, you get another straight line!

I might try it, but that's what I think.


UPDATE: Video playback is (nearly) 100% working! I've posted a few screenshots of the FF7 intro playing in the Remake engine. Quality isn't bad (I'm running it with linear filtering, which is OK). Framerates are generally great; they vary a lot with what's happening, but in "low-action" scenes it averaged around 100FPS with no filtering, or 90FPS with linear filtering. On higher movement scenes, it was making 30-50FPS most of the time, which isn't bad.

Synchronisation is still a problem ... it's sort-of fixed, but I need to do more testing on that.
[edited] 68 2001-11-04 15:07
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: dagsverre on 2001-11-04 15:41:00
A resampled/blurred/antialiased/whatever-you-wanna-call-it resized line still looks better than a brute-force blocy resized line. So I would expect a change myself. If there isn't then it would have to be because of the scanlines tricking the eye or something, which is of course entirely possible.
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: Reznor007 on 2001-11-04 21:19:00
Well, using GL_NEAREST(point sampling filtering) just draws the texture as it is. GL_LINEAR does a bilinear filter to the texture, and it should do some kind of effect blurring the black line and the normal lines.

As a different type of idea to better simulate a true interlaced TV...would alternating the scanline texture(moving the texture 1 pixel up, then back to the original position the next frame) make too much of a flicker efect on a PC monitor, or would it look good?
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: Reznor007 on 2001-11-04 21:22:00
Just as another thought, what kind of texture filters are you using that a V3 would have trouble with? Any custom OpenGL extensions coming into play?
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: ficedula on 2001-11-04 21:58:00
I'm using textures larger than 256x256 - always the killer for the Voodoo cards :wink: Honestly, almost any card in existance can do that ... except the Voodoos....

Oh; scanline filtering: as I predicted, made sweet f.a. difference. Filtering won't make a different at all! Look at it like this:

(http://hal2k.no-ip.com:9880/ficedula/ffr/scanline-example.png)

At the top: if you stretch a line *along its axis* it just gets longer. The only filtering that could *possibly* occur would be at the line ends. Vertically, you aren't stretching it at all, so no vertical filtering can take place. And this is exactly what happens with the scanlines: the scanline texture is stretched horizontally but not vertically, so at most, the very end of the line would be filtered (but since that reaches across the whole screen, nothing can be seen).

In the second example: this time, we're stretching something out in both dimensions so visible filtering *will* take place.

ANOTHER update: You can run videos as well as normal engine graphics (menus, 3d objects, etc.) but it kills speed a lot. Still playable ... but only just.

Uploaded more screenshots (video with scanlines, video and menu...)
[edited] 68 2001-11-04 23:27
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: Goku7 on 2001-11-05 01:09:00
Wait a minute.....ok. you said that you're going to insist that people who play the remake have the original FF7 cds, right?  That gives me an idea.....:smile:
(Hope this makes sense)
As a workaround for the Voodoo series, you have an option to have the game refer to the cd data for the textures that are being used, and for the ones that it can't find on the cd, you could have the game use a smaller version of the textures.

That way, you won't have to redo the texture set completely over again, just the ones that aren't being "recycled" from the original.

Would that be practical?
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: Reznor007 on 2001-11-05 03:28:00
Hmm..I would have thought that the black line would be filtered with the normal game stuff to soften the contrast. I would think that bilinear filtering the entire texture would do that, but I guess not *shrug*

Anyway, the new shots look great. Are you still using filtering on the video when doing scanlines, or is it disabled?
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: ficedula on 2001-11-05 07:53:00
I'm using filtering on everything.

Goku: Umm, not really. The *big* thing that needs to have more texture space is the font, and basically that doesn't look at all readable at 256x256. FF7 got around this by having *two* font bitmaps, each one storing half the symbols, but that sux0rs. And really, really, kills speed in my renderer.
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: Reznor007 on 2001-11-05 12:44:00
Creative had an OpenGL driver designed for Quake3 that would allow older 3dfx boards to support 512x512 textures(by creating 4 256x256 textures internally)...so that might work for this.

Now that I'm thinking about it...I wonder how Square did the videos on the Voodoo cards. Did they sample them as 256x256...or something else? I know the older Voodoo cards can do direct writes with 640x480 bitmaps, so maybe that was used.
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: ficedula on 2001-11-05 13:19:00
If it lets the cards support 512x512 textures in standard OpenGL, yes, that would work.

It's *possible* for the movies they did that - sampled it as multiple 256x256 textures. It's far too slow/timeconsuming to do that normally, but they might have.

Or actually, FF7 uses DirectDraw/DirectShow which probably does write direct to video memory ... in fact, DirectDraw practically guarantees it.
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: Goku7 on 2001-11-06 00:34:00
So, the fonts are stored as a bitmap image....  As if it was a texture?.   :???:

Is that how all fonts are normally stored and loaded?  It sounds really inefficient......
If fonts are normally accessed and used differently than in that huge texture, then why not have the remake use this regular interface for fonts.  I guess that would mean ripping the font information  from the game and installing it in a form that Windows would access the same way programs like Microsoft Word accesses (for example) Times New Roman?

[edited] 239 2001-11-06 02:50
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: ficedula on 2001-11-06 07:48:00
Fonts *are* stored as a texture. It's the most efficient way to do text in a game. Think about it; you're drawing 3d objects with textures and shading etc, now you need to draw some text - it's far quicker to use a font as a texture than to switch to some totally different method of drawing, like the standard Windows text routines.

Why does that sound inefficient?
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: Reznor007 on 2001-11-06 13:12:00
Yes, most 3d games use a texture for the font. Quake series for sure. It just has to pick out the coordinates for the right character, and display that.
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: dagsverre on 2001-11-06 13:31:00
Goku7: I think it can be summed up like this: How do you think Word displays it's Times New Roman? The screen consists of pixels, so the font has to come down to pixels at some point as well.

Granted, Times New Roman is a vector font, however if Microsoft know their stuff then they are caching the image of the font in a "texture" and rendering the font using that. Take another example: The text you look at now, in your browser. Most fonts used in Windows, like Tahoma (the text on your menus if you use Windows 2000) or MS Sans Serif (menus in earlier windows versions) or almost any font used on menus in other operating systems is really a "texture" (well, stored as a list of bitmaps probably, but the effect is the same) that is rendered to screen this way.

In other words, why let Windows do with Microsoft's crappy code what can be done faster in one's own code?
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: Goku7 on 2001-11-06 23:51:00
 Well, as I said, I'm not a graphic programmer......

(Slaps forehead as if he just realized something)

I forgot, OpenGL is 3D-Only.  You'd have to do it as a texture.  I was thinking that you could pull in DirectDraw to accelerate the windows code for fonts; but I guess you can't do that, since you said OpenGL and DirectDrawD3D don't play nice.

However, would using any Off-Screen Drawing type of stuff allow OpenGL display regular non-texture images while doing 3D rendering?  Pete's OpenGL plugin for PSX emulators seems to do that, unless I'm mistaking how the images are stored again.

Also, how would simply dividing up the Font texture into sizes small enough for a V3 kill off so much speed in the engine?  I would think a Geforce type chipset would have the horsepower to not show a decrease in speed.  They can handle like 600 Gazillion polygons a second, so two more textured polygons aren't going to make that much of a burden.  (not that I have a geforce.....but aren't you testing the game on one?)

Ack.....I think I ask too many questions......
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: ficedula on 2001-11-07 07:46:00
Because rendering a font as 4 separate images (each of 256x256) is sloooooooooow.

*Generally* speaking you can only have one texture active at a time. Switching which one is active takes *some* time; not a great deal, but enough that you want to minimise how often it's done.

That's exactly what the engine does: it renders all items using the same texture together, as much as possible.

With 4 font textures - not possible. A single piece of text might use all 4 textures! Drawing 15 pieces of text could result in a possible worst scenario of *60* texture changes.

Now there *are* ways around that but they basically would involve totally recoding part of the engine ... I'm not willing to put that much work in to make the game run on a chipset that's basically not got the features any decent 3d card should have.
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: The SaiNt on 2001-11-07 08:54:00
Quote

On 2001-11-07 03:46, ficedula wrote:
Now there *are* ways around that but they basically would involve totally recoding part of the engine ... I'm not willing to put that much work in to make the game run on a chipset that's basically not got the features any decent 3d card should have.

Not to say, one which it's original company is not providing drivers anymore.
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: dagsverre on 2001-11-07 20:59:00
Wouldn't imagine it requiring a complete recode...just some simple changes...

Like, in TextLabel.SetText() (or whatever you've named the func) you generate the quads beforehand. Then group the quads in four different lists according to which texture they're using. This will guarantee only four texture switches per text-box or whatever. Four texture switches per screen is a lot trickier because one must then manage global lists...not impossible just more bug-prone (and hardly worth the performance increase).

To really boost performance, make SetText generate a real array instead of using a list (dynamic arrays manages this with the same effort), then pass the array directly to the OpenGL array drawing funcs (this is really as fast as you can get).

If SetText is already setting up such arrays, then the step to four textures is insignificant. Engine rewrite just can't be true no matter how the current design is...

Of course, Voodoo compatability doesn't necisarrily matter enough to spend even little time on.
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: ficedula on 2001-11-07 21:45:00
It'd require a complete recode of the *font* system, which doesn't work much like that .

Plus it wouldn't fit in too well with the rendering system...

All *possible* of course ... but why bother? Voodoo cards are old enough that the performance on them wouldn't be too good anyway. Plus, I don't want to do that for every module that *might* have a 512x512 texture in it at some point ...
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: dagsverre on 2001-11-07 22:05:00
Fine, I don't really mind, having a geforce myself...
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: Goku7 on 2001-11-07 22:30:00
Hey.......I was gonna play the remake when it comes out, but since my dad cut off *ALL* access to newer hardware, I'm probably gonna be stuck with my 3DFX hardware for a long time.

Besides, the original FF7 Engine ran the dang thing *Just Fine*.  Granted, that was Direct3D, but don't you only have to work with 2 textures instead of 4?

maybe I should just stop complaining....
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: ficedula on 2001-11-07 22:53:00
Sure, the original ran it. It also used a lower resolution font, didn't apply any filtering to the textures, and wasn't generally a particularly advanced engine.

At the time it kicked ass because there weren't many 3d games anyway. The storyline and gameplay *still* does. But graphically it aint that impressive.

*I* don't have any plans to support the Voodoo cards. That doesn't mean the Remake won't eventually support them ... maybe we'll put together a lower res font (tho that'd suck ... but anyway ...) or possibly someone else (well ... it might happen!) will do the necessary recoding. Or does that Creative driver that increases texture resolution exist? Or possibly even (shock! horror!) I'll get bored enough to code support for the Voodoo in.

At the *moment* there's no plan to support it. Doesn't mean we never will.

Oh: we do need 4 textures (well, we would...); the font is 512x512 pixels. FF7's was smaller so was only 512x256 pixels, ie. 2 textures of 256x256.

Incidentally, I think that was because the PSX only supported textures of 256x256 ... who knows whether they'd have supported the Voodoo if it wasn't for that.

Actually, I guess they would've: 4 years ago, Voodoo's were good cards; some of the faster ones available. That was 4 years ago. By the time Remake comes up (2002 at the *earliest*) how many people will have a V3 or earlier...? Not many. Hence, not worth putting in much effort to support it.
[edited] 68 2001-11-07 23:57
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: Goku7 on 2001-11-08 00:35:00
Not bad for a sense of sarcasm, fice.  Sounds like you really don't like Voodoo chipsets.....

Not enough resolution?! :eek: What's the native gameplay res going to be, 1024X768?  Also, what about FF8's hi-res font?  If it's practically the same font used in FF7, except for a slightly higher resolution, couldn't you adapt that somehow for the Remake?

And, finally, would texture compression affect anything in the way of texture size?  My Voodoo3 supports "legacy texture compression" for OpenGL or Glide games.
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: Reznor007 on 2001-11-08 02:02:00
On V3 that simply refers to 8bit palettized textures, or possibly NCC(narrow channel compression) in Glide. On V4 and V5 it supports those 2 formats, and will fake S3TC texture compression for OpenGL apps that use the GL_S3_s3tc extension. It will compress with FXT1 compression(better format by the way...). It can't load pre-compressed S3TC textures since they didn't buy a license to use the real algorithm in OpenGL though.

Anyway, compression wouldn't help...as that only compresses the file size, not the texture size.
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: ficedula on 2001-11-08 07:55:00
Renzor: Yes, exactly.

Goku: We haven't decided on native resolution ... at least 640x480 obviously, we might well be aiming for 1024x768.

FF8's font...? How would that help? The problem is that Voodoo's don't support large textures. Period. If FF8 does then it's doing exactly what we'd need to do: splitting the texture up into separate chunks and rendering each one separately.
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: Reznor007 on 2001-11-08 12:56:00
On the remake, if you are going to use the original art from the game, it would be best to use 640x480 since the game is 2d for the most part, and stretching 2d to higher resolution doesn't really do much for it.
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: ficedula on 2001-11-08 15:40:00
The original art is mostly aimed at 320x240 so it's being stretched anyway ... 2d art actually scales OK if you filter it, it's regular images like fonts that don't scale so well.

Update: OK, I had a *look* at the font code to see what I could do. While I haven't done anything major, I sorted out rescaling so on the Voodoo cards the game just scales the font down to 256x256, so it *should* run on a card with texture size of 256x256 (don't think that's anything other than Voodoo, but anyway...)

Note: It will NOT look good at ALL. There's a screenshot posted that simulates what it would look like ... font is *very* blurry, obviously, and it wouldn't help the field backgrounds much either.

For the font, there are other things that can be done - like I said before, they *may* get done at some point.

For the field backgrounds - well, I *could* implement some sort of slicing that splits it into 256x256 blocks. For field blocks that *might* be necessary on all cards; if so, then it'd work on the Voodoo too. (Unlike the font, which *should* have been loadable as-is onto any card, so I never intended to add slicing to the font renderer).
[edited] 68 2001-11-08 17:21
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: Goku7 on 2001-11-08 23:12:00
My point behind the FF8 font thing was that if it was already designed to look good at 640X480 Resolution, then you could use that as a jumping-off point for higher resolutions without needing to scale it as much.

Actually, if they did split it, THAT would explain why it wants a card with at least 8megs of texture memory to use it.  It would also explain why some field screens have a terrible framerate......

Concerning Ficedula's font-scaling test: Let me see if I have this right.....
You used some scaling algorithim to squeeze the texture into 256X256.  You said it doesn't look that good, and you've posted some screenshots of it.
Can you try this?  My card has support for standard Anti-Aliasing edge smoothing on the primitives.  I'm talking about the non-FSAA type here.  Anyway, could you see if that can clear the Font up a little bit?
[edited] 239 2001-11-09 00:15
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: Reznor007 on 2001-11-08 23:15:00
I suggested 640x480 as that is usually the lowest full screen 3d accelerated mode supported. Since it is double the resolution, everything scales perfectly, and scanlines can simulate the original 320x240 look. 1280x960 would work as well, but that wouldn't help the 2d at all. 960x720 also works, but 800x600 and 1024x768 use odd multiples, and doesn't work out quite as well.
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: ficedula on 2001-11-09 00:01:00
Goku7: No, I can't try that ... I don't have your card! I don't know exactly how the edge smoothing on the V3 works.

The way I "simulated" having a Voodoo card (as far as the font went...) was just to limit the maximum texture size to 256x256 instead of the video cards default. That way, the engine acts exactly as it would when encountering a card who's maximum really *was* 256x256, i.e. Voodoo.

So I'm pretty certain the screenshot I posted is how the font'd look on a Voodoo.

My *personal* opinion is that smoothing is not going to help at all. Smoothing is generally a very light blur effect after all, to get rid of sharp pixel edges. The font suffers from exactly the opposite problem - too damn blurry!

Um, by the words of your post, you sound like you haven't actually seen the screenshot ... yes/no?

Oh, and in order to load the FF8 font into a Voodoo card then yes it *would* have to split it. There's only two things you can do if you want to use a texture larger than 256x256 on a Voodoo:

a) Scale it down
b) Slice it into multiple sections

That's about it; not a lot else possible.

----

Reznor: Yes, I know that. However it *really doesn't matter* for the 2d images. Filtering the 2d images you don't notice a quality drop going up to 800x600 from 640x480. Now, if you *weren't* filtering the images then you're perfectly correct, choosing a resolution that scales perfectly is the best way to ensure proper display. But we are going to filter them, there's no reason not to...

The only type of image where filtering won't necessarily fix problems with scaling to a non-exact-multiple resolution (you know what I mean!) is an image with sharp, distinct shapes and edges. To wit, the font. That won't scale up too well (it doesn't).

However, since that gets distributed with the game we can always distribute multiple fonts (crappy, but hey...).
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: Goku7 on 2001-11-09 03:30:00
Your correct, I haven't seen the font screen shot.  I haven't had time, with this darn literature report hanging over my head.
Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: Sephiroth 3D on 2001-11-09 07:31:00
I haven't been following along (I don't read this forum too often) but this topic is, without a doubt, the LONGEST topic I've ever seen at Qhimms. Wow... 4 pages...

Sephiroth 3D

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Title: Higher Resolution in FF8
Post by: The Skillster on 2001-11-10 07:36:00
u missed all those useless topics in the old general section like the one about ppls ages, ppls computers and stuff
(the age one hit over 1000 posts :smile:)