The things you do for love... drastic measures to get FF VII working....

[Argonoss]

Clearing the garage I found an old ‘lost’ love – Final Fantasy VII, one of the few great games I never managed to finish (life, work and college got in the way). 

So a full ten years after it came out I discover that the CD’s still work, I Install it on my XP system, install the Final Fantasy VII XP patch to get rid of unwanted bugs, and to improve the display, only to discover the Nvidia patch partially works – I can have 16x SA and Anitrosptropic filtering on max but I have no background – just a black playing field. 

Not too disheartened I extrapolate a radical approach:

I have a friend who owns an old Voodoo 2 card and a PCI Express 2D card (they use a follow through connection which the monitor is attached). 

I remove my 6800 Ultra since it has only dual DVI, ( I lost the DVI > VGA converters) and replace it with my 9800XT, install the voodoo 2, and download the unofficial voodoo 2 XP drivers.  Checking that the voodoo 2 is set as the primary display I launch the Final Fantasy config console – IT WORKS.

Only thing is I swear voodoo uses Glide and not Direct 3D.

How do I get Glide working ?
Also will the new mods (normal characters instead of lego wannabees work with the voodoo ?)

[Otokoshi]

Never, ever install the Final Fantasy VII XP patch, it is absolutely terrible.  Use the official 1.02 patch and check the rest of the FAQ, there are tweaks for Nvidia based cards found there.  I know for a fact that FF7 works with a 9800XT, had that one for a couple of years.

[stormmedia]

Hi and Wellcome Argonoss

Yes the NPC RC will works with any graphic card... but as Otokoshi said... don't use the Final Fantasy VII XP patch... I think it doesn't even fix any bugs... and it will mess with the GM.dls (witch is the insturment set that windows XP uses to play midi).

[The Skillster]

FF7 PC never used glide only Direct 3d.
They did use Glide in pre production, and the first FF7 demo needed a Glide capable card.

But the final version uses DirectX/3D

[Srethron Askvelhtnod]

I remember a long discussion when (if I'm remembering right) someone found the registry key that seemed to activate Glide in FF7. However, I hesitate to bring it up because it's thoroughly unusable. Glide support isn't actually there, it's just a remnant from an earlier dev stage.

[The Skillster]

I remember such a conversation, but I remember it being OpenGL remenants in the FF7.exe?
Long time no see, btw.

[Timiditas]

It has.

Note that this is the exe of the english tnt fix (v1.02), the original 1.0 doesn't have this entry.