Custom graphics driver for FF7/FF8 [v.1-.7.6]

[Aali]

obesebear: You must've missed Palmer 0.2 then
I haven't done anything to it since then though. Import is relatively simple, I just need to get off my ass and do it.


I have made some minor fixes since 0.6.9 that I may release as a 0.6.10 if I don't make any major breakthroughs that could warrant a bump to 0.7

Here are some of the things you might get to see in 0.7:
Replace the code that loads .p files into a format useable by the driver (currently borrowed from the D3D driver)
Per-pixel, real-time lighting
Texture replacement for use with Palmer (and possibly other things as well)
Some trickery with animations perhaps, not sure what I can do with that yet

[Terid__K]

Per-pixel, real-time lighting

Sounds interesting. Does that mean we'll get to see real-time shadows in this game?

[Aali]

Maybe, but that's another big step, you don't get it for free with per-pixel lighting.
And it will only work well in true 3D environments, it would look really stupid in field.

[Stoner]

Since this is my first post, I'd like to start with a big THUMBS UP to Aali, your work on this project is amazing! I've been trying to play this game on PC for quite some time now, but thanks to your mod I am finally able to overcome those annoying technical difficulties and just enjoy it.

I do have a minor problem however. No matter how hard I try, I just can't get the mini-game frame limiter to work. The game seems to use vsync allright, but thats it. I usually play at 1024x768@100hz, in that case I get 100fps in the mini-games. I tried 640x480@60hz, then I got 60fps. I can't even force any lower refresh rate in windowsXP. Although at 60fps I was able to get through the bike sequence and the chocobo race, but the other mini-games are just too fast. I believe I tried every possible combination of the cfg file and the catalyst driver settings. Any ideas? If not, that's okay, I guess I'll live with it, but it would be so cool to really play this game as it was supposed to be played. Anyway, thanks for the mod and I hope we'll see the same kind of success with Palmer.

[Aali]

Your graphics driver must not support swapintervals > 1

The framelimiter works by telling OpenGL to wait for *two* vsyncs before updating, your graphics driver only waits for one vsync.

I suggest you use the YAMP minigame fix instead.

[Stoner]

Your graphics driver must not support swapintervals > 1
The framelimiter works by telling OpenGL to wait for *two* vsyncs before updating, your graphics driver only waits for one vsync.
I suggest you use the YAMP minigame fix instead.

Thanks for the info. I made a quick try with YAMP and it looks like it's working. Hope it won't conflict with the other fixes in your driver. Or should I disable them in the cfg?

[Aali]

It would conflict with a working minigame framelimiter, it will kind-of conflict with vsync if you don't specify a framerate evenly divisable by your refresh rate. (In the YAMP config for the minigame patch)

But it will at worst lead to stuttering and choppy performance, it will not interfere with anything else.

[Spacer]

I just wanted to say thank you to Aali for the great driver and your hard work. I just restarted playing the game after 6 or so years and its working great on my Vista system which is a Core 2 Duo 1.8ghz @ 3.2ghz with a nvidia geforce 9600GSO.

[Aali]

Are these custom drivers still being updated?

There is still a few odd texture problems i have incurred. During the bike minigame for example, the road markings are all skwiggly lines instead of straight textures. Not sure what causes that to happen by using the drivers.

Another one bites the dust, this will be fixed in 0.6.10 (It was also causing some weird stuff in the snowboard minigame and on the worldmap, but those things were much less noticeable)

[obesebear]

OK... what is different about your timer compared to the game's?
And what exactly will fake MIDI do?

[Covarr]

Thank you sir!

Does your fake MIDI mode prevent FF7 from fucking with the system's volume on Vista and later (ie muting all game sound when it should be muting just music)?

[Aali]

Nothing about the actual timers has changed since 0.6.9b, but there you didn't have the option of using the original timer.

Fake MIDI sends the debug output FF7Music needs to play music correctly while FF7 thinks the MIDI failed and so doesn't do any MIDI processing at all.

[Covarr]

That's good to know.

Would you mind if I distributed your driver with my tutorial, instead of suggesting a LoopBe download? It's a much more straightforward solution, and I assume more reliable.

[Aali]

Just link to the first post of this thread so people can get the latest version.

[Chrysalis]

Ok I apologise Aali if this isnt related to the driver.

I have played through the entire game with zilch crashes up to the point I am at now and suddenly the game seems unstable (with emergency save tho and if this is due to your driver many thanks).

In the northern cave area particurly the area where you fight master tonberry and one eye monsters along with those armored golom creatures the game is now crashing.  First time was start of a random encounter, and then as I was in that area trying to get the same random encounter again (to see if that cause of crash) it eventually crashed again but outside of battle as I was running around.  I have a crash dump. 17 meg tho.

rarred it down to just under a meg here.

http://www.chrysalisnet.org/crash.rar

[Aali]

I have a pretty good idea of whats going on there, but I can't figure out why it's happening if I can't reproduce it. Please provide a savegame.

Oh and you should always provide a copy of APP.LOG when something bad happens, even though I didn't need it this time.

[Chrysalis]

yep sorry, app.log is 6th june date so I figured it wasnt right one?

here is save game.

http://www.chrysalisnet.org/save07.ff7

thats the emergency save and I was able to get the crash again on that.

[Kranmer]

Hi, I am getting a weird crash on the newer driver that didnt happen on the older ones with the opening movie.
here is my APP.LOG for the old driver while it was working and then the new APP.LOG with it not working (crash dump also included)
http://www.mediafire.com/?jytynqzygzq
The video plays fine on 0.5 but on 0.6+ it seems to be having problems (this doesnt appear to be the same error as before when i was trying to get aac working since it does work on the older version)

[Aali]

Chrysalis: Still could not reproduce it, savegame looks ok, are you using any mods?

kranmer: It's the alignment problem in FFMpeg, won't be fixed anytime soon

[halkun]

Aali, I've been watching this on and off for a while now. It seems that your driver has advanced to the point where a sticky FAQ may be needed. (Mostly because I'm not sure what it does anymore )

What does the new  driver do in terms of OS compatibility?
1) Does it now run "clean" under XP without the chocobo patch?
2) How about Vista?
3) How about Wine?

What new functions are supported?
1) Stability fixes
2) Engine enhancements

Do you have access to the wiki? I would like to see this a little better documented. (Just cause I'm a mod, don't take it as an order or anything, I'm just speaking out in the name of wishful thinking).

Also, as an amusing sideline, has there been any true WTF moments with the original driver that you fixed where you were wondering what the original developers were smoking? The PSX <-> PC port has always been of great interest for me. (I guess that goes without saying, huh)

[Napper]

Thanks Aali for the update. Im very eager to try out the new driver.

[Aali]

Aali, I've been watching this on and off for a while now. It seems that your driver has advanced to the point where a sticky FAQ may be needed. (Mostly because I'm not sure what it does anymore )

What does the new  driver do in terms of OS compatibility?
1) Does it now run "clean" under XP without the chocobo patch?
2) How about Vista?
3) How about Wine?

What new functions are supported?
1) Stability fixes
2) Engine enhancements

Do you have access to the wiki? I would like to see this a little better documented. (Just cause I'm a mod, don't take it as an order or anything, I'm just speaking out in the name of wishful thinking).

Also, as an amusing sideline, has there been any true WTF moments with the original driver that you fixed where you were wondering what the original developers were smoking? The PSX <-> PC port has always been of great interest for me. (I guess that goes without saying, huh)

It runs clean under XP, it runs clean under Vista and it runs clean under WINE, no additional patching needed, it fixes all known crash issues.

It supports any resolution, fullscreen or window mode, and it makes things run a lot smoother in the process.

I do not have access to the wiki, I PM'd Qhimm about it some time ago, he didn't get back to me.

I haven't really had any WTF moments that could not be explained by the usual time crunch in any (commercial) software development.
Some things are a bit odd, like, you can't turn off texture/vertex color modulation in the D3D driver because both the on/off routines just turn it on, but in the end it's arguably the right thing to do since it should never be turned off anyway.
Oh and subtractive blending is completely and utterly broken, probably because D3D didn't support real subtractive blending at the time. But this is also quite irrelevant since subtractive blending is never used in the game.

[Chrysalis]

Chrysalis: Still could not reproduce it, savegame looks ok, are you using any mods?

mods installed.

custom graphics driver, when it was crashing was version 0.6.8, since using 0.6.10 has not crashed.
old chocobo fix.
old frame rate limiter fix.
(both by yamp I think) these were already in place before I discovered the driver and doesnt seem to be conflict issues.
magic defense fix via yamp
9999 limit breaker via yamp, set to 30000 limit.
replaced avatars
modded various enemy stats but not changed formations and actual enemies
modded some starting stats of cloud and a few spells.

the 2nd time it crashed I was running around in the area for 40 mins or so fighting random battles etc. before it happened, so it wasnt crashing easily.

oh am also using ff7music which itself crashes every so often but has never actually affected ff7 itself maybe until now?

[Aali]

None of those mods seem relevant. FF7Music should not be able to crash FF7 under any circumstances and I can't imagine it causing this.

Barret's slash-all animation looks funky though, it's possible, although very unlikely that could have something to do with it.
Let me know if the problem persists in this version.

[StarkRaven]

Great work! I've been playing around with porting a few shaders from pete's psx plugin, and here's a few things I've noticed:

enable_postprocessing seems to disable AA. I have 16x AA forced on in the nvidia control panel.
We can load custom fragment shaders using a .post file but there's no way to load custom vertex shaders, correct?
The .post file can only contain glsl, not asm, correct?

The good psx shaders I've found are distributed in asm and use vertex + fragment shading, so this has blocked me.