Topics

1

Team Avalanche / Team Avalanche and Aali's Graphics Driver 0.8.x

« on: 2014-05-08 05:18:45 »

So, as most of you probably know, Aali removed "external" (internal?) texture support from 0.8.0. (As in, the "mods" folder works, but hi-res textures inside LGPs don't.) This, unfortunately, breaks the Team Avalanche hi-res textures mod. Is there A) Any plans to re-release the mod as PNG textures that can be placed in the "mods" folder? or B) any easy way to extract the TA textures from the TA installer, convert to PNGs, and use with the "mods" folder?

(I have mentioned this incompatibility both in Aali's thread and in one of the Stickies in this section, but have not received any reply, so I decided to start a new topic for it.)

2

General Discussion / Legal Copy Questions

« on: 2014-05-06 04:31:47 »

Hey guys, I have some questions regarding the legality of copies of FFVII PC.

I have a friend who's got the Playstation version of Final Fantasy VII, but he's missing disk 3. He'd like to play the game some day, but doesn't want to start it and not be able to finish because he doesn't have the last disk. (I'd lone him my copy - but he's one of those friends I don't know if I'll actually see very often after high school and graduation is coming up soon.) He also has a PS3 so no swap trick for him, whether it would be legal or not to play with a burned copy of disk three. (I'm not sure if it would be legal or not for me to make a copy of my disk, he does own the game after all and is only missing the one disk, but it doesn't matter because he has no method to use it, besides an emulator which he said he'd rather not bother with.)

So, my main question really is, would it be OK for me to copy my PC copy of the game to give to him, since he owns the PS version, or is that a no-no? I told him (assuming it's legal) I'd try to burn the game for him with my favorite mods (he'd like to play with graphics/music mods but isn't comfortable modding it himself) and the any cd patch on a DVD with a custom installer - basically copying my entire Square Soft directory to his Program Files folder, setting up his registry appropriately, and using the DVD as "FF7Disk1" (or whatever the proper label is) so he doesn't have to switch disks around. I have a feeling this is a "no", but I'm not sure.

Finally, if the above is not OK, would be OK for me to do that for him if he bought the Steam version and just didn't install it (as I'd have to go and convert his game to the 1998 version anyways to apply mods)?

I appreciate your feedback, and I promise I won't do any of this if there's no legal way. (Worst case scenario I'll tell him to buy the Steam version and I'll go over to his house and set up the mods for him - though applying LGP mods is a pain in the ass sometimes. First time I tried modding LGP's directly, I tried 3 different compressor/decompressors, and ended up with a about 4-5 broken installations before I finally got things working OK. Thankfully I keep backups so I didn't have to reinstall the entire game again multiple times.)

3

General Discussion / FF8 DLS

« on: 2014-05-05 14:30:48 »

Soooo... I recently got FFVIII PC (old version) and installed the 1.02 patch and Aali's driver. I don't have any other mods yet. Technically I've had the PSX version pretty much since it came out, but there's something wrong with at least disk one that causes it to crash before you can leave the classroom in balamb garden - so this is the first time I've really played it, and I'm not very far into it yet (just got to Galbadia Garden).

I was surprised that FFVIII's music sounded so good - even in MIDI format. (I haven't heard much of the PSX soundtrack though, so I can't compare - Balamb Garden's music sounds pretty similar, though not quite as pretty as the PS version.) Digging around, I realized that FF8 had a DLS soundfont, which made me wonder if that is why it sounds so good. Then I heard the square wave in-game and now I think it still must be using Windows' native GM soundfont.

Now, whether or not I get Roses and Wine working, I'd like to try to replace my Windows gm.dls with FF8's ff8.dls because I work with MIDI a -lot-. I know this must be possible, I've seen tutorials to do it on XP, but the machine I have the game on is Vista, and doesn't have a drivercache folder. I tried just replacing windows' version with ff8's version (renaming it gm.dls and putting it in my /system32/drivers folder - but everything sounds the same as before. I don't think System File Checker did anything to it, because the windows' is ~3MB, and ff8's is ~8MB, and the file in the drivers folder is still ~8MB after a few restarts. Anybody have any suggestions?

(Also, a side question - Is that Fey Wong (sorry if I butchered her name) song in the PC version?)