Author Topic: Anybody willing to explain the FF7PC Background section of the Field File?  (Read 2074 times)

niemasd

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I'm trying to write my own Python tools to play with various file formats in FF7, and I have the ability to unpack and repack Sections 1-8 of the Field File (largely thanks to this Wiki: http://wiki.ffrtt.ru/index.php/FF7), but the only resources I can find regarding the Background section (http://wiki.ffrtt.ru/index.php/FF7/Field/Background) don't seem to be complete. Namely, it doesn't describe anything at the beginning of the section. For example, I've noticed that all files say "PALETTE" at offset 0x5 and "BACK" at offset 0x24, and they also have a series of 1-byte values that are either 1 or 0 (but varies between files), and they all have data before "PALETTE", but none of this seems to be mentioned anywhere.

Any guidance for more descriptive details about this section would be much appreciated :-)

Fewtch

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Thank you for taking the initiative to push tool creation forward. I believe you will find those qualified to help you here: https://discord.gg/HzWrRqC

sithlord48

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https://github.com/myst6re/makoureactor/tree/master/core/field should have all your answers but is in C++ with Qt. Since What your doing overlaps with what I am doing perhaps we can save some work duplication and join forces. I have not started on field yet. It was planned to move makoureactor's game related objects to ff7tk (some already are in ff7tk like lgp support). After enough parts were moved makoureactor could build using the ff7tk. Providing us with one place to work on all our game touching parts. Then we could keep our end applications smaller and lower the barrier of entry for people wanting to make ff7 tools since the back end stuff is really where the difficulty is. I also planned to start making Kernel related objects and release an application based on those to allow for kernel edits, then continue until ff7tk had full coverage for the game. When that happened we could even remake ff7 engine using mostly ff7tk parts.The team was mostly me I did have some other help like from Myst6re,Vegetta and Elsava but we just never got that far. We instead mostly worked on QGears and that got us mostly no where due to several things.. anyway,  I would also like to work on getting bindings for ff7tk to python maybe you can help with this. You can find ff7tk here https://github.com/sithlord48/ff7tk its written in C++ with Qt . Qt has python binding for all its internal stuff so getting ff7tk to python should be pretty straight forward. LMK via PM.

niemasd

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Thanks for the suggestions! I joined the Qhimm Discord as Fewtch suggested. Regarding Makou Reactor, I think that's my best bet as well, but because they use the same function names for things and split across different files (which is great software engineering practice), it makes it hard for me to follow the logic. I'll sit down and try to follow things when I have time, but something like a simple schematic would be great

Regarding helping with Python bindings in ff7tk, I'd be happy to help! I do like keeping PyFF7 pure Python to make cross-platform compatibility super clean and simple, but I'd be happy to contribute to ff7tk separately as well