Messages

1

Troubleshooting / Re: New FF7 Helper... Coder..

« on: 2008-08-30 17:45:47 »

Well, I am a programmer but I haven't been involved in much. Job has been taking away my time lately. I've made a few reverse engineering jaunts of my own, but the wiki on this site covers pretty much everything I know about FF7 at present.

2

General Discussion / Re: Thinking of picking up FF9 on PS1...any major emu problems?

« on: 2008-08-11 07:21:46 »

Yeah, I've played it on ePSXe with no problems. You just have to use the subchannel reading thingy, and it works fine. Darn copy protections.

3

General Discussion / Re: Low Level Game for FF7

« on: 2008-07-12 09:33:47 »

Well, speedrunning the game is quite similar to Low Level, except you don't kill off party members to avoid experience from bosses. Here is the current speedrun on SDA (GarlandG is working on one too, I think). Reading/watching that might give you some hints for low-level game.

4

General Discussion / Re: Beating FF7s Ruby Weapon - The hard way?

« on: 2008-07-06 20:45:42 »

I beat it by throwing Dazers at it and casting Pandora's Box.

5

General Discussion / Re: Aeris vs. Aerith in the Voice-Over Project

« on: 2008-06-19 15:39:19 »

I would definitely suggest still using 'Red'. Even if you knew my real name, you'd still keep calling me Lag.Com on here, wouldn't you?

6

General Discussion / Re: Aeris vs. Aerith in the Voice-Over Project

« on: 2008-06-13 21:35:06 »

Well, if you want to get technical, the 'original' one is in Japanese.

I vote Aeris. Because 'Aerith' just sounds crap.

7

General Discussion / Re: AVALANCHE

« on: 2008-06-06 18:20:19 »

Oh, absolutely, I have nothing against you choosing it as a base. Considering that the later FF (and non-FF Square) games tend to copy item/spell names and such from earlier instalments while completely changing the gameplay I don't think you've done any worse than they have, they just happen to own the property and drag it into the dumps on purpose.

I should say that I haven't played too far yet, so I don't know how deep the plot goes.

8

General Discussion / Re: AVALANCHE

« on: 2008-06-06 10:39:04 »

I've been playing it a little - it's pretty smooth, well done! It has so little to do with FF7 though, you might have been better off creating your own game world, as we all know how much big companies love to squash pet projects like this. Honestly the game is probably good enough to stand on its own rather than relying on their franchise.

9

General Discussion / Re: Favourite FF game in the series?

« on: 2008-05-17 09:56:34 »

Right. While FFX had the most polished game systems I've seen in the series, the plot and characters were terrible (not to mention the voice acting). It was a big letdown after FFIX's excellent characterisation and epic plot.

10

General Discussion / Re: Favourite FF game in the series?

« on: 2008-05-16 16:18:05 »

It is the same story for me. I first played FFVII, then bought the new ones as they came out until FFX, when I gave up on the franchise.

11

General Discussion / Re: FF7, Raaps

« on: 2008-05-12 09:27:15 »

Rapps's attack pattern loops every 4 turns, it goes like this:

1: Wing Cut (possibly twice)
2: Wing Cut (possibly twice)
3: Scorpion's Tail (possibly twice)
4: Aero3 (if MP >= 50)

However, the 'turn counter' starts at a random point, so he can Aero3 you right away (I've certainly had that happen to me.)
So if you get lucky and have it start on '1', then kill him in 3 turns, no Aero3.

12

General Discussion / Re: Favourite FF game in the series?

« on: 2008-05-03 22:53:12 »

Serious Answer: FFIX. Believable characters, living world, bleeds emotion, more difficult than other 'recent' FFs.
Nonserious Answer: FFMQ. lol.

13

FF7 Tools / Re: [Release] Hojo 1.0 - enemies editor

« on: 2008-04-22 22:45:00 »

The 'script language' is just Python, that's why it's saved in .py files

The AIBASIC-FF7 language is pretty much fully documented in the txt files, I don't know what help I could give you with that.

14

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Re: FF7 Movie Limitations

« on: 2008-04-21 11:10:32 »

You could try 'nandub', it's basically a custom build of VirtualDub but it supports other stuff. I have no idea if it'll fix the problem you mention, but it might be worth a try.

15

FF7 Tools / Re: [Release] Hojo 1.0 - enemies editor

« on: 2008-04-21 11:09:09 »

Ergh, would you believe it...

I was having some problems with the drive I have most of my code on a while ago, but now they seem to have cleared up. However, the one source file that deals with my BASIC implementation (ai_basic.py) has been corrupted beyond repair. Isn't that typical? However, I can release my old compiled version of 'ff7mod', a command-line util for changing most kernel and battle parameters. Yes, it includes the FF7AI-BASIC compiler.

Read the readmes, and ask me any questions. If it's deemed useable by people other than me, I'll make a new topic about it. And if I can be bothered, I'll try and rewrite my ai_basic.py script.

16

FF7 Tools / Re: [Release] Hojo 1.0 - enemies editor

« on: 2008-04-19 21:03:39 »

I wrote a (BASIC-like language) to FF7-AI code compiler, but it is quite primitive so far.

17

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Re: About Battle Setup 1 format in scene.bin file

« on: 2007-09-21 16:55:59 »

I'm pretty sure it's 20 bytes. Otherwise the Enemy data is way off, and my reader gets it properly.

18

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / [Attacks] Data format

« on: 2007-09-19 17:27:01 »

Alright, so I'm writing my own stuff to play around with FF7's data, hopefully towards making a comprehensive hack. So far I've done fun things like made materia with Quake and Break on, changed spells around, made a materia cast Lapis Laser, you get the idea. Now I'm trying to find out what those pesky 'unknowns' from the wiki are in the attack data! I have some guesses, but if the information is available it'd be nice to know before I go insane changing bytes by 1 at a time.

Here's what I know:

Code: [Select]

OFF SIZE DESCRIPTION
 00  01  Accuracy (or L# in <L# Spell>)
 01  01  Impact Animation
 02  01  Target Animation
 03  01  Unknown [always FF]
 04  01  MP Cost
 05  04  Unknown [byte 0 affects animation in some way, byte 3 always 00]
 09  01  Unknown [affects camera in some way, FF is no movement?]
 0A  01  'Attack Type' (more info would be nice)
 0B  01  'Attack Attributes' (is this a bitfield? the values given are not very helpful)
 0C  01  Attack Targeting (same as Items)
 0D  01  Animation ID# (seems to work, although Cure and Choco/Mog are #0 for example)
 0E  01  'Restore Apply' (strange name considering how many things this does)
 0F  01  Strength
 10  01  Restore Type (affects which dialog appears? also some unknown values 05 and 26)
 11  01  Status Infliction Chance (out of 64)
 12  01  Script (a list of these would be nice, I have a few marked down)
 13  01  Script Argument (# of hits for Script 00, etc.)
 14  04  Status Effects (bitfield)
 18  02  Elements (bitfield)
 1A  02  Special (bitfield, some unknowns)

Also, as pointed out before, kernel.bin section 2 only contains data for 128 attacks (all materia spells, some limit breaks), but section 18 contains 256 names. Where are the other 128 attacks? I decompiled scene.bin and listed all the attacks, but the first (new) attack ID I can find is #259... does anybody know where Big Shot is defined, for instance?

Any help with this stuff would be great!

EDIT: Er, I think I'm missing some monster records. I can't find the Diamond, Ruby or Emerald Weapons in my output from scene.bin. Ultimate is there though.

EDIT: Trawled through some old threads and found data for bytes 0-2. Added.

19

Archive / Re: [Request] Blank movies info

« on: 2007-09-19 09:53:07 »

Here's a blank AVI file in TrueMotion format. FF7 should have no problems playing it back.

I tested it by replacing opening.avi; it worked, but the display stayed black (probably the camera is in the wrong place/waiting for the event to start showing the actual level). Just open the menu and close it again after Barret says his opening line.

20

General Discussion / Re: Final Fantasy VII: Voices of the Lifestream

« on: 2007-09-15 16:04:54 »

I do make my own music, as it happens, though it is modest. However, this has no bearing on whether I can criticise another person's music. Also, if music is of a genre I do not like, I do not call it crap. Being a follower of OCRemixes for a long time, I feel that while their releases have gradually increased in quality, their projects are very hit and miss. I thoroughly enjoy the Super Metroid project (which is vaguely true to the source material) and the Doom project (widely panned as being nothing like Doom), I find myself unable to enjoy this one.

Remix it and make it different, yes. That's what a remix is. However... if you change the instrumentation, the time signature, the tune, the rhythm and the emotion... it isn't a remix. It's just another song.

21

General Discussion / Re: Final Fantasy VII: Voices of the Lifestream

« on: 2007-09-15 13:50:48 »

I really don't like this album. Some of the songs are worth listening to; the others are self-indulgent crap that has very little to do with the source material. I recommend "Son of Chaos", "Golden Fields" and "Daydreaming Again" - basically anything that isn't psuedo-electric-hip-hop-trance bullshit. For some reason only the quiet songs are decent in this project.

22

General Discussion / Re: Chocobo breeding gone wrong

« on: 2007-09-14 18:01:49 »

Honestly, I have no idea. I managed to breed a Gold quite easily using the standard method on my PC version. (Not that you need to, just give Ruby Weapon a call )

Oh, and it should be easy to get to S class if you use the Stamina cheat thingy.

23

General Discussion / Re: Chocobo breeding gone wrong

« on: 2007-09-13 17:06:34 »

Yeah, I'm fairly sure FF7 for the PC stores the random number seed in the save file, so you have to try new things. Note that just taking slightly different actions in battle should change the seed a lot.

24

General Discussion / Re: Final fantasy 7 Ruby weapon

« on: 2007-09-03 08:51:49 »

I have beaten it without using Underwater, but it needed craploads of preparation. My 'fairly low level' strategy was to cast Demi on him over and over again (he resists Gravity, but is not immune like most bosses) - tiring, but it works.

25

General Discussion / Re: Final fantasy 7 Ruby weapon

« on: 2007-09-02 18:45:56 »

That's never happened to me (I beat Ruby as soon as I could, with no 'legendary materia')

All I had to do was Dazers, Phoenix, Dazers, (two people cast big damage spells), Dazers, etc...
Emerald was much tougher. I actually needed 'Underwater'