Author Topic: what happened to the "old" FF7 demo? (Read 39888 times)

Litude · « **Reply #50 on:** 2009-07-21 11:29:08 »

Another bump, as I'd also be very interested in seeing this demo.

BloodShot · « **Reply #51 on:** 2009-08-04 18:15:42 »

hmm... this may be a bump, but its quite interesting.

I found the demo disk with FF7 from the PC gamer under my sister's bed.

apparently, because we had too many pc gamer demo disks we were throwing them out,
and she wanted to save that one, but she forgot about it for almost 11 years lol.

when i get the chance ill post a pic.

EDIT:
oh wow, it has the Quake 2 demo as well

MilesTailsPrower · « **Reply #52 on:** 2009-08-28 04:51:42 »

oh man i rember the demo i still try to download it in school to see if it will run on any of the old win 2000 pcs

SwornEnemy · « **Reply #53 on:** 2009-08-28 09:07:35 »

Quote from: Kudistos Megistos on 2009-06-26 18:02:02

Quote from: ultima espio on 2009-06-26 17:53:26
Oh i've got that demo, its got the psx music playing the in background too. Why didnt they keep it like that for the final?

Were the music files mp3s?

I remember hearing somewhere that the reason FF7 used synthesised music was that the makers couldn't fit the game with mp3 files on three discs. This isn't so much of a problem with the PSX version, but it means that the PC version had the awful sounding MIDIs. Presumably, Square didn't want to go to the trouble of making orchestral versions of everything and putting the game on four discs (not including the install disc), just to make the PC version sound good (@#&%ers!).

There's a significant chance that everything I've just said is a load of crap

then y say it? lol

Kudistos Megistos · « **Reply #54 on:** 2009-08-28 15:28:36 »

Because there was a small chance that it wasn't :3

Evan Lee · « **Reply #55 on:** 2010-03-28 06:55:07 »

anyone got the mt. corel demo of ff7?

ultima espio · « **Reply #56 on:** 2010-03-28 17:01:11 »

Prince Lex · « **Reply #57 on:** 2010-03-28 17:01:59 »

Is there a video of that anywhere? I really don't fancy playing it, but I'd like to watch through it to see the differences.

Covarr · « **Reply #58 on:** 2010-03-28 17:51:58 »

I think I might still have the Mt. Corel demo, but I might have deleted it. If I do have it, it's on my external HDD which is currently connected to my Wii. Sometime today I'll see if I can find it.

I refuse to install it, because it fucks up the existing FFVII install, as I learned last time I tried to use it. It's really nothing special to watch, anyway. It's much more interesting from a technical standpoint, as it uses an unfinished version of their PC engine, with streaming WAV music, and maybe some other differences that I hadn't noticed.

ultima espio · « **Reply #59 on:** 2010-03-28 18:05:04 »

Its just normal FF7 but with PSX music. I wonder why they suddnely changed to Midi? Diskspace maybe? Or it could have been that not many computers could have done it at the time, i dunno.

willis936 · « **Reply #60 on:** 2010-03-28 18:13:45 »

More than likely diskspace but in retrospect it seems like they made a lot of mistakes when developing this. I mean even at their base resolution the backgrounds look much worse than the originals must have. Also pictures don't take up THAT much disk space they could have decided to not downsize the images since most monitors were bigger than those background image sizes anyway. Idk I just feel that this game lost a lot of its graphic and audio potential in the packaging process.

Kudistos Megistos · « **Reply #61 on:** 2010-03-28 18:14:28 »

WAV is uncompressed, so I think it would have taken a huge amount of disc space. It's just a pity that the psf format couldn't have been ported over to the PC version, since it allows quality close to mp3s but file sizes more reminiscent of MIDIs :'(

I know little of PC hardware from back then, so I can't say whether WAV music would have made the game harder to run; I don't imagine it would have made it any easier to run...

sl1982 · « **Reply #62 on:** 2010-03-28 18:24:37 »

System requirements between midi and wav should not be too different as wav is uncompressed and midi is just a file telling the soundcard to place a certain note at a certain pitch for said amount of time. Compressed audio would have been much more demanding.

Covarr · « **Reply #63 on:** 2010-03-28 18:28:25 »

Quote from: willis936 on 2010-03-28 18:13:45

More than likely diskspace but in retrospect it seems like they made a lot of mistakes when developing this. I mean even at their base resolution the backgrounds look much worse than the originals must have. Also pictures don't take up THAT much disk space they could have decided to not downsize the images since most monitors were bigger than those background image sizes anyway. Idk I just feel that this game lost a lot of its graphic and audio potential in the packaging process.

No, the backgrounds were IDENTICAL to the PSX version. They only look worse because of the differences between the way a PC monitor and a CRT television display images.

Quote from: Kudistos Megistos on 2010-03-28 18:14:28

WAV is uncompressed, so I think it would have taken a huge amount of disc space. It's just a pity that the psf format couldn't have been ported over to the PC version, since it allows quality close to mp3s but file sizes more reminiscent of MIDIs :'(

I know little of PC hardware from back then, so I can't say whether WAV music would have made the game harder to run; I don't imagine it would have made it any easier to run...

Pretty much any PC capable of playing this game could handle either WAV or MIDI music, no problem. PSF, not so easily. While it's very lightweight by today's standards, it's rather processor-intensive by 1998 standards, especially given that the first usable version of Neill Corlett's PSF plugin for Winamp wasn't even released until 2002 and wasn't nearly as optimized as current versions. Combine this with the fact that FFVII-PC already doesn't run at full speed on computers that meet-but-don't-exceed the system requirements, it would have been a disaster. Even MP3s were too taxing to use, they had to use an audio format that could be completely handled by the soundcard, without help from the processor (WAV and MIDI both fit this requirement).

As for WAV, the disc space pretty much sums it up. You couldn't fit all the songs in the game in uncompressed WAV format at a decent quality on one CD, as evidenced by the fact that the soundtrack took four (CD-audio is virtually identical to uncompressed WAV). Even if you cut out songs that are only used in specific discs, similar to the FMVs, you couldn't fit all the music, especially alongside game data and FMVs. The only way to manage it would be to significantly lower the audio quality to 8KHz or so, at which point the music would sound significantly worse than the MIDIs, more akin to AM-radio.

willis936 · « **Reply #64 on:** 2010-03-28 18:32:55 »

What I meant by the downsizing was when they were in production the artists must have made a much larger image then shrank it to save disk space even though the trade off of a small amount of disk space for shoddy quality was p dumb.

The same goes for the wav files. I mean if they just had multiple install disks and saved most of the game onto the computer like most current day PC games all of these problems could have been solved. I assume the higher ups said make it for playstation and port it to pc as an afterthought. Quite sad. :'(

sl1982 · « **Reply #65 on:** 2010-03-28 18:34:16 »

The images were ported right from the psx version. Identical resolutions.

willis936 · « **Reply #66 on:** 2010-03-28 18:35:02 »

I understand that, but before they put it onto the playstation disks the artists MUST have had a higher quality image.

sl1982 · « **Reply #67 on:** 2010-03-28 18:37:07 »

Quote from: willis936 on 2010-03-28 18:35:02

I understand that, but before they put it onto the playstation disks the artists MUST have had a higher quality image.

Most likely. Or at least they had the original 3d scenes that could be re-rendered for a higher resolution. Unfortunately they got rid of all of it before the pc port was made.

Covarr · « **Reply #68 on:** 2010-03-28 18:44:41 »

Quote from: sl1982 on 2010-03-28 18:37:07

Quote from: willis936 on 2010-03-28 18:35:02
I understand that, but before they put it onto the playstation disks the artists MUST have had a higher quality image.

Most likely. Or at least they had the original 3d scenes that could be re-rendered for a higher resolution. Unfortunately they got rid of all of it before the pc port was made.

The PSX versions were rendered at a lower resolution because the visible difference was pretty much nonexistent given the PSX's low resolution.

I'm not so sure that the got rid of the original 3D scenes, but Eidos did not have access to anything that wasn't in the PSX version when they were making the port. For all we know, Squaresoft had all the files, but Eidos never bothered to ask for them.

willis936 · « **Reply #69 on:** 2010-03-28 19:03:00 »

Does anyone want to play diplomat an lawyer?

Evan Lee · « **Reply #70 on:** 2010-03-31 05:03:45 »

so where can i download the demo?

obesebear · « **Reply #71 on:** 2010-03-31 05:19:25 »

There was a thread about this MONTHS back. I don't know if anyone ever found it, but feel free to search.

I think I posted up 2 old PSX demos, and someone else posted up a PC one.

Report back with your findings at once!

Prince Lex · « **Reply #72 on:** 2010-03-31 13:49:49 »

The old thread is here.

It's not advisable to install it unless you plan on uninstalling FF7 first, then reinstalling when you're done with the demo. There's a link to the download that broke after about five minutes somewhere in that thread if I remember correcty. I don't plan on installing it.

ultima espio · « **Reply #73 on:** 2010-03-31 19:54:56 »

Its really not worth installing at all tbh, theres nothing interesting about it.

BloodShot · « **Reply #74 on:** 2010-03-31 22:00:04 »

I actually found my PC gamer disc with it on it since i started that thread - still want to try it on an older computer, but i wouldn't try it if i were you because it messes up your FF7 registry

entries. Unless you have a PC without an FF7 install don't bother.

Maybe one of the reasons it was removed and forgotten mostly was because of the bugs? Way back when i tried it it crashed a LOT.

Author Topic: what happened to the "old" FF7 demo? (Read 39888 times)

Litude