Messages

1

Archive / 8-bit pallete fails in FF8 - Was there ever a fix for this?

« on: 2005-08-23 21:00:41 »

The problem is not a 8bit palleted textures but a way that geforce 6 blends textures.
Black boxes problem is also present in older games like warzone 2100.

I hope i am wrong but the only solution would be to heavily modify drivers
(little tweaks would not work) or another solution is to beg The Saint to create patch for ff8  (like his ff7 patch). Since The Saint has no time for ff8 and ff8 is different then ff7 , and full ff7 patch is not ready yet it wil not happen in the near future.

2

Archive / FF8 : Did the blocky and glitch problem fix?

« on: 2005-07-10 22:55:29 »

you can do nothing to solve black box problems ( at least i do not have solution for this)

How rivatuner is helpfull  with ff7 on geforce 6600.
With geforce 4 and rivatuner i was able to use special fsaa modes for ff7
with geforce 6 i found it impossible to use fsaa with ff7.

3

Releases / [BETA RELEASE] Higher Resolution FFVIIPC [v1.00]

« on: 2005-07-09 14:20:57 »

I have few questions to The SaiNt.

1. I am runing ff7 highres in desktop resolution 1280x1024 i windowed mode becouse my monitor doesn.t support 1280x960.
In this wondowed mose background scrolling is not fluid.everything 2d is not fluid. Is this a windowed mode fault or this same happens in full screen mode. If this is a windowed mode fault is there a way to alter high res patch
that way that ff7 would be ran in 1280x1024 fullscreen with tiny black line on the bottom of the screen ( so in reality ff7 graphic would be 1280x960 + black line on he bottom)

2. About ff8. On geforce 6 and probably 7 background has black squares. This is a blending fault. Everything looks terrible and only 3d graphic is good.
Would it be possible to create patch for ff8 to change a way that bacgrounds elements are blended. Would you The SaiNt do something about it?
If you have time, possibilites etc.
Thanks for ff7 high res.

4

Archive / FF8 Graphics Bug - All 'Blocky'..

« on: 2005-07-08 22:18:07 »

This is a known problem on geforce 6 cards.
This is probably a wrong blending of textures.
I have not found any solution to resolve this problem , and i do not have
any nvidia email address to ask them about that driver bug.

So for now  geforce 6 owner can play ff8 comfortably  only in software mode.

5

Releases / Gridline solved

« on: 2005-06-20 18:36:03 »

Thanks Borde you are right ff7 works without gridline.
I was sure that i checked game under every possible conditions.
probably i had tried tnt option with fsaa and not without it.

So ff7 works ok on geforce 6 configured as Borde described.


To Saint: Is high res patch compatible with cetra window patch?
I run ff7 with cetra window  patch and high res patch without problem but i am not sure if it will not cause any problems in later parts of the game and now i have got no time to play whole game and to check stability?

6

Releases / Tested

« on: 2005-06-20 07:03:30 »

Hi i will describe here my ff7 experience with geforce 6 (geforce 6800 gt) and with high res patch. (this will be a little of topic but i will also talk about high res patch)

Tested in Windows XP.

1 -runing ff7 version 1.00 - 8 bit pallete test failed.
geforce 6 (and i heard that geforce fx also) doesn't support 8 bit pallete in ff7

2 - running ff7 version 1.02 - game runs fine but there is gridline outside battle.so background is a mess
fsaa tribes, official and unofficial doesn.t solve anything

3- running normaly  ff7 version 1.02 with high res patch - it was not possible on my comp. becouse i have lcd that doesn' support 1280x960

4- i installed high res patch on 1.02 version and then i installed cetra window patch. now i was abble to run game
in windowed mode (Desktop resolution 1280x1024) (game window has resolution 1280x960). Another unsolvable gridline problem with background where Antialiasing does'nt help (without fsaa gridline is also present).Background scrolling is not fluid.

Conclusion - you can't run ff7 on geforce 6 and solve gridline problem, gridline is presen't in high res patch.

i had geforce 4 before.it supported 8 bit pallete color. in ff 7 1.00 i was able to solve gridline problem by using "secret" fsaa modes. in ff7 1.02 i was unable to solve gridline problem with fsaa. without fsaa gridline was also present.
so 1.02 version introduced unsolvable gridline problem for geforce cards.

in ff8 there was also a problem with gridline on geforce cards but Square released patch and problem is solved.

Solution:for geforce fx,6,7 and future geforce cards - for now there is no solution to run ff7 on this cards without gridline problem.
Future solutions

1- nvidia introduces 8 bit pallete color(i am talking here about 8 bit textures here and not normal 256 color screen mode) support in their drivers for new graphic cards.then you can play ff 1.00 with special fsaa without gridline.

2-someone will create special patch for ff7 (similiar to ff8 geforce patch) to resolve background ff7 problem.


High res patch is working but probably it will be useless for some geforce players becouse of gridline problem
of course this is not Saint fault but nvidia and ff7 game engine.
Thanks Saint for your's hard work.
Last Question to Saint: would it be possible to create patch to solve background gridline problem?

7

Releases / To The SaiNt

« on: 2005-06-19 15:32:49 »

I have a humble request . I have not tried high res patch yet,
I have lcd monitor with resolution 1280x1024. And here is problem.
this monitor doesn't support 1280x960 resolution.
From your's words i understand that you can run ff7 high res only in full screen mode.
So my question is it possible to run ff7 in 1280x960 windowed mode and if not could you expand your patch to support that mode (if you have time, possibilities ... etc.).Thanks for info.

8

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Engine building. If we make it, will they come?

« on: 2005-01-19 06:32:49 »

First Cyberman . I see that you like saying everything precise. anything said generaly is wrong

1) Square soft did not port FF7 OR FF8 to the PC  and yes FF7 was a really nasty port

Maybe not Square but someone made ff for pc for Square and Square aproved that ff version

3) Starting with the PC first and porting to the PSX can have mixed results.  It's better to leave things open for later porting than code for one platform and then attempt to port to another.  It's a difficult situations irreguardless to make the game that way.

I was speaking here about media,graphic. When you have high resolution backgrounds,movies,textures on pc then it is easy to convert them to low
resolution psx. From low resolution media you can't make high one.
You need to render them again in high resolution. People creating pc version has got generaly psx media . (only movies in ff8 were rendered again in 640x480) or maybe they had high res movies in first place and encoded them to psx native resolution.

4) I know a LOT about the FF7 model information there polycounts I suppose I could give you exactly if I took the time to gather statics from them.  I could also give animation count texture size (if any) etc.  Been playing with them for well over a year now (scarey now that I think about it).

I am also playing ff7 models for long time and i was speaking generaly. I was not speaking about exact numbers.  From watching ff7 models and few ff8 models i got felling that they could be better on pc becouse pc is not limited by strict specifications like psx (of course pc is limited by economical boundries).  For example - today no one can release game that is playable only on geforce 6800 ultra .( one can release such game but will not earn much from it)




 

  Ok so you basically have no interest in the project.  That's cool.

What is cool about it?  I don't know . You know this is as cool as saying that nick 'Cyberman" is cool becouse word  cyber  is in it (not that i do not like nick Cyberman). no offense but i heard little flaming in your words.

9

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Engine building. If we make it, will they come?

« on: 2005-01-18 22:10:24 »

I might point out is your sole interest in the engine is different than others.  This is your perspective always keep in mind your perspective may not be shared by everyone.

I never said that may point of view is shared by anyone . It is only MY point of view

Mmmm better is highly subjective. I enjoy playing games that do not have cool graphics.  Perhaps we aren't interested in cool graphics?  I think the idea was running the content provided in a stable manner, with the way we want it to run.  New models etc. are additions to the basic work done.  I think you are putting De'Cart before De'Horse in this case.  It's something you can worry about once the content can be even run.

I like games with outdated graphic if content is right, but Square made terrible work with ff7 and ff8 transfering it to pc almost exactly like they were on psx. In ff7 models have 1000-3000 polygons without almost no textures (there are few exceptions).
In ff8 models are only 1000 poly  with textures. Becouse of texture use and other things models have generaly less polygons then in ff7 and are blocky.Backgrounds in low resolutions. Only ff8 movies are good.
Square does not care about pc. Terrible ff7 translation into english.
Square should make ff7 and ff8 for pc first and then convert it to psx. Of course in Japan psx is more popular.
Square cares little about other markets then Japan. In Japan they will sell any game even without marketing and in high quantities.

 And about models as addition - L .Sipro stated that this engine will newer has any (or hypoteticaly will never has) any new content becouse off legal issues.

First off it's actually 320x214 to be precise. Secondly you appear to be only interested in changing game esthetics which are actually the LAST part of developement. Again you are interested in something way way way down the road in possibilities.  I don't think you are interested in actually getting it to work.  That is actually the BIG challenge.

I had in mind resolution 320x240 (340 typo) .Movies are in 320 x 224 exactly.  I am not interested in getting it to work becouse for me ff7 works now (i know that it is selfish) , and knowing how this engine works is not important for me becouse i know too little about programing and has no practice and can't learn from this project . Of course i would like to help in programing engine but it would take too long for me to catch up with programing level of  many people on this board. So programing engine is not for me .

It's always best to take yourself off there hit list first. Then you can work and acomplish something.  You can't finish what you never start, and you can't start tell you have a plan.  So this is called PLANING.  Sometimes things aren't practical.  Anything is possible just not practical.  Everyone has other projects and things they do to make a living as well.
Cyb

Planing is important but i have seen people who were planing on such big scale that planing was more important than engine and they newer went beyond planing.

Of course everything above are only my opinions.

10

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Engine building. If we make it, will they come?

« on: 2005-01-18 18:37:34 »

Look if  graphic will not be altered then i see no point in creeating ff7 engine other that learning coding ( of course for people writing this engine)

I have geforce 4 and i can play ff7  with fsaa and only new engine will not make it better.

Any higher resolution or anything (without changing graphic, media content )will not make ff7 better. Why ? Becouse movies, backgrounds were created in shity 320x340 resolution and rising resolution even to 1280 x 1024 can't make it better.

And if you have problems with compatibility you can play ff7 on playstation or even on playstation emulator in 1280 x 1024 resolution.

I am sure that many ff7 fans will not be interested in engine without upgrading content at least i will not be interested. Since i have no programing skill so i will be not working on engine  - i only wanted to share my opinion.

This legal things are insane .  If you want to do something legaly then you can do nothing.
Square is to lazy to remake ff7, or it can see no profit in it.
And if you a  ff7 fan you can't remake ff7 for free becouse it is illegal . That is the world

11

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Engine building. If we make it, will they come?

« on: 2005-01-18 12:49:17 »

About legal things.

I think that what square cares most  are money and  square's image.
So in building custom engine we must think that this engine should be used only  with oryginal, legal version of ff7. In ff7 there is only a cd check protection. So in my opinion our engine should have  cd check protection that would check if oryginal cd is in the drive.

I would'nt call engine as an engine but i would call it a "FF7 FRONTEND GRAPHIC INTERFACE" becouse it is using oryginal ff7 data - animation , story , graphic and only displays it with different way (different resolutions, different codecs, sound plugins)

New 3d models should be an option as ad in module (in this case cd check is   guaranting that user has got oryginal ff7 game and that Square earned money) models should be packed and protected so no one could extract them normaly and used in wrong way.
In creating new models we must think about Square's image. New models should be based on Squares concept art (can be found in net)  or ff7 AC  and should be of high quality. Of course models creators should state that they only created models and That Square has at least partialy rights to this models becouse of Squares ideas and concept arts.

While building this" engine" it is important to -

1 make sure that users have orygiinal ff7 so Square earned money
2 Make sure that story of ff7 is not altered in any way.
3 In creating graphic ensured that this graphic is of high quality  ant that it has the spirit of FF7 and this way it is not  altering Square's image as high quality games creators.

12

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / FF8 world map - 3D model?

« on: 2005-01-05 15:13:16 »

At this time it is not possible to get a ff8 map model.
Mirex is working on ff8 model exporter so you can view field and battle models, but this exporter is not yet finished. But even  when this exporter will be finished you will not be able to export ff8 model map becouse probably model map is made of smaller 3d parts and written in different format then normal ff8 models.
You can't get ff7 model map even now when we can view many ff7 models
And probably it  is also true for ff8.

But there is another way to get ff8 model map.
Playing ff8 you can see small map in the right side of your screen.
You can ripp that map from the game using various tools or make a screen shot of it. You can also find a image of ff8 map in the net (someone was creating ff8 map for civilisation3 mod)

Then you can use this image in grayscale in 3d software as a heightmap and you will get a 3d ff8 map.
Of course this map will not be ass accurate as real ff8 map and will not have buildings ,cities...

13

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Importing custom models into ff7

« on: 2004-12-28 17:29:59 »

We do not need to know animation data becouse we do not change animation files.
We are need only to change part of the character's body. And need to set "atachment" "rotation", point
Animation,body part assemble file is intact. This file containing animation, skeleton will put together changed body parts and will animate them normaly.
We only need to know how to convert 3d formats into ff7 format. (so we need to know - geometry data, vertex color ,( since we are creating high poly models we don't need textures),  we need also a knowledge how atachments points are stored). Knowledge about normal bones and animation is not needed (it would be needed if we were to create compleately new models with new proportions, poses and animations)

14

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Importing custom models into ff7

« on: 2004-12-27 18:52:46 »

I have few questions, ideas.

imagine that i have high poly model of Aerith
I would like to import it into ff7 as battle or field model.
Present Aerith battle model is made of many files.
Rvaa file has information about animation, skeleton and position of various model parts.
Other small files are parts of the body and atachments points.
My idea is to export ff7 Aerith into 3d model software then create  ,or get (from few web artists) high poly aerith model.  New aerith must have pose, and proportions of the old Aerith. Then we are breaking apart new Aerith into pieces.Each piece must have atachments point. Then we must export pieces,models into ff7 3d format and replace old files in ff7 archive with new ones.
Important thing - we are not changing Rvaa file so animation and skeleton is preserved. We must have this same number of new 3d files as the number of old 3d files.

Questions.Problems
There is software ,Mirex Biturn to  convert ff7 3d files into other formats but there is no software to convert it back into ff7 model. How to do it?

Is it possible to import high poly model into ff7 or there is a polygon, memory limit for that or any other problems?

Waiting for your comments ,sugestions, ideas

15

Troubleshooting / small feature request

« on: 2004-12-25 21:21:10 »

i was'nt able to use high res movies becouse then game was crashing.
About movies - check if you have changed ff7 registry movie path.
All tested on windows xp

16

Troubleshooting / small feature request

« on: 2004-12-25 14:01:06 »

i am toying with ff7 psx and ff7 pc. You can extract movies from psx. (the best way is to extract them as uncompresed avi.
Then ripp sound and music from ff7 pc movies (psx movies has only sound and no music). Now join uncompresed avi psx movies with sound, music from ff7pc and compress them using some divx codecs (of course you need encoding software and proper codecs). FF7 movies must be of resolutin 320x224.
Then put movies  in folder on your hard drive. modify ff7 (movie path) registry so it points to your movies folder. you need to have oryginal cd  in your cd drive but movies will be played from hdd.
Most important thing is to download  tool fddshow from internet and install it (20041013 version) or movie in game will be green or with artifacts.
Now you have psx movies in ff7pc or any other movies you want to put.

I was trying ficedulas 32bit graphic patch , but it couses battle swirl to vanish and movies are cut in half( i can see movies on left part of the screen but right side is black)

Movies can be compresed to 300 mb without quality loss so you can put them with game data on one disc.( but you still need oryginal discs for cd-check)

Nice to see someone from Poland.  Cześć. Bye

17

Archive / Final Fantasy 7 [SINGLE CD EDITION]

« on: 2004-12-21 15:27:53 »

Deleted by author

[edited]

Ok sorry for ressurecting this topic- i have got no idea about rule of old topics
(should have read rules). Again sorry for any trouble, problems... :erm:

18

Archive / Final Fantasy 7 [SINGLE CD EDITION]

« on: 2004-12-21 14:39:12 »

Blank

19

Troubleshooting / Help please~ all i wanna do is...

« on: 2004-07-21 08:23:40 »

For ff7 models (PC version) you need file decompress utility from
http://ficedula.cjb.net/
it is  LGP tool
For exporting moddels to various 3d formats you need Biturn 0,85
from
http://mirex.mypage.sk/index.php?selected=1

Notice that not all 3d formats will look this same. The best results are when you are exporting fromm ff7 to 3d software - Lightwave. Lwo

You can export monsters, characters, summons, weapons.....

For ff8 there is no working export tool. Future Mirex'es Biturn will support it but not now. There is only ff8 monster viewer without export options.

20

Archive / FFVII FSAA Problems

« on: 2004-07-12 07:31:34 »

ff7 likes win98 so if you can run ff7 on win 98.On windows xp graphic should be ok also but on windows xp there are stability problems.

I have nvidia drivers 56.xx  and gfeforce 4 ti and have got no problem with fsaa.

Ff7 doesn't need any riva patch for geforce cards becouse geforce cards in newer drivers has got 8 bit texture palet enabled.So do not install riva patch.
About fsaa. If you run ff7 without fsaa you can have corrupted background or even if your background is ok, the game has low resolution graphic so everything is a little jaggy.

Solution for many problems is fsaa, But normal fssa tribes causes background to become blocky and other anomalies .
The only way to have perfect graphic is to activate hidden fsaa modes in new drivers. For this you need riva tuner or atuner tool. Using this tools you can turn on hidden fsaa modes.There is a topic on this messageboard about this but you need to search for it.
You can have problems becouse nvidia is changing many things in drivers so older drivers can be better then new one. Graphics problems are also dependant on your geforce model.

21

Archive / a good ideia or not

« on: 2004-03-16 17:03:51 »

I have not tried this new drives so what i will say here maybe untrue. I think that you will not be able to set fssa for ff7 or ff8 in normal way. becouse this fsaa modes were hiden and unofficial. If nvidia made this fssa modes official in new drivers then try every one fssa mode in your display settings and run ff7 . If game will look good with any of the official fssa modes (without blocky backgrounds) and with good antialiased object then that means that nvidia made that unoficial modes official. If that will not work then you will need rivatuner and you will need to enter text into rivatuner.cfg and then run rivatuner and set special fsaa modes (everythink is explained in this topic in previous posts) But beware that this unoficial fsaa modes could have been removed from new drivers. I have no time for now to play with this new drivers.

22

General Discussion / FF8pc - Can the movies be played externally?

« on: 2004-03-15 11:10:08 »

You all were not precise about playing  movies externaly. Personaly i would add that by playing movies externaly you will not recive sound, music quality as in the game , that is becouse music and some sounds files are stored in different files than bink movie files.
So you will recive movie files only with sound and without music and  movies will sound differentlyt than in game..

shortly speaking you can convert to avi and play movies externaly but  movies will not sound exatly as in the game

23

Archive / a good ideia or not

« on: 2004-03-15 11:01:33 »

Xeriouxi . I do not understand your post (at least first part)

What we are talking here is that you can download and install  new forceware 56.56 drivers. This are not official nvidia drivers but this drivers are microsoft certified so thay should be 100% stable.
After install you are downloading rivatuner .In the riva tuner cfg. file you are inserting 2 lines of code
FSAAMode07=test7
FSAAMode05=test5
now in(run riva tuner) riva tuner you can choose 2 new fsaa modes.
Now you can play ff7 and ff8 with fsaa and anisotropic filtering without blocky backgrounds
This fsaa modes were tested on geforce 4ti and may not work on older cards (if you have older card you need to check it by yourself  by runing ff7 with this fsaa)
This fssa modes are undocumented and are not available by normal nvidia display settings (only available by riva tuner).This new fssa modes may   be not available in the next release of forceware or they will be available by riva tuner and not normal ways . or they will be normaly available who knows.
Shortly speaking you can play ff7,ff8 with perfect graphic now

24

Archive / a good ideia or not

« on: 2004-03-12 21:41:00 »

I have postet it already in the post above but here it is again

in riva tuner in fsaa part of config file
put  FSAAMode07=test5

the word "test5" is only a word. After "=" sign you can enter anything you want so you can enter

FSAAMode07=Human
or
FSAAMode07=Rocket

this name human or rocket is a word you will see in fssa tab after runing rivatuner.You can name that fssa mode as you wish.
I have not tested this mode very much. This mode works in ff7 and ff8 and generaly only frames in game are slightly corrupted but background is fine.
I have tried all the modes from mode 01 to mode 18 and i think  the best without any corruption is mode 05 with good 3d . mode 07 has better 3d graphics but frames are slightly corrupted

25

Archive / a good ideia or not

« on: 2004-03-12 16:26:12 »

Found yet another undescribed fssa mode.
forceware 56.56 geforce 4ti

For ff7 i have tested mode
FSAAMode05=ff7_5 in rivatuner (this mode is described im ff7 faq on this forum) This gives great results but quality is worst then FSAAMode19 = 8x
however fsaa19=8x creates pixelated background
so i searched for another fssa mode

i found FSAAMode07=test5
this mode is better then mode 5 and only slightly worst then fsaamode19
backgrounds are perfect the only minor anoyance is that frames in game are slightly corrupted (but it is almost unnoticable.