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Miscellaneous Forums => Troubleshooting => Topic started by: Timeslave on 2002-10-02 17:25:30

Title: Background viewer
Post by: Timeslave on 2002-10-02 17:25:30
I was wondering if there was going to be an update anytime soon to the background viewers for ff7 pc (i.e: Gast, or lgptools). Just wondering because I have a need to extract the backgrounds.
Title: Re: Background viewer
Post by: GattMan on 2002-10-23 15:36:53
I haven't been around in a while so I don't know what developments have been made, but  check Ficedula's web site.

Quote from: Timeslave
I was wondering if there was going to be an update anytime soon to the background viewers for ff7 pc (i.e: Gast, or lgptools). Just wondering because I have a need to extract the backgrounds.
Title: Background viewer
Post by: Renderguy on 2002-10-25 02:50:27
I think Lgp Tools can extract backgrounds, just left click on the image and save it as a .bmp.  Besides, Even if they couldn't export them, you could still take a screen capture (which is probably the best course of action if I'm wrong).  In the case of importing a background, I have not seen any way to do it.
Title: Background viewer
Post by: ficedula on 2002-10-28 14:26:38
Hmm, LGP Tools should be able to export the backgrounds. It should also display transparencies/animations correctly, I think...
Title: Background viewer
Post by: Timeslave on 2002-11-04 04:15:38
It's not that I don't know how to use those tools, it's just that they don't seem to properly decode the images. Most of them have a lot of random black pixels and the ancient forest backgrounds don't display properly at all.
Title: Background viewer
Post by: Renderguy on 2002-11-05 00:32:32
If I remember correctly, some backgrounds are displayed incorrectly and there's no way to change it.  My only advice would be to try another program, which might work though I'm pretty sure all of the programs for viewing backgrounds are based off of Qhimms code for gast.
Title: Background viewer
Post by: Timeslave on 2002-11-05 15:00:58
I realize that they're all based off of Qhimm's code. But unfortunately I haven't been able to find any other programs to extract the backgrounds, if anyone knows of one then I'd really appreciate a heads up.

As far as the problem with the pictures goes, other than the maps that totally don't work, the black pixels seem (to an uninformed non-professional programmer) like a palette problem. i.e: one color doesn't get read and is automatically assumed to be black.

I'm not really sure, I'm not a skilled programmer so I doubt I could really troubleshoot any code problems from Quimm's source.
Title: Background viewer
Post by: Cyberman on 2002-11-19 15:34:51
FF7 has a lot of bitmap layers in it, be sure that the black areas you see aren't actually behind something.  A good way to guess this is to examine the scene in FF7 whilst it's running.. if you can run behind an object (which all areas in FF7 are pretty much 2d overlayed bitmaps) that's a bitmap then that object will likely be BLACK in the background.  There are a large number of images used in each 'scene' in the game, in some places more than others.

Trivia time! The reason that Square went with 2d drawn background and images is because the GTE (Geometry transform engine) on the playstation did not support sub pixel positioning.  If you ever play this game on an emulator you'll see gaps and things in the 3d models on ocassion. this is why.  A large detailed area like the scenes used in FF7 would take a long time to assemble in 3d and display too many artifacts in it, thus it was easier and faster to just draw them.  On the playstation it looked better too :)

Cyb