Sephiroth perfect Omnislash PSX

[meesbaker]

Hi everyone, I'm back to work and will hopefully be able to finish some projects I started soon.
Consider this a small "teaser" for my upcoming Sephiroth patch for PSX. I know that my patch won't be the first one but surely the best one I will fully swap the roles of Cloud and Sephiroth including field models, battle models and dialogues with all animations working perfectly for all models.

I created a Sephiroth battle model executing Clouds battle animations so there will be a fully working main character doing all animations that were written for Cloud. I did the same thing the other way round but the coolest thing about this is that we finally see Sephiroth perform Omnislash perfectly on PSX:

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0DRepMAw7Ck

One small issue I have is that my new battle model makes a physical PSX crash which maybe happens on PSP as well then. As all animations and body parts work respectively show up correctly in epsxe and due to the fact I made all calculations in the computer and triple checked the numbers I am pretty sure that the offset section in the beginning of the LZS model is correct. Still the LZS viewer tool does not open the file saying there was an "offset error". There are many sections in LZS battle models whose function is unknown to me so I will have a hard time finding out what the problem is by myself.

Thus I wanna kindly request the friendly modder who created this awesome lzs battle model viewer to contact me so I can send him my Sephiroth model and he can investigate what exactly his LZS viewer complains about when trying to open my file. This way I may be able to narrow down the problem and make the file work on a fat PSX as well.

[Jeet]

So we finally see sephiroth 'omnislash, u could even rename it " octoslash" like in dissidia.

About the crash i forgot to ask u one thing, is this happend at thebegining of the battle when the model are loading? or just when u perform omnislash?

Are you able to modify the snowboard mini game cloud's into sephiroth? I searched a lot for this file structure but that never worked.

[meesbaker]

The crash occurs at the start of every battle. This means that only emulators read my lzs model. That it works nicely with them shows that PSX just doesn't wanna read my file for whatever reason. Something in its structure is unusual and that is surely connected to the fact that LZS viewer(who made that?? ) believes to find a “offset error“ and thus refuses to load it as well.

[Kaldarasha]

This want solve the crash, but Sephiroth hip is reversed.

[meesbaker]

Yes that is a problem I was thinking about how to solve for a while...
The thing is that Sephiroth's model has a different structure than Cloud's and doesn't have an equivalent like both have a left hand to what is Cloud's part 1.This part of the body is done differently with several parts making up Seph's coat , thus the part I picked out and tried this position with does not display correctly with Cloud's animations.

What I haven't tried yet is using Cloud's part 1 and color it in Sephiroth style and that may work...but unfortunately it is bigger than the part I'm using at the moment and stands right at the beginning so it will change all offsets and that are a looooot.....I DONT WAAANNAAA

Of course until release I will do it but I am more curious about that mysterious offset error crashing PSX fatties.

[Jeet]

the only times i had crashes when the model load was because the weapons model, for example when i made rufus playable, he crash everytime the game load him, so i changed the weapon model to "01" for every weapons of rufus and then its works, sometimes its  the " 01" mode that make the crash, then i change everyweapon to "02" etc, anyway the only weapons contained in sephiroth LZS is the masamune so what ever the change u make u ll only see masamune, unless you gave him cloud's weapons.

Note that this bug only appear on PSP ( same as your PSX then) while its was ok on EPSXE.So that maybe the same issue

[meesbaker]

Nah you're on the wrong track m8, the reason it will only show one weapon despite the ID is that every lzs has 16 weapons. E.g. Sephiroth has 16 times the Masamune so it will show that for every ID but there is no empty ID either.

What I did was using all of clouds weapons except buster sword and UW. I swapped both buster and UW for Masamune and called UW masamune and Buster sword "long sword". For Cloud(who has sephs animations cuz he is know the invincible guy from flashback) I swapped the model of the Masamune for Buster sword and called it that.

[sithlord48]

are you model swapping sephiroth for cloud or are you using sephiroth's char ID as well ?  if you using his char id he can only have one weapon that might be your problem.

[meesbaker]

Ok to clear things up here is what I've done:

I took Cloud's LZS Battle model as a basis and stripped the body parts of Sephiroth's battle model over Cloud's skeleton. Means I leave the amount of bones the way it is but swap the bone data for the bones of Sephiroth that are equivalent. The same procedure is done in the field on every working Sephiroth patch like the FF7 allstars made by Jeet. It is common and allows the use of 1 model's animations and another's 3d data.

[meesbaker]

By now I know that the problem is definately about the whole process of switching a body part between two models. Sephiroth's head is bigger than Clouds so as a test I just decompressed Sephiroth.LZS, exchanged his head with Cloud's head and padded the rest with zeroes to keep offsets and file size in tact. Still after recompression LZS viewer reports “Object Offset error“ while epsxe uses the model with no problems.

I don't get this how can a part work only in one model? Both files are correct still one can not have a different head part? What other data in the model may be able to influence what kind of parts a model has??

It's confusing and doesn't make sense. Also the zeroes can't be it because the first thing I did was just fixing all offsets which neither works. The fact that an emulator can use the models properly is also a proof to me that I have no mistakes just why does LZS viewer not build it and physical consoles neither?

[vayneruel]

You use ff7vme? I want to change Proud Clod color but when i try open the original model the program reports  “Object Offset error“

[meesbaker]

Interesting! That means ff7viewer crashing does not need to mean that a model won't work. I will burn more isos and do more tests!

[Jeet]

Same here, once you modify a model, he is not viewable anymore, but thats dont affect it in game, its will works correctly.

About your problem i noticed one thing,  some character are smaller ( in file size)once compressed, but take more space that the original when uncompressed, the game take in count the uncompressed model, sometimes on PSP my game was crashing without reason , thats was because their " uncompressed size" was bigger than the original character that i swapped.

Did you tried to deleted the 15th masamune of sephiroth and let only the first one to make the file smaller?

[meesbaker]

UPDATE:

It's weird...I was able to replace only the head and the PSX did it however I still haven't got my model running on a physical device. I hoped that the fact that I made KERNEL.BIN assign the same weapon model to 2 weapons was the clue but it ain't. Next thought was that KERNEL.BIN slot 16 may be buggy because of the custom animation related to the loss of HP but fixing that neither helped.

Still I believe that the first Statement of Jeet wasn't as unrelated as I assumed at first because playing with the weapons section I got even epsxe crashing and it's 100% the same crash as on psx so I must apologise, the key lies within the weapons after all I suppose.

The crashes were most weird, here's what I've found:

- loading the weapon from model  slot 16 crashes no matter what it is. I assumed it was due to the fact that this weapon is Ultimate weapon which has a custom animation but this is not confirmed yet. I must assign any other weapon to model ID 0F and see if the model loads then

- putting any weapon except the Masamune in slot 16 makes the game only crash when that slot is loaded because the related weapon is equipped. If masamune is in slot 16 it always crashes which is totally beyond me as the model is smaller than other weapons that Cloud has so it is not an issue of filesize

- putting a blank in slot 16(header+00) allows loading slot 16 after all but of course it is invisible. Still it is interesting that it works that way because it proves that it is possible to load a 16th weapon with my model even if it is blank. it is thus a problem with the models not with the principal of loading one. As all of this is just epsxe I still dont wanna count out UW's HP animation to be related

- loading the Masamune in more than one slot to get 2 different versions works as long as slot 16 is not involved


Putting all this together it is...unlogical. My final test to get around all points was assigning just weapons 1-15, replacing Buster sword and ragnarok with masamune model and putting slot 16 a blank and reverting the kernel to load an individual model for each weapon. Still PSX crashes...It's hopeless

[Jeet]

I dont use  the re-skin method for my battle models, i prefer use the original characters with their original animations ,  but the advantage with the re skin is you have MORE animations ( like the omnislash),  i used this method once, it was for swap normal sephiroth with hd sephiroth ( the one in the final battle) and i have the same problems as you , game crash when, the battle start, i noticed that its run fine when  he is ALONE in battle ( not very useful since your always with 2 other characters) , but the hd models are unique i think they are supposed to be used only on the final stage, so its not maybe the same issue.

But about your model im sure there is something to do with the weapons, just like you i cant find any logic, but this is similar to my problem with rufus that i was talking about, to solve this i just let the model untouched but i modify the kernerl with wallmarket so all weapons are = model 01 ( most of time its model 00 who make crash).

[meesbaker]

but how the hell am I supposed to get 15 different weapon models to work if I equalize the ID on every single entety?
As I said before what I did was swapping in Cloud's weapon models just replaced the buster sword by the Masamune and renamed it and replaced the Ultimate Sword by the Masamune with name and stats accordingly. I tried reducing the amount of models to 15 to decrease the file size and make sure I dont get crashes because of that and I also tried to include the model of the Masamune twice so I maintain 16 weapons as all models have but neither method actually worked.

I could narrow the issue down if I just replaced all parts one by one but that would be a ridiculous amount of work because LZS models have a extremely high amount of offsets and for every bone I would have to correct all of them, it's over 90....
So doing that like 20 times would be crazy I think I have to stop supporting the PSX and PSP version for my mod it is definately not going to work either way....

[Jeet]

My sephiroth model have all his weapon set to the ID 01, and its working , i can equip all weapon without any crashes, did u try this?

[meesbaker]

No, that's not what Im talking about mate
If you set the model ID all the same all weapons look the same loading the same model but I want him to use Cloud's weapons with the correct models. Masamune model just being one of the 16 I have.

Anyway it doesn't matter, I found out that the problem is the model itself after all and not the way I set up the weapons. Im tracking the problem down and I will report back as soon as I made it work.

The funny thing is that the model I created the other way round is perfectly working so my method does work including my Kernel. It must be an issue related to the size of bone data I think Im close to getting it done.

Cloud's body parts are smaller which is why the other swap worked so easily. I could keep all offsets and got a flawless Cloud battle model executing Sephiroth's animations. The fact that  the weapon disappears on the winning animation on my other buggy model shows that there is more trouble. The Cloud model has no similar issue.