Author Topic: [PC] Mod manager - 7thHeaven (v1.54) (Read 488806 times)

Kaldarasha · « **Reply #500 on:** 2014-08-11 17:28:22 »

Well compressing will horribly crash my mod (I used By Content). But 612MB are a bit much for a download. 7zip will make out of this an 21MB small archive. Can't you change the system so we can compress mods for the downloads and 7th Heaven will uncompress them when the mods are set to active?

Covarr · « **Reply #501 on:** 2014-08-11 17:35:22 »

21MB archive from 612MB of content? Man, that'd take a long time to decompress on every run.

Iros · « **Reply #502 on:** 2014-08-11 17:37:37 »

Yes, you can already do this. If the download link for your mod points to a ZIP or a 7Z file then 7thHeaven will (should...) automatically unzip it once the download is complete. This is not quite the same as decompressing when it is ACTIVE, but I think it is not too bad.

Although, I would certainly like to see why the compression makes your mod crash, since it is always good to find a bug and fix it! Could you give me a link to the mod? (The 21MB zipped version would be good...

Kaldarasha · « **Reply #503 on:** 2014-08-11 17:51:02 »

Quote from: Covarr on 2014-08-11 17:35:22

21MB archive from 612MB of content? Man, that'd take a long time to decompress on every run.

No you misunderstood this. You can have active mods in your mod load order and inactive mods in your library. I think that it's enough to leave inactive mods packed to save space.

@Iros
https://mega.co.nz/#!bU0SDYZI!zpxMZCJ48ouJgF5N1XI_hIppwKLuuT6fqCIlK9x6GoE

Iros · « **Reply #504 on:** 2014-08-12 09:37:54 »

Hm, I'm not so sure about decompressing when you activate a mod ... I guess you would delete the uncompressed files when the user deactivated the mod? That could be slow - you deactivate a mod to see "is it that mod causing me a problem?", hmm it isn't that bad, I will reactivate it ... and then you wait a minute for it to uncompress files again.

Plus if you are actually using all the mods you download (they are all active) then it takes up more disk space! Because it has the decompressed version to launch the game, but it is still keeping the compressed version, in case you deactivate it...

Quote from: Kaldarasha on 2014-08-11 17:51:02

@Iros
https://mega.co.nz/#!bU0SDYZI!zpxMZCJ48ouJgF5N1XI_hIppwKLuuT6fqCIlK9x6GoE

Thank you.

That mod is large. I see it does not work in a compressed IRO, so this is definitely a bug I will fix.

Also the compressed IRO is much large than the 7Z. I guess that is because there are a lot of duplicated files in the mod, and you are using solid compression with 7Z. The IRO cannot do this because it needs fast access to any file, so solid compression is not possible. But, I can probably optimize the IRO to work better with duplicate files.

Also FF7 is slow to launch with a mod containing so many files. I really want to make this faster. However this will need a bigger code change, so I will just work on fixing the bugs first. I hope a future version will speed things up.

Kaldarasha · « **Reply #505 on:** 2014-08-12 12:17:27 »

It starts slow, doesn't it? But for me it starts in an acceptable time. The newer games doesn't start instantly either. How about a small pong like minigame until the game starts.

Anyway I will see if I can small down the size of my mod a bit, I already kicked out some files of the HQ weapons (50MB).

Edit:
Hmm, my decision was right to check my file management, there was even an unused folder in the dynamic weapon section. I guess I can bring it down to 400MB.

Iros · « **Reply #506 on:** 2014-08-12 20:47:56 »

OK; new version v1.32: https://mega.co.nz/#!jV9UTCaI!DSrU1hbhMcQN_J3ZEHTr3S4KsbZWMCSKcUW3i5nW8n8

-Fix reading certain compressed files from IRO archive
-Fix pictures for bool options not always loading properly
-Fix compressed file cache not working

The speed is still not good, but I will try to sort that in a future version. At least now I think it works correctly!

EQ2Alyza · « **Reply #507 on:** 2014-08-13 03:22:04 »

Silly bug. When I auto-updated to 1.32, I clicked the NO button for the message about setting up a subscription, but it still opened up the Settings window.

Iros · « **Reply #508 on:** 2014-08-13 06:27:50 »

Well, I guess there is a bug there, just not exactly what you think

When you upgrade to a new version it always shows the settings window in case there are any new settings that need to be configured. (Of course usually there aren't so perhaps this is a bit unnecessary!)

Separately, it also asks if you want to set up subscription links with Windows - so you could click a subscription link on the forum and have 7H open automatically. I guess it should really only ask this question once instead of every time you upgrade.

mystery_editor · « **Reply #509 on:** 2014-08-13 10:26:49 »

Quick bug I've found. Re-producible, which is nice

When a download is incomplete (I've had this happen through accidental closing of 7th Heaven, and also through network dropout), it's removed from the "Downloads" window. However, when this .iro is eventually downloaded again from the start, the incomplete file from earlier isn't deleted from the temp folder, which leads to 7th Heaven thinking there are two versions of the same mod installed.

At some point, this gets cleaned up, but the duplicate entries still persist in the Library. If you try and uninstall one, it makes the other crash 7th Heaven when you hit "Configure".

Hope that's enough info!

genesis063 · « **Reply #510 on:** 2014-08-13 19:48:16 »

Quote from: Sega Chief on 2014-06-02 14:28:43

@cmh175
Oh, it's two dots instead of three. That's where I've went wrong. Thanks for the heads-up; but is Iros gone? I thought there was a summer update planned for this tool.

@Genesis063
I'll put a model together and put it in with the others. But important question: have you modded in Sephiroth by changing the flevel or by replacing the char.lgp files?

Hey bro sorry to just disappear but I changed it using the flevel so he is a little more himself. Some scenes where taken out do to limited animations he can use. Snowboard was taken out, Dolphin jump and lifestream are the ones I remember for right now.

cmh175 · « **Reply #511 on:** 2014-08-15 01:28:59 »

I haven't been able to keep up with the advancements so far, there's been a ton of progress here. I was wondering if it hasn't already been added, is it possible to work in an interface that can configure aali's driver? Bootloader made it pretty simple to configure settings and toggle things on and off, and using notepad isn't the easiest thing for novice users. With that addition and the release of EQ2Alyza's catalog, other than a game convertor 7H is pretty much the only tool needed to run and mod the game.

~Well lookie there, already included since v1.27. Very cool. Has a drop down menu been added for selecting post processing effects or is bloom2 currently the only shader in aali's driver now? Other than an option to toggle the direct folders on and off looks like everything's covered here.

EQ2Alyza · « **Reply #512 on:** 2014-08-15 01:35:25 »

It's already there silly --- Workshop -> OpenGL driver configuration

I meant to ask if you wanted anything in addition to what's already there to configure

cmh175 · « **Reply #513 on:** 2014-08-15 01:42:13 »

lol yup, a bit out of the loop. Other than a drop down menu for selecting the shader effects (unless bloom2 is the only one available in the current driver, not sure haven't checked) and toggling the direct folders this was covered pretty well. I still have v1.27 so it may have been updated since, but btw 1024mb for the texture is what I've been using since the release of aali's new driver so it's been pretty well tested. I found anything lower while using texture mods causes the battle menu to glitch.

EQ2Alyza · « **Reply #514 on:** 2014-08-15 02:36:10 »

Bloom2 is the default for the current driver, but I use SmartBloomAdvanced. It's added in the GC I sent you. I think typing is fine for now since that's really an option for more advanced users who might want to fiddle with new shaders down the road. Having a drop-down menu would mean an update to 7H would be needed to support any possible new shaders.

A direct_mode=on/off toggle is actually a good idea. The Nightmare 7 difficulty mod uses a direct folder, so it would benefit something. Then just use the direct folder for testing a mod before packing it into an IRO.

I use 1024 texture memory as well, and it works great. What exactly does that pull from? System RAM? Video RAM? Something else?

Kaldarasha · « **Reply #515 on:** 2014-08-15 10:08:25 »

Quote from: EQ2Alyza on 2014-08-15 02:36:10

Having a drop-down menu would mean an update to 7H would be needed to support any possible new shaders.

I use 1024 texture memory as well, and it works great. What exactly does that pull from? System RAM? Video RAM? Something else?

No, an update isn't needed. The way I wanted the config Editor and the way Iros has made it, makes 7th Heaven independent from any version of Aali's driver. All what's needed to do is to modify the ConfigSpec-FF7OpenGL.xml to add or remove options. I kept the settings minimalist because the average user will click things on and off because they are present there. While the direct folder doesn't harm anything, it's not needed anymore. You can test with 7th Heaven mods before packing them in an .iro.

The Vram of FF7 is more or less an emulation of the one from the PSX. It has nothing to do with the VRAM of your graphic card, it simply limits the memory for the textures before they will be cleaned from it(?). While it is possible to store as much as possible into the ram, it's not possible to load everything at once from it (32bit Bottleneck). FF7 has a bad texture management on PC. As far as I understand the engine, it loads for every part of a full textured model the texture in memory. Which means for a Cloud model with a texture resolution of 2048 that the game will load the texture in memory 15(or 16) times (I dunno how much ram this would eat up). Maybe a reason why they did textured the models so rarely, because they discovered to handle this better to late as they could use it in the current engine built without to redo a lot of done work.

Well I guess we can remove the 'untested' from 1024. Also the new timer option, Dan has made a hext file to fix the field FPS bug. But the direct folder shouldn't be needed. Tengo can update his mod to work with 7th Heaven and will probably kick out some of his .dll's, but I don't think he will (or is ready to re-write stuff because it's easier to do now).

mystery_editor · « **Reply #516 on:** 2014-08-15 11:10:22 »

OK, I feel like I'm doing something wrong, but I just can't seem to get music to load through 7th Heaven.

I created the music\vgmstream folder manually, but I still get an error message saying it's unable to find the specified file in "D:\Games\FINAL FANTASY VII\/music/vgmstream/PRE.OGG".

If it's just my setup, all good, but AH does work when I manually install it as you would without 7H. I'm running Winodws 8.1.

Iros · « **Reply #517 on:** 2014-08-15 12:10:52 »

Could be setup but I guess we will need to look. Can you post your 7H config and also the contents / folders in the mod you have created?

-----

Also, I will have an update soon. Main change is that creating compressed IRO files will be much quicker (it will be multi-threaded). First though I will see if I can the bug with downloads mystery_editor reported.

EQ2Alyza · « **Reply #518 on:** 2014-08-15 13:23:54 »

Quote from: mystery_editor on 2014-08-15 11:10:22

OK, I feel like I'm doing something wrong, but I just can't seem to get music to load through 7th Heaven.

I created the music\vgmstream folder manually, but I still get an error message saying it's unable to find the specified file in "D:\Games\FINAL FANTASY VII\/music/vgmstream/PRE.OGG".

If it's just my setup, all good, but AH does work when I manually install it as you would without 7H. I'm running Winodws 8.1.

Have you gone to Workshop -> OpenGL driver configuration and setup the Audio tab?

mystery_editor · « **Reply #519 on:** 2014-08-15 13:29:48 »

Yep, selected VGMStream as the player. Music loads fine if I copy a file into the target folder manually, but won't change if I select another option in 7H

EQ2Alyza · « **Reply #520 on:** 2014-08-15 13:56:05 »

Which AH option did you choose?

Kaldarasha · « **Reply #521 on:** 2014-08-15 17:53:30 »

Quote from: mystery_editor on 2014-08-15 11:10:22

OK, I feel like I'm doing something wrong, but I just can't seem to get music to load through 7th Heaven.

I created the music\vgmstream folder manually, but I still get an error message saying it's unable to find the specified file in "D:\Games\FINAL FANTASY VII\/music/vgmstream/PRE.OGG".

If it's just my setup, all good, but AH does work when I manually install it as you would without 7H. I'm running Winodws 8.1.

Maybe it's because the music folder is empty and 7th Heaven doesn't find a file to replace it?

Iros · « **Reply #522 on:** 2014-08-15 19:45:08 »

Quote from: Kaldarasha on 2014-08-15 17:53:30

Maybe it's because the music folder is empty and 7th Heaven doesn't find a file to replace it?

No, 7H will work to put brand new files in. First thing to check is definitely the paths (in the 7H settings, and in the mod).

New version v1.33: https://mega.co.nz/#!fB9VxLwb!2LZo4qfsKAmRg_gs-uA4x1UaDW-o7npfxQf_54oiezg

-Faster IRO creation (multi-threaded)
-Improve handling failed / incomplete downloads

I could not reproduce the error with failed downloads exactly, but I did find one problem which is now fixed, so I hope this will sort out any other errors people have had...

EQ2Alyza · « **Reply #523 on:** 2014-08-15 20:15:38 »

Quote from: Iros on 2014-08-15 19:45:08

No, 7H will work to put brand new files in. First thing to check is definitely the paths (in the 7H settings, and in the mod).

He's testing my catalog, and my folder has always been empty as well, but I can't reproduce it.

Workshop -> Settings --- Is music listed in the Extra Folders box?

Where is your game installed?

Check inside mods/7thHeaven and tell me the file size for Media - Movies, Music, and Sound.iro.

mystery_editor · « **Reply #524 on:** 2014-08-16 12:43:37 »

Quote from: EQ2Alyza on 2014-08-15 20:15:38

Workshop -> Settings --- Is music listed in the Extra Folders box?

Where is your game installed?

Check inside mods/7thHeaven and tell me the file size for Media - Movies, Music, and Sound.iro.

Extra Folders is listed as:

Code: [Select]

music directGame is installed to D:\Games\FINAL FANTASY VII\
Size for the .iro is reported in Windows as 6.33 GB (6,806,765,642 bytes).

Sorry I went into the thread with this, but it's just a small quirk that might be Win8 related? Permissions can be a bit wacky with it.