Problem with PC port.

[DLPB_]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDzDYo8OjP0

For a while now I have been banging the drums about menu's opening at a faster rate, cursors moving at a faster rate and the credit screen moving at a faster rate than the PSX game.

Well, I have gone and looked into it properly rather than making uneducated guesses and it seems that it wasn't an FPS issue after all.  Well...I am not totally convinced yet but certainly this could all be down to a porting problem or limitations with the PC game.  Hopefully some of my questions can be answered and some of these issues can be resolved.

Credit Screen:

In PSX game, the text traverses a 320*240 grid.  This is why the PC text moves faster.  It is compensating for the 640*480 grid.  This seems to be ok, however 2 things are wrong here:

a.  The font the PC uses is crap compared to the PSX imho.  The PSX is larger and seems to meld better when the white and black text meet.

b.  The PC credit screen ends up lasting much longer than it should because the text takes a much longer time to start it's movement along the screen.  As soon as 1 text fades in the PSX game, the next one begins.  On PC there is a large gap that shouldn't be there.

Menu

The normal menu takes less time to open.  It takes around 15 frames from the arrival of a box to the completion of the opening menu.  In PSX this is 20 frames.    If I run down the list of options from ITEM to SAVE it takes the PSX 36 frames.  It takes PC 27.

Both of these seem to indicate a difference of 25%.  The actual animation seems to be better in PSX than in PC.  I can't work out why there should be a difference here but perhaps as Gemini told me it is a limitation of input into the PC that they had to speed it up?  In any case, the menu opening of PSX, including limit dialogue boxes is much smoother than the PC and takes 25% longer to appear (again possibly it is animating more?  I am not sure)

Tifa's Slots:

They appear to be much more jittery than the PSX.  Gemini told me this could be because of differences to how the PC and PSX handle the menu.  In PSX the menu runs at a different speed to the 3D elements.  On PC the whole screen has to run at the same speed of 15 fps.  This problem is most likely with all slot animations in battle.

I am not sure if anything can be done here.


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I will prepare some videos now to demonstrate this.

[DLPB_]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDzDYo8OjP0

This video demonstrates the differences.

Please note that vegas has ended up counting a 30 fps time frame because I changed it in the save as menu.  It was originally edited in 60fps and if you need that version I can supply it.  Makes little difference though to the conclusion.

As you can see with the slots, the original game was animating at 60fps whereas the PC is at 15.  There are 8 frames between Cait's slot items in PSX and only 2 for PC (meaning a very rough animation).

60/15 =4  (4 times slower)

4*2 = 8 (4 times faster equals the correct number of frames between cait's slot items which is 8 )

I understand that this might be an issue that cannot be resolved for PC but I am not sure why the menus and credit screen can't be rectified.
============

The main menu seems to be animating less or this is a frame rate issue.  It is 25% faster on PC and I find that the cursor movement is far too sensitive compared to PSX because of this.

[obesebear]

Nice catch.  I always thought Tifa's slots were much easier to hit in the PSX version, guess I was right.   I don't know enough about hex editing to help you out.  But as far as the slots, I know dziugo found and edited them with YAMP, maybe the frame limiter for them is nearby?

[DLPB_]

The problem with the slots seems to be that the whole screen in PC has to be at 15 fps.  I am not sure what can be done about that.  On PSX the 3d part runs at 15 but the menu (where slots are displayed also) runs at 60.

I think the only way a PC could work like this for FF7 is to have the whole battle running at 60 fps but this can't be done with PC FF7 without speeding the battle up 4X....that isn't an option.

It would take a rewrite of the game to get the battle working at 60fps if I am not mistaken...

So as regards to slots we could be buggered.  But the other menu and the credit lists should be something we can fix in part or whole.  Also it isn't just the animation which is making it more difficult in the PC as you are probably aware:

When you have 4X less frames you have to be 4X more accurate when you press the button.  Since it is frames that decide the accuracy of the input.

[obesebear]

Well QGears is capable of running battle scenes at 60 fps without speeding up the models.   But if it's indeed not possible in the PC version, we could always up the battles to 60 fps and create Team Shinra, whose job it would be to quadruple the animations of all the models... sounds feasible...

It also might be possible to slow down the slots 4x (or whatever) so they would display close to how they are supposed to... kind of.

[DLPB_]

the other thing is, wouldn't the programming need to be altered?  The AI and so forth would be based on the 15 fps inputs...?  Like for example when one alters the field to 60fps, the models all go off their set lines because they were programmed to Move forward by 12 frames, and then left by 15 for example...and when you change frame rate the models move 24 and 30 and go into walls etc.

[obesebear]

No idea actually, if you know how to hack the exe and make battles run at 60 fps, I'll happily add some frames into Cloud's animations to see what happens.

I don't see why increasing fps in battle would effect how much they move.   Effects might be off... I don't know if they're triggered by the amount of frames or the end/beginning of animations.

[DLPB_]

I am just thinking to my own computer games that I made..this game runs by frames.. altering the frame rate would also mess up any programming associated with it.  When I create games frame based, if there is a particular action supposed to happen every so many frames, and I then edited the frame rate, it would change that event to happen sooner or later.

I can't be sure how 7 works but if it is along the lines I fear it is, then there would be an issue.   But it just depends how it is all implemented.  I don't have the expertise in this dept.  I am sure Aali or another would know for sure exactly if this is possible and the troubles that would lie ahead.

[nfitc1]

Nice catch.  I always thought Tifa's slots were much easier to hit in the PSX version, guess I was right.   I don't know enough about hex editing to help you out.  But as far as the slots, I know dziugo found and edited them with YAMP, maybe the frame limiter for them is nearby?

I remember in the early version of FFVII there were blank spaces between her leveled slots were. That's hard to explain, but it was like this:

Beat Rush -> Somersault -> "Miss" -> Water Kick -> MeteoDrive -> "Miss" -> Dolphin Blow -> Meteor Strike -> "Miss" -> Final Heaven

But it only took the first seven. Even if you managed to get all hits or "Yeah!"s or whatever, it wouldn't do past Dolphin Blow. It was probably a problem with the fact that each limit level has slots for three attacks even though the third isn't used. I've never seen anyone even mention this anywhere else, but I swear it happened to my friend and I. Admittedly, we were using a GS at the time, but it wasn't affecting Limits.

[/off topic]

[Kudistos Megistos]

Nice catch.  I always thought Tifa's slots were much easier to hit in the PSX version, guess I was right.   I don't know enough about hex editing to help you out.  But as far as the slots, I know dziugo found and edited them with YAMP, maybe the frame limiter for them is nearby?

I remember in the early version of FFVII there were blank spaces between her leveled slots were. That's hard to explain, but it was like this:

Beat Rush -> Somersault -> "Miss" -> Water Kick -> MeteoDrive -> "Miss" -> Dolphin Blow -> Meteor Strike -> "Miss" -> Final Heaven

But it only took the first seven. Even if you managed to get all hits or "Yeah!"s or whatever, it wouldn't do past Dolphin Blow. It was probably a problem with the fact that each limit level has slots for three attacks even though the third isn't used. I've never seen anyone even mention this anywhere else, but I swear it happened to my friend and I. Admittedly, we were using a GS at the time, but it wasn't affecting Limits.

[/off topic]

it happened to...I

 

[/Grammar Nazi]

Have you ever been able to recreate that without using a GS? I'm sure that has never happened to me, even though I got FF7 soon after it came out (PAL version; I'm not sure what constitutes the "early version").

[nfitc1]

Nice catch.  I always thought Tifa's slots were much easier to hit in the PSX version, guess I was right.   I don't know enough about hex editing to help you out.  But as far as the slots, I know dziugo found and edited them with YAMP, maybe the frame limiter for them is nearby?

I remember in the early version of FFVII there were blank spaces between her leveled slots were. That's hard to explain, but it was like this:

Beat Rush -> Somersault -> "Miss" -> Water Kick -> MeteoDrive -> "Miss" -> Dolphin Blow -> Meteor Strike -> "Miss" -> Final Heaven

But it only took the first seven. Even if you managed to get all hits or "Yeah!"s or whatever, it wouldn't do past Dolphin Blow. It was probably a problem with the fact that each limit level has slots for three attacks even though the third isn't used. I've never seen anyone even mention this anywhere else, but I swear it happened to my friend and I. Admittedly, we were using a GS at the time, but it wasn't affecting Limits.

[/off topic]

it happened to...I

 

[/Grammar Nazi]

Good point. That is the indirect object of the sentence, isn't it? It's a hard habit to break.

Have you ever been able to recreate that without using a GS? I'm sure that has never happened to me, even though I got FF7 soon after it came out (PAL version; I'm not sure what constitutes the "early version").

I don't remember clearly. This was on his PSX version that was probably one of the first. I never owned the PSX version. I'm not sure how if he played through the game without it first. I do remember having the conversation with him as to why it was working the way it was. He didn't have an answer.
I do remember having his PSX for a while (he was on vacation) and playing through FFVII and having this problem. I just can't remember if I was using the GS at the time, but I don't think I did.