Author Topic: FF7 - Got Hardware Acceleration Working; CD-ROM problem! (Read 21824 times)

FinalFantasyRox · « **on:** 2002-11-01 01:00:00 »

Hello everyone,

Regarding Final Fantasy 7, I found some interesting information on a forum (I forget if it was this one or the one hosted on Eido's site), and it said to extract the Riva_TNT file, but only use the FF7Config.exe file and *not* the FF7.exe (i.e., use the old FF7.exe). This worked. I got FF7Config.exe to select Hardware instead of Software, and when I launched FF7.exe I didn't get a blue screen of death.

However, it is asking me for CD 1, 2, or 3. I tried putting the first one (the installation one), and that didn't work. I tried the other three (game disc 1, 2, 3) and those didn't work either. I am looking at my CD-ROM when I click 'OK' and it doesn't seem it is trying to find it on the CD-ROM.

Any ideas? I tried messing around with CMOS, but that didn't work either.

Aaron · « **Reply #1 on:** 2002-11-01 02:02:06 »

Err, this is wierd.

If I'm understanding your post correctly, you are running FF7.exe and its asking you for Disc 1, 2, or 3?

Do you have more than one CD-ROM drive? If you do, make sure you are putting the disc into the same drive that you installed FF7 from. The installation disc is not what it wants, either - it wants a gameplay disc.

Try uninstalling and reinstalling FF7. Its possible that you messed with the registry settings on where the location of the discs are, and if its confused, this should fix it.

Lord Kane · « **Reply #2 on:** 2002-11-01 05:36:19 »

Yes, with multiple drives or virtual drives, the CD detection goes for the first lettered drive.
Subsequently it looks at the registry for the CD and data path.

FinalFantasyRox · « **Reply #3 on:** 2002-11-01 08:37:53 »

Okay, I got that CD thing fixed. I forgot that I ran a registry cleaner three or four days ago. It most likely wiped out my FF7 entries.

However...

Now, when I launch FF7.exe, it crashes. It goes to a Windows 2000 blue-screen-of-death, gives an error that says BAD_POOL_CALLER, and automatically reboots. If anyone has a solution to fix this, please let me know.

As a note, I got my old Pentium 100-something computer from the garage and set it up with Windows 98 to test. I got Hardware Acceleration working and it got into the game (the backgrounds had red and green lines, but I'm hoping those will go away in 2000).

So my CDs and installation isn't defected; good. I guess the crash is due to Windows 2000. What I'm surprised is why I'm the only one who is experiencing this. I never saw once a forum post talking about a blue-screen-of-death in Windows 2000 when FF7 is launched.

Sir Canealot · « **Reply #4 on:** 2002-11-01 09:22:56 »

*shrugs* Dont run FFVII in XP or 2k. Theres ALWAYs problems. If your getting red/green lines you have to tweak the... texture aliment for direct 3d in your graphics cards controll panel.

*sigh* I'd just run a No-Cd crack (try www.megagames.com for the crack). If you need help getting the movies running of the hard disk or any ting just ask.

Qhimm · « **Reply #5 on:** 2002-11-01 09:27:19 »

Actually, for some reason, FF7PC now runs stable on my WinXP machine. Well, the movies don't show, but that's a minor detail.

Nori · « **Reply #6 on:** 2002-11-01 11:56:26 »

Very stable for me (XP)... must be the 3D card, and driver for 3D card!!!

Aaron · « **Reply #7 on:** 2002-11-01 15:13:33 »

Never had any trouble running FF7 in Windows XP on this machine, except for the Chocobo Races bug...

Guess I'm just lucky

Sir Canealot · « **Reply #8 on:** 2002-11-01 15:46:23 »

Last time I tried FFVII on XP I patched the choco races bug... but sound fonts didnt work, and none of my Usb gamepads worked either. So I thought basically "allow dat shit".

Hopefully gonna get a copy of USA (allow Pal FFVII) FFVII soonish though. I'll try FFVII on ePSXe I think... even if I do like the Pc version...

FinalFantasyRox · « **Reply #9 on:** 2002-11-01 20:02:57 »

Sir Canealot: Thanks for the tips. After many, many (and I mean many) weeks, I got Final Fantasy VII working on Windows 2000 without a problem. Now, I'm trying to get Hardware Acceleration working, but it is not really important, so if I don't get it working I will quit. At least Software Rendering is working. Oh, and I don't need a No-Cd crack because I reinstalled it (it was a registry problem). Now I know why the software gave a warning before cleaning my registry.

Qhimm: I had the same problem with the movies. Now the movies play without skipping and the sound is better (but that could be just my imagination). Read my post at http://forums.qhimm.com/viewtopic.php?t=1662 and go down to Section 2.6, Q-1.

nayoung: Yeah, maybe you're right! I guess it's worth a try to find other versions of my video card's driver.

Aaron: Hmm, did you try patching it with the Chocobo patch -- http://www.qhimm.com/ff7_chocobo_patch.zip. ? I obviously haven't reached that point yet, but I sure hope it works.

Threesixty · « **Reply #10 on:** 2002-11-01 21:12:57 »

Guys...he said he was using Win2000 not XP.

You say you got it on your 100mhz system....what video card are you running in it? Sometimes backgrounds in the game can be fixed with Rivatuner....setting the textures to "Force 0". I'm not at my own PC....so I can't post exact directions.

As for the Riva TNT patch, just using the FF7config.exe should work....just as long as you use the latest non-beta drivers, and don't check the Riva box and don't use the FF7.exe from the patch. The error your getting is probalby Win2000 related....

Sir Canealot · « **Reply #11 on:** 2002-11-01 21:54:34 »

Wait a second. Now I remember my way!

... maybe.

Whats the problem with Hardware Acceleration?

Search on google for RivaTuner, download that. And turn 8 bit pattled textures OFF in the direct 3d, texture tab. Then install the patch in the standard way:

Copy patched config, select riva TNT, copy patched ff7.exe.

Drop us abell if you need help with that.

FinalFantasyRox · « **Reply #12 on:** 2002-11-01 22:00:38 »

Yeah, I'm using Windows 2000, not XP

My video card is a ATI. Specifically, a 8MB ATI RAGE PRO TURBO 2X. Kind of old, like 1998-1999ish, but it still works beautifully on newer games such as FIFA 2002.

However, each time I launch ff7.exe it crashes (goes to a blue screen and reboots). It is the exact same effect on the original ff7.exe and the one supplied in the patch. Again, I am able to configure Direct3D Hardware mode in FF7Config.exe, but as soon as I launch ff7.exe, it crashes.

Unfortunately, the driver doesn't have relevant options in Control Panel > Display > Settings > Advanced. I can only change the color balance, the brightness, and things like that. It does support both Direct3D and OpenGL, though I cannot control/configure it.

I've tried other drivers. Well, two I've found. One on the Windows 2000 CD just doesn't work, and another one that a person "hacked" crashed my computer all together.

I am not a Windows 2000 or NT expert, but I think ff7.exe is trying to "talk" to a hardware that Windows isn't allowing. Sort of like a firewall for hardware communication. I don't know.

On my test machine w/ Windows 98, I did like the battle in Direct3D. It looked great. But the rest (like walking in area maps) is the same. I didn't notice any good changes. Well, the colors were a little better and the blue menus were actually blue and not blue stripped (you know what I mean?).

But if Direct3D on FF7 only enhances the battles, I guess it is not worth trying to get it to work. At least not to me. Can someone confirm that Direct3D *only* enhances battles?

Thanks.

FinalFantasyRox · « **Reply #13 on:** 2002-11-01 22:09:28 »

Hmm, does RivaTuner work with ATI cards? I notice it says on the Web site that it supports Detonators? Is Detonator a type of card? I'm sorry, I'm not very knowledgeable about video cards. I'm learning more and more by trying to get FF7's Direct3D working. FF7 is the only game that I'm having trouble getting hardware acceleration working.

FinalFantasyRox · « **Reply #14 on:** 2002-11-01 22:18:13 »

Well, I got RivaTuner anyway just to see.

It installed. In 'Main' it says "RAGE PRO TURBO AGP 2X / NEC MultiSync XV17"

Below it, it says "No Additional Information Available"

And below, in the 'Driver Settings', it says "No supported drivers detected for this display adapter"

So I would assume that RivaTuner is incompatible with ATI cards? Or my ATI card?

Sir Canealot · « **Reply #15 on:** 2002-11-01 22:29:50 »

You have a ATI card? Rivetuner is a Nvidia based tweaker. God knows about ATI cards. Never got FFVII running on one. Sorry.

Good luck.

tekwiz99 · « **Reply #16 on:** 2002-11-01 22:46:39 »

oh my, just what exactly is your card?
for under WinXP, use that "FFVII for WinXP patch" and make a selection for "Riva TNT". and you are good to go

FinalFantasyRox · « **Reply #17 on:** 2002-11-01 22:53:39 »

My card is exactly a 8MB ATI RAGE PRO TURBO 2X (AGP).

What is the "FFVII for WinXP patch"?

Is it the one around 9 MB? Wasn't there a post saying it was a trojan or a "fake patch"? I would try it out, but are you sure that it is really a patch?

Goku7 · « **Reply #18 on:** 2002-11-01 23:04:18 »

Quote from: FinalFantasyRox

But if Direct3D on FF7 only enhances the battles, I guess it is not worth trying to get it to work. At least not to me. Can someone confirm that Direct3D *only* enhances battles?
Thanks.

Well, that is a good question. The answer is that hardware acceleration does alot more for FF7 than enhance the battles. Software rendering mode does not do Bilinear filtering on the polygons (aka "primitives"), resulting in a look that resembles the PSX, only playing at 640x480 (well, if you're running software mode in that res, at least), and puts a great load on the CPU. Ever try running the Yamaha Softsynth for the music and running the game in software mode at 640x480? The processor has to work on both sound and music, and gets really ineffiecent, and would probably kill a pentium 100 with a framerate somewhere in the negative numbers.

Hardware acceleration runs everything using the video card as much as it can, and greatly reduces the load on the CPU, as you probably already know. It allow uses Bilinear filtering on all primitives, and in some cases, it'll use bilinear filtering on the pre-rendered backgrounds (I think it does this usually in the case of 3Dfx cards, though I'm also willing to bet that your card would do it to.). Now, what bilinear filtering does is blur the textures on the primitives, resulting in a less ruff-looking image.

While FF7 may not use very many textures, I think bilinear filtering is also applied to primitives that just have a color for their "texture", meaning even those primitives that make up the field models can have a smoother look, too.

FinalFantasyRox · « **Reply #19 on:** 2002-11-01 23:25:06 »

Oh, so it enhances others things, too? I guess I didn't play it as much to notice those things.

Well, I'm not trying to get hardware acceleration working on my old Pentium computer. I just got it out of the garage, installed Windows 98 on it, took my ATI card from the Windows 2000 system and temporarily installed it on the old system. I did this because I wanted to see if my CDs were damaged in anyway (I was curious when it was crashing in Windows 2000). It worked on Windows 98, with very bad performance though because it is a very weak system. So my CDs are okay. It is Windows 2000 that is giving me the problem.

I was thinking to upgrade to XP because I hear people are having better luck running older games on XP, but my system (450MHz; 128MB SDRAM) wouldn't handle XP well.

FinalFantasyRox · « **Reply #20 on:** 2002-11-01 23:27:41 »

I just tried that 9 MB XP patch. When I ran the .exe, I chose 'English', but then it gave an error saying I don't have FF7 installed.

I guess it really is for XP and nothing less.

Aaron · « **Reply #21 on:** 2002-11-02 01:06:27 »

I think we decided that the FF7 XP patch was not a good idea.

FinalFantasyRox · « **Reply #22 on:** 2002-11-02 02:03:19 »

Hehe. Yeah. It doesn't do anything. I just hope the "error" isn't a fake error and the ffviixp.exe does more things like a trojan.

anyway, i found a driver from a person called bigz and i installed it. i got extra, extra options in settings. im gonna try to play around with it and see if it works.

if i can't figure it out i might post screenshots of it and see if any of you know how to configure it.

FinalFantasyRox · « **Reply #23 on:** 2002-11-02 04:23:48 »

Ahh, forget it! This new driver not only doesn't work with FF7, it doesn't work with any other game. That's it. No more. I am grateful that Software Rendering mode works on 2000.

Thanks everyone for all the information, help, tips, and etc. Out of all this I know that I'm never again going to purchase an ATI card. :erm:

See you guys around. Take care.

tekwiz99 · « **Reply #24 on:** 2002-11-02 12:41:48 »

well, at least this guy is happy!