The Great FF7 FAQ (now outdated)

[Beautiful_Intended]

Tried again the patches and unchecked the 8-bit from Rivatuner but the problem is still there.Why can't i find a fix for these stupid problems with both FF7 and FF8?

[Goku7]

Tried again the patches and unchecked the 8-bit from Rivatuner but the problem is still there.Why can't i find a fix for these stupid problems with both FF7 and FF8?

Because, as near as I can tell, the bulk of the games' 3D code caters to old DX5 and DX6 video cards -- FF7 catering more to the DX5 era than DX6.

What does this mean?  FF7's using old DX5 commands and code syntax -- and modern cards aren't exactly designed around that DX5 era of programming anymore.  Sure, DX is uber-backwards compatible, and sure, in terms of hardware features modern cards should have everything a DX5 card used, but if the company's driver programmers don't bother to implement support for the way DX5 did things, then FF7 is gonna have problems.

FF8's problem is somewhat less dramatic because its newer than FF7, but still the same idea, only that it uses DX6 era code.

Well, that's my 2 cents.

[Threesixty]

Umm....
as far as your Rivatuner comment about disabling the 8 bit pallet.

First of all I'm not so sure Rivatuner works with Nvidia's latest drivers. And second of all, the 8 bit pallet is already disabled from Nvidia, it seems. The FF7config Test, thing would have said Passed, if the 8 bit pallet was enabled.

I'll probably test the 71.89's, tonight.... maybe.
To see what, changes.

[EmperorSteele]

Theres a new version of rivatuner which supports the 7x.xx series.  I dont think you even have to edit the config file because it seems to come with the 2x2 fsaa mode already.

However, on my 6600gt, i still get neon lines when i use it =/

[Threesixty]

Well, I just played FF7PC with the 71.89's....and don't see anything wrong. The only black thing I see is a black frame about an 1" wide, on the bottom of the monitor... and that has always been there, I think.

No layering problem, though.

And again, this is also with a 6600GT, with all the driver settings set to default...which pretty much means, application controlled.
Don't know what to tell you.

[Beautiful_Intended]

Now i'm really starting to lose my hopes.At last it looks like it's over and nobody can help me.Anyway if someone has any solutions to tell me i'd be grateful.

[Goku7]

...Buy a Voodoo2?  

[Beautiful_Intended]

Shall I leave my new Geforce 6800 GT I can't.But I'm going to take an old computer to make start the old games...

[Goku7]

Leave your current card?  Heh, you wouldn't need to do that.

You see, a Voodoo2 will PIGGYBACK on top of your current video card.  You can run both conncurrently -- the video cable from the GeForce should connect to the V2 instead of the monitor, and then you use a separate video cable to connect the V2 to the monitor, resulting in a passthru configuration.  The V2 will only take primary control of the video signal only if it is chosen for 3D rendering.  The GeForce will remain the default 3D card that games will pick up, so you can essentially have your cake and eat it too.

[Beautiful_Intended]

Thanks for the advice Goku.I'll try...

[Matty]

Well, the subject out to be pretty self explanitory as to what my problem is, but i will elaborate a little on it.  I added a few weapons for early use, and when I tried to save, an error message popped up and now I can't load any save files at all.  The only thing availabe to click on are the little ...  things and the only availabe lave file is "save00.ff7" and a error pops up saying the save file cannot be opened.  What the heck happened and what should I do?

[potatopopper]

I am using a radeon 9800 pro in my pc and I have got FF7 to work just fine using patch v1.02. But the thing is, I have a geforce3 lying around somewhere  and I hate having the grainy backgrounds. So before I go putting that geforce3 back in, I gotta ask something to make sure. Will the backgrounds not be grainy if I use my geforce3 and use the rivatuner and what not to get 8-bit palleted textures working?; otherwise, I don't really want to bother.

[EmperorSteele]

Define "grainy" o_O

[potatopopper]

Grainy...lets see how I can explain this. Well, let me first start by saying I have FF7 for playstation as well. But the 2D backgrounds look very pixelated and grainy on the pc, where as the playstation version had photo-like backgrounds. So what I mean is that it appears as though the pixels have been stretched out (without a pixel smoothing rendering ability, like on emulators) to make aweful looking backgrounds. I'll post a picture of what I mean to clarify.

http://potatopopper.tripod.com/
 - This picture is enlarged from the 640 x 480 picture fraps took so you could really see it, but it looks exactly like this even blown up. The background images look really aweful compared to playstation FF7 played on the television.

[EmperorSteele]

Aahh

You men "Pixelated"

Yeah, nothigns gonna fix that.  The backgroudns are optimized for half of full-screen (which, on a tv, is great, becasue TVs actua;;y haev a very small resolution).

A newer video card will only make the backgrounds WORSE, because it'll chop the BG up into 16x16 squares and outlines parts of them with neon colors o_O

if you use the geforce 3, you can at least prolly get FSAA working and then the characters at least wont look so blocky =)

[potatopopper]

ah darn then. Thanks for the replies about my concern Steele. I think I'll hook a tv up to my computer and just play on that then.

[voodoo47]

You see, a Voodoo2 will PIGGYBACK on top of your current video card.  You can run both conncurrently -- the video cable from the GeForce should connect to the V2 instead of the monitor, and then you use a separate video cable to connect the V2 to the monitor, resulting in a passthru configuration.  The V2 will only take primary control of the video signal only if it is chosen for 3D rendering.  The GeForce will remain the default 3D card that games will pick up, so you can essentially have your cake and eat it too.

note that you will need a special driver that supports Voodoo2 D3D under xp if you want to play FF7..see here.

[Winter]

Hello,

I'm new here, but not new to the FF7 scene

Avoiding the 8-palleted textures support is easy, I suggest to install appropriate drivers (up to 66.81, later seems to doesn't have this option).

But what about the fonts in the game? Easy... I recommend you to use the aTuner program. Just turn the maximum option for FSAA on the left and on the right column (but don't use anisotropic filtering). It worked for me and my fonts are much better in the game.

------

P.S: Try using 2x2 multisampling, works great.

Mod Edit: Don't double-post, please.

[voodoo47]

hmm,just had a look at this FAQ,and I have something that may be worth mentioning,my minigames were insanely fast (the bike minigame was over in only few seconds),but using a refresh of 85Hz and turning V-sync on has slowed it down to much more acceptable levels.lower refreshes would probably slow it down even more,but playing at 60Hz sux.

[final slash]

What about these weird crashes/freezes like the cosmo canyon, gondola and possibly the execution scene (haven't made it that far yet but i dread to think of another crash).  XP really f***s this game up mayne.

[James Pond]

What about the crashes?

You can just do what everyone else does if you get them, post the save file and hope someone here has the game installed >_>

*Basks in his own crashless glory*

Strange... I have an Identical setup to my friends PC and his crashes, yet mine doesn't, the only thing different is my memory is corsair value, and his is Kingston Hyper-X

[final slash]

Dziugo has been helping me with my crashes.... thank god.  Just recovered from the gondola crash.... any more i can expect down the road?

[dziugo]

Tried to switch memory modules?

The exact configuration... same OS (i presume)... Do you have identical FF7-copies? Tried to install his copy on your PC already?

[Aaron]

Sometimes you may have success putting the game in software rendering or lower resolution and lowering the sound hardware accelleration level in dxdiag.  However, we don't really have a solution to those problems if that doesn't work, except to try a different computer or get someone else to play your save file through the trouble area.

[cmay119]

Hey all, I just wanted to add my $.02 this topic. This is all based off my experience thus far playing this game and making it work with newer hardware. This is just a quick write up for things to do to get this game working crash free with a 6x00 series card and Windows XP. Note, I don't have a Radeon card to try these steps with, but I'm confident it should work the same way...

First off, let me second that you should NOT use the so called "Windows XP Patch" It helps with absolutely nothing as far as I can gather.

Now, install the game doing a FULL install not the minimum (I've found this will only cause more problems, besides the games old enough where even the full install shouldn't take up too much space on your HDD. Also, avoid installing the sound plugin (can't remember the name). This sound plugin made my game and computer unstable.

Once you've installed the game, apply the 1.02 Patch. Go into the FF7 Config. and Check the box next to NVIDIA and select TNT. Now Direct3D Hardware rendering will be enabled and your graphics adaptor will now render the images instead of your CPU.

Now, Download and install Rivatuner available at guru3d.com among other places (just google it ). Go into the Directdraw and Direct3D settings>Click the Textures tab, and disable or uncheck the "8-Bit palette textures" Note you can do this for both DX7 Apps, along with DX8.1+ Apps as well, I've found you only need to disable for DX7 apps.

*NOTE* It is not possible to get FSAA to work with the 6800 series cards (unless you're using the Hi-Res patch) I don't know if this applies to the 6600 series, but I would assume it does as well. So save yourself the hassle and DO NOT apply the changes to the .cfg file of rivatuner posted on the first page of this faq. It will create the grid-line effect if you do. I've tried several sets of drivers to find out for sure and they all failed at getting AA and this game to run without the gridline effect.

*NOTE* Speaking of trying several different sets of drivers, I've tested the 77.76 Driver set, the 71.84 Driver set, the 77.13 and the 72.12. Out of all of these. Only the 71.84 driver set fully got rid of the Gridline effect after disabling 8-bit palette textures and FSAA. One thing that bugs me about the 71.84's is that it seems to report the video card temperatures really high, even at idle it was saying the card was around 65C while any other driver set I used was reporting about 10-15C lower at idle.

Now, if you've followed these instructions and are using the 71.84 drivers, you should be Gridline free, but you might not be fully crash free. There are still 2 things you can do to prevent crashes in the future.

The first and more popular thing is to apply the Chocobo patch. You can download it from qhimm.com just do a search and you should find the patch, or you can look in the "Popular Programs" sticky to download that as well. I myself had to apply the Chocobo patch to stop the game from crashing whether just watching a chocobo race or racing in it myself, both times would crash. This patch totally resolved that issue.

The other tweak you can do, which helped me tremendously in a lot of cases was to pull the .avi (Movie files) off the CDROM and put them on your HDD. You than do a simple registry tweak to tell the game to not load the movies from the disk but the directory that you placed the copied .avi files to. The tutorial on how to do this is located at this link: http://www.ff7-universe.com/ go to downloads, and at the very bottom you'll see the write up. Thanks to EmporerSteele for the write up
Doing this has resolved some movie crashes that I was having, and it also makes the play back of the movies a lot smoother.

If you're experiencing the "Upside down" movie problem, you can download the corresponding patch that's located on page one of this thread.

If you're still experiencing problems after doing all of the above steps. Create a thread here, and try to be as thorough as possible about what problems you are having. Example the subject line shouldn't say OMG!!!1 WTF!!! CRAsH!

It should say somthing like: "1.02Patch applied and 8-bit disabled still getting gridline effect". ect. ect.

The people on this forum are very intelligent (especially at getting this game to run properly ) Listen to what they have to say and you'll get through your problems just fine.

Sorry if this post is long-winded or if it didn't help you at all. I'm just trying to make it easier for people who have a similar setup as me and spare them hours of frustration.

My Apologies to anyone I didn't recognize through out this post, I take no credit for any of the patches/tweaks mentioned in this post. Thank you.

EDIT: I forgot to add a little segment about setting the Compatibility of the FF7.exe.

First, if you are unsure how to do this, click start>Programs>Final Fantasy VII. Locate the FF7.exe and Right-Click on it. select properties and a menu screen should appear. Click the Compatibility tab at the top and check the box that says: "Run this program in compatibility mode for..."
You now have a drop down menu available to select Windows 95, Windows 98/Me or Windows 2000. For me, Windows 98/Me seemed to get rid of any crashes that still seemed to occur. Although, I'm now running the Hi-Res Patch, and that seems to like the compatibility mode of Windows 95 instead of 98/Me. With 98/Me selected with the Hi-Res patch, the game would just suddenly crash about every 20 Minutes (in or out of battle).

Windows 2000 Compatibility mode did not work very well at all for me. So I suggest avoiding that one, but it may work for you, so as a last ditch effort if everything else fails try it.

EDIT #2: Hmm, what a coincidence. I was talking about how it seemed like Windows 95 Compatibility mode seemed to be more stable with the Hi-Res patch, but the game started crashing on Gaea's cliff. So I now have it set to Windows 98/Me compatibility mode and it has been crash free since...