Messages

1

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Re: FF8 Models, How did Qhimm rip them?

« on: 2009-02-06 10:36:09 »

Ah, then I take my apology back  . I'm still getting a little confused by language barrier, you know.

With Biturn its like I don't plan to work on it, at least not in 2009. But if there would be someone who wants Biturn to read/write some data and that making it work would not take me long time ( there would be precise specifications and enough test data ) then I would gladly update Biturn.

2

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Re: FF8 Models, How did Qhimm rip them?

« on: 2009-02-05 14:40:06 »

Hi Koral, sorry about the misunderstanding, I have forgotten few things from back then. I did not want to offend anyone if that happened. Now I see that Qhimm did post quite a specification for field models.

3

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Re: FF8 Models, How did Qhimm rip them?

« on: 2009-02-03 12:45:22 »

Hi, I'll add what I know.

- there is no specification of FF8 model format. Neither in-battle nor in-field(map) models.

- there have been some tries to decode FF8 format but with no final result. There were some viewers but no exporter.

- someone called "Kvaks" has created a "FF8 battle model viewer" or "Gerakl character editor", it was published at site kvaks.narod.ru. Site is still up, but viewer links are down. I have downloaded it back then, so here it is ( not original but smaller version of archive, original contained lots of models but it was 16mb, so I have removed most of models and now its 600kb to download ) : http://mirror.mypage.sk/kvaks.narod.ru/dir.php . It can view models and animate them. No export possibility. Author did not reply my e-mails back then.

- because there is no known specification, Biturn can't view most of ff8 models. It can read field models but with incorrect bone setup and no animation. It can read some things from battle models, but not much, usually only textures, few polygons, one object and rest is mess.

- Qhimm showed some screenshots but haven't released any program or specs so far

- if you'll be able to decode ff8 files I'll be happy to add ability to read it into Biturn, so it can be exported to various other formats. It will take some time as I'm busy with other projects. I think I have published all I know about the both battle and field 3D model formats in the forum threads below. If not and you're willing to continue on working on the formats post me a Personal Message and I'll sum you up all my info.

Some more reading (which I already posted in other threads):

http://ffab.mypage.sk/viewtopic.php?t=34 "ff8 mch file"
http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=2518.0 "Cracking" FFVIII model data"
http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=3694.0 "FF8 3D battle models update"
http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=4797.0 "ff8 models"
http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=5586.0 "Final Fantasy VIII Model Switcher?"
http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=6354.0 "FF8 model progress"
http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=6961.0 "FF8 Field Models"
http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=7524.0 "FF8 Models?"

4

Troubleshooting / Re: [Request] ff8 programs

« on: 2009-02-03 08:07:08 »

Hi, I have made a mirror of some webpages http://mirror.mypage.sk/ and I see that there is compiled Garden on ficedula's site, and some other translation software 'Translhextion - hexeditor' on RobinColly's site.

5

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Re: [FF7 Batlle model] Weapons...

« on: 2008-01-09 08:29:10 »

Can someone show an example of the animation data file, and how do you read it ?
It would be sufficient to tell me position in the file where you find 2nd, 3rd and 4th frame ( so I can check what am I doing wrong because I can't find any frame past first one ). Thanks !

6

Archive / Re: Final Fantasy 7 Battle Skeleton

« on: 2008-01-07 11:59:51 »

Hi Eteus
first of all, it can be done, but it has limitations. Whole model with the skeleton can be exported to 2 formats - LWO6.5 = Lightwave format and ASE = 3DStudio MAX text format. Maybe even .TXT / .MS3D = Milkshape format can hold those skeletons, but I'm not sure about that. File format 3DS is very old and I think that it can't hold skeleton information.

I worked with models bound to skeletons and it works really well. I tried both Lightwave and 3DS MAX. You can see screenshots of the renders in the "FF7 models to 3ds Max" thread ( see link below ). By the way Biturn can export model with skeleton with only one position of the frame of the animation file ( anyhow, so far it can't read any animations besides of first frame ).

You can read more about this in these threads:
http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=2819
http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=4404
some more links:
http://mirex.mypage.sk/RNR/rnr.php?action=show_notes&parentid=97

To get the bone positions in the human-readable numbers you can either:

- Export model with skeleton to .ASE format, which is text format. You should be able to find skeleton bone joints as geometry objects named "root" or "b<joint number>". They should be stored on start of the file.

- Or even easier way - open the FF7 model in Biturn and click on 'Data info' button. You should be able to browse through all the model data there. In the first combo select 'joints' to see position of bone joints, 'bones' to see how are they connected and to see length of the bones, or 'bone animation' to see rotation of the bones


But another thing is that you say "in Bitturn, when you load one of the xxAA files, it loads the individual pieces for you," ... does that mean that you don't see whole model in meaningfull position, when you open xxAA file in Biturn ? You should see model completely as it should look like, for example as this one (Joker):


If you see only pieces, that would mean that you're probably missing animation file xxDA of the model. Try to extract it, and place it along the model files.

Hope this info helped you.

7

Completely Unrelated / Re: PC Games similiar to Final Fantasy?

« on: 2008-01-07 11:23:11 »

I will ask my brother, he liked to play RPG's. Right now I remember only one, it was called "Septerra Core".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Septerra_Core

--edit--
my brother also recommends 'Star Ocean' though it was probably not released on PC, but you can still play it in PSX emulators on PC.

8

Completely Unrelated / Re: The best linux for starters?

« on: 2007-12-17 11:35:09 »

Yes gaming on linux is a little harder. You're not able to play all the games as on linux. But there ARE possibilities.

As I mentioned before, see this link, and links for other articles on bottom of the page:
http://kahvipapu.com/blog/2007/06/16/linux-gaming-part-one-first-person-shooters/

There are quite few games to start with.

Then there is emulation. DosBox for old dos games, Wine for windows games, and if Wine has problems you can try a Cedega emulator which should work a lot better.

You can try to look here http://kyberia.sk/id/3393621/ to find some more links to games (mind the different language).

9

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Re: [FF7 Batlle model] Weapons...

« on: 2007-11-29 14:54:02 »

very nice news !

can you tell us how do you decode all of the model animations ? from what I know so far, only first animation frame is decoded properly, and we don't know how to move on to next animation / where does it start.

10

Completely Unrelated / Re: The best linux for starters?

« on: 2007-11-09 08:39:47 »

I recommend Ubuntu. One year ago, I was in the same situation, and I went with Ubuntu, and it works well for me. I did not need to boot to windows partition for more than 3 months now, ubuntu has all the software I need. ( though, some of the software was better on Windows, but I still can find something as replacement. Well free software is sometimes a little worse than commercial software ).
There are even some good working games on unix ! Right now I'm playing Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, and Open Transport Tycoon Deluxe, both of them work flawlessly.
One of many webs that show unix games: http://kahvipapu.com/blog/2007/06/16/linux-gaming-part-one-first-person-shooters/


Zophixan: on ubuntu there is graphic tool "Synaptic" (Synaptic package manager) which lists you all the available packages, and also displays the dependencies.
There is also command line tool "apt-get" which works in very similair way.

11

Archive / Re: Compiling FF9 Viewer from source code - FF9Viewer.pch missing?

« on: 2007-11-09 08:21:23 »

Hi.

there should be no errors in those files (well at least no errors that should you stop from compiling). You are probably missing some includes. Try to add #include "stdafx.h" to your main cpp file, and see if "stdafx.h" in your project contains #include <windows.h>

If you have any more problems, then get the project into single archive, place it somewhere on internet, and I'll get it for you into compilable state. I have VS2005 right here.

12

Troubleshooting / Re: FFVIII Crash

« on: 2007-09-07 07:15:53 »

Hi, I'm not familiar with this problem, but from what I was reading on the forums I think that you can:
- try to install / copy the movies to harddisk ( http://www.ff7-universe.com/Downloads/FF7Movietweak.txt )
- if movies are on harddisk and it still crashes, and you are able to find the faulty .avi try to replace it with another, working .avi
- if nothing helps, post your game save file here, and maybe there will be someone here who will play it for you untill after the FMV.
http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=6843.0

maybe you could look for advices in other threads with similair problem, try using search for "movie crash" or "copy movies to disk"

13

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Re: FF8 Field Models

« on: 2007-08-24 12:45:24 »

Hi, I don't have any news. I can only link you to older threads, which you probably read already:


http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=2518.0
http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=3694.0
http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=4797.0
http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=6354.0
http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=5586.0

14

Troubleshooting / Re: Fonts in FFVII (translation)

« on: 2007-08-02 05:15:16 »

Please post some screenshots from the game how "unreadable" are the results.

15

Troubleshooting / Re: ASE plugin and Max 7

« on: 2007-08-02 05:14:11 »

Look here: http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=4404

16

Completely Unrelated / Re: Speech Comparison/Recognition

« on: 2007-07-30 12:26:15 »

I would say that there should be a free c++ library with API for voice recognition somewhere on the internet.
After converting the input from microphone to words I would compare it with the spell strings with some function that can tell you distance of two strings ( http://www.cut-the-knot.org/do_you_know/Strings.shtml ) as  microphone input and voice recognition won't be perfect.

But I think that it will not work well anyhow and number of successfull casts will be low. Voice recognition is still inperfect and users usually have their microphones placed on various places and not set up correctly which degrades voice quality.

17

FF7 Tools / [FF7/FF8] Archive Extractor - Unmass (w0.92, Sourcecode)

« on: 2007-07-23 19:53:58 »

Hello

I'd like to announce that one of my tools - Unmass - has been released with its sourcecode under GNU GPL licence. So if there is someone interested to see the sourcecode or to upgrade it please see this url: Unmass

It should be also added to the debian devel-games repositories soon.

18

Troubleshooting / Re: Biturn crash

« on: 2007-07-20 05:49:59 »

Hi
reason for that not-crashing could be that when you run it with the parameter then its current directory changes to C:\

so when you changed your language settings it did not crash anymore ? Interesting. Did it crash even in directories with only english characters ?

I'll have to investigate this further. Please can you investigate which exact moment causes it to crash ? Is it when you try to expand the directory tree on the left ? Or when you click on some directory ? Does it crash also when you click on different drive letter ?

19

Troubleshooting / Re: Battle Magic Animations / Graphics?

« on: 2007-07-19 09:00:33 »

I believe there is no such program which would display the animations
Maybe you can find some images on the http://ffonline.com/ff7/

20

General Discussion / Re: QhimmWiki Link's are down

« on: 2007-07-19 08:58:23 »

I have updated the Unmass link, so it points to the Unmass webpage instead directly to the program, I hope you won't mind.

21

Troubleshooting / Re: Biturn crash

« on: 2007-07-19 08:39:15 »

Hi taarna23
do you know how to run the program with command-line arguments ? Try to run Biturn.exe with parameter "/logheavy". That will create a log file where Biturn stores what it does. It will be located in the same directory as the program, and it should be file "biturn.log". Please view this file with notepad, and post what is inside so I can see what was going on when it crashed.

Are you using asian version of windows ? I think that I heard of such problem, when you tried to start Biturn in directory path, which contained non-english characters. Try moving Biturn directory to root of your drive ( C:\Biturn ) and try to run it there.

22

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Re: .a files question

« on: 2007-06-26 13:34:43 »

It can be done easily by some basic 3D math. I'll post it here when I get to see my code.

To sum it up:
1) place the bone point somewhere into the space - from 1.75 create a point (0, 1.75, 0)
2) rotate the point by the angles (0,0,270), which can result in (0, 0, 1.75). ( rotating something by 270 degrees is the same as rotating it by -90 degrees which is clearly moving the point from one axis to another )

important thing is - order of performed rotations.

23

Archive / Re: Animation File List

« on: 2007-05-30 10:50:09 »

Scorpicus:
Hi, I have some things abou animations described in my docs, see them here: http://mirex.mypage.sk/index.php?selected=2

24

Q-Gears / Re: Battle Environments

« on: 2007-05-30 09:59:36 »

I was just wondering, as a newb of course, if it would be possible for battle environments to be completely remade?

In my opinion it is absolutely possible, as battle locations are textured models just like any other. Each location is a group of single 3D files in .P format with textures.

25

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Re: Problems with fread

« on: 2007-05-16 08:47:17 »

Hi, is the problem solved or not ?

Anyhow, lets try to clear things up. malloc works also in C++, but it has to be used correctly. You must not use malloc for allocating the C++ classes (objects). Those have to be allocated through 'new' operator, which also calls class constructors. Then they have to be freed through 'delete' call which will call its destructor. If you would have defined some class A, and then you would allocate it through malloc like A* pA = malloc( sizeof( A ) ); it could cause some headaches. I'm not sure what problems does it cause, but it does. It should be alloced like A* pA = new A;

about the fread() call - I can't answer properly when I don't know what are the parameter types, and how are they used. Can you post some code before the fread() call ?

Also, in case that 'Polygons' variable is a array of classes, this could be causing the problems. Classes can have some hidden variables so its not good to overwrite them as a whole, for example if you have class A;  A  a; fread( &a, sizeof( a ), 1, file ); or memset( &a, 0, sizeof( a ) ); could cause overwriting its internal variables.