Custom graphics driver for FF7/FF8 [v.1-.7.6]

[Kudistos Megistos]

Re-render?  Like the same exact backgrounds just higher resolution?  Because that would be fantastic.

That's what's happening over in the Team Avalanche forum:

http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=9235.0

Progress is slow, since there are so many of the bloody things, but they're looking pretty good now.

[Amakyusa]

Can someone give me the directions on how make this driver work on FF8?

[sideparker]

is it possible to set the fps limit for battles/world area/etc so that the game will run faster?

[Tekkie.X]

IIRC this was discussed as being possibly but utterly pointless as the animations would be sped up to match the framerate.

Even if you did remove the limit and stopped it affecting the animations it won't look any smoother or faster.

[sl1982]

The only way this could theoretically make any improvement on the game is if you could make the game not speed up and if you could redo the animations to take into account the extra frames, or somehow interpolate frames in between the frames that are there.

[sideparker]

IIRC this was discussed as being possibly but utterly pointless as the animations would be sped up to match the framerate.

Even if you did remove the limit and stopped it affecting the animations it won't look any smoother or faster.

The only way this could theoretically make any improvement on the game is if you could make the game not speed up and if you could redo the animations to take into account the extra frames, or somehow interpolate frames in between the frames that are there.

i see, but what if i actually want the game to speed up?

[sl1982]

Then ask aali if he is willing to implement it.

[Aali]

I am not willing to implement a "turbo button", end of discussion

I have considered the possibility of interpolating frames, the problem is of course that then you need to wait for two frames before being able to render anything. In battle where frames come in at a measly 15 per second this will translate to approximately a 0.15 second delay before anything you do is visible on the screen. That could really take away from any feeling of a "smoother" experience the interpolation itself would provide. I will experiment with this though, it could be worth the effort.

[Mako]

I am not willing to implement a "turbo button", end of discussion

I have considered the possibility of interpolating frames, the problem is of course that then you need to wait for two frames before being able to render anything. In battle where frames come in at a measly 15 per second this will translate to approximately a 0.15 second delay before anything you do is visible on the screen. That could really take away from any feeling of a "smoother" experience the interpolation itself would provide. I will experiment with this though, it could be worth the effort.

Well I can tell interpolating frames in the FMV didn't do anything. In fact it made them look choppy even with filtering. If it helps.

[Goku7]

Hey, long time no see.  Glad to see how well the custom driver has developed since I last came by here -- the new battle interface is totally sweet.  Kudos to Aali. 

My apologies if this was covered already, but I am noticing an intermittant, peculiar error when running this on my Gateway laptop, though.  It's graphics chip is a Radeon 7500Mobile, using OmegaDriver 3.8.252 (The newest set that is still compatible with such legacy hardware -- apparently the newer driver cores simply don't work with this), on WinXP SP3.  Here's the error:




This happens with both 0.7.5b and 0.7.6b, though with 6b I'm also getting massive frameskips during the movies.  Are both errors the result of the (relatively) older drivers, or is this a fixable problem?

[titeguy3]

The frameskips are an issue that most people seem to be having with the latest version. I've even heard a couple of cases of FF7 just crashing while trying to load an FMV with 0.7.6b.

I've never seen that world map issue before, I'd chalk it up to a driver issue, but Aali might have a better idea...does the APP.LOG file in the FF7 directory give any useful information?

[Goku7]

One of the annoying things about intermittent problems is that they never happen when you try to get them on purpose, lol.

Here's an app.log generated when using 6b.  The problem happens much more often in this than it does in 5b.  Obviously, I use 5b more.

Code: [Select]

INFO: FF7/FF8 OpenGL driver version 0.7.6b
INFO: Auto-detected version: FF7 1.02 US English
INFO: ATI Technologies Inc. MOBILITY RADEON 7500 DDR x86/SSE2 1.3.1072 WinXP Release
INFO: No OpenGL 2.0 support detected, shaders won't be available
INFO: Found swap_control extension
INFO: Original resolution 640x480, window size 640x480, output resolution 640x480, internal resolution 640x480
INFO: FFMpeg movie player plugin loaded
INFO: FFMpeg version SVN-r21874, Copyright (c) 2000-2010 Fabrice Bellard, et al.
INFO: No shaders, codecs with YUV output will be slow.
INFO: FF7Music helper plugin loaded
LOCK UNLOCK TEST
MATRIX INITIALIZE
INITIALIZE DD/D3D END
initializing sound...
creating dsound primary buffer
reading audio file
loading static sounds
sound initialized
set music volume: 127
set music volume: 127
Entering MAIN
Exiting MAIN
START OF CREDITS!!!
INFO: D:\FF7\Movies\eidoslogo.avi; truemotion2/pcm_u8 320x240, 15.000000 FPS, duration: 10.133333, frames: 152
set music volume trans: 127->0, step=60
GLITCH: video playback is lagging behind, skipping frames (frame #: 50, skipped: 1, lag: 131.666667)
GLITCH: video playback is lagging behind, skipping frames (frame #: 51, skipped: 2, lag: 95.000000)
GLITCH: video playback is lagging behind, skipping frames (frame #: 53, skipped: 4, lag: 1.666667)
GLITCH: video playback is lagging behind, skipping frames (frame #: 57, skipped: 8, lag: 5.000000)
GLITCH: video playback is lagging behind, skipping frames (frame #: 65, skipped: 16, lag: 42.666667)
GLITCH: skipped 30 frames
END OF CREDITS!!!
Entering MAIN
set music volume: 127
Exiting MAIN
START OF MENU SYSTEM!!!
ERROR: COULD NOT OPEN FILE C:\Program Files\Square Soft, Inc.\Final Fantasy VII\save/save02.ff7
ERROR: COULD NOT OPEN FILE C:\Program Files\Square Soft, Inc.\Final Fantasy VII\save/save03.ff7
ERROR: COULD NOT OPEN FILE C:\Program Files\Square Soft, Inc.\Final Fantasy VII\save/save05.ff7
ERROR: COULD NOT OPEN FILE C:\Program Files\Square Soft, Inc.\Final Fantasy VII\save/save06.ff7
ERROR: COULD NOT OPEN FILE C:\Program Files\Square Soft, Inc.\Final Fantasy VII\save/save08.ff7
END OF MENU SYSTEM!!!
Entering MAIN
Exiting MAIN
-=-=[START OF WORLD MAP!!!]=-=-
stop_sound
cross play music: 0
set music volume trans: 127->0, step=4
set music volume: 127
stop_sound
cross play music: 0
set music volume trans: 127->0, step=4
set music volume: 127
-=-=[END OF WORLD MAP!!!]=-=-
START OF MENU SYSTEM!!!
WM_CLOSE
END OF MENU SYSTEM!!!
Field Quit
UNINITIALIZE DD
END UNINITIALIZE DD

On a side note, the Omegadriver version I use is roughly equivalent to the Catalyst 6.6 release, IIRC.

[Mako]

One of the annoying things about intermittent problems is that they never happen when you try to get them on purpose, lol.

Here's an app.log generated when using 6b.  The problem happens much more often in this than it does in 5b.  Obviously, I use 5b more.

Code: [Select]

INFO: FF7/FF8 OpenGL driver version 0.7.6b
INFO: Auto-detected version: FF7 1.02 US English
INFO: ATI Technologies Inc. MOBILITY RADEON 7500 DDR x86/SSE2 1.3.1072 WinXP Release
INFO: No OpenGL 2.0 support detected, shaders won't be available
INFO: Found swap_control extension
INFO: Original resolution 640x480, window size 640x480, output resolution 640x480, internal resolution 640x480
INFO: FFMpeg movie player plugin loaded
INFO: FFMpeg version SVN-r21874, Copyright (c) 2000-2010 Fabrice Bellard, et al.
INFO: No shaders, codecs with YUV output will be slow.
INFO: FF7Music helper plugin loaded
LOCK UNLOCK TEST
MATRIX INITIALIZE
INITIALIZE DD/D3D END
initializing sound...
creating dsound primary buffer
reading audio file
loading static sounds
sound initialized
set music volume: 127
set music volume: 127
Entering MAIN
Exiting MAIN
START OF CREDITS!!!
INFO: D:\FF7\Movies\eidoslogo.avi; truemotion2/pcm_u8 320x240, 15.000000 FPS, duration: 10.133333, frames: 152
set music volume trans: 127->0, step=60
GLITCH: video playback is lagging behind, skipping frames (frame #: 50, skipped: 1, lag: 131.666667)
GLITCH: video playback is lagging behind, skipping frames (frame #: 51, skipped: 2, lag: 95.000000)
GLITCH: video playback is lagging behind, skipping frames (frame #: 53, skipped: 4, lag: 1.666667)
GLITCH: video playback is lagging behind, skipping frames (frame #: 57, skipped: 8, lag: 5.000000)
GLITCH: video playback is lagging behind, skipping frames (frame #: 65, skipped: 16, lag: 42.666667)
GLITCH: skipped 30 frames
END OF CREDITS!!!
Entering MAIN
set music volume: 127
Exiting MAIN
START OF MENU SYSTEM!!!
ERROR: COULD NOT OPEN FILE C:\Program Files\Square Soft, Inc.\Final Fantasy VII\save/save02.ff7
ERROR: COULD NOT OPEN FILE C:\Program Files\Square Soft, Inc.\Final Fantasy VII\save/save03.ff7
ERROR: COULD NOT OPEN FILE C:\Program Files\Square Soft, Inc.\Final Fantasy VII\save/save05.ff7
ERROR: COULD NOT OPEN FILE C:\Program Files\Square Soft, Inc.\Final Fantasy VII\save/save06.ff7
ERROR: COULD NOT OPEN FILE C:\Program Files\Square Soft, Inc.\Final Fantasy VII\save/save08.ff7
END OF MENU SYSTEM!!!
Entering MAIN
Exiting MAIN
-=-=[START OF WORLD MAP!!!]=-=-
stop_sound
cross play music: 0
set music volume trans: 127->0, step=4
set music volume: 127
stop_sound
cross play music: 0
set music volume trans: 127->0, step=4
set music volume: 127
-=-=[END OF WORLD MAP!!!]=-=-
START OF MENU SYSTEM!!!
WM_CLOSE
END OF MENU SYSTEM!!!
Field Quit
UNINITIALIZE DD
END UNINITIALIZE DD


I remember having nothing but problems with that gfx card when setting this game up for a friend. The problem may be that your card does not have a max texture size check and it appears white as does the screen on certain resolution. I don't think there's a fix for windows "Linux maybe" try adjusting the resolution to a lower resolution maybe that will help. Good Luck.

[Goku7]

The card can handle 2k x 2k textures, and last I heard, textures that size were not in use when FF7 was made.  Other than that, I'm running the game in its original 640x480 resolution with 4xFSAA.  For a game as old as this one, the card can handle the 4xFSAA overhead.

I have gotten the GL:Invalid Value message, so I think this card can't do NPOT (that's Non-Power-of-Two, right?) textures.

[Mako]

The card can handle 2k x 2k textures, and last I heard, textures that size were not in use when FF7 was made.  Other than that, I'm running the game in its original 640x480 resolution with 4xFSAA.  For a game as old as this one, the card can handle the 4xFSAA overhead.

I have gotten the GL:Invalid Value message, so I think this card can't do NPOT (that's Non-Power-of-Two, right?) textures.

Nope you are right I was wrong I found your issue on a earlier post (assumed your gfx card supported NPOT textures) sorry I am not able to help.

[Goku7]

Nope you are right I was wrong I found your issue on a earlier post (assumed your gfx card supported NPOT textures) sorry I am not able to help.

Meh, its OK.  Looks like I'll have to wait for Aali to see this and give a diagnosis.  Right now my money's on the Radeon drivers being the culprit; however, the problem also manifests as having huge areas of the field screens show up white, so maybe its an 8-bit Paletted Textures thing?

[Aali]

People are still hung up on 8-bit paletted textures? It hasn't been supported or used for like 10 years now. 1.02 with the nvidia option ticked doesn't even try to use it, the custom driver only ever uses 32-bit BGRA textures. Anyway, it should be a problem with the drivers/graphics card since I have never seen it before and it's not happening to anyone else.

The frameskip problem is a bit weird though, it doesn't happen to me and it seems quite random. If I can't find anything wrong with it I will just make it an opt-in setting.

[Amakyusa]

I've intalled the aali's driver in ff8.

Everething seems works fine but the internal resolution isn't changing.

The APP.log is as follows:
---------------

INFO: FF7/FF8 OpenGL driver version 0.7.6b
INFO: Auto-detected version: FF8 1.2 US English (Nvidia)
INFO: NVIDIA Corporation GeForce 9600 GT/PCI/SSE2 3.2.0
INFO: OpenGL 2.0 support detected
INFO: Found swap_control extension
INFO: Texture compression not supported
INFO: Original resolution 640x480, window size 1152x864, output resolution 1152x864, internal resolution 640x480
INFO: No FBO support, using slow scaling/postprocessing path
MATRIX INITIALIZE
INITIALIZING SOUND...
  initializing direct sound
  EAXDirectSoundCreate
  creating primary buffer
  initializing audio data
  OK
  initializing streaming
SOUND INITIALIZED
DIRECT MUSIC - Enumerating Ports...
PORT 0: Microsoft MIDI Mapper [Emulado]
GUID={0x59c6b0d6,0x6eff,0x466c,0x96,0xb2,0xc0,0x38,0xc5,0xfb,0x2d,0x73}
PORT 1: Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth [Emulado]
GUID={0xe7e7fddf,0x9906,0x4bcf,0xa3,0x6,0xf9,0x4b,0x83,0xcf,0x7b,0xa8}
PORT 2: Microsoft Synthesizer
GUID={0x58c2b4d0,0x46e7,0x11d1,0x89,0xac,0x0,0xa0,0xc9,0x5,0x41,0x29}
Creating Port1...
    Microsoft Synthesizer
  Port1 supports XG data
BinkClose
SdMusicPlay ()
sd_music_play (number=0, song_id=79, volume=0)
midi_play...
Stopping Performance
Loading DLS...
Playing Segment
midi_play successful
WM_CLOSE

Releasing Performance...


Releasing Loader...


Releasing Port1...


Releasing DirectMusic interface...

Releasing COM...

-------------

Any ideas?

Thx in advance.



EDIT:  I Figured out....since the window resolutions isn't a multiple of the original resolution (both x and y should be at leas => than 1280x960), it can't multiply...I was using 1152x864.

Just configured the windows size to 1280x1024 and everything works fine.....

[Changeling]

I don't believe I had ever emulated FFVII, so I gave it a shot.  And wow, the backgrounds are beautiful, but of course there is no Z-buffer so the 3D animation jumps around, you know what I mean.

But it gave me an idea.  What exactly is the 'Screen Smooth' filter in Pete's D3D plugin?  It just blurs the image a little bit.  It's no Bi-linear or 2XSai or anything like that.  Could we use this method?  Everything won't be as clear but it will blur and smooth out the pixelated backgrounds.

As for your driver Aali.  The linear filtering option is the only way to remove the pixelation in 3D on my machine.  And the battle swirl is real slow.  I have an ATI x800 with a crappy OpenGL driver.  I installed the latest Catalyst, 10. something.

But my biggest question is and I've asked this before, why can't we do this in Direct3D instead of OpenGL?  It's more compatible, everyone could use it.

[Goku7]

People are still hung up on 8-bit paletted textures? It hasn't been supported or used for like 10 years now.

Yes, that is correct; however, I figured that FF7 originally used it, that it meant some texture data was stored that way, which would mean your driver would have to interpret it or something -- I was just throwin' it out there as a shot in the dark.

1.02 with the nvidia option ticked doesn't even try to use it, the custom driver only ever uses 32-bit BGRA textures.

That's certainly a format the Radeon7500Mobile can handle.  The thing's got 64mb VRAM, so its not like its running out of texture memory either.  It also happens with and without FSAA.

Anyway, it should be a problem with the drivers/graphics card since I have never seen it before and it's not happening to anyone else.

That's what I suspected, but I had wanted to rule out any other cause.  As I've said, the drivers are quite old -- equivalent to the 6.6 Catalyst, I think.  Newer driver sets simply won't support the hardware, its too old.  That's what I get for having a hand me down laptop, I guess.

[Kranmer]

IIRC this was discussed as being possibly but utterly pointless as the animations would be sped up to match the framerate.

Even if you did remove the limit and stopped it affecting the animations it won't look any smoother or faster.

The only way this could theoretically make any improvement on the game is if you could make the game not speed up and if you could redo the animations to take into account the extra frames, or somehow interpolate frames in between the frames that are there.

i see, but what if i actually want the game to speed up?

Actually i am working on putting a speedhack into the game, "Dark Bytes" generic speed hack seems compatible, now all i need to do is to make the speedhack run with the game (which isn't hard but the method i use to inject the speedhack into ff7 is considered a virus by a lot of virus scanners so i am having to try other methods to try and make it so it isnt like a virus).
Anyway here is a quick youtube video of the hack working
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nW-p7_jTB-A
It has changeable speeds so i can actually change speed in the middle of playing the game if i want it to run faster or slower.
Also the video just shows it slightly faster then normal, it can be made even faster then that (the fastest i have gotten it to go and stay stable is around 88fps in battles, 130fps in field and 173fps in the menu).

[Idec Sdawkminn]

For me, that FPS are perfect while playing and even while recording with FRAPS, except for in battle. The FPS while recording in battle goes down to 13 (or 14 if I lower the resolution). It's not that big of a deal because I can increase the video framerate after recording, but then I have to use different sound because it won't match the video if I do that. And the timer during the Emerald Weapon battle still goes the same speed regardless of the lowered framerate, so speeding it up also speeds up the timer.

This is a bit confusing since I have a quad core AMD Phenom II and a Radeon video card with 1GB that can play Prototype at full resolution and effects without any slowdown.

[Kranmer]

For me, that FPS are perfect while playing and even while recording with FRAPS, except for in battle. The FPS while recording in battle goes down to 13 (or 14 if I lower the resolution). It's not that big of a deal because I can increase the video framerate after recording, but then I have to use different sound because it won't match the video if I do that. And the timer during the Emerald Weapon battle still goes the same speed regardless of the lowered framerate, so speeding it up also speeds up the timer.

This is a bit confusing since I have a quad core AMD Phenom II and a Radeon video card with 1GB that can play Prototype at full resolution and effects without any slowdown.

Yes Fraps does slow the framerate down while recording, it has been mentioned before (by siefer i think) but other on-screen recorders seemed to work fine so you may want to try a different one to see if the same thing happens to you.

[Idec Sdawkminn]

So far I've tried ZD Soft, CamStudio, and FastCapPro. None of them seem to do any better than FRAPS. I've also read every thread I can find on this forum pertaining to "recording" and "FPS". I'd like to get it to 1440x1080 so it can be HD on youtube. If not that, then 960x720. But even 640x480 gives me 14 FPS when recording with FRAPS. Only if I do it 320x240 can I achieve 15.

[Timber]

IIRC this was discussed as being possibly but utterly pointless as the animations would be sped up to match the framerate.

Even if you did remove the limit and stopped it affecting the animations it won't look any smoother or faster.

The only way this could theoretically make any improvement on the game is if you could make the game not speed up and if you could redo the animations to take into account the extra frames, or somehow interpolate frames in between the frames that are there.

i see, but what if i actually want the game to speed up?

Actually i am working on putting a speedhack into the game, "Dark Bytes" generic speed hack seems compatible, now all i need to do is to make the speedhack run with the game (which isn't hard but the method i use to inject the speedhack into ff7 is considered a virus by a lot of virus scanners so i am having to try other methods to try and make it so it isnt like a virus).
Anyway here is a quick youtube video of the hack working
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nW-p7_jTB-A
It has changeable speeds so i can actually change speed in the middle of playing the game if i want it to run faster or slower.
Also the video just shows it slightly faster then normal, it can be made even faster then that (the fastest i have gotten it to go and stay stable is around 88fps in battles, 130fps in field and 173fps in the menu).

Haha awesome, I just tried this using Cheat Engine 5.6, worked perfectly.
Had to use the gui to change speed or turn off though, if you manage to make a turbo toggle key press, that would be perfect for use in game.