Messages

26

General Discussion / Googling pays...

« on: 2004-12-27 21:41:25 »

Yeah, she looks slightly cross-eyed. I shouldn't complain, though because it's far better than I can currently model. =( That's excellent work.

Halkun, if you're going to warn them, can you give em some hints like: " hide till you got a playable MOD." or "Don't create a site and only distribute this via Bittorrent. :D"

Another problem is that groups like this always seem to close-source all of their work with the promise that they'll release everything once it's finished. ...then Square comes with a lawsuit and they all just quietly go away. Sure there are a billion disadvantages to releasing works-in-progress, but it's still better than the alternative. At least that way other groups would be able to pick up where the last group got taken down.

27

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / PSX model formats?

« on: 2004-12-27 21:32:08 »

Well the other thing is you need someone to proof read sections so they make sense in english.

I can do that. In most cases, though, you can still figure out what halkun means pretty quickly. I don't know if fixing it up is really necessary.

28

General Discussion / How fast did you beat FFVII?

« on: 2004-12-26 10:36:13 »

Heh, who wants to show him the clip? :P

Hehe. I'll whip it out (by leeching off Aaron.)
http://aaronserv.dyndns.org/!!stuff/qhimm/ff7_emerald.avi

yoshi314: A quick check at FFGuides revealed this. I'm not gonna test it, but it sounds solid. It explains exactly how the Jenova ~ SYNTHESIS fight influences the number of parties, too.

29

General Discussion / i know it's a dumb question to ask, but...

« on: 2004-12-26 01:09:22 »

is it legally ok to use them on my (legal) FF games?

AFAIK, they're quasi-legal but companies will usually leave you alone (unless they happen to be tools for an online game.) You probably break the EULA (and thus void technical support) by using them.

and what's the authors view on modifying their sources by other people?

IIRC, both Qhimm and Ficedula have released their source code under the standard open source license.  A few of Qhimm's are closed source (like TTG), although if you were serious enough to reverse engineer it and improve it, he probably wouldn't/couldn't stop you. Their might be hell to pay, though. Who knows.
Some of Ficedula's source isn't up to date, but if you ask him, he'll probably give you a current copy. The basic rule is really just common sense: don't pass off anything based off of their source as your own; be sure to give them full credit in any modified work you distribute; keep it free; and make your own source available.

i wonder how hard would it be to port some of your programs into linux

Well, with Qhimm's you'll have to rewrite both the GUI and work around--rewrite--all of the code dependent on the MFC classes. With Ficedula's it's probably just GUI.

30

General Discussion / Battle arena

« on: 2004-12-25 07:09:57 »

A week?! Ouch, I was thinking a month or so was relatively safe, considering how slowly this board moves...as long as you're adding to the discussion (in other words not bringing up an old Joey thread and going "ha ha".)

I agree that it was hardly a critical followup, though.

31

General Discussion / Re: i'm lazy :D

« on: 2004-12-25 07:03:50 »

btw. i noticed that if your party is relatively high on levels you can sometimes split it into _three_ groups to figth sephiroth. is that a bug or intended behavior?

It's intended behavior. Basically, how well you do in the fight against Jenova ~ SYNTHESIS determines how many parties you get. IIRC, you can have just one party. If it takes you a horribly long time to beat Jenova (say, 10-20 minutes?) you'll just have one party. If it's an even fight (if you take out her tentacles but leave her main body alone until the tentacles come back?), 2 parties. If you sneeze at the start of the battle and she falls over, three parties.
I did a lot of testing on this at one point, but now my memory's fuzzy so I might be wrong. This is just the way I remember it. Anyway, a good way to test it is to give Cloud the Morph Materia. Then, during the battle, only have Cloud attack Jenova, and only let him use Morph. The other characters can be healers. The battle will take awhile because of how little damage you're dealing. Then see if you have one party at the end.

32

General Discussion / I need a copy of the EULA from FF7 PC

« on: 2004-12-25 06:49:35 »

halkun: Ok, ok, ok, fair enough. For the most part we've got lines of opinion clearly drawn. But with all of that said, what I think is still muddled is what exactly you're recommending L.Spiro do. Are you telling him it's best to drop his project, or that it's still legally workable if he changes his strategy?

As far as I can tell with something like this, the best way to ensure it gets out is to tell no one and just submit/announce it anonymously somewhere with a lot of distribution once it's ready. You can *hint* which is what this thread is (but now it's starting to attract attention...), but as long as you don't produce evidence, lawyers will probably wait in the wings. What lawyer makes money out of preventitive legal action? There's a lot more money to be made once there's infringement.

The "problem", as we might refer to it from now on, is the same reason why we don't see Mickey Mouse with a mustache being distributed by individual artists.

That's something that greatly annoys me, since original copyright law (at least in the U.S.) states that copyrights were supposed to promote the arts and sciences and would only protect a copyright (even a Trademark?) 20 years. After that it was supposed to go public domain (At this point, anything NES-related would be on the verge.) ::sigh:: Mickey *should* be public domain. (Although a picture of him with a mustache might be defensible under parody grounds.) However, Disney keeps successfully lobbying Congress to pass blanket copyright extensions, and that's that.

33

Archive / Hand patch problems...

« on: 2004-12-25 06:30:37 »

They used to be great, I even had a site there. Now they're crap.

Yeah, and I'm told they have a billion pop-up banners now (not gonna disable my proxy and find out. ;) I guess you can same the same about free webhosting in general at this point. Unless it's a friend or some kind of non-profit organization that you have to jump through a lot of hoops for, it's all terrible.
Anyway, I can still always download from Prohosting, and, from what I'm told, at least they're not as paranoid or trigger happy as certain ::cough:: others, despite their other problems.

I'll host it on my site; its a tad slow, but completly reliable

Thanks again. It's been sent.

34

Archive / Mod/File locations

« on: 2004-12-24 09:08:25 »

Suggestions, regulars?

If it's going to stay localized like this, either a single sticky thread like what's currently happening, or bribe Aaron to host everything, since he has bandwidth. ;)
If we want this to be an all-ecompassing repository (in other words *every* semi-useful file that's ever appeared here--and I have most of them), then I'd suggest Bit Torrent. Most big public trackers probably won't mind one of us submitting a compendium torrent to them.

35

General Discussion / How fast did you beat FFVII?

« on: 2004-12-24 08:59:09 »

That would be my guess. ;) Egotistical adolescent posturing is nothing new. If people manage to find value in tangents, regardless of the original's goal, I'd treat it as a separate matter. Here, I guess, people have. Ignoring over-inflated egos when they're online is very easy. And my second time through, (with the time bug) was over 80 hours game time (got the strategy guide and it turned out there was a *lot* of stuff I missed.)

36

Archive / Yuffie Materia Quest Switch Problem

« on: 2004-12-24 08:42:32 »

I had the same problem on my first playthrough. IIRC, it boiled down to it being just an extremely annoying pixel hunt. If that doesn't work, I suppose a last ditch is to try the scene in 640x480 software mode (still gotta find that *one* pixel.)

37

Archive / Movies don't work at the end

« on: 2004-12-24 08:38:12 »

Then I did the movies on the hard drive thing, but now there was no green water in the background at all

The green water is a movie, so if you're not seeing it, you're probably right about it being a movie problem. It's either last4_2.avi or last4_3.avi that should be playing...I haven't been able to figure out which yet. So make sure both of them work. They're both under 1MB. After that, last4_4.avi is the next movie (11.6MB, possible spoilers.) During the scene after, lastmap.avi should be playing, and at some point, during the same scene, lastflor.avi (spoilers) will play. It could be any of those.

last4_4.avi is the likely culprit, though.

38

Archive / Ideas for Controlling Sephiroth

« on: 2004-12-24 08:21:46 »

Interesting question. I can't speak for anyone else, but for me the answer is, "Because I can."

It's not meant to be

Apparently the characters weren't supposed to have hands whenever they were in town, either. =/ The hand patch isn't *that* fun, but I've ended up liking it better.

Anyway, I guess you could boil it down to a lot of things. I can think of two big ones: first there's hobbyists like me who do things for unjustifiable reasons. Second, there's people who think Sephiroth is a really cool character. Neither of which you can really argue with very successfully--both types of people can't be reasoned with. I guess the Nibelheim flashback could be considered a teaser with no payoff or something. We get to sort-of have Sephiroth as a playable character for a few minutes, and it turns us into whiny children. "Give me Sephiroth!" Who knows. Regardless, I'll keep pursuing the Siren's call for now.

totally screws up the plot of the game and above all, he loses his style!

Well, the plot is mostly fixable with slight dialogue alteration (like with the original Sephiroth patch.) You're definately changing it, but it's not like this is the first time anyone has taken liberties with FF7 (Dirge of Cerberus or FF7 Handheld, anyone?) You're pretty much right about Sephiroth losing style points (cursed item: "-1 Patch") but the same can usually be said of *any* major game alteration such as cheat codes--they all tend to subtract a little luster from the game.
However, in another sense, try comparing this to being Darth Vader. There's a lot of cool factor/fan boyism involved. Enough so, I would argue, that it adds to their style in a different sense, even as it takes away.

No offence to anyone!

None taken, and none meant towards you. ^_^

39

Archive / Hand patch problems...

« on: 2004-12-24 08:16:08 »

Ok, new version of the patch is available. I've fixed your problem and a few similar ones, and changed Cloud's forearms (this is the trial run.) All in all, your problem wasn't that hard to fix, but it took some time to get back in touch with the FF7 Gold webmaster. If you have the usual downloading problems, I guess I can email you a copy someplace. I've had a few email roughspots, so don't try to email my old address--basically, it died. =/

Anyway, sorry for the extreme delay between updates. Real life has been taking up a lot of time.

40

Archive / Ideas for Controlling Sephiroth

« on: 2004-12-22 08:36:50 »

Eh, topic activity's only a month old. I'll bite. I've had an (unproven) hunch for awhile that there's a 1-byte value somewhere in memory that controls whether computer Sephiroth is a playable character or computer-controlled. Find it it, flip the value, and you've got your playable Sephiroth with just  some memory hacking. Of course, there's a billion 1-byte values, and I'm not good at memory hacking. I've tried, obviously without success.

41

Archive / Hand patch problems...

« on: 2004-12-22 08:31:14 »

Sorry, I just take my sweet time. =/ Like I said in my PM, I'll take a look. What version of the patch are you using?

42

Troubleshooting / Getting a Gold Chocobo Before you should

« on: 2004-12-22 08:15:46 »

First, I'd say this topic really belongs in Game Tweaking (it's a big stretch to call this feedback on a program.)

However, i WOULD like to see if the northern cave has the shield around it before disk 2

I can't remember for sure, but I think I did it a long time ago. IIRC, I used the Cid save editor--there's an option to enable the Highwind in Disc 1. At least, I hope there is. Otherwise my memory's really going. Anyway, in Disc 2 you can definately get to the Northern Crater before the shield comes up. For flyovers, use the Highwind or breed a Gold Chocobo (you can do that as soon as the Gold Saucer reopens.) The Shield's definately not there, but I couldn't get in.

43

General Discussion / FFVII Text dump... anyone got it?

« on: 2004-12-22 07:51:47 »

Sure. It's just over 4MB uncompressed. Tell me where you want it sent. Although, if you just want the FF7 script (much more readable) just get the excellent one at GameFAQs.

[Spoiler:]

44

General Discussion / returning to Great Glacier

« on: 2004-12-22 07:36:06 »

Sorry but I think you're at a dead end. Either replay or edit your save file to get the scales. IIRC, the last time you can enter the Underwater Reactor is right after the submarine mini-game (since you can get the red sub after you've either gotten the blue one or failed the minigame.)

i really want this master support materia

Ey? There is no master Support Materia like there are Master Command/Magic/Summon. A Support Materia that did all of the supporting abilities would just be weird.

Spoiler: show

The Blue Huge Materia you can get will turn into the Bahamut ZERO summon. Just look at it.

If you just mean you want a mastered Steal As Well, sorry to have wasted your time with this tangent.

45

General Discussion / How fast did you beat FFVII?

« on: 2004-12-22 07:22:55 »

First time for me was about 50 hours (game time.) At FFWA there was (is?) a mod named Martin who could beat the PSX version in (I think) 8-11 hours. He had screenshots that were reasonably good proof (gone now), although I suppose a GameShark might let you edit the game time, so who knows.
For me, on all versions of Windows later than 95, the clock in FF7PC has run abnormally slow (even slower than what Ged describes.) At the rate I'm going, I think I could give Martin a run for his money, but it wouldn't be legit since it's just some weird bug.

46

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Has anyone tried tackleing FF8's battle fields yet?

« on: 2004-05-23 03:50:26 »

Buy it's been a few years, hasn't it?

Programmers are still genetically lazy. What do you expect? ;)

I dont THINK anyone has made a field viewer for 8 yet...

Well, Snailrush has a FF8 PSX background viewer that you might be interested in. I only have a PC copy, so I haven't used it.

47

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Getting character timing right...

« on: 2004-05-23 03:38:13 »

As far as anybody was ever able to tell, coordinate info for characters that move on top of the movies is in the .cam files. Nobody's every took a crack at them and come away with anything, though.

An alternative fix to this synching issue might be to find the animations themselves and replace them. That itself presents all sorts of little headaches, but you might have better luck.

48

Archive / Chocobo Crash STILL happening

« on: 2004-05-23 03:30:07 »

[begin nitpicky/sniping pointing out the obvious mode]If you can't reproduce it, then how can you not chalk it up to a random happenstance?[/end]

49

Archive / 2 quick questions.

« on: 2004-05-23 03:22:46 »

They were an improvement, since I don't remember the PSX version having mouths at all.

AFAI can tell they're actually supposed to be closed, they just *look* open. Unless my memory is really off its rocker, they're just textures. So, yes, you could remove them fairly easily.

50

General Discussion / FF7 on PC

« on: 2004-05-23 03:14:58 »

On the other hand, the PC version benefits from a (slightly) cleaned up dialog translation. Some of the worst errors ("this guy are sick") are removed, but still, it's not *that* much of an improvement.

The PC version is also more moddable.

Another thing to keep in mind is that it's much easier to find a copy of the PSX version than PC.

It really boils down to what your priorities are. Are graphics the *only* thing you care about? (In that case I reccommend FFX-2 or Advent Children. ;)