Author Topic: Final Fantasy 7 [SINGLE CD EDITION] (Read 20149 times)

_Ombra_ · « **on:** 2003-12-04 14:31:20 »

I was thinking about making a 1 cd version of the game. With modern technics and the knowledge we have about the game must be easy.

The game can easyly run any DirectShow filter like DivX or XviD so the movies can be all resized. A couple of files can be deleted like the disc_us.lgp (that's the one that the game uses to switch CD) and the field files can be resized by deleting not used text (a lot of it it's duplicated).

What you guys think?

Rubicant · « **Reply #1 on:** 2003-12-04 15:09:41 »

And sell it widely on the black market?! Sure! Then, someone gets ahold of a copy and bitches about it not working. Then, they start complaining to us (instead of Eidos, for legal reasons) about the game not working, and then we get stuck in the middle of a gigantic class action suit. Is that what you want? Is that it?

But uh....it'd be more practical to store the avi's in a more space-efficient codec. That's the only thing worth doing.

And it'd be impossible on a 700mb CDR, by the way. I'll explain later.

usman · « **Reply #2 on:** 2003-12-04 16:21:18 »

Hi:
_Ombra_ its a wonderful idea

REALLY I appreciate your efforts. If you need any help or you got any idea send me an Email.

Regards

Usman

[email protected]

Cool Newbie · « **Reply #3 on:** 2003-12-04 17:36:32 »

i have the game put together on the hd so i don't have to bother with the cd's, in total its about 1.29GB, the movies being about 900mb.

so it will probably be possible to put the stuff on a cd but using compression, and other codecs.

Rubicant · « **Reply #4 on:** 2003-12-04 22:53:48 »

The entire "data" directory is 436 MB, or at least that's what I have for it to be working. That leaves about 264 MB for movies, on a 700mb CDR. Through extreme compression it is possible, but the movies would look VERY ugly.

So I take it back about it not being possible. I guess the word I was looking for was... "worthless"

Aaron · « **Reply #5 on:** 2003-12-05 00:30:34 »

If you were willing to have one CD for installing and one CD for playing, you could probably remove some of the data from the play CD, cause if you do a full install, all of the field files are transferred to your hard drive, but they have to still be on each of the CDs for loading if you did not do a full install. I.e., a full install could be required, and most of the play CD would be available for movies only.

Or you could just run it off your hard drive (move the movies or use some kind of virtual CD-ROM software), which most people have the hard drive space to do these days anyway. Or well, at least I do (go 360 gigs).

ShinRa Inc · « **Reply #6 on:** 2003-12-05 05:04:38 »

If anyone wanted to spend the time editing the .hrc files and weeding out duplicated .p files (which is RAMPANT), you could most likely compress the char.lgp file to at least a tenth of it's current size.

I'd been toying with that....and then my computer's FAT got corrupted.

xeriouxi · « **Reply #7 on:** 2003-12-08 11:21:06 »

Hi!

I might be a bit slow here... but what is the point of putting the game onto a single CD? I don't think that it could be sold anywhere. If you are planning on doing this however, then I would take a lot of precautions. I recall that the PSX version of FF7 only had the 'Super Nova' scene on the final disc. I can't remember off the top of my head if this is the same on the PC version, but it's better to be safe than sorry that you used 28 blank discs!

On the other hand, it would be useful to have it on a single disc. It would have to be 2, however, for the install CD to be included...

xeriouxi.

Bluetank · « **Reply #8 on:** 2003-12-08 12:21:43 »

Single disc, No, but double disc, yes...

Installation = 1
Play = 1

Or if better you want to edit where the game reads data from the disc, you can name folders 1, 2, 3, representing disc 1, 2, 3 respectively.

Then, as you say, delete those duplicated .p files and try to minimize the size of those files if possible.

It would be better if it would be rewritable disc, for people can save their save games in the cd-rw and will not lost those datas if the PC crashed or something.

Just a suggestion...

But i don't know if it could be done...

Cyberman · « **Reply #9 on:** 2003-12-08 15:01:53 »

1 DVD

It might be possible yes.
Just to remind people a lot of the data on the disks are redundant (PSX version has the full game on each disk with movies being the big difference).

The Movies are compressed using motion JPEG on the PSX version but my estimation is you can get at best a 6:1 compression of the PSX movies (PC version movies are just these movies recompressed for direct X). So yes you can make them smaller. Game data is about 300M per disk in the PSX version (which is the same on ALL disks the data that is). That means 400M per disk for movies (3 disks) so if you can get 1200M to 200 M and change the engine to read the data sure. Installation might be a pain though.

Cyb

The Skillster · « **Reply #10 on:** 2003-12-09 00:20:19 »

another difference on the psx version was a whole folder of data dedicated to the supernova summon on disc 3

Richard Kain · « **Reply #11 on:** 2004-08-28 06:42:34 »

Okay, I know this has to be possible. I played around with the codecs a little and discovered that in order for FF7 to read other codecs, you must have FFDshow installed. Final Fantasy 7 uses DirectShow to run all of the movies in the game. FFDshow makes it possible for DirectShow to use codecs not native to DirectShow (such as Divx). After installing FFDshow, I went through all of the FMVs on the FF7 PC version and re-encoded them all in Divx (with Mp3 compression for the audio). Along with the game content from the play discs (1, 2, or 3) the total memory consumption is just slightly over 400 MB. 400 Megabytes! And that's with every FMV from all three discs. I already tested it by burning a new disc and playing through the entire first disc. It worked perfectly, every fmv ran exactly as it should and the drop in quality was barely noticeable. But when the second disc came up, the game insisted that I install the original second disc. There must be some way for the game to run off of just one disc! I've already squeezed the movies on, and with a full install it doesn't even need any of the game files. (I am assuming that the game has already been fully installed on the HD except for the movies, I have the original install disc, my disc1 just broke is all)

halkun · « **Reply #12 on:** 2004-08-28 07:14:03 »

I'm moving this into "Game Tweaking"

1) It offers very little on engine technical information.

2) Mods 'n such. (Hi res cloud, hand patch, etc) are discussed there. This seems to follow that line of discussion.

3) It seem more approprite.

To add to the discussion. There is a lot of wasted things on the PC disk. I have found copies of various .BIN files that are in PSX-only format (for example .TIM archives) that are duplicated with .TEX files within LGPs. It doesn't suprise me you can probably shrink it down to one disk.

I have always been under the romantic impression you can probably put it on a GBA given enough work.

EmperorSteele · « **Reply #13 on:** 2004-08-28 17:44:34 »

Oh, shush, halkun! GBA... snicker*

I doubt a 1-disk solution would ever work. Even the cd-cracks that i've seen require you to go back and change your registry between changing disks, so it's still a mild pain.

And congratulatiosn for reviving an 8-month-old topic, RK

liquidsub · « **Reply #14 on:** 2004-08-28 22:33:50 »

I thought the FF7 Ultra Edition with the music patch was already 1 CD? That's a really good release. Not only does it come with the music patch, but the goodies folder as well.

Borman · « **Reply #15 on:** 2004-08-29 01:36:47 »

Also illegal though

Cyberman · « **Reply #16 on:** 2004-08-29 02:03:44 »

Quote from: EmperorSteele

Oh, shush, halkun! GBA... snicker*

I doubt a 1-disk solution would ever work. Even the cd-cracks that i've seen require you to go back and change your registry between changing disks, so it's still a mild pain.

And congratulatiosn for reviving an 8-month-old topic, RK

Oh it's possible to do just you need a custom cart with bank switching to get the 4096mbits needed to ROM the game. Fortunately the GBA has some great movie codecs so the movies might be 2 to 16 megs in size (IE can be easily bank switched in as contiguous sectors). The hard part of course is the backgrounds and 3d though these are doable. The game sound can be done with 'reducing' everything considerably.

The hard part would be getting better than 1 FPS ..

Cyb

qwerty · « **Reply #17 on:** 2004-08-29 02:31:30 »

Quote from: Cyberman

The hard part would be getting better than 1 FPS ..
Cyb

Not true. There is some very good 3D software that has been developed for the GBA already. Most are more than powerful enough to run FF7 at around 60 frames per second... The only bitch would be converting everything to a GBA format.

For example, a game that uses some of the best 3D technology availiable for the GBA is Need for Speed: Underground. It runs pretty good considering the fact that everything is done in polys and it's a racing game. It kinda looks like Jet Moto 3 for PSX graphic-wise. Some very good graphics for GBA. In fact, the game was created by a small team that used to be called "AGB Games".(some of them helped create Doom for GBA) Dunno wtf they're called now, but they were working pretty hard and even made a Quake demo for the GBA sometime ago! Beautifully rendered and all at a blazing 54 fps.

So you see, it is possible to make FF7 run nicely on a GBA. BTW, I also have shared your thought on FF7 GBA halkun!

Borman · « **Reply #18 on:** 2004-08-29 03:24:02 »

Itd make it to the ngage first

sfx1999 · « **Reply #19 on:** 2004-08-29 20:54:21 »

Quote from: Cyberman

Oh it's possible to do just you need a custom cart with bank switching to get the 4096mbits needed to ROM the game. Fortunately the GBA has some great movie codecs so the movies might be 2 to 16 megs in size (IE can be easily bank switched in as contiguous sectors). The hard part of course is the backgrounds and 3d though these are doable. The game sound can be done with 'reducing' everything considerably.

That would be too damn expensive.

Quote from: qwerty

Not true. There is some very good 3D software that has been developed for the GBA already. Most are more than powerful enough to run FF7 at around 60 frames per second... The only b*tch would be converting everything to a GBA format.

For example, a game that uses some of the best 3D technology availiable for the GBA is Need for Speed: Underground. It runs pretty good considering the fact that everything is done in polys and it's a racing game. It kinda looks like Jet Moto 3 for PSX graphic-wise. Some very good graphics for GBA. In fact, the game was created by a small team that used to be called "AGB Games".(some of them helped create Doom for GBA) Dunno wtf they're called now, but they were working pretty hard and even made a Quake demo for the GBA sometime ago! Beautifully rendered and all at a blazing 54 fps.

I believe you are talking about the C2 engine by http://www.pocketeers.co.uk. Anyway, might I remind you that battles only ran at 15 FPS on the PSX, and that the C2 engine uses texture mapping, not vertex shading.

The best chance you would have at porting this stuff to the GBA is to have a special combined GPU and CD-ROM cartridge. Maybe a sound mixer, too.

Cyberman · « **Reply #20 on:** 2004-08-29 22:05:58 »

Quote from: sfx1999

That would be too damn expensive.

Well likely it would put the cost of the game close to ... oh say $400 $440 US

Quote from: sfx1999

The best chance you would have at porting this stuff to the GBA is to have a special combined GPU and CD-ROM cartridge. Maybe a sound mixer, too.

Yep that's what you would want to use. Vertex shading and such is not a big deal as you can just convert the models to textured ones instead. It might not look exactly like the original but we are talking a much smaller screen so if it's looks like anything at all it's good!
I proposed the 3d advance 18 months ago. I realized it was a great idea but way to late to be useful. With developement cycles etc. It would be coming out about now on the market.
The practical method is too use a consumer grade FPGA (1.8V device) small low voltage Flash ROM (8Mbit) for configuration and 'boot' up. Then have 128mbit of mobil SDRAM. A CPLD is used for a bootstraping system to program the FPGA, and to support an SD flash memory interface. Games load via the mmc interface directly into internal SDRAM. The fpga is configured to provide 16m of contiguous memory 12m of which is used for program space and 4m is 'video' and 'Audio' space. A simple CPU assisted audio decoding engine and 3d engine allow the data to be DMA'd to video memory, and to have the audio data dumped to the D/A convertors as needed. Video segments can be decoded by loading data into the 16m of RAM and running the codec on the raw image. It's complicated but I think it would work. That being said it will never happen because there wasn't enough time to develope it. Sometimes ideas are great but way to late.

Cyb

qwerty · « **Reply #21 on:** 2004-08-29 23:17:36 »

Yeah, it's too little too late... :weep:

Hehe, for the first couple of months that I owned my GBA, I had FF8 Advance on my mind...

Now THAT would be something!

sfx1999 · « **Reply #22 on:** 2004-08-29 23:56:40 »

Good ol' FPGAs.

http://www.opencores.org/
http://www.fpgaarcade.com/

halkun · « **Reply #23 on:** 2004-08-30 00:39:08 »

Naaa. I think you could always make FF7 run "stright" on normal gba hardware with a 256 mbit rom.

The engine would have to be modded a little bit.

For the field files, the 3d characters would be replaced with scaleable sprites. They in turn will have pre-rendered "views" from side-view to overhead.

The backgrounds will be much smaller as would the video.

There is a codec that allows 30 minutes of full motion video and sound to be played on a single 256mbit cart. I've played with it.

Leaving the battle system, that could be psudo 3d-ized like golden sun. Then again, even 3d woudn't be that hard. you can drop the whole game to 240x160 resolution. That should squeeze out a lot of extra data.

I have a GBA dev kit. It would be fun to make a demo of the original demo just to see if it's even possable.

Not that I have a paper to write right now.......

bomer · « **Reply #24 on:** 2004-09-29 04:41:19 »

OK, this is mostly for warez, but www.uharc.com can compress 2gb of data to 300 mb

Author Topic: Final Fantasy 7 [SINGLE CD EDITION] (Read 20149 times)

Richard Kain