Topics

1

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Need help figuring out how to zoom out field backgrounds

« on: 2019-05-30 07:09:49 »

My end goal is that I want to have high-res backgrounds on FF7 Switch, which only supports mods that replace existing in-game files one-to-one. As such, I figured out a way to change the background image in field files to anything I want, including higher-res images. The problem is that, when I put a higher-resolution image, it just zooms it in:



I know the high-res image is in there just fine because I'm able to open it and extract it properly in Makou Reactor. My guess is that something (e.g. the Field File Camera Matrix?) needs to zoom out somehow, but I have no idea what exactly dictates how a background image is rendered in-game. Any help would be much appreciated.

If you want to mess with it yourself, my script to change Field file backgrounds is here

https://github.com/niemasd/PyFF7/blob/master/field_change_background.py

And the specific lines that need tinkering start here:

https://github.com/niemasd/PyFF7/blob/master/PyFF7/field.py#L1601

Perhaps the Q-Gears source will be useful, e.g.:

https://github.com/q-gears/q-gears/blob/3da522b996f09e81c148b25bd8cd022d8db761ef/QGearsMain/src/data/QGearsFLevelBackground2DLoader.cpp#L48

2

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Anybody willing to explain the FF7PC Background section of the Field File?

« on: 2019-05-11 09:42:53 »

I'm trying to write my own Python tools to play with various file formats in FF7, and I have the ability to unpack and repack Sections 1-8 of the Field File (largely thanks to this Wiki: http://wiki.ffrtt.ru/index.php/FF7), but the only resources I can find regarding the Background section (http://wiki.ffrtt.ru/index.php/FF7/Field/Background) don't seem to be complete. Namely, it doesn't describe anything at the beginning of the section. For example, I've noticed that all files say "PALETTE" at offset 0x5 and "BACK" at offset 0x24, and they also have a series of 1-byte values that are either 1 or 0 (but varies between files), and they all have data before "PALETTE", but none of this seems to be mentioned anywhere.

Any guidance for more descriptive details about this section would be much appreciated

3

FF7 Tools / PyFF7: Python 3 tools to manipulate FF7 files

« on: 2019-05-06 08:52:36 »

Hey, everybody! I'm relatively new here, but I've been following the FF7 modding scene for some time. I was a bit frustrated with some of the existing tools for manipulating FF7 files (namely packing/unpacking LGP files), so I did some research and implemented my own in Python 3 called PyFF7.

Currently, I have implemented an LGP unpacker, an LGP packer, and a tool to just print information about the contents of an LGP (I tested it on char.lgp and magic.lgp, and it seems to work correctly, even when ulgp didn't). Also, the classes I design can be easily integrated into new tools, and I intend to make it available on PyPI so you can install it via pip. I also intend to expand beyond just LGP files. Note that my LGP packer rebuilds the lookup and conflict tables on-the-fly.

Also, if anybody has any information regarding the "check code"(?) in the LGP file format table of contents, I'd greatly appreciate it. Most files list this value as 14 (but some are 11 if I'm not mistaken), and a lot of old posts I read (e.g. from Aali) suggest that the game doesn't actually check this value so I currently just hardcode the value to 14 for all files, but I really want my tool to be completely correct. I was thinking maybe it's user+group file attributes (14 = 7+7 and 11 = 7+4), but yeah any info would be greatly appreciated.

Anyways, you can find the tools here: https://github.com/niemasd/PyFF7/

They're completely written in Python 3 (no external libraries/packages), so they should work out-of-the-box on any system with a Python 3 interpreter.