Author Topic: Black Textures Problem (Or Graphical Glitches with GF8800) (Read 32547 times)

Chrisu · « **on:** 2007-03-26 15:19:44 »

Hi, first off, heres my system config:

Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 @ 2,4GHz
Nvidia Geforce 8800GTS 640MB
2GB RAM

And here's my problem:
In-game, most of the textures are black. Not every texture, but many. I see this in menu, battle and field (havent got a save to test in world map at the time).
And here are some screenshots: Link.
Maybe someone could help me with that, because it looks really ugly

Thanks in Advance, Christian

PS: Im playing with the german game, the english 1.02 patch, and the saints high-res patch. (I have renamed the _gm and -ge files to _us/-us)
I've checked the Nvidia/TNT Fix checkbox and 640x480 direct3d.

stormmedia · « **Reply #1 on:** 2007-03-26 16:26:22 »

Geezzz .. that's a weird one... well... I got a similar of problem with titan quest one day while overclocking my graphic card... but from what I see from your specs... I doubt you need to overclock your graphic card... haha espicialy for ff7

... well... from what I know from 8800 series from nvidia the drivers aren't realy ready... maybe that's the problem.... or maybe nvidia cut some old features that's needed for ff7 with the 8800 series... just like they did with the 8-bit palleted textures with the 7x series that prevent us to play ff8 with hardware acceleration... anyway... you could try reinstall the game without anypatch (exept the 1.02) then if it works install all the patch one by one until you find the one that cause the problem... if it's not working.... my guess is that it's the drivers that aren't ready.

Chrisu · « **Reply #2 on:** 2007-03-26 19:09:35 »

Thanks for your answer, ill try reinstalling.
Ive heard many people saying the drivers arent ok but i dont have any other problems with the card. Im playing Oblivion, Gothic 3,... without problems. Im not overclockint it, because there willl occur errors (pc shutdown) after some time playing.

stormmedia · « **Reply #3 on:** 2007-03-26 19:39:35 »

Well... don't overclock it... I don't think you have any performance problem with this card hehe... so well... maybe the drivers aren't that bad... but I know they are still beta... so it might have some compatibility problem... especialy with older games.... I hope you'll get it to work some day

.

Chrisu · « **Reply #4 on:** 2007-03-29 17:01:02 »

When there are new drivers ill try again and post the result. For now, thanks for your answers.

Timiditas · « **Reply #5 on:** 2007-03-30 21:08:30 »

Hello folks. I have the same specs as Christian and are suffering from the exact same problem. I too did some screenshots of this cuz I posted this in another forum already.

Quote

(...)
I have a problem with our beloved game that I have not yet read about in this forum nor anywhere else. All of the ingame textures seem to be corrupted. This really seems to be a hardware incompability problem, not driver dependant (however I cannot downgrade to older Forceware due to a Geforce8800 lurking in my PC).
You can find some screenshots of my problem here:
ftp://diego.is-a-chef.com/ff7
Especially take a look at "!ff7_corrupt_textures.jpg" in the commands dialog box. The background looks like a shuriken, colorized to the default textbox background colors. Now what? God damnit, why isn't there a TNT emulation option in the forceware driver?

As you can see, the battle FX like magic, puffs etc are looking fine, and the game runs in 3D-Hardware mode @ 1280x1024. On some screenies you can see, that the playfield characters do seem to be colorized, not black, but waaaaaaaaay to dark. If this could somehow be solved, the textbox corruptions wouldn't bugger me at all.
Software mode works, but well... you know the drill, it just looks UGLY.
I also tried to replace d3d8.dll with XP SP1 and win2000 versions, but this doesn't have any effect (no wonder, this file is not shown in the references of ff7.exe when viewed with dependency walker of visual studio).
Enabling 8-bit textures with rivatuner has no effect as well, PLUS the 8-bit texture test in the ff7 setup still fails. Maybe rivatuner 2.0 is incompatible to forceware v97.92

I think it could be a hardware problem, since using a dx2OGL wrapper produces the same corruptions.

Chrisu · « **Reply #6 on:** 2007-03-30 22:05:04 »

Is anyone else here with a Geforce-8 graphic card?

Tigertank · « **Reply #7 on:** 2007-04-05 13:12:17 »

I have the same problem with my 8800gts, Conroe 6600 and 2 GB ram...

Chrisu · « **Reply #8 on:** 2007-04-05 16:28:05 »

Maybe we shall wait for the next version of the driver...
EDIT: With the new 97.94, the problem still remains.

Tigertank · « **Reply #9 on:** 2007-04-06 18:02:12 »

Quote from: Christian on 2007-04-05 16:28:05

Maybe we shall wait for the next version of the driver...
EDIT: With the new 97.94, the problem still remains.

Yes....
8800 = the end of Direct3D FF7

Cyberman · « **Reply #10 on:** 2007-04-06 18:20:10 »

From what I understand the newest drivers AND card's eliminated a few features. Namely emulation of 8bit pelleted texture emulation etc
As FF7 FF8 are both for an old version of win32 and there Direct X support is for a variant far removed chronologically from the current version of direct X, this seems to be the way of obsoleting games.
I suppose that Q-gears is going to become more and more important for people who like to play the game.

Cyb

stormmedia · « **Reply #11 on:** 2007-04-06 19:12:54 »

Looks like Angel (Omegadrive) will start again to make drivers for Nvidia. This might fix some of the problems with ff7/ff8. From what I remember of the omegadrivers it fixed the black boxes of FF8 and fixed some of compatibility issues with some games. Unfortunately, I can't use them anymore since I changed my graphic card because the drivers are too old for my card

. Anyway, it might work better with those drivers once they will be out.

Here's the site if you're interested.

Otokoshi · « **Reply #12 on:** 2007-04-06 22:58:23 »

Quote from: Cyberman

I suppose that Q-gears is going to become more and more important for people who like to play the game.

That's the truth. /* Fanboy cheers */

Timiditas · « **Reply #13 on:** 2007-04-20 18:05:50 »

Using Forceware v158.19 now, textures still corrupt.
Losing hopes here.. . I definately will NOT get my old Pentium1 from the attic to just run this one game.

Chrisu · « **Reply #14 on:** 2007-04-21 14:58:04 »

Just installed new 158 drivers.
There are now the Supersampling modes, where the whole screen is renderd with a multiple resolution.
In 640x480, D3D i can use this for having very fine menus.
But the backgrounds will have the gridlines.
In 1280x960 i can enable supersampling or not, theres no better image quality. Why?
And btw. the black textures just disappear in 640x480, software rendering, where i can use no supersampling too.

PS: When running in 640x480, D3D it hangs when a battle would start.
PPS: The ff7.exe process keeps running when exitting the game, dont know if this is interesting here or not.

Tigertank · « **Reply #15 on:** 2007-04-26 09:48:59 »

8800 GTS...

Borde · « **Reply #16 on:** 2007-04-26 16:49:31 »

I'd just like to point out a little detail: textures seem ok, the problen is with the un-textured (vertex colored) parts. Certainly it's a shame that new cards no longer support this game. Well, looks like we defintly will need Q-Gears in the future

Chrisu · « **Reply #17 on:** 2007-04-26 18:50:33 »

Why is your resolution 800x640?

Timiditas · « **Reply #18 on:** 2007-04-26 19:26:50 »

Quote from: Borde on 2007-04-26 16:49:31

I'd just like to point out a little detail: textures seem ok, the problen is with the un-textured (vertex colored) parts. Certainly it's a shame that new cards no longer support this game. Well, looks like we defintly will need Q-Gears in the future

Okay, the original textbox backgrounds are just some messy gradients, could be very well just untextured vertex shaded colors (as well as the status bars, which are broken too). But what about ftp://diego.is-a-chef.com/ff7/ff7%202007-03-30%2021-53-09-75.jpg this shot? Or this one? ftp://diego.is-a-chef.com/ff7/!ff7_corrupt_textures.jpg (Look at the shuriken in the box)
Why would the textbox all of a sudden get a texture if it is supposed to have none, just because of hardware incompability?

On such a case I'd rather expect the colors to be wrong, just like on the field characters.

Borde · « **Reply #19 on:** 2007-04-26 20:12:39 »

Frankly, I don't have the slightest clue about how the game manages to draw there those textures. But I can tell you for sure: the window backgrounds are (normally, at least) vertex colored. That's why you can change the colors at will and why they never look pixelated. As for the bars, I'm not so sure if they are textured or not.

Tigertank · « **Reply #20 on:** 2007-04-26 22:10:10 »

Quote from: Christian on 2007-04-26 18:50:33

Why is your resolution 800x640?

Cut and optimisation with photoshop.
Original resolution is 1280x1024.

Timiditas · « **Reply #21 on:** 2007-04-27 04:51:49 »

I have contacted NVidia customer care about this issue on 04/21/2007. After some talk, the last answer I got yesterday was:

Quote

Hello Benjamin,
We'll have to research this and keep you posted if we find anything.

Best regards,
David

I also pointed out what borde said, that it could be a vertex shader issue. Maybe they'll fix this with a future forceware version if the 8xxx GPU is not the problem.

borak2k7 · « **Reply #22 on:** 2007-04-27 14:58:27 »

Has anyone tried just running Virtual PC and seeing if there is some kind of way to make the older graphics card drivers work? Call me a n00b but I obviously have no idea how drivers and hardware work. Im sure most of us run a sweet enuff rig to easily run a shell OS and play the game in there is this idea is possible?

Timiditas · « **Reply #23 on:** 2007-04-27 15:02:06 »

I doubt that any virtual PC available supports 3D acceleration.

borak2k7 · « **Reply #24 on:** 2007-04-27 15:11:16 »

Oh poo! Lol sorry not used any virtualisation software before you see. What about booting off a removable disc or separate HD into 98 or something similar then? I realy dont want to buy the psx version and running an emulator because obviously you can get much better tweaks and everything in the PC version. Plus I always played it on the PC.