Author Topic: Battles playing at 60fps (Read 30416 times)

Obesebear · « **Reply #25 on:** 2010-07-21 18:43:49 »

Ok, I'm going to pick this back up shortly. First off, have we made any headway in fixing the 180/360 problem? NFITC1, any progress with the camdat files? What about the .s files?

sl1982 · « **Reply #26 on:** 2010-07-21 23:54:12 »

180 degree problem will not be fixed in program as i know no way of doing it. They will have to be manually tweaked afterwards.

NTFIC1 has made some progress with the camdat files. I have a reader for them that he whipped up. It doesnt allow changes as of yet though.

Cazador · « **Reply #27 on:** 2010-07-22 13:36:01 »

this would be a pretty huge improvement, very nice thinking

BloodShot · « **Reply #28 on:** 2010-07-22 20:37:50 »

Not bad, the video looked nice but for some reason i feel having them less smooth gave the game a more cinematic feel. I wonder how increasing the frames from 15 to 25 fps would look.

Obesebear · « **Reply #29 on:** 2010-07-23 01:04:13 »

Well 25 isn't really a good idea since because of the trouble it would cause adding 1.6x frames. 30 is possible, but the difference isn't nearly as obvious as the change from 15 to 60.

Sl, did you ever get the guard scorpion done? If not I'll finish it this weekend.
Cloud is done
Sweeper is done
Grunt is done
Who is left besides Barret in the 1st bombing mission?

Travis · « **Reply #30 on:** 2010-07-24 20:12:48 »

This may seem like a "noob question", but what is the benefit of running the game at 60 FPS?

BloodShot · « **Reply #31 on:** 2010-07-24 20:33:26 »

Quote from: Travis on 2010-07-24 20:12:48

This may seem like a "noob question", but what is the benefit of running the game at 60 FPS?

Smoother gameplay.

DLPB · « **Reply #32 on:** 2010-07-24 20:44:22 »

It is getting the game to run like PSX for starters, with the Tifas limit slots and cait sith slots and coin animation working correctly.

Travis · « **Reply #33 on:** 2010-07-24 21:18:38 »

Ah, that is all I really needed to know.

Thanks.

sl1982 · « **Reply #34 on:** 2010-08-04 03:27:42 »

Just a little experiment with interpolating the sprites. Opinions please.

DLPB · « **Reply #35 on:** 2010-08-04 04:57:40 »

Looks smooth to me, and when running faster will look pretty good, no?

sl1982 · « **Reply #36 on:** 2010-08-04 05:00:23 »

It should, we just need someone to crack the code on the .s files so we can add in the extra frames.

Timber · « **Reply #37 on:** 2010-08-04 05:31:17 »

Looks good, but yeah, needs to be in game to judge properly.

So are the sprites the last thing to crack, before beautiful 60fps heaven is achieved?

sl1982 · « **Reply #38 on:** 2010-08-04 14:17:49 »

And the camera.

NFITC1 · « **Reply #39 on:** 2010-08-04 15:52:42 »

Quote from: sl1982 on 2010-07-21 23:54:12

NTFIC1 has made some progress with the camdat files. I have a reader for them that he whipped up. It doesnt allow changes as of yet though.

The camdat files have to be handled with extreme care. The file pointers are all over the place and actual script storage isn't exactly linear.

Wutai Clan · « **Reply #40 on:** 2010-08-04 23:13:51 »

Well, I don't know much about this games internal workings, so, this is probably a stupid suggestion.

But, I have made game engines, etc, I do a bit of programming.

Most games have a game loop, if you can find where that loop is being executed, you could probably manipulate it, so the game could run at the desired FPS, but only execute parts of the loop at a decreased interval. ?

ie,..

Loop Start

Update Controls
Update Graphics <- try to manipulate these calls, ie, a third party app calling them instead of the game .exe at a desirable rate.
Update Music

Loop End

It's probably the most difficult route as far as figuring it out, but it would be way less work if ya did.

(Assuming it wasn't stupid, which is a possibility, have to ask a better hacker than me, I have very basic hacking\ASM skillz. I'm learning though..)

sl1982 · « **Reply #41 on:** 2010-08-04 23:18:38 »

As far as I can tell everything in the game is run based on the fps and everthing is based on the amount of frames it takes to do.

Wutai Clan · « **Reply #42 on:** 2010-08-04 23:23:00 »

Yeah, but the loop, just loops, the faster it loops, the more FPS you get. (Thus, thats why it's running all the animations faster at 60fps, hence my suggestion to manipulate the loop.)

Basically, keeping some things slower(animations, etc,.), while allowing others to process as fast as possible.

Edit: That's normally done internally via code, but apparently they didn't do it here because of it's console origins, so on a PC it comes out all borked.

FPS is calculated, similar to this

Loop

Counter += 1; // One Frame

if (1 Second Has Passed)
{
Counters Current Value Is The FPS
Reset Counter
}
End Loop

sl1982 · « **Reply #43 on:** 2010-08-04 23:25:19 »

Yeah, but there is no point in upping the fps to 60 fps if the model is only going to update every 4th frame. It will look exactly the same.

edit: Although if it were possible to keep things running at 15fps that we cannot change yet (camera, sprite animations) we could start working on battle models.

Wutai Clan · « **Reply #44 on:** 2010-08-04 23:29:39 »

Yet, this is exactly how games do it.

The loop processes some things really fast(physics, for example), and limits visual stuff so it looks uniform.. (This is how most games can run at 2000 fps(ie, way above 30-60), yet, still have normal looking animations..)

sl1982 · « **Reply #45 on:** 2010-08-04 23:35:47 »

Well I am not much of a programmer, and know nothing of modifying FF7's exe. But if you want to see if you can manage it I am sure many would be grateful.

Wutai Clan · « **Reply #46 on:** 2010-08-04 23:38:28 »

Like I said, I'm new to hacking, too new for that, but I know what needs done from my game programming experience.

You basically need to build a limiter using the FPS code above, and put it in where needed, but it needs to be done in ASM, or with a third party app, either way, you need some serious knowledge of FFVII's internals, and ASM.

Sorry, I'm to new for that, I was just trying to offer you guys another solution.

Cloudef · « **Reply #47 on:** 2010-08-05 07:30:30 »

It would look no different, it runs on 60 fps, but it looks same because it skips the graphical stuff. What games do nowadays is timer based code, so the game always runs "synchorized" with your PC's internal clock. For console's this kind of code is non important because devs assume the console always runs on the same speed.

The deltaTime used to calculate this, is calculated by checking differences of internal timer at beginning of the main loop and at end of the main loop
Thus, speed * deltaTime
does the action on near same speed on faster and slower PC's.

Wutai Clan · « **Reply #48 on:** 2010-08-05 09:08:00 »

Yeah, that's what I was saying, I think that's what they want too. They want the game to look like it did on the psx, but still have it run smoother because of the increased FPS.

This fix, if it can be applied would allow the game to work like that, even above 60fps, in fact, as fast as your machine can run it, and still look as expected.

I know I get hitches, etc, using the Remix patch(like when a character hits their limit.) so this should be able to smooth that stuff out.

The problem, lies in the implementation(which is why I said it might be stupid.), I have no clue what Squares code looks like, so it may just not work with the way they coded the game. The next problem is you need some very smart FFVII hackers to help you figure out where stuff is being called, and to help inject the new code. (There are quite a few of these folks around here btw.)

But on the plus side, you wouldn't need to edit a bunch of game files, and it wouldn't be locked to 60fps, it could actually run way faster, etc,.

(I wonder if the minigame fix does something similar?)

sithlord48 · « **Reply #49 on:** 2010-08-05 14:12:59 »

@ wauti clan would ff7 then become one of those games that will try to use every last cycle of my processor.(i.e no matter what 100% cpu use) if so then i think its a bad idea..