Custom graphics driver for FF7/FF8 [v.1-.7.6]

[Grimmy]

Hellbringer, just uncheck the nvidia box, worked for me.

[Hellbringer616]

Thats what i meant haha, But thanks. Worked like a charm

[Aali]

The game crash when I enter a battle!
crash.dmp + APP.LOG

Yep, seems like I broke the french version.. Not much you can do about it I'm afraid, it will be fixed in the next version though.

[myst6re]

OK thanks, that's what I thought .

[DLPB_]

forgive me if this has been mentioned....but is it possible to use bicubic sizing of the field maps?

At the moment it seems to be nearest neighbour and as such there is pixellation  even at 640*480

edited

[Aali]

forgive me if this has been mentioned....but is it possible to use bicubic sizing of the field maps?

At the moment it seems to be nearest neighbour and as such there is pixellation  even at 640*480

edited

Its possible and it looks terrible. Field tiles have to be pixel-perfect or you'll see stuff that shouldn't be visible and vice versa. TheSaint did some experimenting with this, the screenshots should be available on the forums somewhere.

[DLPB_]

I know nothing about the dynamics of professional games like FF7.  Why do they use tiles?  Why doesn't it load the whole 2D map?  Is this a limitation of the engine or the system it is placed on?  Does exactly the same loading method occur on all platforms?

[Aali]

The whole tiling business is most likely an artifact from the PSX version, where both RAM and VRAM were in short supply.
But the tiling is not the problem. Even if each layer was a normal 2D image you'd still have to make them fit together perfectly. You can't do it with ONE image since then there would be no depth and your 3D models would just walk around on top of everything.

[drfeelgud88]

ok... i fresh (max) installed my game, (none of those drivers nor slideshow or movie show or wutever it is were ticked) and then when i played it, in the 1st battle (2 MP's), 1 of them was missing the his head and gun. when i killed the 1st 1 (the 1 that looked normal), the 2nd 1's head and gun appeared... so i want to know wut could be the cause of this? maybe this has been answered and i apologize if it has.

NOTE: I did not apply any patches/mods to this. The install b4 this 1, i had 1.02 exe, saints, dzuigo's patches and still same results

[DLPB_]

it with ONE image since then there would be no depth and your 3D models would just walk around on top of everything.

ah of course!  I never thought about that!

[Aali]

ok... i fresh (max) installed my game, (none of those drivers nor slideshow or movie show or wutever it is were ticked) and then when i played it, in the 1st battle (2 MP's), 1 of them was missing the his head and gun. when i killed the 1st 1 (the 1 that looked normal), the 2nd 1's head and gun appeared... so i want to know wut could be the cause of this? maybe this has been answered and i apologize if it has.

NOTE: I did not apply any patches/mods to this. The install b4 this 1, i had 1.02 exe, saints, dzuigo's patches and still same results

This is using the original data files? No new models or anything? If so, I would like to have a look at that APP.LOG. That sounds very odd and I can't reproduce it here.

[DLPB_]

Took a look with fraps to check the framerate.  Field, instead of running at 30 at all times, runs at 29/28.  The Vsync problem seems to be gone for some reason, who knows what happened with that..

I have noticed frame rate drops also, but mine stay at 29/30 fps unless fraps is recording.  That is when it drops to 27/28.  regardless, there does seem to be some issue.  perhaps it is more a fraps issue?

I am also wondering if it is a nvidia problem.  I have a 7900 GS, what is yours?  I know with newer drivers of nvidia there is a serious fps bug but this hasn't shown up with Aali's driver.

Aali states he is getting smooth 30fps all the time....that is certainly not what I am getting with or without this driver.  It is the same....27-29 (and sometimes 30 when not recording)

[Kranmer]

I am also getting the framerate problem. i have 29fps in cities. 30fps on world map. 23-24fps in menu and lower when exiting the menu and 15fps in battles which drops from time to time but tends to stay solid. thats with driver 0.6. without the driver i get 29fps in cities. 30fps on world map and 60fps in the in-game menu.
I have AMD5000+ processor, Geforce 9600 GSO overclocked to 1900mhz and 670mhz GDDR3, 2GB RAM (i have tried the latest geforce driver and still as the same effect so i went back to 185.65 which works better for me then the offical driver 185.85 and i also have the AMD dual core optimizer). I am also using windows XP Sp3 incase this also makes a difference.
The framerates arnt unplayable its just a bit of a slow menu thats a little anonying for me.

[drfeelgud88]

Aali, yeah, even with a fresh install and nothing patched onto it produces this result (original files yes)... I uninstalled my ff7 atm but i will reinstall soon and then show u wut it is i need to show u

[obesebear]

I'm guessing most of you have dual core processors.  You may want to try running ff7, opening the task manager, right click on ff7.exe and set affinity for only cpu 0 or cpu 1.   Don't have both checked.  I forget what this fixes, but I want to remember it making my game run smoother when I did it.

If your complaints are about the game running 30fps in the field and 15fps in battle... that's what it is supposed to do.  At least until Aali finds some loophole to allow 60fps everywhere.

[Kranmer]

obesebear i know 30fps in standard and 15 fps in battle is standard. but is 28-29fps in cities suposed to be standard ?  and i am very sure that 23-24fps in game menu is not right (i know this because without the driver i get 60fps in the in-game menu). so thats my problem. the game is playing at decent rates its just the in-game menu running slow and a little bit slower in cities with the driver on then without the driver. (so just to make it clear world map and battles play fine just cities and in game menu is slower). Although i will try running the game on 1 processor tonight to see if it makes any difference so thanks for that advice.

[Aali]

Too bad I don't have any slow windows computers to test it on. I'll bet you anything its the relatively large number of texture conversions it has to do. I have something in mind that should make it a lot faster, especially in the menu.

[DLPB_]

I will give it a test.  Also, I always use affinity of 1 with older games   I set threading optimisations off in nvidia also, so it does it automatically.
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fps is same.  29-30 in field and 27 when recording with fraps.  I don't get it   If you are using fraps, which version...?

Although there does seem to be better performance when not recording.  It stays on 30 now and menus are working at 60

[Aali]

If fraps is artificially lowering the refresh rate to 30hz while recording, that will clash with FF7's own framelimiter and cause a noticeable drop in performance.
But recording will always be much slower, moving data from VRAM to RAM is a slow operation.

[DLPB_]

That is a pity....  I assumed with a high spec computer it would be able to manage it, esp recording 640*480 @ 30 fps....

But obviously this is fraps.,....

[Aali]

Well, try recording at 60fps, as odd as it sounds, that may very well work better.

[DLPB_]

Well, try recording at 60fps, as odd as it sounds, that may very well work better.

yeah tried that before now   It just goes straight down to 27 fps....

It is strange that no matter what I do it is always 27 when recording.  It does seem to be a fraps issue though.....hopefully others around here will confirm the same.

and it doesn't seem to drop any frames with any other game I have including mario kart 64 emulated and Halo....it stays rock solid.

It obviously has issues with ff7

[Kranmer]

menu's seem to work fine now (now slowdown at all now thanks alot). I also had the same problem with fraps but a friend of mine e-mailed me earlyer and told me to try camstudio-2.0 which is also freeware so when i get a chance later on i will try installing that and giving it a go.

[myst6re]

I found a bug in Forgotten Capital : Video

The TM video should be repeated, but it stops.

[DLPB_]

camstudio is  waste of time.  It skips a lot and is primariliy a desktop recorder....let me know how you get on.