Messages

76

Support / Re: [FF9PC] Field Background replacement (patch?)

« on: 2017-02-19 11:46:12 »

Here is an updated patch. It should be a little bit more sane...
Now it will not delete what it shouldn't. It also should support ffix-x86. There is probably still a room for improvement, also I barely tested it.

I have not added any new backgrounds. (but I completed Evil Forest )

Edit: FFIX was updated on steam since the patch was made so I removed the link because it will probably not work. I'll make an update at some point.

77

Support / Re: [FF9PC] Field Background replacement (patch?)

« on: 2017-02-19 10:29:18 »

Fraggoso
Okay I have an idea what could have happened.

You applied my patch to non-vanilla ff9 already patched by HW

it tried to patch one file, but it was already patched by HW so it said "Using latest patch ok", but then removed the file cause my patch is stupid (I am working on a fix)
it then patched 2nd file and said it is OK.

78

Support / Re: [FF9PC] Field Background replacement (patch?)

« on: 2017-02-19 09:46:48 »

Assuming I'll make a complete patch and THEN some issue will be found, I will of course make a new complete patch but will provide a small update for existing users too. If that's what you are asking. But if you are talking about work in progress patch, I will not be making any small updates for it unless issue will be so bad that it will be not possible to complete the game.

Edit: anyway At this point I dunno what could be the issue for you. If both messages were OK it should work. If you suspect win10, try to replace Assembly-CSharp thingy with original one. If you will see broken backgrounds but not a black screen, the issue is indeed in that... But I don't think that will help."Using latest patch ok" message means one of 2 things. You applied my patch 2 times in a row to the same FF9 folder - that would probably break things, or that means that you applied HW patch before my patch. Which shouldn't actually be an issue.

79

Support / Re: [FF9PC] Field Background replacement (patch?)

« on: 2017-02-19 09:38:51 »

Does it say exactly "1. Using latest patch ok"? If so then ff9 definitely wasn't vanilla but the message is okay too.

black screen can only happen if:
- some file is missing (check if p0data11 is there)
- some texture or movie is broken (not gonna happen with my patch, i don't touch movies and textures whatever all ok or none)
- if you launch the game through FF.exe and not through launcher.

What do you mean background which is broken? I will not make a new version for the sake of one background. It will have to wait for more significant update. I did not expect players to actually play with that patch. It was to check things out. It is incomplete, what do you expect from version 0.002-alpha

80

Support / Re: [FF9PC] Field Background replacement (patch?)

« on: 2017-02-19 08:58:39 »

You need to select a folder where FF9-launcher is located. After it is done you should be able to see the results in log window. if there is anything but two OKs - something went wrong.

Actually now that I reviewed the code, I found what could be a culprit. I think it could be that if patch was unsuccessful it still removes the original file. I just assumed that patch will never fail. I will improve that at some point. So yeah check if there were two OK's. And make sure you patch the unmodified version of FF9.

As for languages - I have no idea. I used only English so far. You can always swap the layers temporarily though...
Edit2: actually maybe you can't since Japanese is much bigger in size and all that... haven't thought of that.

81

Support / Re: [FF9PC] Field Background replacement (patch?)

« on: 2017-02-19 07:42:52 »

I give up. *lol*
Let's move on. ;P

Do you also intend to waifu/filter the multi titles, Meru?
I tried to filter them. The Backgrounds looks nicer but the font has black artifacts in them. :/

I really don't get it. But I tested it from the beginning and saw nothing unusual...
Moving on

Ultimately I would like to process every single layer, that includes titles, but right now they aren't a priority for me. After all, they only stay on the screen for a few seconds.
I saw your message about artifacts, it could be due to incorrect handling but I have not touched them myself. Maybe if I'll be bored I'll try em out.
On the other hand, I would probably just re-create them from scratch. At least English and Japanese ones (not really interested in other ones).

82

Support / Re: [FF9PC] Field Background replacement (patch?)

« on: 2017-02-19 06:42:30 »

I don't think you understood what I meant. ^^

Yea, I don't have a slightest clue what r u saying.

The sign, as soon as you arrive at the alley, gets knocked down. That's why a npc will start fixing it.

No it is not. It is being fixed from the beginning. It gets knocked after you found out that the ticket is a fake.

And yes it's far from the others animation because the layer/tile is not swapped like other one but moves down and after the npx fixes it, stays where it belongs.

It is in fact swapped like other animations.

Edit: Could be whatever you or old HW messed up layer order.

83

FF9 Tools / Re: [FF9] General editor - Hades Workshop (0.36b)

« on: 2017-02-18 14:33:35 »

Tirlititi
I just realized that you mentioned "seam lines" along with black pixels when posted HW 0.36. I feel like there was a little confusion. In case with "seam lines" you was right. They appear because of doing things incorrectly or taking shortcuts/sacrificing quality for the sake of doing things faster. I wouldn't try to fix these things though. Better not to make them to begin with. Black dots, on the other hand, are a totally separate thing. Too bad I realized this just now.

Anyway, I wanted to ask a different thing. It would probably be a good idea if files in texture output folder will not be overwritten before checking for image compliance with a selected item in dropdown list. Would prevent losing textures to accidentally selecting a wrong item. (Using .tmp file may work too.)

84

Support / Re: [FF9PC] Field Background replacement (patch?)

« on: 2017-02-18 11:05:44 »

Start a new game and head into the alley and see what happens with the shield/sign. I'm only stressing this out because he gave me headaches. But that could've been because of an older hw version i had.

Nah, I don't have a time to waste on that. That thing is not different from any other animation. The only reason its position could change from the default one is because of a bug in one of the older HW versions (theoretically, I'm not saying there was a bug) or you accidentally moved it (but in this case it would not move far).

85

Support / Re: [FF9PC] Field Background replacement (patch?)

« on: 2017-02-18 10:46:44 »

Looks like I've reached Evil Forest. So far things are going much more slowly than I originally expected, but they are going somewhere.
Now I hate Prima Vista, was so happy when it finally crashed... took it a lot of BG's to crash :DDD My FFIX photoshop folder is now 1.2Gb in size.
Found 3 bugs in the process (not introduced by me ofc, mine I'll never find myself). Fixed 2 of them and one left there for now cause it is barely noticeable anyway.

I have not made a patch though. Maybe later...

86

FF9 Tools / Re: [FF9] General editor - Hades Workshop (0.36b)

« on: 2017-02-17 07:12:55 »

Tirlititi
I keep forgetting to ask. Are there any plans to support 32bit version? Or it is already supported and I didn't noticed?

87

FF9 Tools / Re: [FF9] General editor - Hades Workshop (0.36b)

« on: 2017-02-16 20:14:24 »

BTW I still have a crash issue with PSX

Open FFIX PSX -> Environment -> fields -> open synthesyst's "Manage" dialog and close it, switch to weapon shop (or possibly any field) then back to synthesyst -> crash.

These exact steps crash it 100% of times.

88

Support / Re: [FF9PC] Field Background replacement (patch?)

« on: 2017-02-15 19:58:12 »

Hey Meru, why is upgrading not possible?

Not possible because I have not made it possible... but I don't think it will be needed in the long run anyway as most likely the whole thing will be replaced.

How did you do the moving parts? Layer by Layer with all alpha in it? If yes, maybe it would be good to point you to something like the shield in the alex alley which collide with the ground and gets hammered back in. If this looks good at your end, than everything else will (believe me, this one is/was a sucker on my end). ^^

I don't really understand this one. I did it same as non-moving parts. And then... shield collides with the ground? I can not even imagine why would something like that happen. Oo In any case I have not seen any changes in its behavior.

89

Support / Re: [FF9PC] Field Background replacement (patch?)

« on: 2017-02-15 03:35:33 »

Just a small update for previous proof-of-convept patch. Pretty much the same thing, but I actually added all the moving objects. Layer edges are still dirty though. So not counting some occasional visual glitches, this is pretty much what it looks like. Though overall Alexandria streets are not as good looking as some other zones.

Edit: oh yeah you can not upgrade from previous patch. This have to be applied from scratch. Maybe I'll make upgrading later, assuming it will not increase the size by much.

90

FF9 Tools / Re: [FF9] General editor - Hades Workshop (0.36)

« on: 2017-02-14 19:41:19 »

Are you sure?
If I use HW to rip the psx tiles they're animated and are only tiles, so I suppose those are layers themself. But of course, I'm no technican. :/

I see. Now that you say it. It turns out to get a complete output I must check all the checkboxes 1st for that particular animation. Never bothered with that >__<

91

FF9 Tools / Re: [FF9] General editor - Hades Workshop (0.36)

« on: 2017-02-14 19:25:21 »

I mean that in PC version animation is done by swapping layers at a right time. But in PSX, textures contain only a single layer, so there is nothing to swap. There are 2 possible outcomes. Whatever PSX engine generates extra frames on-the-fly based on that single layer, or HW's texture output is not complete.

92

FF9 Tools / Re: [FF9] General editor - Hades Workshop (0.36)

« on: 2017-02-14 18:51:07 »

Speaking of layers, I am curious about different thing. For each of the moving objects in PSX version, HW creates only a single layer. This includes everything: doors, flags, water, clocks... how they were animated then? PSX engine was distorting and moving the layers in various ways? But for example that fan from a picture I posted above (that is on the disabled layers). You can not create all these layers by moving or distorting the fan on PSX layer.

Edit: in addition to that. It is known that all the moving objects and most of the scenes even were originally created in 3D by various artists. So instead of distorting a layer they should have made a few "shots", the same way we see in PC version? So does the HW output for PSX really complete?

93

FF9 Tools / Re: [FF9] General editor - Hades Workshop (0.36)

« on: 2017-02-14 18:19:52 »

Fraggoso
Heh, I was too focused on the problem we were discussing ^^
The templates you are talking about I am using of course, but only for now. They will have to be redone by hand at some point. Maybe with vector masks (https://i.imgur.com/zeeepfQ.png) maybe something else, not sure yet.

94

FF9 Tools / Re: [FF9] General editor - Hades Workshop (0.36)

« on: 2017-02-14 16:32:37 »

Hi Meru, are you creating all layers from scratch?
The engine is really nitpicking on the Layers. Slight variations done to the background layers opposed to all other layers can yield very bad results like gray/black seams and/or the dot's you're mentioning.

Not sure what do you mean by "from scratch". You mean layer edges? Sometimes yes, sometimes no, but this doesn't matter. BTW the problem can be seen on some of your older screenshots of synthesist too.
Edit: of course for the final product all the layers must be redone. Leaving them as is and simply swapping backgrounds just makes things different kind of ugly from what it used to be with default backgrounds.

The dots are there because this is how HW creates textures. The problem is that these dots are outside of the range that must be shown on screen. I think that instead of trying to fix the engine, it is better mimic the way Silicon created textures. I dunno what the engine does there, nor I want to know, but these dots (and probably grid as well) look like a product of averaging with nearest pixels, like bilinear or better resampling or fxaa-style antialiasing (unlikely in this case since I think it works in screen-space only). When it happens that the nearest pixel is a black dot - sometimes we can see it on screen, when it happens to be imperfectly mirrored edge pixel - we see grid. The grid is very hard to spot if you deal with 64x64 tiles but quite easy with default ones.

95

Support / Re: [FF9PC] Field Background replacement (patch?)

« on: 2017-02-14 04:05:24 »

To clear any possible misunderstandings, I am not working together with Fraggoso.

Anyway, I said I'll post some images but ehh, too lazy. Here is a proof-of-concept patch instead.
Attention, this is nowhere near finished and nowhere near playable! All you can do is to look around starting Alexandria but not further than alley!
Most of the moving objects aren't replaced. Some of them partially processed, some no, but all of them look 5 times more ugly on new backgrounds. Most of the layer edges need work too. I did some, like on the main street where you 1st time meet Vivi and some other places, but mostly for testing.
For now it doesn't looks like consistent wysiwyg results with edges can be achieved so I decided not to touch them until (much) later.

If you are brave enough to try it, you absolutely must make a copy of your game files. There is no way to uninstall this!
I have no idea what effect on savedata this may have, if any. Backup it too.
Also only x64 version of the game is supported.

96

FF9 Tools / Re: [FF9] General editor - Hades Workshop (0.36)

« on: 2017-02-12 19:17:55 »

Here is what i mean:

I create all layers like so - hard edges, no antialiasing:


Some layers look in game just like that even after adjusting to my resolution.

Some layers, on the other hand, start to look like this all on their own:


Now I have not checked all the layers out there, but incidentally layers that look like so also have a black dot issue.

Also as I described before, issues appear even on exporting and re-importing the same thing without modifications (grid issue being one of that)
There probably is a weird behavior in-engine, or even a bug, but original textures don't make it apparent because their tile paddings are precisely a copy of the tile's edge-pixel. (Or it could be Silicon's workaround for Unity's crappy tiling)

It is up to you of course what to do about that, but I think it is easier to create textures in a compatible way instead of figuring out what engine does there.

97

FF9 Tools / Re: [FF9] General editor - Hades Workshop (0.36)

« on: 2017-02-12 17:55:49 »

I did colored it on purpose. Here is exact layer i used https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/110558786/Report/Square28.7z

The rendering is scaled depending on the resolution:
what i am saying is, game has different approaches for different layers. Or at least it looks like it. "Tickets" tent and most of the textures looks like scaled with "point" method. They show hard edges and no artifacts. While some layers, like this green one seem to be processed differently. You can see it is "blended" into the background. These half-transparent green edges is not my doing nor it is related to DXT because it is not present in decompressed HW's output as I've shown on 2nd image.

So my theory is, these black dots are slipping in because of that "other processing" game does for this layer.

98

FF9 Tools / Re: [FF9] General editor - Hades Workshop (0.36)

« on: 2017-02-12 17:24:16 »

Thats what I do. I only have fully transparent and fully opaque. Also pls see my edits above.

99

FF9 Tools / Re: [FF9] General editor - Hades Workshop (0.36)

« on: 2017-02-12 17:05:45 »

Tirlititi
About these black dots: https://i.imgur.com/cDpUCJT.png
I'm not sure this is something I can work out on my side...
This is how HW's tileset looks like: https://i.imgur.com/QEY1WNv.png

Edit: also, I just noticed that this particular (green) layer has a clear signs of antialiasing. This could be the reason why these squares are slipping-in -> by being averaging with nearest pixels.
In that case the question is, why this layer gets scaling and/or antialiasing while other (tickets tent) - don't? Can we enforce that for all layers to (possibly) get a smoother picture?
My original layer does not have any half-transparent/antialiased pixels. Whatever opaque color or full transparency.

On a side note, I wasn't able to process this particular image fully with the errors "can't allocate memory" for a couple of last (biggest) layers. HW wasnt using more than 300megs of ram though.
The problem seem to be went away after I patched executable with largeaddressaware flag. Maybe just a coincidence... dunno.

Edit2: also any idea what would happen if we'll patch texture to be processed with trilinear mode instead of bilinear? (if anything). Also maybe patching it for point filtering mode may remove this processing of the green layer?

100

Support / Re: [FF9PC] Field Background replacement (patch?)

« on: 2017-02-12 16:29:12 »

Hehe, moving parts you say? Not sure about all of them but these damn ugly flags... (that don't have the original equivalent on PSX) I may possibly leave all the layer edges work for a 2nd pass. Cause it won't be worse than original PC and I wanna actually finish the game 1st.

Anyway, about joining forces I just PMed you before I saw this massage, don't see the need to repeat it here.