Messages

326

Troubleshooting / Re: STICKY: FF7 Crash Play-Through Requests

« on: 2009-06-28 19:49:45 »

am I the only one that thinks using a save that came from someone else kind of ruins the game? even if you start editing levels and such so it matches it isnt quite right.

327

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

« on: 2009-06-28 19:24:20 »

Chrysalis: Still could not reproduce it, savegame looks ok, are you using any mods?

mods installed.

custom graphics driver, when it was crashing was version 0.6.8, since using 0.6.10 has not crashed.
old chocobo fix.
old frame rate limiter fix.
(both by yamp I think) these were already in place before I discovered the driver and doesnt seem to be conflict issues.
magic defense fix via yamp
9999 limit breaker via yamp, set to 30000 limit.
replaced avatars
modded various enemy stats but not changed formations and actual enemies
modded some starting stats of cloud and a few spells.

the 2nd time it crashed I was running around in the area for 40 mins or so fighting random battles etc. before it happened, so it wasnt crashing easily.

oh am also using ff7music which itself crashes every so often but has never actually affected ff7 itself maybe until now?

328

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

« on: 2009-06-28 07:13:50 »

yep sorry, app.log is 6th june date so I figured it wasnt right one?

here is save game.

http://www.chrysalisnet.org/save07.ff7

thats the emergency save and I was able to get the crash again on that.

329

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

« on: 2009-06-28 04:46:43 »

Ok I apologise Aali if this isnt related to the driver.

I have played through the entire game with zilch crashes up to the point I am at now and suddenly the game seems unstable (with emergency save tho and if this is due to your driver many thanks).

In the northern cave area particurly the area where you fight master tonberry and one eye monsters along with those armored golom creatures the game is now crashing.  First time was start of a random encounter, and then as I was in that area trying to get the same random encounter again (to see if that cause of crash) it eventually crashed again but outside of battle as I was running around.  I have a crash dump. 17 meg tho.

rarred it down to just under a meg here.

http://www.chrysalisnet.org/crash.rar

330

FAQs and Tutorials / Re: [Tutorial] Covarr's New FF7Music Tutorial

« on: 2009-06-18 20:03:04 »

ok things to check.

path to music files (seems you done this)
winamp installed correctly
latest version of ff7music that doesnt need exe changing.
ff7music in correct directory under ff7.
launching ff7 from ff7music.

whatch the ff7music window when you do something that should start a track playing like entering world map, and see if it reports an error.

331

General Discussion / Re: What is her name?

« on: 2009-06-18 19:56:00 »

what did you expect?

you asked a question and then disputed the answer given? result is a argument/debate.

Her name is Aerith, Aeris was a mistake.

332

General Discussion / Re: chocobo breeding problems

« on: 2009-06-18 19:50:01 »

few points I wish to add.  This applies to pc version if relevant.

First I think the random number generator in the game clearly is glitchy, random events can be umm non random.  Hence getting same chocobo repeatedly.

You can get 2 different coloured chocobos green and blue from same parents, I have done it in my current game and was very lucky to get what I wanted first time, ie. female green followed by male blue.
Between breeding you need to do random battles to pass the time, racing does not pass the time, but of course winning races is needed to garunatuee the right chocobos.
Breed great with great, no need to do great with good as sade in various guides.
Feed at least 10 sylkis so speed is at max potential, this gives you a better stat new born chocobo.
Now the rank to race to?
Just about every guide I read says race it to S rank and that gives you best chance of getting a special chocobo however my experience is different.  To me A class is the pinnacle, get the chocobos to A class and you will always get a special chocobo out of the carob nut every single time, if I race to S class, I only sometimes get a special chocobo so it seems the game mechanics punish you for reaching S class and breeding.  (this goes against all the guides I have read including the choco mechanics).
Race the 2 coloured green and blue to A class and of course give them at least 10 sylkis greens before breeding.
Give them a carob nut and you should be garuantueed a black.
Race the black to A with 10 sylkis greens or more and breed with a wonderful using a zeio nut that is also A with at least 10 sylkis greens and you get a gold garuantueed.  again if you race to S class its not garuantueed and can get normal chocobos.

Now my problems came when I wanted more than 1 of black and gold chocobos so I can breed them with each others to get the fabled 176 speed chocobo, the game mechanics seem to change once you have your first gold chocobo, I start getting normal chocobos even on A class chocobos.

If you find it keeps spitting out the same sex chocobo and/or same colour you need to fight some battles to change the random generated number, when I kept fighting battles outside of the ranch it made no difference but after I did a fight in the crashed gelnika on harder monsters the generated chocobo was changed and I got what I wanted, so I guess who you fight makes a difference or perhaps moving to different certian areas generates a new number.

333

Troubleshooting / Re: Ok i need quick help How do i use Jenova save editor??

« on: 2009-06-14 01:34:56 »

when I use the editor it auto detects the save directory (probably by reading registry).

you then click the save you want to use and hit load.

But be warned it seems a bit buggy, on some of my saved games it doesnt even detect who is in the party correctly and my chocobos wrong, like detecting black chocobos as standard so I expect if I made it save over my previous save it would mess up my game.  I did use it to give aerith the umbrella in an early save fine tho, since that item is impossible to get.

334

General Discussion / Re: chocobo breeding/racing invisible stats

« on: 2009-06-13 23:09:17 »

haha finally!!!

I think the game was glitched, I decided to do a random battle in a different area and also used up my charged omnislash, then first time after that got gold female.  Speed is 153, after I race it up to A class I will breed it with the other gold.

My battles are now different enemies again as well.

335

General Discussion / Re: chocobo breeding/racing invisible stats

« on: 2009-06-13 22:46:35 »

I had  avery fast chocobo once, I just kept breeding 2 gold together with a zeio....over and again I think....

Been a long time

but I cant breed 2 gold I keep getting males only, need a female

336

General Discussion / Re: chocobo breeding/racing invisible stats

« on: 2009-06-13 22:45:17 »

some more info.

if i mate the gold male with the black female using the 3rd from bottom nut porofo I think, then its always a gold male, zeio always black male as said in previous post.

If I win more races so the chocobos are S class then I NEVER get gold chocobos.  Hence why I only race chocobos I am breeding to 8 wins, 1 win away from S class.

with the wonderful and black on S class I did 5 breeds.

female black
male yellow
male yellow
male yellow
male yellow

so immediatly after the race I actually had a female but after some fights reverted to always male again and no golds.

also my fights are now all the same always back attack against same monsters.

337

General Discussion / Re: chocobo breeding/racing invisible stats

« on: 2009-06-13 22:16:37 »

ok I am trying to get a 176 speed stat gold chocobo.

I have this at the moment.

a 154 speed male black chocobo (my fastest)
a 127 speed female black chocobo
a 145 speed male gold chocobo
a 110 speed female wonderful chocobo
and a 104 speed female blue chocobo

I have been mating the female wonderful chocobo with my male black chocobo for over 2 hours trying to get a female gold chocobo and the results arent impressivem they suggest either the random generator is screwed ot the guide is wrong.  Both have won 8 races each. Total 16 races won between them. With zeio nuts of course.

The last 20 attempts with 3 to 5 random battles between each attempt, (bearing in mind I am supposed to be garunatueed gold chocobo and female/male is 50/50 chance.)

male gold
male gold
male gold
male gold
male yellow
male gold
male yellow
male gold
male gold
male gold
male gold
male gold
male gold
male gold
male gold
male gold
male gold
male gold
male gold
male gold

any thoughts?

what I am trying to do is get 2 gold chocobos I can mate with each other in the hope of getting a 176 speed chocobo.

In addition I have tried mating gold with black assuming 50/50 chance of gold or black and its nearly always male black with the occasional female black.

338

FAQs and Tutorials / Re: [Tutorial] Covarr's New FF7Music Tutorial

« on: 2009-06-12 13:34:14 »

FF7Music sometimes throws a fit when you put your music in a path with spaces in it. I would STRONGLY advise something more direct, such as C:\FF7PSF or something like that, rather than leaving them in your game's install directory.

As for the plugins, it doesn't really matter where they are as long as FF7Music can find them. I've seen it said that they need to be in the same directory as ff7.exe or that they need to be in the ficedula folder, but I'm pretty sure this is not the case.

ahh thanks so thats the fix, now I have my music in f:\games\FF7MP3\PSF no spaces and no issues.

339

FAQs and Tutorials / Re: [Tutorial] Covarr's New FF7Music Tutorial

« on: 2009-06-12 13:24:51 »

does anyone have the following problem?

if I load ff7music, I have to open config box and manually fix the path where it searches for music files.  This has to be done everytime the app is loaded, so basically the path gets reset to an invalid path.
If I open the config box to edit options and then save without editing the path, the path breaks again and so basically everytime I make changes to config I also have to fix the path.

here is the correct path to my music files.

F:\games\Square Soft, Inc\Final Fantasy VII\Ficedula\FF7Mp3\PSF

here is the path it resets to

F:\games\Square
Soft,
Inc\Final
Fantasy
VII\Ficedula\FF7Mp3\PSF

basically it changes spaces to new lines.  it also sometimes adds a \ to the end which breaks things.

340

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

« on: 2009-06-12 13:21:14 »

will the dumbed down shaders have any affects on good graphics cards? like reduced quality etc.

341

Troubleshooting / Re: Gamepad Recognition

« on: 2009-06-10 23:09:21 »

should be no issue as long as the pad is recognised and calibrated in windows, you may need to set control type to custom and assign the buttons etc. inside the game.

342

Troubleshooting / Re: Anyone playing on Vista and NOT having sound cut out during some FMVs?

« on: 2009-06-10 23:08:26 »

in addition I also noticed best to turn of ramp emulation in ff7music, since that can cause sound to cutout on some fmv's.

covarr, I guess that depends on the quality of soundfont banks used on the pc alongside the soundcard.

On a decent creative card its possible to make the supplied pc midi sound as good if not better than the ps music.  My original motivation for using ff7music was I was playing ff7 on my laptop onboard realtek sound.

I am back on my desktop pc now but have decided to keep using ff7music as it allows me to use some crysis core and remixed music.

343

General Discussion / chocobo breeding/racing invisible stats

« on: 2009-06-10 23:02:11 »

Ok when playing the game and breeding chocobos chloe mentions which chocobo is the fastest sprinter, this is the only hint the game gives you of that ability.  I assume this is the ability that when you press the sprint (turbo) button during a race it affects how fast the chocobo goes.

Most of the time when I breed all yellow chocobos I get (even wonderful ones) barely speed up when I use turbo, only the black and gold seem to do.  But when compared to A,S and the computer black chocobo its bad they sprint much faster.

So my question is, can sprint stat be boosted by certian combinations of nuts and greens?

I have read the mechanics guide here.

http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=3241.0

It mentions run, dash and acceleration stats, so the chocobos have 3 different stats related to speed? which one out of dash and run is used as the speed stat, and what does accelerate do?


Thanks

344

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

« on: 2009-06-08 14:26:56 »

ok I have tested and works good, can someone verify that the game caps frame rate to 30fps on field screens and to 15fps in battles? or is that my pc been sluggish.

aali and thanks for answering my question on the textures.

345

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

« on: 2009-06-08 13:54:13 »

aali thanks for the update.

0.6.7 so far been very stable for me, I will upgrade to 0.6.8 next time I fire up the game (some time today).

I have anti aliasing on in my nvidia panel which smoothes out the jaggies on the models in battle scenes and field but backgrounds and attack animations remain blocky at high res, is this what to expect and anti aliasing cant fix?

346

Archive / Re: scene.bin ai size reduction project

« on: 2009-06-07 18:05:11 »

my game style must be odd I find eligor very easy, easy to the point I can just have 2 characters waiting whilst the 3rd one keeps attempting to steal the striking staff, he is not hard enough in that I need to heal and finish the battle.

in regards to peerless I meant adding the ability to enemies so they can use it, I wouldnt object to the player been able to use it ( I considered adding great gospel to cait sith as level 3 break or as a reward on his fruit machine) but it can be considered a cheap move.  I am not massively against cheap moves I think they are less of a problem than the overall too weak enemies.  Its one thing having cheap movies it is another thing when the cheap moves arent needed to easily win a battle.

secondadvent I think you have touched on the problem I noticed, when I was looking at the growth curve in wallmarket I wanted to see if I could make early growth much slower (like in oblivion) and it accelerates towards the end so higher levels are more rewarding and you not overpowered early in the game, some times when attack power increases there is very large boosts in attack been dealt as well.  In addition I would like to see different characters more variable in their stats.

So if barret is a tough guy we boost his max hp and max defense but we make his magical and dexterity abilities signifacantly worse.
Tife we boost her dexterity but we reduce her toughness and hitting power.
Cait sith we can make someone whos lucky and is good at magic but very weak physical abilities.
I would have vincent the 2nd best at magic in the game (behind aerith and ahead of cait sith), but weak at physical defense and dexterity.
Cid can be all round like cloud but weaker.
nanaki dexterity same as tifa but not so fast and of course not as weak.

So these are ideas to add variety which makes the player be more strategic in the use of characters.

There is one thing I wonder a lot in RPG's which squaresoft made an effort to fix in crysis core and that is why dont they add diffilculty levels, they have a problem in satisfying players new to the genre so dont want the game to be too hard and dont want to make it so the players have to train and level up their characters to get pass a boss, but this then makes the game too easy for experienced players, the solution is a diffilculty option, personally I think its better if a player needs to level up to get passed a point in the game then be in a position where the level is too high for that point of the game and things are too easy.

347

Archive / Re: scene.bin ai size reduction project

« on: 2009-06-07 02:43:18 »

I initially tried to add the following changes to kotr.

increase cost over 250 (sucked when realised max is 255)
make max level 3 so 3x per battle, and to even level up to level 2 would be same as current level 4 and level3 same as current level 5.

I then tried to take the ignore defense flag off so its significantly weaker against bosses (since all boss's in my game especially late game have good magic defense) but this in some cases made it too weak, it went from doing 9k or so damage per hit to sometimes only 100 per hit.  So for now I have kept the ignore defense flag on and took down the base damage so it does around 2k-3k per hit, so total damage is more than zero bahamut but not insane.

Of course late game kotr isnt that powerful when you compare to other things eg. 4x cut with 9999 limit break removed will do similiar damage to kotr and omnislash also similiar.  This is why I consider many hp's far too low, to me a boss battle has to last a long time thats the #1 rule, even if its just the same AI but the battle lasting longer its an improvement.  Once thats fixed then the battle can be made genuinly harder with AI improvements and stronger attacks.

By the way your idea for kotr to harm everyone is very good, to get round the shield not protecting issue you can decrease the accuracy down to something that will miss as often as normal attacks and then ways for players to survive could be having a very high defense %.  So wearing mystile for example.

If I understand you correctly you will be balancing the game so the player is expected to be around level 90 at the end? and to compensate for the higher level requirements you will make it easier to level up so less training.  If so I like the idea of this.

What I did in my game, (since I lack the skills to edit AI.)

1 - I set most normal enemies with a attack, magic and dexterity boost meaning most enemies you meet will get their turn first and get an attack in, the idea was for the attack too hurt, the dexterity defenitly worked as I rarely go first in fights but most attacks are still far too weak. Also luck boost to every enemy so critical hits more frequent.
2 - I set a few random encounters to signficantly more diffilcult, large hp boost, larger boosts than normal on the attack and dexterity stats, as well as some defensive boosts.  These fights I tend to make more rewarding like extra exp and small chance of good item.
3 - all enemies get level boosts, trying to keep enemies that are inside 4x and 5x levels still inside them, so enemy skills remain effective on same enemies.
4 - all boss's large boosts especially on hp and mp, early boss's have lower boosts and all boss's after midgar larger boosts.  Typical boosts to HP are early boss's triple HP, mid game bosses 4x HP and late game bosses 10-20x HP.  In addition large level boosts as well as large stats boosts, initially I went too far on some boosts and had to tone it down a bit, but I still have many bosses way too easy.  Some are genuine tough battles tho.
5 - safer sephiroph, in addition has couple changes to attacks. super nova ignores status defense, heartless angel adds chance of poison and ignores status defense, of course slow+poison on someone with 1hp will kill them, so basically heartless angel becomes a 1hp attack with a chance of death.  He has massive defense boosts since his hp cant be effectively boosted.
6 - all enemies are much easier to steal from, this is something that makes game easier but it was just silly before on the default settings, most items 83% chance of success, but special items like weapons and elixir reduced to 51%.

To me obvious AI boosts are.

1 - a counter attack that either heals or drains, so the enemy will be able to attack+heal (since the heal is a counter).
2 - more status affects in attacks such as confusion and petrify.
3 - ability to use peerless.
4 - to react to current state of battle, eg. casting haste onself after slow in affect.
5 - ability to cast summons including kotr.
6 - have stocks of elixir, especially some boss's.
7 - to be able to revive other enemies.
8 - have a random chance of breaking players equipped accessory. once broken it is lost.

348

FF7 Tools / Official Proud Clod 1.0 Topic

« on: 2009-06-06 18:49:36 »

both def and mdef are doubled by the engine, and yes it is true that enemies would need less room to have their def to go up to 510, since it is doubled initially. but, the thing is, enemies shouldn't need to almost null damage (255, the base max for the defenses halves all damage, except def ignoring things, and 510, the doubled max, would take the damage to pretty much nothing, around 1-100 for powerful attacks, since the damage done is damage = damage * (512 - def) / 512, making 10000 damage taken down to  ~40 damage dealt, a really big decrease. if an enemy had that much defense, then it is likely that they wouldn't have much life, or the fight would be really unnecessarily long, especially since hp can go pretty damn high.

yes, an enemy with 400 defense (200 base) would still take plenty of damage, but if you had a good ai, great moves, and ample hp on it, then that high of defense wouldn't really be needed. the main problem with most of the vii fights, is that the enemy ai is too simple, and their moves too weak. many enemies are too low level to be doing a ton of damage, and some at very high levels would still be very easy since their ai sucks. if you balance out the game well, and make it hard from there, then mass def boosting isn't really necessary, just overkill, and making the fights much longer than needed to be.

i guess that the def doubling is good for now, and will still be needed when my first compressed ai scene.bin is done, since the enemies will still be essentially the same, but when i make my REAL difficulty hack (want this done so that i have plenty of breathing room, and so that psx version users can still enjoy my hack, since it should still fit into the original iso easily), i am hoping that i will have a way to stop the initial doubling, even though it is likely many enemies late-game will be hitting the higher stat marks, and the end game optional bosses will definitely be taking roids, so only a few enemies should need past 255 defense, if they even really need it at all. usually, if you know the enemy ai very well, and have a very nice setup, you should eventually win anyway, but my hack is going to be cruel to the users, so massive defense would just be too much .

well it is a problem with too low hp/def/mdef, I defeated red dragon without it even getting one attack on me, so you could give red dragon very high attack stats and a brilliant AI but it means nothing if it doesnt get a move in, this red dragon I defeated in one move had triple HP over the default, as I triple HP'd most bosses in my game due to fights that way too short, generally speaking I can finish most non boss fights (before modding) without them even getting a turn and most boss fights within 2-3 turns which was just ridiculous, the game seemed to be designed that the player would just rush through it on low level weapons and with no levelling up whatsoever.

The way I see it, every single boss in the game should be capable of withstanding a omnislash attack, kotr should make fights easier but not finish boss's of in one move.  Red dragon I thought at level 54 had the rune blade and omnislash charged up at start of fight, used omnislash which did around 2k per hit, and its dead.  The boss after that which I read many people find hard??? I have never struggled on this boss although it does moderate damage it just dies far too quickly like most other bosses so usually only gets 3 or 4 attacks in at the most.  This boss has strong magic defense (very strong on my mod) however I still beat it fairly fast with physical attacks, it got 6 turns in and it had quadruple over default hp, a dexterity boost of 30 so it had faster charge.  To get level 54 I didnt do much levelling, I did item collecting where I fought battles to stock up on things like ethers and x potions and once I got these to high stock 80+ I then would carry on playing the game, I did a bit of gil saving in junon area, but not what I would call excessive, and this had me on level 54 at the temple of ancients.

So the solution could be to make enemies give way less exp so levelling up is slower and the time you meet bosses you are much lower level but this would then mean getting to the magical level 99 and level 60 points much harder and less likely in a normal game, I do agree enemy AI's need to be improved especially on bosses and of course stronger attacks ones that hurt enough so that you do actually have to heal in battles and even consider fighting on the back row/use sadness, but doing this alone is useless if the enemy gets no attacks in, and the best way to ensure they get attacks in is to boost their hp/dexterity and defenses.

349

FF7 Tools / Re: [Release] Hojo 1.0 - enemies editor

« on: 2009-06-06 18:12:47 »

thanks, using sceneedit and scenereader was rather cumbersome.

All we need now is a gui editor that can alter AI, seems at the moment need to use hex editor and know all the raw code values.

350

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

« on: 2009-06-06 18:04:31 »

ok I am using 1680x1050 now in the custom driver config, with aspect ratio correction so doesnt stretch to wide screen.  Initially my hardware did struggle with this but I tuned some nvidia driver settings (kept my same antialiasing on tho) and disabled vsynch in the config and now runs smooth again.  This gives me the full screen height as well as no desktop glitches with my windows when I play the game.

I noticed even tho I had disabled monitor scaling so the monitor was using native res when using lower resolutions, the desktop was forced down to the same res as ff7 which is why everything was shifted to the right.