Minimizing lag

[nikfrozty]

Sorry if I started a thread for this but I don't know where to post this question. Anyways whenever I start the game and use some magic like thunder and summons like the chocobo my game lags. Is there any way to reduce the lags?? I've read somewhere that you'll need SDD or something. What is that?? Is it a hardware??

[nfitc1]

This happens to me sometimes when I'm trying to summon Ultimate End. In that case, I think there are just so many files to read out of the magic.lgp file that the game pauses for a second or two to get them all.
Are you playing from a maximum install or standard? It sounds like a standard since even basic spells are laggy. If that's the case you might want to enable direct disk access for your CD drive. I don't remember how to do that, but it fixed a horrible lag problem I was having with FFVIII back in the day.

[sl1982]

It is basically a super fast hard drive. And yes it does help. Another thing you can try is turn on caching in Aali's driver. The game will still lag the first time the files are loaded but after that it should be good.

[nikfrozty]

It is basically a super fast hard drive. And yes it does help. Another thing you can try is turn on caching in Aali's driver. The game will still lag the first time the files are loaded but after that it should be good.

This happens to me sometimes when I'm trying to summon Ultimate End. In that case, I think there are just so many files to read out of the magic.lgp file that the game pauses for a second or two to get them all.
Are you playing from a maximum install or standard? It sounds like a standard since even basic spells are laggy. If that's the case you might want to enable direct disk access for your CD drive. I don't remember how to do that, but it fixed a horrible lag problem I was having with FFVIII back in the day.

I know about the cache in Aali's driver and as you said it works fine after using the spells the second time. It just bums me out cause everytime I restart my computer and play ff7 again it. Still thanks for the tip.
@NFITC1-I'm playing maximum install but I think my game lags because it loads the textures slowly but when I use it the second time its all good.

[sithlord48]

i don;t really recall any lag on my system when using spells, then again i really don't play all to often lately been working on a few projects. do you have an older machine, cause i could see a lack of vram or regular ram helping add to your lag.

[nikfrozty]

i don;t really recall any lag on my system when using spells, then again i really don't play all to often lately been working on a few projects. do you have an older machine, cause i could see a lack of vram or regular ram helping add to your lag.

Well whenever I try to use a spell the first time I start my game it slows for about 2 or 3 seconds then it continues. Is there anyway for my pc to make the game read the texture files faster?? And by the way I'm sure I have 512 ram. Is it low?? I can run other games faster like Assassins Creed and Dragon Age but why FF7 when infact it is much older than my other games??

[nfitc1]

Consider defraging your harddrive. It may be that the lgp files are in pieces, especially if you've done editing on them.

[nikfrozty]

I could just try that. I'll probably take a long time. Thanks for the advice. I'll post here if your advices work for others to know what to do.

[willis936]

This raises an interesting point.  Is there anyway to cache all replaced textures that the game will ever need before you even run the game?  This might make startup be more than a few seconds but at least gameplay will always be smooth as butter.

[sithlord48]

This raises an interesting point.  Is there anyway to cache all replaced textures that the game will ever need before you even run the game?  This might make startup be more than a few seconds but at least gameplay will always be smooth as butter.

im pretty sure that aali's driver already does cache used textures, but im not sure if they get removed after you close ff7 or they get put back in cache when you reload the game.

[nikfrozty]

This raises an interesting point.  Is there anyway to cache all replaced textures that the game will ever need before you even run the game?  This might make startup be more than a few seconds but at least gameplay will always be smooth as butter.

im pretty sure that aali's driver already does cache used textures, but im not sure if they get removed after you close ff7 or they get put back in cache when you reload the game.

Hmm if you're talking about the .ctx files made in the cache I'm pretty sure they are never removed unless you delete them. But it may also be good to load the texture before the start of the game for faster gameplay.

[willis936]

^^^ That's what I was getting at.  Rather than saving it in the cache when you use it, just cache everything off the bat.

[nikfrozty]

Oh.. Sorry I didn't understood what you were trying to say in your post. Can it be done manually??

[willis936]

Not as far as I know.  It seems like something that could be done easily enough from aali's position.

[Aali]

It can be done for sure, but there's no "clean" way to do it since it's not possible to tell which files will actually be used in game.
And if your computer is not fast enough to load them on the fly it's not very likely to be able to fit everything in RAM all at once.
Not to mention that it will add a considerable amount of startup time.

[willis936]

Well everything in the textures folder could be cached and that's only up to 180 megabytes on my install.  That would eliminate all lag waiting for the world map and  battles.  Also it doesn't seem like it would add more than a few seconds to startup.

[sl1982]

180 Mb so far. This size will climb quite a bit as more gets released.

[willis936]

This is true.  I remember I tried someone's release of retextures on 3 battle scenes and the game hung up or took minutes to work when starting a new game.  I think an update to the driver and caching helped this but still 3 battle scenes is nothing in comparison to the entire bombing mission.

[Cupcake]

Caching made the TA patch on my Eee go from Unplayable, to "there's a lag?"