Messages

276

General Discussion / FF8 - the 'closed' shops in Esthar

« on: 2004-12-25 23:06:04 »

What I want to know is why all of the TOWNS are closed once you get towards the end of the game...-_-

or to be more specific, who's horrible idea was it to close everything off. >_<

heh it's ultimecia's or rather time compression's side-effect. isn't that abvoius? she might also have some connections with malicious ff8-development staff  

yeah, it's a clever excuse for no-space-on-cd-on-psx-version ever-existant problem - since you have almost everything locked up when you enter utimecia's castle, she could also block all the towns to make your life harder. but all your skills get unlocked when you exit the castle, which seems to be an area of influence of her minions - her area of influence might be bigger.
----
i heard that the final movies take almost 50% of the cd on psx. so _some_ towns could not 'make it' into cd4 on psx. they propably thought at square - we'll just block _all_ the towns as a result of a time compression, to save ourselves even more space for other stuff.

277

General Discussion / sorry

« on: 2004-12-25 22:47:02 »

yeah it's hard to be innovative in ff7 these days :/ i don't mind the rough facts, as long as they have a decent basis.

well this dead post thing is a surprise...a week old? i always feel like old posts have at least a month of age....
okay time to shut up and read the rules...again :/

278

General Discussion / bad feeling about this

« on: 2004-12-25 22:29:01 »

i think ff7:ac will suck. why? because it's not interactive :/
and it's gonna be at most 2-3 hours long. this is no compensation for an awesome game that squeenix might finally make

another sad thing is that square is doing its usual fan-ripoff thing. if the ff7:ac makes a financial success they'll make...a series? another movie? or maybe a game. my guess is that they'll make all that and more. just to limit-break our pockets.

and if the movie doesn't work out financially they'll propably forget ff7. forever. i don't know which option sucks more.

either way it's gonna be a rip-off. either we pay for a dvd, which may not make a success and doom ff7-2-ish chances forever, or it could be just a first step to make us pay more and more hoping for a ff7-2. [they already tried this by giving people an incomplete, unsatisfying ending in FFX, forcing people to make requests for a second part - as someone in square said, they didn't feel like abandoning their accomplishment with the epic world of FFX, so they just give people a reason to wait for the second part of the story set in the same world = less work to do, same/more money to get]

i don't have anything against FF7:AC .the trailers are awesome. and the movie might be great [if they don't screw up the script or something]. but it might fail just as previous movie did [i actually really liked it, i don't get it why it failed]

yeah i had a feeling that white cape dude could be rufus or sephiroth or some clone, maybe some bigger jenova's part left out. who else would these guys obey? [heidegger was too fat to fit into a wheelchair anyway:D] [i also thought for a while that this could be cloud's clone, since it's not clear in FF7 if the cloud that falls into the lifestream is the same one that emerges from it, maybe something weird happened in the lifestream. well what about tifa then....she was also there.oh..forget it:D]

279

General Discussion / i know it's a dumb question to ask, but...

« on: 2004-12-25 22:00:12 »

what's the legal status on qhimm's and ficedula tools? is it okay to modify their code and maintain it on one's own?

is it legally ok to use them on my (legal) FF games? and what's the authors view on modifying their sources by other people?is someone maintaining the code [if there are people kind enough to throw in some patches into the source]?

btw. i've recently become a linux-freak, so i wonder how hard would it be to port some of your programs into linux [i cannot call myself a serious programmer yet, but i'm working on it:D]? - i have to run griever from wine [win emulator] to modify my saves [from my pc- and my friends' psx-emulated version]. games run just fine under wineX/wine/cedega and that's just about sweet

280

Archive / umm...

« on: 2004-12-25 21:30:53 »

btw. does anyone know the estimate on how many 'mods' are there to ff7/ff8 ? [i'm not counting those soundfonts/music stuff/standard bugfixes, there are propably _tons_ of them altogether]

281

Troubleshooting / possible problems

« on: 2004-12-25 21:27:36 »

there was a trick similar to this, when you could actually get a flying chocobo in ff9 _too early_ in game - you were supposed to obtain it after getting an airship (as far as i know) somewhere on 3rd disc (or maybe even later) - and even if you got it too early, it caused major script problems when you would go to the wrong places ahead of time (game script-wise).

well in ff9 on a psx there was propably only part of a script on each cd i guess, so that could cause these problems. i don't know if that would affect ff7 on pc.

however, my point is that the same thing could happen in ff7 - you might go into some place too early, it might flip some trigger in the script and you wouldn't be able to do everything that you were supposed to do before the trigger (which could be important somehow, like the 'change disk' event). or the game might just 'blow up' :d

282

Troubleshooting / small feature request

« on: 2004-12-25 21:16:41 »

this is kinda strange...i did the same thing, except for the sound tracks, and it did not work :/

so it really does not work with higher res? [shhesh, i was hoping to put in there some high-res clips from ff7ac trailers :/

283

Troubleshooting / small feature request

« on: 2004-12-25 09:28:35 »

First of all, the movies are actually a bit better than they look in game, as you can see if you play them in Windows Media Player or something.  A lot of "fuzz" is added by FF7 because of the way it plays them in 16-bit.

well i did, but some of them are still ugly and blocky, some movies on a psx are actually better.

If you do some searching on this, you'll find past discussions about it...  People have attempted this with limited success.

hmm...thanks, i'll take my time and look for it...wish me luck [ :/ ]
i was just wondering if it somebody attempted to make a patch via ficedula's f77 patcher for this...

284

General Discussion / :D

« on: 2004-12-24 11:26:18 »

i blocked only the most annoying stats using status materia on myself - i blocked pertification, minimizing, frogging, and confuse. at the start i cast regen, and wall on myself [and first of all - deathforce], and there i go

having tons of bad ailments really racks up the points - i got about 8000 [or more] for finishing the arena poisoned, berserked, darkened, cursed, with doom and petrify counting down over my head, having broken items, weapons, levels and locked some materia

and i usually get tissues as well

i noticed once a weird thing - i put a luck increasing materia on myself and after each fight [when the roulette shows up] i had 50% chance of getting into the next battle with NO handicaps [but it gives you pathetic score :/ ] - there were only two handicaps on the roulette - no handicap and level-down.
but this happened only once and i haven't been able to repeat that

285

General Discussion / my thoughts on the subject

« on: 2004-12-24 11:10:51 »

it goes like this:

use your first limit about 8 times and you get a second limit
now _that_ character has to kill some enemies on his own (you can use their magic, weapons, limits, whatever - petrification does not count, that's what i heard) [i guess it'a 20 in order to get a lvl2 limit]

then you need to switch to lvl2 limits an keep using you new limit until the next one shows up [propably 6 times].
then you need to kill some enemies using _that_ character [this time it's about 40].

and then you get limit lvl3. use it a few times [i think 4 times] ]and you should get second lvl3 limit.

obviously, you need to have a special item in order to obtain limit lvl4.

oh yeah, this works for characters that have that many limits [so vincent and cait sith have different rules for that]

286

General Discussion / i'm lazy :D

« on: 2004-12-24 10:57:21 »

i usually get through the 2nd disk fast, since it's boring to me :/

and i stop at north crater at disc3 to fight some movers [those red jumping balls] and magic pots ['gimme elixir!'] until i get some characters to lvl99 [at least cloud] that's where most of the time goes away [but they give lots of exp / ap]

i usually get a time around 90 hours [i usually end disc2 with 50-60 hours on the counter, and i end disc one after 45 hours]

btw. i noticed that if your party is relatively high on levels you can sometimes split it into _three_ groups to figth sephiroth. is that a bug or intended behavior?

287

General Discussion / Re: FF8 - the 'closed' shops in Esthar

« on: 2004-12-24 10:49:13 »

i think it was could be random. propably having bahamut with rare-item could make the difference. if that's true, that is. (i thought i read something like that in some faq)

aww, what's the big deal, since you can get rosetta stones elsewhere?

well, now you can try to verify some other rumors if you have nothing better to do in ff8

288

General Discussion / FF IX for pc

« on: 2004-12-24 10:44:13 »

how good is FF9 compared to the others?

well it's like ff5/ff6, where you can equip things on yourself that teach you various skills [this depends on a character], but you can't change character's class.

you can have 4 characters at the same time in a battle. it's pretty much like not-ff8 fantasies, where you have to amass tons of XP to get high levels. oh, and there are no attacks stronger than 9999 :/

how is the gameplay - is it like FF8?

no it's entirely different - no more arcade like combos [like in zell's limits]. no more 16x9999 combos [yup.i really love lionheart ]. only two characters have summons now, and their animation can be short or long. character design is similar to ff7, and looks fairy-tale-ish :/. but there is still a card game :] [it's way different now, however]. oh bother, read some reviews for more!

i might try this emu to give it a shot, it would be like a dream come true playing this game.

ff9 looks awesome on openGL plugin in epsxe, but it might get sometimes sluggish on older video cards, that don't support framebuffer 'acrobatics' too well [like GF2 cards]

289

General Discussion / reality sucks

« on: 2004-12-24 10:30:21 »

well that's how it is - when developer's intentions have a brutal clash with development deadline :[ i wish they released a script patch or something after the game went out, so they would fix some weird things [like aeris' ghost script bug e.g. - i personally feed it should be left however], or fix some dialogues, as i don't get some of them [the one between cloud and aeris before entering honey bee inn really sucks - it's so stiff and artificial]

290

Troubleshooting / reply

« on: 2004-12-24 10:19:29 »

you can try PSMPlay program or PSXMC to rip various data off ff8
[it usually rips movies and textures]

there is also a sound sample extractor somewhere, and i recently played around script viewer, and background viewer [hmmm wasn't that qhimm's garden?]

ooopz.. this post is sooo old. sorry.

291

Troubleshooting / small feature request

« on: 2004-12-24 10:08:05 »

perhaps you've noticed that psx-ff7 version has videos of a little-bit better quality than pc version. yeah, i know the TV blurs the screen on a psx so it propably looks better because of that, right? no. i checked this via a psx movie ripper on my PC. i gave it a shot to replace those files by recompressing them from STR on psx to various codecs on a PC. but it does not work. ff7 seems to have some movie-check inside and my movies don't play at all. [i tried to scale them to the same resolution and framerate as the original ones]

as far as i know ff7 demo used indeo codec. retail ff7 uses duck truemotion in its avi files, which
1) has crappy quality, -_-
2) doesn't have an encoder freely available -_-

so i'd like to know if someone managed to run ff7 with custom movies. you know it would already be cool just to replace the sephiroth-in-fire scene with that one from FF7:AC [and if it would play some better codecs, like mpeg2, xvid etc in high-res]

ff7 seems to relay on something like direct-show [i forgot the proper name for it] for movie playback, so i figure it shouldn't be THAT hard to change to another DS codec for video playback, right?

perhaps someone might spare some time and make a patch for ff7 to do the job? or perhaps it's easier to pull off than i thought?

thanks for any response in advance.