Final Fantasy 9 mods: UI/Backgrounds/Cheats

[Lein]

I got the pc port and was immediately struck by some things that even make the original on an emulator look better. The UI is way too big in battle, it looks really bad, when you approach NPCs icons appear above them to indicate you can talk to them, it's just an ugly distraction imo, how to disable it? The characters are way too sharp and don't look like they fit into the pixelated backgrounds and the cheat option in the config menu is just retarded.

Is there something akin to a patch for these things? I found some guy who had put a filter on all the FF9 backgrounds, I'm not sure how it looks ingame if it's an improvement or not so possible the character/background thing is fixed already. Is there some mod for the battle UI? and lastly is there some way to disable cheats. I have looked at both this forum and the steam forum and even on google and there are 30 pages long threads discussing how to mod it and somewhere in there you might find a link or two.

Anyone who got the links for the fixes? I would really appreciate it.

[Lein]

I found this:

Replace Font
http://steamcommunity.com/groups/ff-modding/discussions/13/1290690926876650747/

Scaled UI
http://steamcommunity.com/groups/ff-modding/discussions/13/1290690926876650747/

To install these two fixes do you have to just put them in the game folder and hit the patcher and the font and ui will be updated?

[Rodumas]

Is this part of the Memoria mod or something? Or standalone?

[Tsuna]

So someone managed to resize the UI then. That's great

[Lein]

I'm not sure if it's standalone or if you need to first install memoria, whatever memoria is because I have trouble installing it. Anyone know how to get these mods to work, I found that if you run the game in 800x600 resolution the character models blend quite well into the background, it's when you're at higher resolutions that the characters stand out.

However it would be really nice to have smaller menus in battle and a changed font, also is there some fix for the audio, it sounds slightly compressed. I think it's odd that a ff game that has been out for more than a year on pc and you'll find some obscure thread hidden away on the steam forum for how to fix the menus and font. I thought at this point someone would have turned this android port into a real ps1-PC port.

Disable cheats would also be nice, like I noticed you can just shut the game off and it saves automatically. It's like they tried to make a super friendly port for people who just want to rush through the game.

[Fraggoso]

It's all done with Memoria, nothing is stand alone.
And I disagree that running a lower res is better in blending the characters. The real problem is not that the character stands out, at least not for me, but the real ugly filtered Backgrounds are the real problem.

And you would be amazed that some Backgrounds have a 3k resolution to begin with.

[Tetraspore]

It's unfortunate. The best thing for them to do would have been to locate the original 3d assets for backgrounds and re-render them at  a higher resolution. The best outcome from a modder would be re-entered backgrounds created by hand. Some of those maps would be easier than others, but I'd love to start some kind of collaboration effort with other 3D modelers to achieve this. The game could be stunning.

Alternatively, another way to approach it would be to trace and repaint in photoshop or something. You could probably get a really cool style that way.

[Lein]

Tetraspore, I don't know how to replace the backgrounds or how to match perfectly the perspective in the 3d scene to the original background. But I'm a very capable 3d modeler, so if you know all this and could help me out with the perspective of some scene/scenes I wouldn't mind seeing if we could have a go at replacing some backgrounds. Let's start out easy at first with some simple backgrounds then if it works out we might go further, what do you say? I'm Dan Lel on steam.

[Tetraspore]

Here's how I would approach it. I'd have screenshots of each map with the characters for scale. One screenshot with Zidane as close to the camera as possible, and one with him as far away from the camera as possible. Then you'd need Zidane's model ripped from the game and in whatever 3d program you're using. You'd use Zidane as your basis for scale for objects and the two screenshots per map as the proportions and relation to one another.

And totally! I'm 100% game for some more simple maps. I'm more of a character artist than environmental, but it's something I'm sure I'm capable of. I'm "fungus waifu" on steam. Currently out of a PC due to a power supply failure, but I should have a brand new beast in two weeks. If we can produce a good looking result, I'm sure we could post something and grow a larger team of people to work towards this shared goal.

[nfitc1]

It's unfortunate. The best thing for them to do would have been to locate the original 3d assets for backgrounds and re-render them at  a higher resolution...

Most developers back in the day didn't retain their original sources. Either they scrapped them to make room for the next project or the original designers actually have legal claim to the sources. I believe most of the set design of FFVIII was done by a third-party designer and only gave a certain quality image for Square to work with. Upscaleing that would require contacting the original designers (assuming they're still in business) and getting higher-res images (assuming they were ever made) or redoing the entire image (again, assuming the designer personally has no legal claim to the image).
IIRC in the case of FFVII, one of the top developers or producers was the sole possessor of the original source code and left Square shortly after the PSX International edition was finalized. The source is now in a legal limbo in such a way that it can not be used by the one that possesses it nor procured by the company that technically owns it.
Since FFIX was redone in Unity it's probably safe to say that the source was retained enough, but only some assets were redone. In the case of backgrounds it was likely "if we can't do it all we can't do any of it" kind of issue.

[Tetraspore]

Yeah, I figured it was something along those lines. Thats not gonna stop me from producing a map or two as a proof of concept.

[Lein]

I'm not motivated enough to do any of the actual modding, which is why I said that if you're able to do all the perspective stuff I could help out. Also I think there is a better method to do all that, some people on this forum remade the Final Fantasy 7 backgrounds using sketch up, there is some tutorial somewhere. But I'll not be messing with that, so if you need any help I'll only work from some basic 3d layout and ripped background image provided by you.

[Tetraspore]

I'll look into the methods used by FFVII modders.

Edit: OK yeah, I see how it was done in sketchup, that might be a lot easier lol.