[FF7] The inner workings of FF7Config.exe and FF7Config update

[Tom]

After a long night of work at trying to figure out how the source works I have pulled together some info on the FF7Config.exe.  So here we go:
First of all, FF7Config.exe's boxes (the little ones that say "Primary Display Driver") are not some kind of native windows form and were MANUALLY drawn by the original programmers at EIDOS.  They consist of 4 lines with coordinates.  The first box's top line coordinates are:
X1:2820 X2:6090 Y1:240 Y2:240

The FF7Config only recognizes Intel Pentium CPUs because it does not read the processor environment variable.  Im working on a fix for that.  On the graphics tab menu there appears to be a bug where it only detects 1 graphics driver but I'm fixing that too

Hopefully this project will replace the default ff7configs (and provide them for newer versions that don't have them built in)

Woohooo! Tooltips so you don't always wonder "Now what did this thing do?" 

Been playing around with the ff7config files


Very old development version of ff7config


Ill update this post as more is discovered and fixed

[Kaldarasha]

Eidos was only the publisher not the porter. Square did had a team which has done it (in Honolulu if I remember right).

There is also a bug with the sound device. As example if the driver for it will be changed then the soundcard isn't selected in the config anymore and the game CTD.

[Tom]

Update: I have been playing around with the ff7configs files and have come up with some goodies:


Tooltips to help guide new users!

Soon, we will be able to intergrate mods into the FF7Config so you can add and remove options to it and make your mods seem more "integrated" into the game.

[Covarr]

Is this a new app designed to look like the old one, or have you hacked the old one to pieces to update it? I seriously hope the former; its overall functionality is so overwhelmingly simple (almost all it does is mess with the registry) that I can't imagine it's worth the effort to modify it compared to the potential benefits of remaking it from scratch.

[Tom]

This is a completely new one but I did hack up the old one into pieces with decompiler to see what the options do.
But worry not, its compiled with the exact same compiler and environment the original was made and its designed with the same architecture the original was made with so it should be a 100% compatible replacement.  Basically I looked at what the original did in decompiler and rewrote the function so it would work and fixed any bugs in the process.

[Hellbringer616]

An option to select Aali's driver vs using a registry key would be awesome.

I'm sure this is a tall order, But if you could use the config as a GUI to config the ini for the driver that would be amazing. I know it's not hard, But hey, while we are prettying everything up, may as well add it

[Tom]

That IS in fact one of the main functions of this upgrade.
I've fixed up MIDI support in the MIDI driver section and might add the ability to play any music you want from the game, instead of ASERI2 (Hurry Faster) what do you think?

Because I feel some people are gonna ask this: Well MIDI sucks!
Fear not, I will add Sound Mod compatibility so if Sound Mod is detected the MIDI tab will transform into the Sound Mod tab.

[Kaldarasha]

Btw. is it possible to change the sound output of the game from direct sound to openAL? The game has some problems with certain channels (sound is killing another played sound), but I'm not sure if that would do the trick to fix them. Possibly it's better to use Ficedula's Ultrasound.

[Tom]

I don't think the FF7Config manages how sound is played in the game but yes, for the sound from the configurator can go to OpenAL.  The game is not part of the config so there is nothing I can do about it.

[GoldSaucerBosser]

This thread doesn't seem too active lately but I it was the only thing I found that would help with a project.

I have been trying to get all my old stuff to work in a vmware virtual machine, but with this particular game the ffconfig and sound card in general seems to crash and I could not find a way around it. Every other old game works just great but when you try to configure this one, it never shows the dialog box to select options and the logs show it failing on the sound device.

I am also running it on a Windows 7 machine and my graphics card is not properly detected or able to render the graphics.. I'm using a Radeon HD 7970 and half the HD graphics either look solid white/black or crash the game. The ones that do render don't look as good as screenshots I've seen and it seems largely due to the way the ff7.exe and the ff7config.exe are detecting and configuring support for graphics and sound.