This is about remaking FF7 in case you didn't know. This is a good time for those who aren't interested to quit reading. Also, keep in mind that this goes against the copyright and end-user agreement, so we'd be risking the wrath of Square.
The first order of business is to figure out what we want. What do we want to do? Do you we just want to change some of the dialogue and maybe a location or two? Maybe modify some limits? Enhance the graphics?
If that's all we're doing, it probably wouldn't be near as hard, but is it worth doing? I'm going to treat this discussion as if we've decided to go for a lot more. Does this seem feasible? I'm very skeptical, but it would be fun if we could.
Let's say we're going to:
-Improve or change some or all graphics, dialogue, sounds, and music
-Add completely new parts to the story
-edit the .AVIs
-Edit existing locations and add new ones
-Other (Heck, be my guest here. I really don't want to go overboard, but with some of the stuff I've mentioned, I think I already have. Multiplayer *would* be an interesting feature...)
Ok, we know what we want to do (a lot). How the heck are we going to do it? I see three options right off the bat on how to proceed.
1. Use the existing game engine(s) and modify it where necessary to suit our purposes.
2. Create our own engine(s).
3. Use existing engine(s).
|_If we choose #1, we need to be able to edit and/or create:
-Character/NPC models, .a files, etc.
-All aspects of the level files (images, scripts, locations, text)
-Sounds and music
-.TEX files
-All aspects of the battle files (models, enemies, limits, spells, items, etc.)
-The World Map
-The menu system
Out of this currently we can do:
-Text
-Music (and probably sounds with a little more work)
We're getting there with the 3d models and a few other things, but we can't really do much at the moment.
|_ If we choose #2, we'll have to do a *ton* of programming as we're practically making a game (think about as long as Legacy). We'd need a 3D engine or five for the Field, World Map, Battles, and Minigames. We'd also have to recreate the menu system, among numerous other things. Then, we'd have to copy and/or import 3D models, sounds, create our own scripts, AI and program routines, etc., etc.
|_ If we choose #3, we'd be doing many of the same things if we were doing #2. First we'd have to find an existing engine that suited our purposes, maybe even several of them. Then, we'd have to figure out how to implement FF7's Field, Battle, World Map, and Menu Systems. Next order of business would be copying/importing the character and Battle models. Then, remaking each scene of the game. After that, Minigames and so on.
In conclusion, none of these options sounds very fun -or feasible. At least not at the moment. What do you think? I'm not trying to be discouraging, but this does seem rather unlikely. Thoughts? Opinions?
[This message has been edited by Srethron Askvelhtnod (edited February 02, 2001).]
Wait...scrap that. The battles still needs to be totally 3D. Not too advanced...howevever the special effects are pretty stunning. You could of course replace the battles with old SNES style battles to make things simple ;-)
Worse is the entire script engine. You would probably need to use the story format made by Squaresoft, which should hopefully take care of most things (just cross your fingers and hope that the game doesn't do too many dirty tricks but keep things nice and tidy seperated between the game scripts and the executable code).
What I would go for in your case is probably creating a DirectX inbetween layer as I've told you before...that way you would be able to heighten the resolution of the battles. Then supply higher resolution textures, and perhaps hack all the backgrounds to 1024x768. This can be done by emulating the filesystem so that when FF7 requests a file, we give a bogus file with textures the right size, but which only really contains a handle at the beginning and the rest is zeroes. Then, we also intercept the outgoing calls, and recognizing the singature we load our texture/background instead. This way, there are no restrictions set by the Squaresoft formats, just create one set of files which translates everything into a directory structure where the backgrounds are nicely stored as BMP or JPG. In essence, create a virtual (though very fast) machine which FF7 runs to, and whenever FF7 does something you understand what it tries to do and do it better.
Just a suggestion. Why do you want to do this anyway? FF7 is a finished product, and while it's fun to hack it a little, I would think that when you are going to put all this effort into a game you're better off finding some artists and story writers and create a new (but perhaps similar) game from scratch. Wait until Legacy is released and you'll have a state-of-the-art extremely customizable engine capable of doing anything in RPG... it's a principle we have, it shouldn't be necesarry to hack *anything*, everything sits in nicely documented data files. In theory, a new game should be able to be created without even recompiling anything.
You're always welcome to join, too.
Dag Sverre: Nope. Not planning on replacing anything. Maybe a new materia system to spice things up. :wink: (j/k)
Thanks for the info on the layer. That sounds feasible once (if) I can learn DirectX.
Heh. Thanks for the suggestion, but you can call me stubborn. As far as I'm concerned, FF7 needs fixing, and even if no one else will do it, I'll give it my best shot. :D
Home-grown stuff like this is just kinda my thing, I guess. Although, I would be very interested in making a game with the Legacy engine someday...
As for Legacy, I've considered joining the project, but I feel I have nothing useful to add.
Halkun: Hey, if this doesn't work out, I'll think about it.
Sir Canealot: A friend is supposedly sending me his copy of the FF7 Soundtrack CD. If and when I get it, I plan to take all the .WAVs and convert them to .MID. If it works, it'll mean I can replace the current midis with the new and improved. Then I can make a patch with LGP Tools and start distributing.
[This message has been edited by Srethron Askvelhtnod (edited February 03, 2001).]
Using WinAMP is not elegant or anything, feel free to insert your own MP3 decoder. But using WinAMP is so little work I might even consider doing it myself...I'll look into it.
(Halkun does a "uname -a" on in his computer)
>uname -a
>SunOS earth 5.5.1 Generic_103640-34 sun4u sparc
>
Sun Sparc, nope can't play wma file here.
(Halkun does a "uname -a" on another computer)
>uname -a
>Linux titmouse 2.2.18 #22 SMP Mon Jan 8 15:05:17 PST 2001 i686 unknown
Nope no windows media player for that either, how about this one..
>uname -a
>Linux dhcp-0-238.wwts.corp.voyager.net 2.2.15-4mdk #1 Wed May 10 15:31:30 CEST 2000 i586 unknown
nope Looks like there will be no wma playback for me...
-Halkun
*****************************************
ON a new note;
this is what id like to do to spice up FF7's materia system;
Its too easy: There should be a limit to the nuber of uses on materia (like on summons and all materias) like 10 uses at meteria level 1 20 at level 2 (but the level 2 magic ie fire2, is at 5 uses) etc.
Its so simple: You find materia EVERYWHERE!!! sephiroth even gives u a important materia (destruct), i want to revert to the older FF4-5 style of having to FIGHT the summons to get them on your side. Ie fight ifrit, fight shiva etc. or just fight some boss, u find TOO much materia lying around.
New materia: possibly a new group such as Dark magic as an opposite to holy magic.
Level dependant materia: Some higher materia/summons can only be used once u pass a certain level (ie in Crono cross u have to be at level 7 above to use summons) So ultima stays locked till u reach level39 prehapes, and KOTR is locked till ure at level 70? etc,
BIGGER disadvantages of equipping materia: equipping too much materia has usually not posed too much problems, i want to see BIGGER disadvantages, like have death sentence on the player how equipts KOTR, and HP -25% for the one equiping Ultima, etc.
OK the above adds a new difficulty level to a game thats too easy 2nd time around (unless u make it difficult :wink: ).
Suggestions on better things or on how to do any of the above are welcome :D
[This message has been edited by The Skillster (edited February 04, 2001).]
Anyway, the important stuff:
Ficedula, you are absolutely right of course. DirectMusic is not the only thing one can replace though, it's rather quickly done to replace winmm.dll instead. That's not the problem.
The problem is that the MIDI files are stored inside LGP files. My original idea would be to create a .ini file like this:
battle.mid=battle.mp3
however that is not possible. I guess, however, that it can be done another way: Use Ficedula's LGP editor to replace some of the midi data with the path of the MP3 file. I don't think it will be much work, it just requires everyone with a soundtrack to hack their own files... (perhaps some common file for everyone owning the soundtracks could be made by Skillster).
I'm not sure how much work I should put into this...Skillster would be the only one having any real use for it I guess?
-Calculate checksums for each of the .MID files in the LGP's.
-When you receive MIDI data checksum it. Look the value up in your table, you then have the filename it originated from.
-Now you can match battle.mid=battle.mp3 or whatever
-Alternatively, make a custom LGP where the midis inside contain sod all midi data, but just a comment mentioning which file they are.
-Also, I've just thought: the midi files all contain the filename as a title, don't they? Try playing them in Timidity (I know you have it, Dag!) which will display a load of info on the file. Though this isn't the easiest option...
Re: Materia System. Keep in mind I was merely joking about enhancing the materia system. Maybe we could do it, but we'll have to wait and see. Well, I believe that most of what you want is technically feasible. I'm not sure if I agree on how to handicap the materia, but adding fights with the summon monsters would be cool (although in some spots it's not applicable because you get certain summons from bosses, which would mean you'd have two boss fights in a row).
Anyway, if *I* decided that I was going to enhance the system, I would add a new group like "Dark Magic". I also would greatly expand on the linkabilty that you have with the support materia. Making each type of materia link-able (except, of course, Independent) would certainly enhance the potential strategy.
And yes, I do have something planned for the second time around. :wink:
Dag Sverre: Well, as Qhimm himself pointed out that the line between Game Tweaking and Tech-Related is very difficult to discern. I wasn't sure which forum to put it in. On the one hand, I have the remake which could be classified as a "tweak". On the other, all of this has to do with programming, file types, file structures, and the technical aspects of how things work and how we would do such and such.
Ficedula: This sounds more feasible by the minute. Of course, *if* my .WAV -> .MID plan works out, you won't even have to bother. :D
[This message has been edited by Srethron Askvelhtnod (edited February 04, 2001).]
I guess, however, that it can be done another way: Use Ficedula's LGP editor to replace some of the midi data with the path of the MP3 file.
However, you stated it much better. Checksums can be used to of course, in fact I guess they're a much more elegant solution, however they do add some calculation overhead. Perhaps checksumming the first 100 bytes or so, just enough to make sure it's unidentifiable.
Also remember that there are four different MIDIs, one for each soundcard type. The naming does look like a better alternative...and more work.
The worst work is in learning myself how to use the midi* functions though. Knowing Microsoft it will probably be far from the obvious solutions.
I guess it's just a question of who of me and Ficedula gets bored first ;-)
[This message has been edited by dagsverre (edited February 04, 2001).]
It can be sorted, of course; but that's why it's not 100% straightforward.
The Skillster: Thanks for the mail.
Jari Huttunen: Thanks for the info. I'll still try it out just so I don't leave any stones unturned.
Ficedula: In other words, it'd be best to make the changes Dag's talking about to all four of the midi files?
[This message has been edited by Srethron Askvelhtnod (edited February 05, 2001).]
Just noticed it in Skillster's post and couldn't resist...
If you want MIDI, there will have to be a composer behind them. A real, human composer, who can plot down the scores. Also you'll need a decent soundfont, which takes some work if you want it for free and in the quality you're talking about. But if you can't get a composer to write down the scores and the 'directing of the orcestra' (adding volume and pressure finesses etc.) then the best you can do is what we have done in FFSF.
The question about MP3 quality is moot however, if you own the soundtracks just compress them at 300 kbps VBR and if you still care about quality loss I'll suggest something else for you than playing video games...like getting back to listening to that $5 000 sound system you must have to be able to pick that difference up...
-Halkhun
Anyway, loops would be difficult if you're using an external player, but if you're using one you make you could have it when it gets to the end, jump back a cerian number of bytes and start playing some more. This is similar to what the MIDIs do. But to do this, you wouldn't be able to use MP3s ripped from the CD, you'd have to do some editing. And everyone would have to use the same set of MP3s or make up there own loop thing, or the loops might be a couple of seconds off.
Most freeware encoders (at least that I've tried) ARE bad unless you crank the bitrate >128KBps. So what? Get a good one, and 128KBps is (to me) CD quality. 64KBps WMA is not. I've got a lot of WMA's I encoded myself at 64KBps, and believe me, they aren't as good as my MP3's.
So... if there's a quality difference, it isn't enough for most people to be able to tell.
That's possible, but not as easy to do as MP3 playback.
Anyway, the reason I'm replying is that this souns like so much better than the way the PC version does it...I got seriously bored of listening to that half minute intro which really aren't all that melodical over and over and over again without ever getting to the real parts of the song...
Yes, it would be easy for MP3's. Not so easy for MIDI's though, since FF7 streams the MIDI's itself.
BTW I remembered this great site again some time ago and thought some of you people would have great use of it: www.wotsit.org
Remember to seek out the MIDI specs there...
hmm any thing else?
On prerendered backgrounds how would they be rendered?
Would they be drawn?
I have a freind who a pretty dam good drawer
he might be able to help with pre rendered back grounds. Hes no miricle worker though.
-halkun
If we get it running at 800x600 all the polygons look better, and any sort of stretching on the backgrounds would do.
Of course, nobody's willing to write the DirectDraw layer yet, so not happening so far...
View it at fullscreen with your monitor set to 320x240(this may require a program to set your monitor to that resolution)
View it at 640x480 fullscreen(you have to stretch the picture now)
View it at 800x600 fullscreen(again stretched)
Same at 1024x768, 1280x960, 1280x1024, 1600x1200, 2048x1536, 3200x2400.
You will notice that the image looks worse the more it has to be stretched.
[This message has been edited by Srethron Askvelhtnod (edited February 18, 2001).]
a) 320x240
b) 640x480
b) 1280x960
(notice the 2x multiplication all the way, 240x2x2=960 and so on)
These three will always give the same results. At a) you represent one pixel in the image with one pixel on screen. At b) you simply use four pixels, all pixels are now four times smaller. So four pixels with the same color on screen show exactly the same as one pixel in a).
At c) it is the same, except you now use 4x4=16 pixels on the screen for each pixel in the image.
All these modes views the exact same, impossible to tell the difference. In theory, but if you have a screen like mine it interlaces at the lower resolutions so there still is a way to tell the difference...
And of course the 3D looks a lot smoother on the higher resolutions. And you have the *optional* ability to smooth the pictures out using some filter.
I agree that 800x600 it might look a little different, but smoothing filters will usually take care of that.
If you played the PC version of the game I'm willing to bet that what you saw was in fact 640x480, since there are no way to change that. Even if you set the resolution to 800x600 on TV-out, the resolution is set to 640x480 once you start the game.
If you played with emulators, that's another thing...
Sadly the pc version only exists in Joeys mind. Im useing ePSXe to play it. And the image isnt blured. Its almost as sharp as my moniter(Its a little blurry on the desktop but looks great in games). See my 32inch Hitachi Widescreen tv is designed to be used as a tv- and a monter.
It has a moniter jack on the back of it so all I would have to do is get a very long cable dig up the drivers and hey presto 32inch heaven. And if it means any thing its not running in 4:3 its being streced to 16:9(And it looks great as well)
I would have to say now with a futher 4 hours of playing :) That the back grounds looked SLIGHTLY Worse. Im not sure about the FMV. Its looks the same ro maybe even slightly better. Yea thats why. Normally the TV is interplded or some thing. It has scan lines. On Tv-out there are none so that why the FMV looks better.
Ah im just rambleing on now aint I?
Who cares why?
Though im still intrested.
Maybe one of these days I will find out how texture compression works in full.
As for aspect ratios, yes, 320x240,640x480, and 800x600 are all 4:3, but if you display an image at a higher resolution than what it is intended to be displayed at, it looks worse. Take Grand Turismo running on a PC through Bleem. Look at the title screen while having Bleem run the game at it's default resolution. The title screen should run at 640x480(The title screen runs at 640x480 on a real PSX) and look good on a PC monitor. Then run with Bleem forcing it to 800x600 or 1024x768. It looks noticeably worse. This is because it has to supersample the image, and you see the edges of pixels that are normally at scanlines on the TV. The same for my example of stretching a 320x240 image on a PC.
BTW, there should be an option for your TV to make 4:3 input display in a 4:3 format instead of stretching the image. I don't like altered displays. Oh, and I work for Hitachi :)
And I dont like running any thing in 4:3 I Couldent cope with those huge blacks bard running down the screen. Any way the way the Tv streches it to 16:9 is bloody brilliant. There no loss of image quilitie what so ever.
And what do you do for Hitachi any way?
You make good tvs/ The one I have is several years old and it still runs like brand new.
Also you can alter the aspect ratio on all modern European non-widescreen TVs as well. Like on mine.
And dagsverre you said earlyer in this topic that your monitor interlaces at lower resalutions. Do you mean black line across the screen like a TV? My Moniter does this is there anyw ay to stop it?
[This message has been edited by Sir Canealot (edited February 19, 2001).]
The specific division of Hitachi I work for is HICAM(Hitachi Computer Products America). The area under that division I am at is Hitachi-OMD(Oklahoma Manufacturing Division). We mainly work on the Hitachi RAID-400 series of computer servers. I work in the PCB Quality Control department as an inspector. I have to check boards to make sure that they are soldered well. That involves looking at parts so small you can barely see them(tedious work).
Most TV's everywhere are 4:3 format. Only newer widescreen TV's are different. They use a 16:9 ratio.
Oh, and bout the interlacing, it's actually better to have it at low resolutions. It helps to make things look better at low res, higher resolutions need to be non-interlaced though.
Oh and again about the interlacing is there any way to turn it off? Its a bloddy pain when I play FFVII/VIII though the monitor.
Hmm Staring at computer boards all day musent be fun. I know that one loose solder can screw it all up. We Had a repair man in to repair the TV I have now.(It was switching its self off) And the repair man said he just had to solder some thing on the main boards. Thats it all that truble for one loose solder. sigh....
As for interlacing, I don't think there is a way to turn it off. But when playing in low res it's better to have interlacing.
Yes, small mistakes in soldering can be killer. At work once we had a board that would not pass the test system, and we couldn't figure out why. After 45 minutes of looking at it under 40x magnification we found a small crack in 1 trace on the board. Took me about 5 minutes to repair. It then worked fine. VERY frustrating.
And interlacing seem to be good. On my tv-out I got a program that turns it on for TV-out. FFIX look more normal now and the flicker on the tv is all gone. And FFIX isnt desgined for widescreen I played for a while in 4:3 and every thing looks just a bit fat in 16:9. But I dont care I dont wanna lose 5 inchs of my screen.
And Reznor after hereing that about your job. I feel sorry for you. I hope you get paid well for that.
[This message has been edited by Srethron Askvelhtnod (edited February 21, 2001).]