"NTSC-J mode" is a forthcoming feature for FFNx. If NTSC-J mode is enabled, FFNx performs a conversion to simulate the color gamut of the 1990s Japanese television sets that FF7 and FF8 were originally designed for. The resulting colors are more faithful to the original artistic intent, and generally brighter and more vivid.
This mode is appropriate for:
- Vanilla FF7/FF8.
- Mod assets that are upscales of the original assets.
- Mod assets made from scratch where the modder used the original assets as a color reference without doing a gamut conversion.
This mode is not appropriate for mod assets made from scratch that truly use the sRGB color gamut. Such assets can be made suitable for this mode using
this converter program.
If you would like to try out a preview of NTSC-J mode:
- Make a backup of your FFNx files!
- Download this preview build and extract to your FF7/FF8 directory, overwriting files.
- Make sure that FFNx.toml includes enable_ntscj_gamut_mode = true
Some notes on mod compatibility:
- As expected, SYW's upscales look great in NTSC-J mode.
- Ninostyle models also look good. These hew closely enough to the original palette that I'd say NTSC-J mode is more "right" for them than sRGB mode.
- ESUI and Finishing Touch don't look good. These were made from scratch in the sRGB gamut. So I've made some unofficial versions using inverse conversions that should look like the sRGB originals when used in NTSC-J mode.
- (That link also has a "compatibility pack" mod that forces some mods to work together in the way I want them to, includes color range and banding fixes for SYW's videos, a new "buster" screen, SNES-style button icons, and misc stuff.)
- Avalanche Arisen is a mixed bag. Uprisen increased brightness and saturation in many places, which is sometimes too much for NTSC-J mode, and sometimes too little for sRGB mode. I'm preparing an inverse conversion to see what that looks like.
Github-inclined people can review the pull request including NTSC-J mode
here.
