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Releases / Re: [FF8PC-Steam] SeeD Reborn (v3.5) - Menu/GUI/Font Overhaul *ALL LANGUAGES*
« on: 2018-02-28 01:55:31 »
EDIT: Nevermind, the thread was displaying weirdly and didn't see the other posts
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Releases / Re: [FF8PC-Steam] SeeD Reborn (v3.5) - Menu/GUI/Font Overhaul *ALL LANGUAGES*
« on: 2018-02-24 03:31:43 »
I'm just curious as to why they changed the Font of character names in battle on PC and removed that font entirely. I've also never seen the character sheet for that font in either version of the game, it's very odd. The amount of strawberries they did to the PC version still makes me angry.
Japan's PC version had all it's font work and text stuff redone entirely because it previously wasn't out in Japan on PC, so now it looks quite nice for them even without the PSX font. But all we got was the rehashed garbage of the 1999 PC version. I don't know if their version had anything else done, like audio or FMV wise, getting ahold of it is surprisingly tough.
I would have paid a little bit more in price for the re-release had they just re-ported the PSX version again with the all the proper audio and everything, apparently what's even more baffling is even though the PC version uses lower quality assets in alot of places compared to the PSX version, the FMVs of the 1999 PC release are much higher res than the PSX FMVs (Which is awesome), but the Re-Release doesn't use the higher res FMVs for whatever reason.
I just don't understand.
Then you have this
A wallpaper of CG Squall in Modern Day resolution, indicating that they clearly still have some sort of access to the FF8 CG stuff.
The screenshots on the site show really, really crisp screenshots from the cutscenes (Though they are fairly small)
As it stands, my copy of FF8 has
1. Restored PSX Music in Games and FMVs
2. Restored PSX Font (Still need to know more about berrymapper for Icons)
3. Fixed UV for world map stuff
4. 1999 release FMVs that were rendered at a bit higher resolution than the PSX and Steam releases
If someone manages to figure out how to restore the PSX buttons proper and such then I think I want to put together a guide or a list for people who want kind of the best version of the FF8 Vanilla experience.
Japan's PC version had all it's font work and text stuff redone entirely because it previously wasn't out in Japan on PC, so now it looks quite nice for them even without the PSX font. But all we got was the rehashed garbage of the 1999 PC version. I don't know if their version had anything else done, like audio or FMV wise, getting ahold of it is surprisingly tough.
I would have paid a little bit more in price for the re-release had they just re-ported the PSX version again with the all the proper audio and everything, apparently what's even more baffling is even though the PC version uses lower quality assets in alot of places compared to the PSX version, the FMVs of the 1999 PC release are much higher res than the PSX FMVs (Which is awesome), but the Re-Release doesn't use the higher res FMVs for whatever reason.
I just don't understand.
Then you have this
A wallpaper of CG Squall in Modern Day resolution, indicating that they clearly still have some sort of access to the FF8 CG stuff.
The screenshots on the site show really, really crisp screenshots from the cutscenes (Though they are fairly small)
As it stands, my copy of FF8 has
1. Restored PSX Music in Games and FMVs
2. Restored PSX Font (Still need to know more about berrymapper for Icons)
3. Fixed UV for world map stuff
4. 1999 release FMVs that were rendered at a bit higher resolution than the PSX and Steam releases
If someone manages to figure out how to restore the PSX buttons proper and such then I think I want to put together a guide or a list for people who want kind of the best version of the FF8 Vanilla experience.
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Releases / Re: [FF8PC-Steam] SeeD Reborn (v3.5) - Menu/GUI/Font Overhaul *ALL LANGUAGES*
« on: 2018-02-23 23:36:39 »
I'm aware, I've been looking at this game and the forums on and off for years and years. That's the sort of thing I was referring to though, it's amazing all the work that people have done for the game but I don't really like any of the Hi-res stuff for FF8 for the exact reason no one figured how to make it display correctly, if I can't fully redo the UI with pinpoint accuracy then I don't really want to bother with a mishmash of things. So that's why I'm going in the other direction and trying to figure out how to get it to be as true to the PSX version as possible, which is what I mentioned earlier.
Speaking of.
Character Names in battle on PC
Clearer example of the PSX version
See that font on the character names in battle in that tutorial image, I don't think I've ever seen anyone point this out but that font is seemingly removed from the PC version, Battle names use the default dialogue font and it looks bad when there's a bright background behind the text. I had an old copy of FF8 on PSX laying around that I made an image of to see if I could find the font or texture that has that Battle font, but even there I've had absolutely no luck finding it. If I could track it down from the PSX game I could try and figure out where it's suppose to go and then with Tonberry it could be re-mapped properly back into the game (I still don't know how to figure out the Icon sheets the game calls from to make it a 1:1 recreation.
I've been stuck with the awful blurred Icons for awhile.
Speaking of.
Character Names in battle on PC
Clearer example of the PSX version
See that font on the character names in battle in that tutorial image, I don't think I've ever seen anyone point this out but that font is seemingly removed from the PC version, Battle names use the default dialogue font and it looks bad when there's a bright background behind the text. I had an old copy of FF8 on PSX laying around that I made an image of to see if I could find the font or texture that has that Battle font, but even there I've had absolutely no luck finding it. If I could track it down from the PSX game I could try and figure out where it's suppose to go and then with Tonberry it could be re-mapped properly back into the game (I still don't know how to figure out the Icon sheets the game calls from to make it a 1:1 recreation.
I've been stuck with the awful blurred Icons for awhile.
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Releases / Re: [FF8PC-Steam] SeeD Reborn (v3.5) - Menu/GUI/Font Overhaul *ALL LANGUAGES*
« on: 2018-02-23 03:32:26 »
It would be perfect if it can be done that way, I don't have any knowledge in terms of hex editing but when I saw the button codes in deling I thought "Surely these codes can replace the current green text ingame somehow"
Nice job finding the L & R buttons and the D pad buttons too, I didn't have any luck finding them initially but I did assume that since all the code numbers are very similar that you could feasibly guess them out.
I haven't a clue what the small Icons do, I assume they're used in a tutorial or perhaps a minigame or menu within the game I've forgotten about.
My only goal is to find ways to restore the game and undo all the garbage changes the PC versions have gone through. Things like restoring the old PSX font and Icons and proper controller buttons etc. I would be all for re-creating HD Menus and fonts and all that jazz but since the game can't seem to handle transparency properly without making it look messy and shit, I'd rather have a purist/nostalgic experience instead with a couple of nifty modern conveniences.
If someone were to be able to get the exe to use those button codes properly, I can have have a crack at making some XBOX Button icons that match the style of the PSX buttons for those who want that old PSX look but don't use Playstation controllers. I have some skill in Photoshop but I'm all about trying to recreate things as accurately as possible.
Nice job finding the L & R buttons and the D pad buttons too, I didn't have any luck finding them initially but I did assume that since all the code numbers are very similar that you could feasibly guess them out.
I haven't a clue what the small Icons do, I assume they're used in a tutorial or perhaps a minigame or menu within the game I've forgotten about.
My only goal is to find ways to restore the game and undo all the garbage changes the PC versions have gone through. Things like restoring the old PSX font and Icons and proper controller buttons etc. I would be all for re-creating HD Menus and fonts and all that jazz but since the game can't seem to handle transparency properly without making it look messy and shit, I'd rather have a purist/nostalgic experience instead with a couple of nifty modern conveniences.
If someone were to be able to get the exe to use those button codes properly, I can have have a crack at making some XBOX Button icons that match the style of the PSX buttons for those who want that old PSX look but don't use Playstation controllers. I have some skill in Photoshop but I'm all about trying to recreate things as accurately as possible.
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Releases / Re: [FF8PC-Steam] SeeD Reborn (v3.5) - Menu/GUI/Font Overhaul *ALL LANGUAGES*
« on: 2018-02-22 01:53:39 »Download SeeDReborn 3.5 and look through the master files that I have to make sense of where the icons go. I have a master text file around here with a list of where the palettes get paged in tonberry, but I can't seem to find it right now lol. Also, download the PSX controller button mod to see what I did to modify the buttons. They go in the 'green' master text file... in sy/sysfld00(and sysfld01) somewhere. This may all change in the future, but for probably the next 6 months will work that way. When/if it gets 'fixed', it will also enable the mod to be much smaller.While digging around in Deling I came across what seems to be codes for the X, Circle, Square & Triangle, Start & Select buttons, that the game uses to display the PSX Button Icons ingame.
They look like this:
Triangle x0524
Circle x0525
X x0526
Square x0527
START x052b
SELECT x0528
(I haven't found the sticks or the R1/R2/L1/L2 button codes yet)
I figure somewhere in there, the game has to have a file that defines what the Buttons do or look like, and so you would probably use those codes to display the proper PSX Icons instead of B10, B9 etc. etc. But I haven't had any luck figuring out where the game determines this with the tools available.
By the way the Qhimm wiki no longer seems to work in all the times I've tried to visit it to look at FF8 file structure stuff and so on.
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Releases / Re: [FF8PC-Steam] SeeD Reborn (v3.5) - Menu/GUI/Font Overhaul *ALL LANGUAGES*
« on: 2018-02-19 00:46:54 »
So after trying various things I've spent the last day or so grabbing and restoring the PSX font by hand using the SeeD Hashmap, thankfully the text palettes all line up perfectly with the original PSX text and so the colors and usage and everything seem to be displaying properly at fullscreen
Side note: There's 2 versions of the old PSX style font by the way, they look identical but one is significantly more broken looking when used in game because for some reason in that one they remove all the "grey" parts of the white and it looks noticeably simplified and shitty, just a guess but this seems to be what the old PC version used as the default when Hi-Res wasn't turned on which is very weird to me why they'd do that (It has "GAME FOLDER" characters instead of "MEMORY CARD" so that's how I deduced it was for the PC version). The actual PSX font with the "MEMORY CARD" characters in the font sheet (and also the font used in my screenshot) is a lot more "complete" looking.
However, as you can see there is something wrong here, the Icon sheets that SeeD uses don't map 1:1 to the original icon palettes like the fonts do, which is why we get this white text. I have been able to fix 95% of that before I took this screenshot but I was still finding every so often an arrow or a symbol in different circumstances would be pulling from the wrong palettes and I decided that rather than pick through ever intance of misuse in the game I'd rather ask here instead about how I might go about using Tonberry and Berrymapper to get the Icon palettes to match 1:1 with the game defaults. (This is to override the Icons in the Hires folder with the original Icons, they've been split into quadrants to match the Hires versions)
I do still wish I could find where the game decides to use "B10" and stuff to try and replace that text with the PSX buttons, that would be the Icing on the cake, the work arounds are messy and frankly don't look very good even when done properly to me. I'll keep digging.
Side note: There's 2 versions of the old PSX style font by the way, they look identical but one is significantly more broken looking when used in game because for some reason in that one they remove all the "grey" parts of the white and it looks noticeably simplified and shitty, just a guess but this seems to be what the old PC version used as the default when Hi-Res wasn't turned on which is very weird to me why they'd do that (It has "GAME FOLDER" characters instead of "MEMORY CARD" so that's how I deduced it was for the PC version). The actual PSX font with the "MEMORY CARD" characters in the font sheet (and also the font used in my screenshot) is a lot more "complete" looking.
However, as you can see there is something wrong here, the Icon sheets that SeeD uses don't map 1:1 to the original icon palettes like the fonts do, which is why we get this white text. I have been able to fix 95% of that before I took this screenshot but I was still finding every so often an arrow or a symbol in different circumstances would be pulling from the wrong palettes and I decided that rather than pick through ever intance of misuse in the game I'd rather ask here instead about how I might go about using Tonberry and Berrymapper to get the Icon palettes to match 1:1 with the game defaults. (This is to override the Icons in the Hires folder with the original Icons, they've been split into quadrants to match the Hires versions)
I do still wish I could find where the game decides to use "B10" and stuff to try and replace that text with the PSX buttons, that would be the Icing on the cake, the work arounds are messy and frankly don't look very good even when done properly to me. I'll keep digging.
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Support / FF8 some questions about Deling
« on: 2018-02-15 21:12:13 »
So after looking into SeeD and Tonberry and all that stuff and not really finding what I was looking for, I went to Deling and found in Menu.fs a section with the old font and UI elements in a directory with a separate "Hires" folder for their half assed attempts at redoing stuff. (I guess this is where the old PC version would let you switch between fonts)
(I don't like the weird smudging technique they use in the Hires set)
So here's what I'm wondering, if the game is using the UI and font assets in the "Hires" folder, is there a file in all this mess that tells the game to look there, if so then can that be undone so the game goes back to using the old UI and font? I know the old PC version had a switch for this, there must be a way to turn it off somewhere in the files surely.
The other question I had is, since the game has the PSX Buttons included in the UI assets, can they be mapped to a controller without needing to install a bunch of stuff, can they be assigned to buttons? I feel like this has to be the easiest (Atleast easiest to me) way to get the vanilla look of the game back.
EDIT: Some sniffing around with Notepad++ Leads me to believe the FF_EN Exe it's self is being pointed to those files as I saw them specifically listed in their hires path through the .exe, unfortunately editing an exe and such is way out of my depth, but I thought it was interesting none the less, I also found what seem to be PSX Input lists when digging around in there also.
So far I have attempted several things with no results such as swapping the old font file over the hires version which lead to crashing upon loading the main menu so I suspect there is a file size issue the game dislikes. Other things I've tried is deleting the hires folder entirely to see if the game would simply fall back on loading the original font/icon files necessary, this only lead to crashing also.
So overall, no success yet. digging through the exe so far has been the closest I've come to finding anything useful, if I had a way to read that stuff or modify it without breaking the exe I could just redirect it back to the old font file and be done.
(I don't like the weird smudging technique they use in the Hires set)
So here's what I'm wondering, if the game is using the UI and font assets in the "Hires" folder, is there a file in all this mess that tells the game to look there, if so then can that be undone so the game goes back to using the old UI and font? I know the old PC version had a switch for this, there must be a way to turn it off somewhere in the files surely.
The other question I had is, since the game has the PSX Buttons included in the UI assets, can they be mapped to a controller without needing to install a bunch of stuff, can they be assigned to buttons? I feel like this has to be the easiest (Atleast easiest to me) way to get the vanilla look of the game back.
EDIT: Some sniffing around with Notepad++ Leads me to believe the FF_EN Exe it's self is being pointed to those files as I saw them specifically listed in their hires path through the .exe, unfortunately editing an exe and such is way out of my depth, but I thought it was interesting none the less, I also found what seem to be PSX Input lists when digging around in there also.
So far I have attempted several things with no results such as swapping the old font file over the hires version which lead to crashing upon loading the main menu so I suspect there is a file size issue the game dislikes. Other things I've tried is deleting the hires folder entirely to see if the game would simply fall back on loading the original font/icon files necessary, this only lead to crashing also.
So overall, no success yet. digging through the exe so far has been the closest I've come to finding anything useful, if I had a way to read that stuff or modify it without breaking the exe I could just redirect it back to the old font file and be done.
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Releases / Re: [FF8PC-Steam] SeeD Reborn (v3.5) - Menu/GUI/Font Overhaul *ALL LANGUAGES*
« on: 2018-02-14 20:18:10 »There's actually a font mod that's around.... what I recommend doing for your experience is getting SeeD Reborn 3.2, and then installing the PSX-style font replacement over the top of it. 3.2 is a 'close to the PC' version, but for the PSX text, someone has re-created it for use with SeeDReborn hashes. Not sure where the link is, but it installs right over the top of SeeDReborn (any version) - and you should be able to find it easily.
That sounds basically perfect, I'll go looking around for it. Thanks alot.
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Releases / Re: [FF8PC-Steam] SeeD Reborn (v3.5) - Menu/GUI/Font Overhaul *ALL LANGUAGES*
« on: 2018-02-14 07:03:17 »
I don't know if this is the best place for this but I thought I'd ask.
I'm looking to find out if it's possible get the PSX Font working on the current PC version of FF8 through using a mod such as this. I quite like the sharp blocky look of the PSX font and was hoping to get it and the original PSX Button icons working with the current PC version for a somewhat more vanilla FF8 experience, I grabbed the PSX Music replacement mod and also grabbed the FMV mod that uses the higher res version of the FMV videos from the old version of FF8 on PC.
So you can understand what I'm going for here, I'm just trying to scrounge together the different parts of FF8 that were better in different versions but still "Vanilla" if that makes sense. I'm not looking to bog the game down with HD fan stuff.
I'm looking to find out if it's possible get the PSX Font working on the current PC version of FF8 through using a mod such as this. I quite like the sharp blocky look of the PSX font and was hoping to get it and the original PSX Button icons working with the current PC version for a somewhat more vanilla FF8 experience, I grabbed the PSX Music replacement mod and also grabbed the FMV mod that uses the higher res version of the FMV videos from the old version of FF8 on PC.
So you can understand what I'm going for here, I'm just trying to scrounge together the different parts of FF8 that were better in different versions but still "Vanilla" if that makes sense. I'm not looking to bog the game down with HD fan stuff.
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