[FF7PC-98/Steam] FFNx - Next generation modding platform for FF7/FF8

[TrueOdin]

FFNx

Next generation modding platform for Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy VIII ( with native Steam 2013 release support! )

Kudos to Cinzia Cancedda (aryaaiedail)

Project URL: https://github.com/julianxhokaxhiu/FFNx

Support: https://github.com/julianxhokaxhiu/FFNx#support

How-to Install: https://github.com/julianxhokaxhiu/FFNx/blob/master/docs/how_to_install.md

What is FFNx?
FFNx was born from the ashes of Aali driver, with an intention to refresh the Rendering engine and the possibility to extend modding capabilities to original Steam copies without the need of a Game Converter. Today FFNx not only can offer that also much more. Feel free to explore the official feature list at https://github.com/julianxhokaxhiu/FFNx?tab=readme-ov-file#features

Thank you!
There's a HUGE list of people to be grateful to for their amazing work. Starting from Aali who made this possible, without his code release FFNx would have never been a reality, but also to A LOT of other people here on Qhimm. Feel free to checkout this list: https://github.com/julianxhokaxhiu/FFNx#credits

From the bottom of my heart, THANK YOU!

[TrueOdin]

Reserved

[OatBran]

Finally this has its own thread here! 

This is truly an amazing piece of free software made by someone with so much passion and respect for this community. Thanks for all you do Odin you are a true legend

(thanks for the shout out and link to the guide in the op too Odin  )

[-Ric-]

Well here's something that might make me put aside the PS4 and Switch versions and actually have interest in the steam version again.

Thanks for all the work!

[Aali]

Cool! Glad to see this is coming along

[TrueOdin]

Cool! Glad to see this is coming along

This is truly unexpected, I'm super happy to see you around! If you want to I'll be super happy to have a chance talking to you. There are a TON of questions I'd have ( but not only me ).

In case you hop on Discord, PLEASE remember to say Hi!

Thank you again for all the great work you've done. That's truly amazing achievement. I hope FFNx will be your living legacy!

[Zera]

This sounds exciting. I'll be looking forward to texture replacing support for FFVIII. This doesn't look like it has the world map quality reducing bug, so it would be a much better alternative to native Steam with Tonberry.

[Salk]

Congratulations and thanks for creating FFNx!

[TrueOdin]

To everyone writing here, THANK YOU from the deep of my heart. For using this software, for contributing on it and for making it better and better with your issues

Feel free to report anything that may not work on Discord! I'll be happy to support directly as much as I can.

[TrueOdin]

I haven't checked your source in last week, so forgive me if you've already plugged this one -  some FMVs are full 1280 * 960 AR  as opposed to 1280 * 896.

My code works as follows to make sure centring is turned off for those ones >

Code: [Select]

// draw a full_screen quad, respect aspect ratio of source image
void gl_draw_movie_quad_common(int movie_width, int movie_height)
{
float x1 = 0.0f;
float x2 = (float)width;
float y1;
float AR = (float)movie_height / (float)movie_width;
   
    if (Centred_Field && AR != 0.75f ) // DLPB
y1 = 16.0f;
else
y1 = 0.0f;

float y2 = y1 + min( (float)width * ( (float)movie_height ) / (float)movie_width, (float)height);

0.75 is safe for floating point in these cases.

Congrats on the release.

Hey there!

Thank you very much for the tip. Actually that was implemented a while ago, you may want to checkout the latest master branch Guess you missed a lot of things then!

Feel free to see https://github.com/julianxhokaxhiu/FFNx/blob/master/src/gl/gl.cpp#L48

Let me know if you need any help in case

Cheers!

[TrueOdin]

Ah, good stuff.   In that case, there's nothing I can really add to this.

Clearly the texture loading issues and memory problems and unloading issues have also been resolved.  I'll need to devote a lot of time to merging this with The Reunion. Did you also manage to stop delays happening with texture loading?  [I really should play your latest build - just a tad busy]

If you need what I have on 60fps battles, I'll supply you it.  At this point, I think you may be the only one who can resolve the graphical issues that remain - NFITC1 is still needed for camera side - but I am more than happy to transfer 60fps battles to this DLL and away from ddraw.dll as a good will gesture.  If I merge Reunion with this, I'll remove it from my own dll.  If not, I'll just have my own version and work with you adding it to this. 

Both modes work well but if we collaborate on this we may finally get the remaining bugs ironed out.

Texture loading delays were caused by too big PNG textures. If you switch to DDS they will work like native ( usually Instant in most environments ) but upscaled in 4K You can ask Satsuki about this, he is kind the expert of this topic now.

Related to the 60FPS mod I'll be happy to merge what you did, of course giving you credit for that! If you're fine with it, once we implement that too, you could ideally use the releases I do just out of the box!

Related to "NFITC1 is still needed for camera side" I don't really get where or what the issue is, but I'll be happy to talk about it. If there's something to be fixed, I'm totally into

Let me know how you want to take it up from this point.

Cheers!

[Zara9]

is anyone else having slow down problem by using this FFNX program on the ff7 pc steam version at all

[Zara9]

why does this plugin does not want to work for me at all

[cencen36760]

Many years I was waiting.
Thank you. Thank you. And thank you. （I am Japanese）

[Salk]

Hello TrueOdin! (Ciao)

I was wondering if FFNx could do something about the one issue that is spoiling the transition from the original backgrounds to the upscaled ones. Apparently due to engine limitations, background animations do not work anymore (http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=19204.msg278333#msg278333).

Thanks again for all the hard work!

[Zara9]

I love this ff7 game alot

its my childhood game of all time and i really like this plugin alot also

and i am just wondering why it goes slow for me and wondering how you guys fix it yourself

[satsuki]

Hello TrueOdin! (Ciao)

I was wondering if FFNx could do something about the one issue that is spoiling the transition from the original backgrounds to the upscaled ones. Apparently due to engine limitations, background animations do not work anymore (http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=19204.msg278333#msg278333).

Thanks again for all the hard work!

Not ATM but one day it will (i hope) and it'll probably need some files to be done from scratch.... i'll adapt my mods then ^^

[Zara9]

keep up the great work on this mod

[TrueOdin]

I love this ff7 game alot

its my childhood game of all time and i really like this plugin alot also

and i am just wondering why it goes slow for me and wondering how you guys fix it yourself

Hi Zara9,

Feel free to approach me on Discord and I'll be happy to check your configuration. Another used had the same issue with an AMD RX 590 and all we had to do in the end was update the driver to the latest AND a factory reset in the AMD Control Panel. Personally I always suggest to start with the default FFNx.cfg file and then try tweaking until you find your perfect spot

Let me know and thanks for using FFNx.

Cheers!

[EmperorSteele]

FFNx will allow you to use up to 3.5GB of RAM space for Mods, by using the 4GB Patch on your ff7.exe file. Remember that this feature works ONLY on Windows 64bit.

Can I apply this patch without using FFNx? I only ask because apparently FFNx doesn't work with Win7. The page that is linked there is very... generic and didn't mention FF7 by name.

[TrueOdin]

Can I apply this patch without using FFNx? I only ask because apparently FFNx doesn't work with Win7. The page that is linked there is very... generic and didn't mention FF7 by name.

You can apply the patch at your desire but you may not get the same benefits because there some other internals that are required to work with that. FFNx does work with Win7 just fine, make sure you download the latest release.

[OatBran]

You can apply the patch at your desire but you may not get the same benefits because there some other internals that are required to work with that. FFNx does work with Win7 just fine, make sure you download the latest release.

Oh you actually did implement a win7 fix already? I totally did not see you mention that anywhere I will change that information in the guide I have still been telling people to use v1.6.1 for win7 

[EmperorSteele]

Oh! Yeah, that's what I was confused on, too! I'll try the whole kit and kaboodle, then!

[EmperorSteele]

So, I tried following OatBran's guide, and unfortunately FF7 now looks and runs like garbage =/ The screen is stretched (even though I have preserve aspect ratio set to "yes"), and everything is low-rez and pixelated (even though I can tell it's loading the high-res texture packs). The AA isn't working, even though I have that set, and even the music now sounds worse =/ It takes extra time to loads scenes (field to battle, battle to EXP up screen, exp up screen to field, field to menu, etc). It's displaying the version number and rendered in the top left, which is distracting... Any idea what I may have done incorrectly? The only thing I can think is that I'm running windows 7, but you said that shouldn't be an issue, so....

[TrueOdin]

So, I tried following OatBran's guide, and unfortunately FF7 now looks and runs like garbage =/ The screen is stretched (even though I have preserve aspect ratio set to "yes"), and everything is low-rez and pixelated (even though I can tell it's loading the high-res texture packs). The AA isn't working, even though I have that set, and even the music now sounds worse =/ It takes extra time to loads scenes (field to battle, battle to EXP up screen, exp up screen to field, field to menu, etc). It's displaying the version number and rendered in the top left, which is distracting... Any idea what I may have done incorrectly? The only thing I can think is that I'm running windows 7, but you said that shouldn't be an issue, so....

That sounds like a lot of things that went wrong. I'd say just jump on Discord and we will be happy to help.

Until then those are my personal suggestions:
1) Make sure you install the game on an internal HDD ( no USB attached HDDs, or if any, make sure it's at least USB 3.0 )
2) Make sure you GPU driver settings are not using "fancy" settings. Better reset them to stock and then run the game with FFNx
3) Try the game with FFNx only, default cfg file and vanilla. It will look like how the game came out but it's the best way to check if the game runs smoothly.
4) Once you start to install mods using 7th 2.x, make sure you read the FAQ section. And use official FFNx installation steps. Run the game without mods but through 7h. If it starts with FFNx then you're good.
5) Start to mod the game gradually. Try on each step and make sure the game runs fine. If not, then starts to toggle the last downloaded and so on. Until you find out which one it is.

It works fine as said on Windows 7 ( which is the minimum target version for FFNx ) up to the latest Windows 10 May 2020 update.