The Great FF7 FAQ (now outdated)

[j_notes]

Hey all, I'm trying to get FF7 to work on XP 64 pro.  I followed miracle.flame's guide to installing (http://fem1.uniag.sk/Miroslav.Jezik/ff7ncopam.html), following steps 1-5b.  For YAMP I installed minigames patch and 9999 patch.  The movies are displaying properly, the backgrounds seem fine, but the characters are black except for their eyes.  Further, the colors for speech and menu boxes is dull and the sliders for battle speed, etc. are garbled.  As soon as I try to enter the first battle (when the battle swirl should appear), the music hangs and the game crashes.

Now I read that the black characters may be a graphics card issue for 8-series cards (I have an 8800GT), but I couldn't access the debugging link a few pages back.  I uninstalled the NPC reconstruction patch and tried the hand patch instead to see if that would change anything, but it didn't.

Any ideas?

Intel Q6600, nvidia Geforce 8800GT, 4 GB RAM, Win XP 64 pro

[Trenholm]

Interesting problem.  Running on a laptop

Intel Celeron 1.3 GHz
Intel integrated graphics (82852 GM I think)
1 GB RAM

Now the thing that happens with me is (and it happened with my better desktop as well) is the game runs with no flaws under TNT mode.  However every so often, but not randomly, some scripted animations will slow down to what looks like half speed.  It seems like it just does a clean cut from 60 to 30 fps.  only for a few seconds, until the animation is done.  One specific example is before reactor 2 in the bar and barret does some animation where he points at cloud/himself or something.  Hard to explain.  this ALWAYS slows down.  same thing with some other character animation just before the conversation with president shinra before air buster. 

Like I said it isn't random, and its a clean cut, its not choppy or anything, just the animation seems to go to semi-slow mo for maybe 2 seconds tops.  Anyone else have this issue and maybe a fix?  I think I remember I fixed it somehow on my gaming rig:
Dual Core 2.4 GHz AMD64
2 GB RAM
Radeon X1950XT
but I don't remember how I did it x_x.

[RagingDemon]

Hi

The game freeze but the music still plays in cosmo canyon just after Barret say Whoa! Shooting Star.
I was able to skip movies with integrated gypt but when i skip this one i always end up with this still image music and no response from the game.
So if anyone can tell me what i do wrong or get me beyond that movie it would be much appreciated



If it can help here's my saved game : http://www.megaupload.com/?d=084VK80L

Thx in advance
[email protected]

[drocpsu]

I'm new here and I'm not sure what I did to my game.  I first stumbled onto this site trying to figure out how to fix a problem I was having in FF7 (game would always crash during one video).

Hoping it might help, I reinstalled FF7 last night as a fresh copy and upgraded using the official 1.02 patch.  The game worked normally last night and today, although I didnt actually play it to the scene that always crashed it.  I pretty much would just start my game to see if it was working right. 

I wanted to install the sound fonts for my SB Live card to improve the audio, so I downloaded and installed the Creative driver with the AudioHQ program for loading the soundfonts.  After restarting my computer, the game no longer runs.  I start it, it black screens for about 1 second like its going to start the Eidos intro video, but then just closes out.  I've read through tons of pages and cant figure out how to fix my problem.

This actually happened last night as well, when I tried to "downgrade" from the "XP" patch to the official patch.  It's the reason that I reinstalled anew, which seemed to work just fine.  Would it make sense to try it again?

[Jayke]

Hi guys,

I'm literally just about ready to give up, I spent 30 pounds on a Final Fantasy 7 for the PC, and for the life of me I can't get it to work.

First thing my system specs:

Windows XP 32bit Media Center Edition
Intel Pentium 4 CPU 3.2 GHz
2GB RAM
NVidia 8800GTS 512mb

Ok, I've installed the game and downloaded the 1.02 launcher, set it up to run on Direct3D Hardware Acceleration with the TNT method, the game loads up fine, displaying both the Eidos and Squaresoft movies. I select new game from the title menu and it plays the intro movie fine, but when the train stops at the platform, the screen goes black and I hear the sound effects, and then a text box comes up saying: 'c'mon newcomer follow me.' But the screen remains black and I cannot do anything.

I feel a bit disapointed not being able to play my favorite ever game, if someone can shed some light as to how I can get this working, I'd be extremely grateful.

Cheers.

[Kudistos Megistos]

You found a copy of FF7 PC for £30? That's pretty good...

Anyway, my advice for all crash problems is to try the custom graphics driver, which fixes most of the game's graphical glitches.

However, this particular problem sounds like one I've had before. Press the menu button repeatedly when the screen is black; when I've done this the menu has appeared and the field screen went back to normal when I left the menu.

P.S. - even if that is the solution to this problem, you should still install Aali's driver 

[Jayke]

Thanks for the fast reply, but I found a video on YouTube which involved the process of installing K-Lite codec and some other bits, and it works 100% fine.

And @ the price, everyone loves ebay

[Harruzame]

Hi There! I'm A new Fan and already playing Disc 2 of these Magnificent game called FFVII.. Well to get things goin :

I would like to answer Raging Demons problem if I can But I would like to ask first if he :

Already installed Aali's graphics driver? Because I did have the same problem with the movie hanging up during Bugenhagen's Real-time Lifestream Movie and "The Date".

But after I installed I finally see the planetarium scene and the continuation to Caith Sith treachery ( spolier Xp). Although I liked the Gypt solution but it spoils the fun for me not knowin what happened next. And of course one problem with his driver is that the Battle Swirl is gone missing for the count. I mean when I enter a battle it suddenly goes black..but the music still playing and after 3 secs. the battle starts. Well that's the only prob you'll encounter, well in my case that is.

So I hope this helps ya...

Add:

By the way I Installed:

1.02 patch
Trumotion codec
Laptop Patch
Aalis Driver the latest
YAMP
Advent Avatars
APZ Battle Model Cloud
Slayersnext Weapon mod
Phoenix Rejuvenation Proj. ( Its the Next one to NPC )
FFVII Music ( Like to hear new battle music every now and then )
Aalis Less debug
The New Spell patch


Laptop specs:

Windows XP Pro 32
Intel Core Duo
Integrated Graphics GMA 950
Normal Laptop Speakers ( realtek audio )

I guess thats it!

Happy Gaming!

[Vallander]

hi i've never had this problem before, but when i re-installed FF7 on my computer (my computer was wiped to clear out viruses)
i ran some patches and, after bringing up the New Game or Continue options, and hitting New Game, the screen flashes some message like

cant locate  ACFE.aki file i think? it only flashes for a moment and then its gone (then microsoft starts with the whole error report thing)

help please?

specs:

Intel Pentium 4 2.00GHz
1.99GHz, 512 MB RAM


and the patches i've run are:
-Advent Children avatar changer
-NPC RP v0.6 to get the updated field Sprites
-YAMP Lucky Tifa, Lucky Cait Sith
-9999 Limit breaker Changer

[obesebear]

Create the error again and post EXACTLY what it says.  Sounds like one of your files is messed up and you will need to reinstall again...

[Vallander]

i know i edited it after i saw it again it was ACFE.aki file.

oh well im reinstalling it right now its about 89 percent done so ill just wait and try again. i might've accidentally deleted something when i was patching and modding i guess. ill try it again then post if it does it again.

[Vallander]

ok well i reinstalled and dont have that file problem anymore....

now it just wont run.

when i go to the folder its saved in (on my hard drive with the standard directore C:\Program Files\Square Soft\Final Fantasy VII\)

i try clicking on the ff7.exe file, suddenly the screen goes dark as if its loading, then suddenly it just leaves and im back on my desktop   
i even tried my backup folder and it wouldnt run.
i tried it before modding and it worked great.
ran the avatar changer, checked, still worked fine.

but after i ran the NPC RP mod, now it does what i mentioned above.

any ideas?

[Harruzame]

Did ya follow the steps in NPC RP MOD step by step? Because thats where ya start seeing the problems....

[Vallander]

yeah i did

made the "char" folder.

used the lgp tools to extract into the folder.

applied the patch, let it run until done

created new char.lgp (renamed the old one charbackup.lgp)

and got rid of the folder.

did i do something wrong? i tried to follow it according to the readme and somebody's post on here.

[Harruzame]

Hm..where did you save the new char.lgp? In the new char folder? Or in the field folder?

[Vallander]

in the field folder.

of course now i've run into a new problem....again -_-. geez im having some real issues with this game lol.

i reinstalled and it seemed to work good (all i did was click new game and saw the beginning of that space scene and shut it off) ran the Phoenix Rejuv. Project patch and aalis graphic driver

and it looked great...until the first fight. i ran it twice to see if maybe it just glitched, but heres what happened:

fight started like normal, wait gauge filled i attack nothing wrong.

as soon as i take damage and the number showing how much damage shows, it goes black (music still playing) and then showed that standard MS error report thing saying: FF7 has encountered a problem and needs to close. im sure you know the window im talking about

i've looked around on here and saw somewhat similar problems, but nothing like this. could it maybe be something in my battle folder?
since it will keep running until i take any kind of damage, whether its their machine gun or that melee attack.

sorry for coming bak again and again with problems and thanx for you guys bein patient

[obesebear]

Well, PRP doesn't affect any battle models, so there's no reason it would mess with the battle.  Sounds like one of your other files has been corrupted.  Post your app.log here.

type [ 'code']copy and paste your app.log then type['/code']   but leave out the quotation marks around code

[Vallander]

are you talking about the .txt file named app? thats the only one i can find

i tried pasting it but it wont let me. when i try opening it its blank.

is that the one you're talking about though? (sorry im new to this stuff)

EDIT: if nothing else should i try just reinstalling...again? lol.

[obesebear]

If you're correctly running Aali's driver, it shouldn't be blank.
Anyways, you may want to go ahead and reinstall

[Vallander]

ok ill try that.

as for the driver. im assuming its right since the graphics did improve greatly but ok ill try reinstalling and see if it helps

(good lord im gettin tired of installing this lol this is like the 5th time )



EDIT: yep its the PRP that messed it up

i ran it as soon as i installed it and did the fight. i won (leveled up woot!) and it continued onto the next screen with no crash so i exited.
then i installed the PRP and ran it and voila, it crashed as soon as i got hit by the enemy.
any ideas? should i probably just try the NPC RP again instead? or am i just kinda screwed lol.

[Harruzame]

What?..I'm using PRP and I didn't have that prob?....hmmm

1. So did ya renamed the following lgp in your FFPRP folder?

00.lgp
01.lgp

and replaced them with proper names...??

2. Are you using FFVII music?..If so start your game there..But if your using the PRP game starter icon..Your Dead...


Check this first...

[Vallander]

umm.. nope was i supposed to rename them?

and what do you mean proper names?

yeah i didnt change the music at all.

soo i shouldnt go through PRP.exe? but then it doesnt use the updated stuff?

so what should i name the 00 and 01 lgp files?

[Harruzame]

 

00.lgp is  supposed to replace char.lgp

01.lgp is supposed to replace world_us.lgp


Always remember to backup the originals before replacing okay?

And The FFVII music that I'm askin about is another MOD to replace the MIDI's to MP3 of the songs of the game ( So I'll Assume you haven't installed this?... This is great stuff man try it!)

[Vallander]

ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh

lol ok now i feel dumb

hmm.. well if this works maybe ill try it out ^_^.

ill go try what you suggested and see if it works.

EDIT: gahhh!! still didnt work

i replaced char.lgp with the 00.lgp and the world_us.lgp with the 01.lgp

and still as soon as i get hit it crashes.

should i maybe go back to the original NPC RP version and see if it does the same thing?

[Harruzame]

Waittaminnit!!...

hmm


Did you rename the 00.lgp and 01.lgp to its respective counterparts first?....