Messages

351

FF7Voice / Re: Has a FFVII Voice-Over Project ever been attempted?

« on: 2008-05-30 22:10:00 »

Dziugo : I had a bit more time to look into this and the issue was that I didn't have the Visual C++ files on my computer.  Downloading and installing the 2008 vcredist_x86.exe from Microsoft's website fixed the issue.  Quick test worked.  I'm going to try it out for a bit and report back.

edit : Tried it out some more.  The way your software works, I can definitely see this project working out technically.  Brilliant.

However, the application doesn't seem to handle questions well.  Tried the two questions on the highwind (operations room and take control of the helm) and they both send the game into an infinite loop.  Here's the start of my debug file showing a loop :

MapID = 74    DialogID = 18   Just started playing.
 MapID = 74    DialogID = 18   Has been stopped.
 MapID = 70    DialogID = 102   Just started playing.
 MapID = 70    DialogID = 102   Has been stopped.
 MapID = 70    DialogID = 114   Just started playing.
 MapID = 70    DialogID = 114   Has been stopped.
 MapID = 70    DialogID = 112   Just started playing.
 MapID = 70    DialogID = 112   Has been stopped.
 MapID = 70    DialogID = 1   Just started playing.
 MapID = 70    DialogID = 1   Just started playing.
 MapID = 70    DialogID = 1   Just started playing.
 MapID = 70    DialogID = 1   Just started playing.
 MapID = 70    DialogID = 1   Just started playing.
 MapID = 70    DialogID = 1   Just started playing.
 MapID = 70    DialogID = 1   Just started playing.
 MapID = 70    DialogID = 1   Just started playing.
 MapID = 70    DialogID = 1   Just started playing.
 MapID = 70    DialogID = 1   Just started playing.
 MapID = 70    DialogID = 1   Just started playing.
 MapID = 70    DialogID = 1   Just started playing
...

It keeps on going this way until I close the game.  The actual text in game never shows up and the sound plays each second though!

Looking at the source of your program (installed VC++ Express 2008 out of curiosity to try and understand what you did), I'd wager it'd be related somehow to the program interpreting the part where ff7 waits for input as a end dialog and the program trying to reinitialize again since the dialog never came up in the first place.  Only a theory from somebody who doesn't know much about these things and who's trying to understand.

To avoid that whole problem completely, would it be possible to exclude the ASK opcode messages from being picked up ?  I don't remember a spot in the game where a question would be important enough to need to be voiced.

Ficedula : Wouldn't the text match way create a lot of overhead if the program has to look into a big heavy text file to match the clip before sending the sound out ?  Wouldn't the ID way be more responsive ?

Ficedula & Dziugo : I've noticed, ff7music picks up the log Dziugo's hook creates in its main window (where all the texture stuff and mid info is written).  With this in mind, would it be easier to use ff7music built in "sorter" and output engines in conjunction with Dziugo's hook or would it be easier to make one from scratch using Dziugo's program as a base ?

Here's a short copy & paste of that window (removed some redundant lines) :

TEXTURE LOADED INTO VIDEO MEMORY

MIDI play: 47

reading midi file: HIKU.mid

HIKU.mid

Midi file matched! HIKU
CSA6
CSR7
File counterpart 4-03 Airships Make Me Happy - The Highwind Takes to the Skies Remix.mp3
Resolved to F:\Documents\Music\ff7\4-03 Airships Make Me Happy - The Highwind Takes to the Skies Remix.mp3
Playing music
CSA6
CSR7
CSA8
Look for plugin for mp3
Init plugins
Setup input plugin: Nullsoft MPEG Audio Decoder 2.96+AAC
Setup output plugin: waveOut output v2.0.2a
Init finished
---------------------------
Prevented from resuming
CSR9
current volume: 127

MIDI is playing SUCCESSFULLY!!!

TEXTURE LOADED INTO VIDEO MEMORY

TEXTURE LOADED INTO VIDEO MEMORY

MIDI play: 47

song is already playing...

TEXTURE LOADED INTO VIDEO MEMORY

TEXTURE LOADED INTO VIDEO MEMORY

MapID = 74    DialogID = 18   Just started playing.

TEXTURE LOADED INTO VIDEO MEMORY

TEXTURE LOADED INTO VIDEO MEMORY

MapID = 74    DialogID = 18   Has been stopped.

TEXTURE LOADED INTO VIDEO MEMORY

TEXTURE LOADED INTO VIDEO MEMORY

MIDI play: 47

song is already playing...

TEXTURE LOADED INTO VIDEO MEMORY

TEXTURE LOADED INTO VIDEO MEMORY

MapID = 70    DialogID = 102   Just started playing.

MapID = 70    DialogID = 102   Has been stopped.

TEXTURE LOADED INTO VIDEO MEMORY

MapID = 70    DialogID = 114   Just started playing.

MapID = 70    DialogID = 114   Has been stopped.

MapID = 70    DialogID = 112   Just started playing.

MapID = 70    DialogID = 112   Has been stopped.

TEXTURE LOADED INTO VIDEO MEMORY

TEXTURE LOADED INTO VIDEO MEMORY

MapID = 70    DialogID = 1   Just started playing.

MapID = 70    DialogID = 1   Just started playing.

MapID = 70    DialogID = 1   Just started playing.

... (loop 'til alt-f4 as explained previously).

I do feel I should point out I tried the hook with and without ff7music and the loop still starts in either case so it would seem unrelated.

352

FF7Voice / Re: Has a FFVII Voice-Over Project ever been attempted?

« on: 2008-05-29 00:35:50 »

Great job guys!

Didn't think we'd see results so quickly.

I however had a few questions.

First one, Dziugo, I tried to run your tool to see if I could gather more info about how the game handles dialog but when I start dllloader, i get a side-by-side error.  Obviously I know this isn't even alpha yet and this is to be expected but I figured you'd like to know.  I use Vista and it was in the right directories.

Second one, Ficedula, I tried to take a look in Cosmo to some of the flevel.lgp files but Cosmo oddly opens outside my screen ?  I can bring up the options with alt but can't see the actually main folder.

Third one, I was hoping to have a theory to suggest here but since I couldn't take a look at the files as I would have liked I don't really have much to say.  How would you guys think we could identify which dialog line is being called (basically ID it).  I mean, we can show the text right now, but can we uniquely identify which text is shown so we can associate that identifier with a file to play it ?  My guess from what I know would be that we'd need to identify the right field file in use but apart from that how could we tell which dialog is being called up by the game ?

353

FF7Voice / Re: Has a FFVII Voice-Over Project ever been attempted?

« on: 2008-05-28 03:00:01 »

Quick progress report on my end for people interested.

I've done a search in technical and in q-gears on every post containing "dialog".  I've also read the relevant parts of the wiki.  This obviously was massive amounts of info (not all of it relevant for this project) and I need time to let all this set in and I also would like to look at a field file inside flevel.lgp

I can however say right now that I was wrong in that the 0x41 MPARA and 0x42 MPAR2 opcodes are for showing dialog.  The correct one seems to be 0x40 MESSAGE.

354

FF7Voice / Re: Has a FFVII Voice-Over Project ever been attempted?

« on: 2008-05-27 13:14:14 »

First off, I'd like to say thanks to everybody who's taken the time to consider this so far.  It's really great to see people showing interest in this just like I am , especially since two people I would describe as a master of the add-on while the other as the master of fixed/adding to the existing engine from within are among the group.

Also, I've been a member of this board for a few years now and I've mostly taken from this community.  I'd like to give back a little so I'd like to offer you guys my help on the technical side but as I've stated before I'm starting from scratch so I don't know how much help I'm going to be.

As Ficedula mentioned, I do believe the first step would be to probe on how the game truly handles dialog events.  Something in my grasp right now is to do research so I'll do a research tonight and post the results of my findings on what is currently known on dialog events for quick reference and to further my understanding.

edit : summarized what I was saying.

355

FF7Voice / Re: Has a FFVII Voice-Over Project ever been attempted?

« on: 2008-05-26 14:35:22 »

Thanks for the feedback Ficedula.

I've been trying to understand how the game dialog works to see if my theory was correct on how to go at it (which is proving kind of hard since I have no programming skills ... at all) and reading Gears, I see you contributed some info to the Dialog and Event Field Format.  Would you have any suggestion as to how this could be handled ?

From what I could gather so far, the Flevel.lgp file will contain the info for each screen and will command the engine to go look into the dialog table to fetch the right text.

Also, the two following opcodes are the one calling up the correct dialog according to the wiki :

0x41 MPARA

   [0x41][bank_for_variable_id/bank_for_value][window_id][variable_id][value]
   Writes bank_for_value to 800E4214 memory bank variable array (size 0x08 0x01). This value will be used when we will copy field dialog to window string.
   Writes value to 800E4D48 offsets for variable array (size 0x10 0x02). This value will be used when we will copy field dialog to window string.

0x42 MPRA2

   [0x42][bank_for_variable_id/bank_for_value][window_id][variable_id][ [value] ]
   Writes bank_for_value to 800E4214 memory bank variable array (size 0x08 0x01). This value will be used when we will copy field dialog to window string.
   Writes value to 800E4D48 offsets for variable array (size 0x10 0x02). This value will be used when we will copy field dialog to window string.

So basically, we would need to watch these specific memory locations and detect the values, reference them to the dialog table which we had mapped previously and send the correct ID to a playback software which would launch the associated sound bite ?

After that, we would need to monitor the following opcode as well in case the user closes the text window before the end of the dialog to stop the sound bite and go on to the next one :

0x2E WCLS

   [0x2E][window_id]
   If window opened call "set_state_to_close" and then "manage_window_states" to close window.
   This opcode called until window closed (we can call this opcode from any entity).

Again, I'm no programmer.  I'm just trying to understand a way to do this from a technical standpoint with basically no previous point of reference.  Would this make sense or am I totally wrong about this ?

356

Archive / Re: New avatar - melts "transparency"

« on: 2008-05-25 20:28:03 »

Yahoo est horrible.  J'utilise personnellement translate.google.com qui donne de meilleurs résultats ... même si c'est loin d'être parfait.  Voici le résultat de google pour ton info :

Hi,

I just created a series of avatar for the menu final fantasy VII, I enjoy you, for what they want.
It is a false transparency. In the menu FFVII, Tab "config", set the color of the four corners, like this:

(UP)

The transparency of these avatar only works on a blue are therefore ^ ^
I can create even make another color (not color gradient), for what they are interested ...

Overview:

(UP)

Download:

(UP)

That is not great ... i know. It was just tested for ^ ^

Comme j'ai dit c'est loin d'être parfait ... mais c'est déjà une amélioration.

For all other non-french speakers : just suggested Google translate instead of yahoo as it seems to do a better job ... even though its far from perfect at least its a step up!

357

FF7Voice / Re: Has a FFVII Voice-Over Project ever been attempted?

« on: 2008-05-25 18:55:04 »

Hahaha.

Nice idea.

I'd also be able to volunteer to voice given a timetable to work with.  My voice is not a deep one either and I'm by no means professional but I could gladly do NPC's and such or whatever you guys would see fit.

Warning though, I speak English perfectly but I do have an accent as I'm not a native English speaker.

But before getting into all of this, I think we should ask ourselves this question : would an amateur speech patch (even if some professionals are on board, not everyone would be) actually improve the game or make it worse ?  As for myself, wrong deliveries, wrong emotions in a given scene and wrong casting totally takes me out of a game.  The first Grandia and Tales of Eternia are good examples of this.  I'm asking myself if these two games would have been better off without voice overs as an example.

As for the technical side of it, in order to reduce the size, MP3's would be a logical choice and ff7music could most likely be used to handle the playback if Ficedula agrees with it as, from what I understand, it already can intercept the calls the game makes and start its own sound engine on cue so I think it would be the easiest way to make this work.  It would need some modifying obviously though.

Going on a limb here as I'm no programmer but I would think that the game engine should make a call referencing to a certain part of the game script in order to pull the right text (in scene.bin if I'm not mistaken) so it would be likely that these calls could be intercepted to start the right sound bite through whatever program would be used for playback without modifying ff7.exe at all (à la ff7music).  The trick is going to be to find out what are the actual calls the program makes for text and interpret them to actual events (so in other words, find out how the game ID's event to show the right text so the speech player could intercept those and start the proper MP3).  A mapping of the text might already exist though since I know people have been playing with the dialog before for various patches.  There might also be info somewhere as to how the game fetches text.

As such, using ff7music could be beneficial to use as it already starts ff7 in a way to intercept its calls, already has a list system to associate sound files to events in the game and already has a sound output system.  Obviously, this is Ficedula's program so he would have to agree (and most likely lend a hand to the programmers understanding his code) so it might not be possible to use his program but that would be the #1 solution in my book (or a similar program if not possible ff7music).

Another issue would be that the text is hardcoded into the FMV's so for these it would actually be necessary to code the calls for the speech into the game.  That's the only part I see that actually requires modifying of the game.  Unless, again, the calls made by the game to start a fmv can be intercepted to determine what fmv it is starting and put in a timer to play the required speech file.  That implementation could easily be off-cue though so that might not be the best way to go at it.

Overall, I'm thinking the big parts could just be to add a layer on top so it should not be impossible.  Obviously, I'm no programmer and I could be totally in left field on this as this is just educated guesses from what I've read over the years, so if someone more informed reads this, feel free to correct me.

358

Archive / Re: I Can Help Somebody Please!

« on: 2008-05-19 18:01:05 »

I've never done this myself so I might be wrong but from what I picked up over time it should go like this :

First of all read this topic to find a list of what field model goes with whom http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=4774.0 and perhaps get a bit more info.

You'll basically need to exchange the files of reno with cloud, etc. by renaming the files to match.

To do so you'll need to get LGP tools and find the char.lgp, extract it, change the files around and repackage it.

If you need more info, search for "switch field models".

Also, if you want high quality field models, I'd suggest asking the authors of the "Phoenix Rejuvenation Project" if you can use their models for the Turks since they've ripped the battle models and modified them for field use.

But that's only for the field models (in towns etc.) and not battle models nor World Map models.

You'll need to do the same for battle models (battle.lgp) and world map models (world_xx.lgp where xx stands for your version (ex: us)) afterwards.

I recommend you do a search for 'battle model switch" to get more info about that.  I do believe its a similar process but you have animation files to worry about as well and limits might be screwed up.  As far as I know, there's no current way to easily change the limit breaks.  Look around for more info.

Also, English is obviously not your first language so I understand if you don't speak perfect grammar but I would strongly recommend you at least try not to write in bold and write as well as you can.  It won't get you help any faster, quite the opposite actually.

Also, I'm not 100% on this but I do believe somebody already released a Turks patch.  You might want to do a search on that as well as that would save you a whole lot of trouble and time.

Good luck.

359

Archive / Re: Guide to Installing FF7Music

« on: 2008-05-16 02:04:34 »

As the previous poster said before me, you don't need ficedula.dll or ficeconsole.dll

They're actually known for causing problems with the 1.51 version of ff7music (latest).

Really? Mine won't work without them 

Are you certain you're using the latest version of ff7music ?  The author himself (ficedula) had said they caused issue if these files are kept.

The latest version can be found there : http://sylphds.net/f2k3/index.html

It doesn't have an ff7music.ini included however so make sure to keep yours.

360

Archive / Re: Guide to Installing FF7Music

« on: 2008-05-14 23:39:23 »

As the previous poster said before me, you don't need ficedula.dll or ficeconsole.dll

They're actually known for causing problems with the 1.51 version of ff7music (latest).

361

Archive / Re: Conversion format. Bmp ->. Tex with software Omega.

« on: 2008-05-13 22:26:51 »

Destiny : Didn't mean to imply you didn't understand.  As I said, I've never used Omega so your original explanation was a bit hazy to me.  But that's pretty much what i had understood from your message.

I was just trying to act as a facilitator here.  Good thing is you helped him solve his issue so great!

VIP : Ça me fait plaisir mais c'est vraiment Destiny qui a fait tout le travail.

J'ai hâte de voir ce que ça va donner.

362

Archive / Re: STICKY: FF7 Music

« on: 2008-05-13 04:31:28 »

Quick update about my issue to those interested.

I was long due for a formatting (had been over 3 years) and I also had a copy of Vista lying around that I've been wanting to try for a while so I gave this a try yesterday.

My rig is almost 5 years old (still managed to get a 3.5 on the vista experience index surprisingly!) so I had to try to find all kind of drivers for my aging hardware such as working vista creative drivers (finally used the kx project drivers - open source; creative are among the worst support company I've seen).

After I got the sound working and had set up everything again, the delay was gone and the song were resuming again.

I don't know if its the switch to vista as its got a pretty different sound subsystem, the reinstall of ff7 or the new (actually decent for a change) sound drivers, but its working flawlessly again.

Just thought I'd share.

363

Archive / Re: Conversion format. Bmp ->. Tex with software Omega.

« on: 2008-05-13 02:33:14 »

Destiny : Quick question, I've never used Omega so I may be in left field here but I do however speak french.

What he wants to do is take a .bmp image he has modified and transfer it back to a .tex but it comes out garbled and not make a bmp out of a tex as you seem to suggest (unless I misunderstood here).

VIP : Comme je dis ci-haut, je n'ai jamais utilisé Omega mais en lisant le texte de Destiny, il semblerait que si tu ne sauves pas ton bmp en 256 couleurs (8-bit), tu vas avoir des problèmes.

Je parierais que c'est la cause de ton problème.

Sinon il semble suggérer d'utiliser un logiciel se nomant textool pour reconvertir un bmp and tex.

J'espère avoir pu t'être utile en tant que traducteur!

364

Archive / Re: STICKY: FF7 Music

« on: 2008-05-09 23:55:16 »

Hi evereyone. I installed FFVIIMusic, and it was working great with MP3s. Then all of a sudden, nothing. No MP3s, psf, or cdtracks. ANd I have no idea what the reason could be. I went back and checked, everything seemed to be correct. Anyone think they could help? Thanks.

I've got a similar issue actually.

Everything appeared to work fine until I got into the Shinra HQ part.  2/3 into the Shinra HQ I started loosing sound effect and only the currently playing MP3 would finish.  So i save the game and go back to windows and all my sound was deaf in every app.  I looked into the XP sound tab under the control panel and everything appeared all right.

So I reboot the system and its still there.  I shut down the system completely and it's still there again.

Just for kicks I open ff7music again, load a game and try for 30 seconds and the sound just comes back on its during the middle of a room (no transition to another screen or to a battle or anything).

I also transfered my saves to my laptop saince I'm on the road sometimes and it does the same thing except that it comes back whithin 10 seconds (same ini, different paths).

That's odd.

PS : both system use XP and one uses a Creative SB live 5.1 card while the other uses an integrated audio card.  I can see no constant between systems apart from ff7music and the ini.

EDIT : There's now a huge delay before songs start on my main system (not laptop).  Every other sound effect is bang on though.  Something odd is happening.

EDIT2: I've also noticed the songs stopped resuming.  This is most definately related to this issue.  I tried reinstalling ff7 music, starting over from a fresh ini, playing with the plugin config, etc to no avail.  The only thing I've found to help is to roll back to the 1.5 version and disable ramps.  But it still doesn't resume and there's still a small delay.  I'll post an update if I find what caused it.

365

Releases / Re: [Release] Final Fantasy VII Phoenix Rejuvenation Project

« on: 2008-05-05 16:27:54 »

As for the glowing tank, I noticed that on my last playthrough a year or so ago.  I did have the Reunion patch but not the NPC one so it would seem unrelated to the npc specifics.  I thought maybe it was a driver issue.  I have an ATI card myself.

As for the materia, some flash, some are normal.  It is pretty odd.  Were the materia textures altered in some ways ?

As for the flashback, I had that quick scene in the reactor were you see Tifa with a sword (begining of the scene) and the sword was normal.  I haven't been to Kalm yet.

As for everything else, using ff7music in conjunction and its been rock solid so far apart from the fact that doing "quit" will reboot my system   So I simply ctrl-alt-del out of it.

PS : Not using the supplied exe.  I renamed the files manually.

366

Releases / Re: [Release] Final Fantasy VII Phoenix Rejuvenation Project

« on: 2008-05-04 03:38:07 »

Quick question, if you do it by hand instead of using the patcher (rename the 001 to the correct lgp file, etc.) will the materia be invisible or not ?

I've read through this thtis thread and its still not clear to me whether or not it can be avoided by patching it manually.

If it is not fixed by doing that, any ideas what might cause it ?  Is it the lgp with the save point that has the materia images ?  If we skip modifying that one, does the materia normally appear ?

367

Archive / Re: Disable FMVs?

« on: 2008-04-29 02:14:31 »

I've never actually tried this but if you used the movie on hard drive trick and replaced all the movies by a very short one such as the gold saucer one or junon elevator one, then it would in theory do what you want.

368

Archive / Re: Weeemus FF Fan Movie?

« on: 2008-04-05 17:41:34 »

Oh what! you cant release fmvs as well? @.@ even if its from scratch?

gee that sucks... Come to think of it what about dead fantasy? did he have to take that down as well?

I'm no lawyer so I don't know where they would stand but if "re-made" high quality original FMV's without consent, I'd figure they would take offense.

As far as original content such as dead fantasy, I doubt they'd mind.

But then again I'm just a sales rep so what do I know!

369

Archive / Re: Model creation

« on: 2008-04-05 16:02:11 »

I'm actually no modeler but if you're interested in my two cents, I would think Cid would be the character with the less details to make.

Going from memory here but he has a pretty straightforward attire with a smoke, a dogtag and a beard being his only special "traits" and he has a pretty straightforward haircut.  Cloud on the other hand has belts, shoulder pads, a crazy haircut plus loads of other little details.

Plus Cloud has got some many variations out here while Cid has none and is so badass! 

370

Archive / Re: Weeemus FF Fan Movie?

« on: 2008-04-05 15:54:08 »

Actually, if you ever get down to it, recreating the movies would be an awesome idea as that's one of the only parts in the game that still needs major improvements (apart from the background obviously).

However, I'm sure Square would take issue to that so you would basically need to work on them in secret and release them only when done through torrent or whatever so they can't be stopped once released!

That, however, would be somewhat of a shady way of doing it plus you'd have loads of work to basically handle alone.

No matter what comes out of it, keep up the good work! 

371

Archive / Re: (Possibly) New unused text found

« on: 2007-08-03 00:07:07 »

Just to add to this, I can confirm with 100% certainty that Aeris's mother says that during the flashback of when she found Aeris.

372

Archive / Re: Cloud wearing Daedric armor

« on: 2006-07-04 22:48:29 »

So let me guess this straight, you're actually working on something that would enable ff7 to play new models ?

Wow is all I can say.

Good to know talented people like you (and many others around here too) still care about this game and, more importantly, continue to improve what we can do with this thing!

373

Archive / PLZ PLZ PLZ you can make a man happy

« on: 2006-02-18 06:44:01 »

As I said I don't have the ff8 pc game but ff8 is listed under the EA US website.

Maybe it's a NA/EU difference.

374

Archive / PLZ PLZ PLZ you can make a man happy

« on: 2006-02-17 21:47:39 »

My best bet would be to register an account with EA and ask them the question.

If they have a spanish geforce patch, their tech support could surely tell you about it.

375

Archive / PLZ PLZ PLZ you can make a man happy

« on: 2006-02-17 01:17:17 »

I don't own the ff8 pc version but if I'm not mistaken, EA ported ff8 to pc.

You might have better luck on their website.