Messages

26

Releases / Re: [REL] Menu Overhaul Project

« on: 2013-01-12 00:23:58 »

So back to work for me... Still finishing off my tools that will make editing memory for this game (and any game/program) as simple as pie.  Mostly done.  What I am not happy about is the rather "here there" job I did with the value changing.  To explain, imagine that this was memory:

E8 77 4D 24 00

When I did a comparison between the original exe and the changed exe, the 00 was same in both so was not added to the list.  So now in the list of changes the ones there would be E8 77 4D 24

It is very sloppy.  I don't like it.  But it's way too late now to do anything about.  The worst case scenario is that if someone else has modified certain memory that I also have (excluding text because I made sure ALL of those are added), game will crash.  But given I and kranmer were editing things no bugger else seems to, I'd say we are safe...

It's just sloppy.  Ah well... you learn by mistakes see.  I did make sure to correct this when using Dziugo's edits... so at least his work and my modern changes have been properly done.

You should really get these things into a version control system, like git or svn. It makes it very easy to compare your work with a colleague's, and keep track of it's history.

27

Releases / Re: [REL] Menu Overhaul Project

« on: 2012-12-19 02:44:29 »

Found a funny one, when riding the truck to Nibelheim with Sephiroth:

Cloud (projecting himself on Zack): "So, how does you feel, HERO?"

28

Team Avalanche / Re: Official Team Avalanche Suggestion Thread

« on: 2012-07-04 05:25:08 »

Sounds like TA needs a new file repository.

How are you maintaining your progress at the moment?

Is there a git or svn repository out there somewhere?

29

Releases / Re: Upscaled Magic Textures

« on: 2012-07-03 15:29:04 »

The folder structure of the archive is correct.
It is set up for a mods path of DATA.
So you would place the DATA folder from the archive in your MODS folder: .\mods\data\
Then change the mods path in F7_OpenGL.cfg to match: mods=data

If you're using a different mods path, then change DATA to match.
Menu Overhaul uses DK and Avalanche uses AVALANCHE.

Don't alter the file structure or change any of the subfolders.

Is there any documentation to make sense of this?

I understand the Menu Overhaul project uses the mod\DK folder and Team Avalanche uses the mod\AVALANCHE folder, and Grimmy's textures go in mod\Data.

As far as I can tell, all of these folder names are arbitrary.
It does not, or should not, matter what the name of the mod folder is.

What matters is where Aali's driver expects to find the files inside that folder...

I doubt that Aali has encoded separate pathways for AVALANCHE\whatever\they\do and DK\whatever\happens\there and Data\which\could\have\been\"bannanas".

There should be a certain layout of directories inside the mod\whatever folder.

**Edit**
So that crazy pathway is the expected one... ok.... weird.

30

Releases / Re: Upscaled Magic Textures

« on: 2012-07-03 05:56:20 »

Inside your archive is a file structure like this:

Code: [Select]

data\
         several.pngs
         magic\
                several.pngs
                ff7\
                     data\
                           battle\
                                   severalsubdirs\
                                                    somehave.pngs
                                                    somehavesubdirs\
                                                                   withafew.pngs
I can't imagine that structure works, unless directory structure is irrelevant, so I rearranged this as follows:

Code: [Select]

mixed\
         magic\
                pngsfromyour"data\magic"
         battle\
                subdirsfromyour"data\magic\ff7\data\battle"
I'm particularly concerned about the files in mixed\battle\subdirs, because I'm seeing only a hodge-podge of your enhanced textures.

Are the subdirectory structures correct? Do those files belong in subdirectories of subdirectories of battle?

Long overdue edit: Yeah that was a bad idea. The directory structure is based on the original lgp file contents; the mess belongs to the developers at Square.

31

Releases / Re: [REL] FF7 Unified Model Installer

« on: 2012-07-02 14:39:18 »

You need to start right at the beginning.  Is there some kind of major tutorial around here people for newbies?

I figured out what was wrong.

I was installing the proper way, but as I mentioned in the Menu Overhaul thread, the installer falls apart (silently) in WINE.

After running the installer from a terminal, I was able to determine that it opens thousands of file descriptors and thousands of cmd.exe.

This may be a problem with WINE, perhaps some kind of scheduling bug, or it may be that windows lax security allows this behavior.

32

Releases / Re: [REL] Menu Overhaul Project

« on: 2012-07-01 18:50:59 »

A different patcher executable might help.

Is there any way to extract the files from your installers?

I think the main problem is with ulgp.exe and the batch files, which are opening too many files and too many processes.

This may not be a problem on Windows, and WINE on linux can do much of what Windows can do, but linux has more strict security restrictions.

What gets me is just how close I get to installing with your installers.
They run, even with Sephiroth and Music, and they seem to do their thing.
I can only see them fail if I run them from terminal and behold the torrential flood of errors.

33

Releases / Re: [REL] Menu Overhaul Project

« on: 2012-07-01 18:12:56 »

I'm having trouble with DLPB's installers.


I'd like to know if it's possible to release the mod package without the installer.

ie, just a zip file with all the modifications so I could write my own install script using lgp & unlgp

The reason being that I am trying to install in linux through WINE, and I don't think that will ever work.

Apparently, when run in WINE, the installer attempts to open an a great many file descriptors (lots of little files in lgp archives?) along with numerous X clients (multiple instances of cmd.exe); thousands of each.

In Ubuntu, file descriptors are limited to 1024 by default, and in X11 clients are limited to 255.

I was able to work around the file limit through some config file hacking, but I don't even know if it's possible to change X11's client limit.

I poked around in the dlpb-mods folder and found something interesting: most of the patchers can be run directly on linux.
In fact lgp.exe and unlgp.exe can also be run directly on linux.

If I could make a shell script to do what the installer does, there may not be any need to modify the other executables and I could probably get around WINE's difficulties.

34

Troubleshooting / Re: Running FFVII in WINE (Linux)

« on: 2012-07-01 14:15:03 »

The change to alsa worked for me (only for FFVII), but the game is asking for CD 1, 2 or 3 to be insert, even if CD 1 is inside the drive. So I still can't run it (but sound works fine in FF7config). Another problem is, that when I want to try MIDI in the FF7config there are no sounds and the program freezes. This issue is just in the MIDI section.

Since I changed the driver to ALSA in WINE the sounds of Diablo 2 are crappy, anybody who knows a solution?


I'm using WINE 1.5.5 in Ubuntu 12.04
During installation the command sh winetricks didn't work!those weren't inside of my winetricks
glxgears was no problem!

please help me! I'm very new to Ubuntu

Skillmon

I have good news for you:

First, MIDI has been fixed in winepulse!
This means anyone installing FF7 in a clean install of wine 1.5 (from the wine team ppa) will have no extra work to do other than installing Aali's OpenGL driver.

For those of you who took my advice before:
You can use regedit to revert HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Wine\Drivers string value Audio to pulse.

Second: CDEmu

I converted all of my FF7 cds into ISO images, and use this utility to mount and swap them.

This tool is different from others in that it actually works.

There are features of cds, like certain types of copy protection, that cannot be provided by simply mounting an image to a folder.
CDEmu works by not simply mounting the images to a folder and providing the files, but emulating a disk drive and a cd inserted into it.

Strangely, very few of the many guides I've seen around for mounting images in Linux acknowledge this.

35

Troubleshooting / Re: Running FFVII in WINE (Linux)

« on: 2012-06-12 18:15:35 »

Having a linux only system, I was very happy to discover about three years ago that FF7 was functional in WINE after a series of hacks and configuration changes.

Since I've been using linux for years, command line hacks and text file configurations have become commonplace for me.

Imagine my surprise when I install FF7 in wine1.5.... and it practically works out of the box.

OUT OF THE BOX... (practically)

If you are a wizard, by which I mean someone who can compile wine from git and configure alsa drivers from regedit, read no further.


"Practically", meaning that:
1. Aali's OpenGL driver must be considered absolutely necessary to run the program on any kind of modern computer anyway.
2. MIDI is a nightmare all it's own, but considerably more manageable these days than it used to be.

In fact, I didn't even try running the game without Aali's driver. That test should be done, eventually.
FF7's MIDI audio was the most troublesome aspect of the game for me, but that has a lot to do with my particular hardware.

You could read the rest of my post, or you could read just what I had to to here.

I have an emu10k1, SoundBlaster Audigy Live! 5.1.
This is a cheap 5.1 surround card with an onboard MIDI synthesizer.
Using a software synthesizer, like timidity++, is probably much easier!

I had installed WINE from a launchpad PPA (in ubuntu obviously).
For political(?) reasons, the Ubuntu WINE Team PPA is distributing wine with an unofficial pusleaudio driver by default.
I really shouldn't get into it here, but suffice to say the wine devs aren't quite ready to face the inevitability of pulseaudio support.

The winepulse.drv audio driver does not support any kind of MIDI ouptut as far as I can tell.
This is a problem with Pulseaudio, not the driver itself.
There may be ways around this, but I spent 48 hours searching for any kind of documentation or bug reports or anything and came up empty-handed.

Pulseaudio does not support midi, but it can output midi audio from an ALSA source.
You will have to use winealsa.drv for the time being.

The best way to get there is with winetricks:

Code: [Select]

winetricks sound=alsa.
This allowed me to run FF7Config.exe and the game itself, which require a MIDI device of some kind.

Unfortunately, winealsa is no longer offering a pulseaudio output pathway by default in winecfg.
It will setup audio to use the sound card through alsa directly? in which PCM sounds terrible for reasons beyond my understanding.

It is necessary to set up a pulseudio pathway manually in regedit, winecfg, and FF7Config.
See my post in the ubuntu forums for an idea of what to do.

36

Releases / Re: [REL] FF7 Unified Model Installer

« on: 2012-06-08 14:19:52 »

How can I enable the models this installs?

I've tried installing several times, but subsequent runs of FF7 look exactly the same as the original.

I also installed the Menu Overhaul, which did nothing but break fonts throughout the game.

The tutorial here doesn't seem to specify any activation step or alternate loading methods...

Am I missing a step?

I noticed an extra ff7.exe in dlnb_mods, but it will not run.