Messages

1

Troubleshooting / Custom graphics driver for FF7/FF8 [v.1-.7.6]

« on: 2009-05-17 18:06:57 »

Aurenasek116:
I suppose it could be because you have preserve_aspect set to false. I did not try this option.

Aali:
I gave it a try setting the internal resolution to 4 * 640 x 480 = 2560 x 1920 and it does work! No artifacts as far as I can tell.

Now if it could only use the internal- to actual resolution scaling on the backgrounds and render the 3d objects independently when FSAA is enabled the stretching would not be noticeable at all.

I think the sound problem was an effect of me reinstalling the creative drivers a few days back but seeing as d33eniz had the same problem with it silently failing at the “initializing sound...” line I thought it be worthy of posting.

Anyway, the driver is really coming along nicely! Good job!


Edit.
Forgot to say that the artifacts are nowhere to be found using a multiplier of 640 x 480 for internal resolution on my laptop aswell. Movies show, everything works great!

2

Troubleshooting / Custom graphics driver for FF7/FF8 [v.1-.7.6]

« on: 2009-05-17 14:35:31 »

It's working without your "mod"- but when I activate it, It just starts and turns then to the destop^^

Sound-Initialasing IS the last line in the log...

Having the same problem on my stationary PC. I've tried changing all of the options in the cfg without success.

On my laptop the 0.5 driver works but I still get graphical glitches in the backgrounds.


Edit. ran a quick debug session and the log is showing:

Code: [Select]

Debugged application message: INITIALIZE DD/D3D END
.
Debugger: Library loaded: C:\Windows\SysWOW64\hid.dll
Debugger: Library loaded: C:\Windows\SysWOW64\wintrust.dll
Debugger: Library loaded: C:\Windows\SysWOW64\crypt32.dll
Debugger: Library loaded: C:\Windows\SysWOW64\msasn1.dll
Debugger: Library loaded: C:\Windows\syswow64\imagehlp.dll
Debugger: Thread started: id=00000648, entry=77008770.
Debugger: Thread started: id=00000FE0, entry=77008770.
Debugged application message: initializing sound...
.
Debugger: Library loaded: C:\Windows\syswow64\clbcatq.dll
Debugger: Library loaded: C:\Windows\SysWOW64\MMDevAPI.dll
Debugged application message: DIRECT SOUND ERROR
.
Debugged application message:    ERROR: No sound driver is available for use. in FILE C:\lib\src\sound\dx_snd.cpp LINE 68
.
Debugger: Thread terminated: id=00000648 (exit code = 0x0).
Debugger: Thread terminated: id=000001D4 (exit code = 0x0).
Debugger: Thread terminated: id=000012F0 (exit code = 0x0).
Debugger: Thread terminated: id=00000FE0 (exit code = 0x0).
Debugger: Process terminated (exit code = 0h).

If you run the config utility and select the correct sound device and then run the .reg file provided with Aali's custom driver it should work. It did for me.


Apart from the above mentioned problems pertaining to my laptop I still get a few graphical glitches in the menus and on effects like the damage numbers in combat on my stationary PC. This only happens in resolutions that a not evenly dividable by the original resolution and I prefer to run it in 1940x1440 with no scaling in the monitor (Nvidia apparently finally got around to fixing this - I'm impressed) so it's not a big deal.

On the laptop it’s a bigger problem though native resolution of 1280x800 only allows for a max evenly divisible resolution of 640x480. The graphical glitches are also more evident on the laptop.

3

Troubleshooting / Custom graphics driver for FF7/FF8 [v.1-.7.6]

« on: 2009-05-10 12:08:25 »

No, it's fixable in the way Aali described above. It's also possible to compensate for since it's essentially an issue with the drawing of the bitmap-grid that makes up the backgrounds.

I was referring to the issues with bad states and having to reboot and so forth. Your complaint sounds like it's simply related to texel alignment, which is "fixable" in a variety of ways.

Ok, the "you guys" had me confused.

4

Troubleshooting / Custom graphics driver for FF7/FF8 [v.1-.7.6]

« on: 2009-05-09 08:43:18 »

Normal OpenGL antialiasing (when FBO's are not involved) is just a matter of asking the drivers to turn it on. So any problems you guys are having there are most likely driver issues and not at all fixable by Aali. FSAA/MSAA implementations on various hardware (on behalf of both ATi on nVidia) have had a variety of quirks. The first thing to do is, of course, make sure you have the latest drivers for your hardware.

No, it's fixable in the way Aali described above. It's also possible to compensate for since it's essentially an issue with the drawing of the bitmap-grid that makes up the backgrounds.

5

Troubleshooting / Custom graphics driver for FF7/FF8 [v.1-.7.6]

« on: 2009-05-07 03:43:07 »

I noticed while trying to run FF7 on my laptop using the driver that there are artifacts in the backgrounds and menus when using a custom resolution like 1280x800. Turning on FSAA in the driver makes the artifacts more apparent while running the game in 640x480 works great even with FSAA enabled.

Would be nice it if you could look into this small issue for a future release.

6

Troubleshooting / Custom graphics driver for FF7/FF8 [v.1-.7.6]

« on: 2009-04-20 22:30:28 »

Nice job, Aali.

I just wonder that noone discovered the possibility of injecting a custom graphics driver into the engine before, especially since there have been several patches developed for the internal engine.

And we thought that we have already reached the limits of the original engine years ago... 

 - Alhexx

If you look it up, I think Qhimm noted it quite some time ago.
I've looked at it before when I did the high res patch, but never got round to actually playing with it.

\me rounds up mob

7

Troubleshooting / Custom graphics driver for FF7/FF8 [v.1-.7.6]

« on: 2009-04-17 14:55:40 »

Tested and working on Vista x64 in 1920x1440 using preserve_aspect = true option. 2560x1600 however causes a crash in ff7_opengl.dll!0x6e51f767h.

Confirmed. That's a crash in libswscale though, so if you disable nice_movies it'll work

Nice, looking forward to coming improvements.

8

Troubleshooting / Custom graphics driver for FF7/FF8 [v.1-.7.6]

« on: 2009-04-17 13:54:40 »

http://epj.no-ip.org/upl/ff7_opengl-0.2b.zip

Tested and working on Vista x64 in 1920x1440 using preserve_aspect = true option. 2560x1600 however causes a crash in ff7_opengl.dll!0x6e51f767h.

Code: [Select]

ff7_opengl.dll!6e51f767()
  [Frames below may be incorrect and/or missing, no symbols loaded for ff7_opengl.dll]
  ntdll.dll!77022f1f()
> msvcr90.dll!free(void * pBlock=0x00000000)  Line 115 + 0x5 bytes C
  00002154()


Code: [Select]

...
6E44F720  push        ebp 
6E44F721  push        edi 
6E44F722  push        esi 
6E44F723  push        ebx 
6E44F724  sub         esp,0BCh
6E44F72A  mov         eax,dword ptr [esp+0D4h]
6E44F731  mov         ecx,dword ptr [esp+0D0h] //dword ptr [esp+0D0h] == 0x0h
6E44F738  mov         ebx,dword ptr [eax]
6E44F73A  mov         dword ptr [esp+90h],ebx
6E44F741  mov         edx,dword ptr [eax+4]
6E44F744  mov         dword ptr [esp+94h],edx
6E44F74B  mov         edi,dword ptr [eax+8]
6E44F74E  mov         dword ptr [esp+38h],edx
6E44F752  mov         ebp,dword ptr [esp+38h]
6E44F756  mov         dword ptr [esp+98h],edi
6E44F75D  mov         esi,dword ptr [eax+0Ch]
6E44F760  mov         dword ptr [esp+0A0h],ebx
6E44F767  mov         ebx,dword ptr [ecx+60h] //exception (ecx == 0x0h)


9

Troubleshooting / Custom graphics driver for FF7/FF8 [v.1-.7.6]

« on: 2009-04-10 06:09:31 »

I ran it through IDA on Vista 64-bit and the problem is the registry keys are not located in the same place on Vista 64-bit as in XP.

Modifying these keys does the trick:

Code: [Select]

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Square Soft, Inc.\Final Fantasy VII\1.00\Graphics]
"DriverPath"="ff7_opengl.dll"
"Driver"=dword:00000003
"Mode"=dword:00000002
"Options"=dword:00000012


10

Troubleshooting / Re: FF8 Launcher - Custom resolutions and 8-bit paletted textures fix (patch)

« on: 2009-04-07 18:09:19 »

I don't think the launcher could have such an effect on the game. It only makes alterations to the DirectX calls.

On the topic of FF7; Aali seem to have found a better way to modify the graphics driver so I'm holding off on doing any work.
http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=8306.0

11

Troubleshooting / Re: FF8 Launcher - Custom resolutions and 8-bit paletted textures fix (patch)

« on: 2009-03-21 02:02:49 »

I absolutely love this program.
 
Is there any way the same thing could be done for FF7? I'd like to be able to choose my resolution with that too, instead of being stuck with just the two from the high res patch.

I don't think it can be done if it is a game engine issue.

It's on my todo-list as I'm a big fan of FF7 (much more so than FF8 to be entirely honest).

12

Archive / Re: High Resolution Backgrounds - New Spin on an Old Idea?

« on: 2009-03-16 15:54:32 »

You mean to enhance the PC version.

Dude, the PC version fails. LOL (sorry, i had to)

Yeah, no doubt that's why so many people are modding it.

Go make sh*t for Q-Gears, then. That's not what this topic is discussing. Hard to make stuff for something that isn't even finished, isn't it? Exactly. There's a good reason that after all these years and countless topics on the matter, there's still not a SINGLE release for higher resolution backgrounds. This may be the only way.

Also, the PSX version is fickle as all hell. Just ask ff7rules, he has to fight with it constantly. It's even more limited than the PC version when it comes to models.

Good luck to you. 



Clearly there's no interest in this here, so I guess enjoy all the new character models coming out over top pixelated backgrounds. If anybody gets serious and realizes I'm not joking when I say this could be the only way, feel free to use the idea.

I don't think Crazy Nova's lack of interest qualifies as indication of the community’s view as a whole.

It certainly possible to add new backgrounds to the game and while the approach you're taking may or may not work (which I can't help you answer) there are numerous other ways to go about it. If we really wanted we could turn FF7 into Quake but it would of course take a lot of hard work which goes to say that anything is possible as long as you have the knowledge and time to invest in the project.

My approach to adding new backgrounds to the game would likely take a different route by separating the new content from the old as to avoid any limitations in the original code and instead focusing on making changes to the game assembly to handle the new content.

I'd much rather see new backgrounds being rendered in-game than pre-rendered backgrounds for obvious reasons and while pre-rendered backgrounds likely are the easier approach it’s a tradeoff between difficulty of implementation and quality of the end result that really only can be made through greater understanding of the technical aspects of both approaches.

13

Archive / Re: High Resolution Backgrounds - New Spin on an Old Idea?

« on: 2009-03-16 00:21:01 »

I was thinking about this a few weeks back when I installed FF7 on my newly formatted and reinstalled pc.

There are basically two ways to approach making the backgrounds look better; either through image enhancement or by replacing the old ones. From my testing and as far as I’m aware there's no image enhancement technique able to improve the quality of the backgrounds by a great extent without at the same time introducing a noticeable amount of artifacts. That only leaves us with replacing the backgrounds.

I haven’t done much research and also don’t know a lot about the 3d or field format being used in-game but from what I can tell there are already a few objects being rendered in 3d (some of the trains in the train graveyard in midgar come to mind).

What strikes me as interesting with replacing all the backgrounds apart from the obvious graphical benefits is that the same content could eventually be reused to an even greater benefit in for example Q-Gears. Maybe this could prove helpful to the giant community effort that would be needed to pull off a full overhaul of the FF7 backgrounds.

As for myself I’m quite busy with school right now but I’m definitely interested in the possibilities of such a project.

14

Troubleshooting / Re: FF8 Launcher - Custom resolutions and 8-bit paletted textures fix (patch)

« on: 2008-09-19 20:56:53 »

So I managed to disable UAC, but now every time I click 'play ff8', it just gives me 'FF*.exe-Application Error:  The application failed to initialize properly (0xc0000ba).  Click OK to terminate the application.'  Afterwards, FF8 stops working. 

I tried running it in windows 95 and 98 settings but it didn't work, and I tried working with the run program.  Hmm...I be confuzzled.    

Is there anything else I can do?

Thank you for all the help that you've been giving me, by the way!  =D

jaa,
sano

Does it work without the launcher?

Could be a CRC error in the FF8 installation or Launcher. Or faulty memmory. I'm afraid I can't give you much help except to try reinstalling windows/drivers/ff8/launcher etc.

15

Troubleshooting / Re: FF8 Launcher - Custom resolutions and 8-bit paletted textures fix (patch)

« on: 2008-09-19 15:29:40 »

Um...!  I'm a computer retarded and I don't know what you mean by UAC.  >_<  ( I know!  I'm horrible!  Go on and laugh!)  Anyway, putting that aside.  Do you think you could explain to me how you go about disabling the UAC?  I'm so sorry for being incompetent!  *cries!*

But thank you so much for helping me! =D  It's been so frustrating trying to figure out how to work this whole thing out...>_<;

Thanks again!

jaa,
sano

Control Panel -> User accounts -> Activate or inactivate UAC.

Do note though that it should not be needed to turn off UAC for the launcher to work.

16

Troubleshooting / Re: FF8 Launcher - Custom resolutions and 8-bit paletted textures fix (patch)

« on: 2008-09-18 19:30:12 »

I've been reading this thread for a couple of hours now, downloading everything that had worked for other people, but now I'm stuck.  I click the launcher and check the 8 bit box, but I still receive an Create Process(FF8.exe) returned an error...ERROR CODE 2. 

I understand that Ossott had replied to a post that also had that problem, so I followed what Ossott had recommended with the launcher and putting it through the Run dialog and all, but it still gives me ERROR CODE 2. 

Does anyone know what I should do?   

Any tip would be GODLY at this point.   

Thanks,
Sano

Error code 2 means file cannot be found. Make sure the FF8.exe is located in the same directory as the launcher exceutable.

But it is...I'll try installing FF8 again and see what happens. 

...

So I installed it again, and now I receive error code 740.  So I run FF8 Launcher as an administrator, and now I receive:  "FF8.exe Application Error-Application failed to initialize properly (0xc00000ba).  Click OK to terminate the application."

When I click OK, FF8 stops working and now I'm stuck again.   

Is there something wrong with the installation itself? 

By the way, thank you for replying to my post.  I really appreciate it.  =D 

jaa,
sano

Error code 740 means the application requires elevation to run. From your post I understand that you are already running the launcher as administartor through "right-click -> Run as administrator" which should do the trick. You might try and disable UAC and see if it helps but other than that I don't know what could be causing the error.

I remember there were someone else that had the same problem and posted in this thread who got it to work after awhile. Don't know what he did though.

17

Troubleshooting / Re: FF8 Launcher - Custom resolutions and 8-bit paletted textures fix (patch)

« on: 2008-09-15 16:56:51 »

I've been reading this thread for a couple of hours now, downloading everything that had worked for other people, but now I'm stuck.  I click the launcher and check the 8 bit box, but I still receive an Create Process(FF8.exe) returned an error...ERROR CODE 2. 

I understand that Ossott had replied to a post that also had that problem, so I followed what Ossott had recommended with the launcher and putting it through the Run dialog and all, but it still gives me ERROR CODE 2. 

Does anyone know what I should do?   

Any tip would be GODLY at this point.   

Thanks,
Sano

Error code 2 means file cannot be found. Make sure the FF8.exe is located in the same directory as the launcher exceutable.

18

Troubleshooting / Re: FFVIII Installation Error

« on: 2008-09-12 07:15:32 »

From what I gather this is an error message from the InstallShield setup meaning the CD could not be read during copying of the file audio.dat. It could be caused by scratches/dust/bad sectors on the CD etc. Different CD-ROM units/drivers have different tolerance for read-errors and this may be the reason you're seeing this error on one computer but not the other. Usually CD-ROM drives capable of writing are better able to handle this kind of error than regular drives.

Might be possible to simply copy the files over from the XP installation.

19

Troubleshooting / Re: FF8 Launcher - Custom resolutions and 8-bit paletted textures fix (patch)

« on: 2008-03-28 21:58:00 »

what is the difference between Version 1.31 rev9 source and Version 1.31?

1.31 rev9 source - C++ source code for the launcher (a few changes in the source from the 1.31 release - 16bit windowed mode code)
1.31 - Release binary

20

Troubleshooting / Re: FF8 Launcher - Custom resolutions and 8-bit paletted textures fix (patch)

« on: 2008-03-02 09:26:05 »

ahh, X002 seems magixts was active just the other day, but no answer to our respective problems

Never mind, he's still done an incredible job, that  I could never do, and at least my gameplay is full  screen, cheers magixts.

There are a lot of different issues with FF8 that the launcher does not have a fix for. The launcher only acts as a wrapper for the DirectX calls being made by the game and does not alter alter the assembly code in any way except overwriting the IAT of the loaded DirectX modules. Hence all compability issues with new hardware will still be there, any crashes that are present without the launcher active will still happen.

I don't have the time to work on the FF8 launcher anymore. I have very little free time during the weekends which is also the only time I have access to a computer or the Internet. This is the reason I made the source of the launcher public; anyone is free to add new features or fix old ones that are broken (cause crashes or missing graphic effects that I did not get around to try and fix).


If the launcher works for you in the original resolution but not any higher custom resolutions it may be because your laptops cpu or gpu is to slow to handle the scaling routines that are being applied. The code is not optimized for speed and any wrapper is bound to make the code run slower than before. In the readme file theres a list of different systems specifications that have reportedly run the game without problems.

I'm not aware of any crashes in the game that are comfirmed to be caused by the launcher. The only such crash that I've come across was when I was working on windowed mode support. When I forced the game to run in 32bit (same as the desktop) the combat swirls would occasionally cause the game to crash. There's always the possibility that there are other issues that are caused by the launcher (slowdowns/memory leaks could be caused by the launcher but I never had any such issues after a few hours of gaming).

21

Troubleshooting / Re: All models are black with [EDIT] Hardware modes

« on: 2008-02-08 15:02:49 »

This is a problem with the 8-series nvidia GPUs in Final Fantasy VII. In Windows XP model textures are all black with a few exceptions. In Vista the nvidia driver keeps crashing in the background and after awhile causes the game to turn all orange and later bluescreen.

From what i know there is no fix. Software should work (no idea if the high-res patch works in software - probably not).

22

Troubleshooting / Re: FF8 Launcher - Custom resolutions and 8-bit paletted textures fix (patch)

« on: 2008-01-27 17:11:52 »

I have uploaded the source for Final Fantasy VIII Launcher 1.31 rev9 to rapidshare (released under GPLv3):
http://rapidshare.com/files/87080293/ff8_launcher_v1.31.r9-source.rar

DirectX 6.1 SDK
http://rapidshare.com/files/87123406/dx61sdkimage.exe

23

Troubleshooting / Re: FF8 Launcher - Custom resolutions and 8-bit paletted textures fix (patch)

« on: 2008-01-24 04:36:39 »

Well i cannot get the 8bit to pass and when i use the 8-bit fix on the custom launcher it still doesn't help with the black boxes.

If you can't get the test to read pass then you need to download and install the official FF8 Nvidia GeForce patch from Eidos. It can be found here:
http://www.eidosinteractive.co.uk/support/patchinfo.html?ptid=38

After applying the patch the test for 8-bit Paletted Textures in the FF8 config application should read "-" and you will be able to choose hardware acceleration using D3D. If it does not; it would be the first time I've ever heard of it not working.

24

Troubleshooting / Re: FF8 Launcher - Custom resolutions and 8-bit paletted textures fix (patch)

« on: 2008-01-23 20:44:07 »

Tryed all of that im not worried about it anymore im just gonna put up with the sh*tty software renderer.

I don't really understand from your posts what it is you are trying to do.


Using the launcher is pretty simple:
Run the FF8 config application and set the game to run in hardware accelerated mode (640x480 fullscreen). This won't be possible unless 8-bit Paletted Textures check reads "Pass" or if you applied the Nvidia 1.2 patch in which case it will simply read "-".

If you experience black boxes around textures on a Nvidia GeForce 6+ series GPU you need to check the "8-bit Paletted Textures Fix" option in the launcher. ATI cards and earlier models of Nvidia GeForce cards should run the game fine without black boxes so no fix is needed.

Expert mode enables hotkeys (see the readme for details) that lets you adjust the uv-map compensation applied by the launcher. With Expert Mode disabled they are set at a fixed value which will yield bad results in many custom resolutions (especially if FSAA is being used). Hence with Expert Mode enabled it is possible to get rid of the line artifacts that you mentioned (note though that the default uv-map compensation value with Expert Mode checked is 0 which mean there's a good chance the artifacts will be visible until you make the necessary adjustments).

Stretch 4:3 Aspect Ratio should only be checked if you want the image to be stretched to fit your entire display. It only applies to non-4:3 AR custom resolutions. There will still be black borders at the top and bottom of the screen as they are included in the original game and I did not want to mess with them in the 1.31 release.

25

Troubleshooting / Re: FF8 Launcher - Custom resolutions and 8-bit paletted textures fix (patch)

« on: 2008-01-18 23:52:36 »

Is it possible to put the loader on a different sever (such as Mediafire) for me?

Rapidshare is being a pain.

ff8_launcher_v1.31.rar Here's a temp mirror until magixts says otherwise. It's permanent since its only a US Quarter to keep it there almost forever. Donated 20 bucks so I have a lot of tokens at hostfile.org  .

EDIT: PS: This Launcher is the best.

I don't mind at all with it being uploaded or hosted on different sites.


On another note I haven't been able to work on the launcher a lot since version 1.31. I have windowed mode working in 16-bpp but in 32-bpp the game crashes frequently during the "battle swirl" due to a texture memory addressing issue in the FF8 executable (hardcoded). From what I can tell D3DWindower and similar programs must somehow force the game to run in 16-bpp even when the display is set to 32-bpp.

I've modified the launcher to work moderately well with FF7 but since I have a GeForce 8800GTX it has proved almost impossible to run the game to do some test runs. In Vista the Nvidia drivers keeps crashing every few seconds until the computer bluescreen and in XP all character/npc models textures are black and the game is very unstable.
Been looking into converting all the Final Fantasy DirectX calls to DirectX 9 to try and circumvent this but it's a long process and nowhere near complete.

I’ll try my best to have the launcher source (C/C++, Visual Studio 2008) up for download before the end of next week for anyone who is interested.