1
General Discussion / Modeling Balamb
« on: 2015-03-25 02:32:20 »
I don't know.. It looks like a cupcake 
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2
Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Is there a way to export the balamb garden WM model yet?
« on: 2015-03-22 07:43:13 »
Is it just in the experiment phase right now? I'm asking because I would like to use that as a basis for import into the Cities: Skyline game. (I'm modeling my own Balamb garden, but that model would be an excellent base shape to model from. I saw a screenshot of a wireframe before. I don't even need the textures or anything. Better yet if you can capture a wireframe shot with the map triangles around it, (for perspective), that can work too.
3
Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Another Mind (A Squaresoft FMV visual novel)
« on: 2014-07-29 10:24:50 »
Ok, I'm pulling this out of hibernation and can use some help, and also have a moral dilemma.
Another Mind is a neat FMV visual novel made by Square back in 1998. It uses a pretty quirky Dialog system where you input full sentences into the game and it parses them.
I just put up the file formats on the Wiki. There are only 12 of them. The good news is that I found the sector look-up table for the files. (After literally seconds of searching. It's called CDPOS.DAT and it's in the root directory. It only looks up the files in a single folder (where all the Game data is located) and at the end of the list is a big DUMMY file which fills out the outed edge of the CD-ROM. This means file insert/removal is pretty much a breeze.
If I can get a text dump of the dictionaries/game dialog, I will be so happy. Even better. There is tutorial at the beginning I'm assuming called "DEMO" that exercises much of the game core functions. Also, the scripting commands are plain text in the executable.
Anyone what to help?
Another Mind is a neat FMV visual novel made by Square back in 1998. It uses a pretty quirky Dialog system where you input full sentences into the game and it parses them.
I just put up the file formats on the Wiki. There are only 12 of them. The good news is that I found the sector look-up table for the files. (After literally seconds of searching. It's called CDPOS.DAT and it's in the root directory. It only looks up the files in a single folder (where all the Game data is located) and at the end of the list is a big DUMMY file which fills out the outed edge of the CD-ROM. This means file insert/removal is pretty much a breeze.
If I can get a text dump of the dictionaries/game dialog, I will be so happy. Even better. There is tutorial at the beginning I'm assuming called "DEMO" that exercises much of the game core functions. Also, the scripting commands are plain text in the executable.
Anyone what to help?
4
Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Squaresoft's TIZ format
« on: 2014-06-28 02:10:52 »
I have been playing an early square game from the 1990s called "Another Mind". It a text FMV game and it has a bunch of files I'm trying to figure out.
The main one is the compressed TIM format or .TIZ
I have an example file It's located here
The name of the file is Kanji.tiz From what I gather it's the main TIM with all the kanji loaded into video memory on load and is used thought the game (as it is a Text adventure game). I picked this one because the kanji is 1BPP and I have a "snapshot" of it in PSX memory. (It's in the lower left hand corner)
The file is obviously compressed with, I'm assuming, some kind of Lempel–Ziv compression due to it's popularity with Japanese and Squaresoft in general. (LZS/LZH) Most likely Lempel–Ziv–Stac. as Square obviously had a library already.
Bytes 0x00-0x05 seem to be a header of sorts (0x04 and 0x05 are double zeros, which is imposable with compression.) Strangely, running it though LZSCDec does produce output, but I think it was blindly decompressing and the end result gives me no TIM headers.
You guys want to help take a stab at it?
The main one is the compressed TIM format or .TIZ
I have an example file It's located here
The name of the file is Kanji.tiz From what I gather it's the main TIM with all the kanji loaded into video memory on load and is used thought the game (as it is a Text adventure game). I picked this one because the kanji is 1BPP and I have a "snapshot" of it in PSX memory. (It's in the lower left hand corner)
The file is obviously compressed with, I'm assuming, some kind of Lempel–Ziv compression due to it's popularity with Japanese and Squaresoft in general. (LZS/LZH) Most likely Lempel–Ziv–Stac. as Square obviously had a library already.
Bytes 0x00-0x05 seem to be a header of sorts (0x04 and 0x05 are double zeros, which is imposable with compression.) Strangely, running it though LZSCDec does produce output, but I think it was blindly decompressing and the end result gives me no TIM headers.
You guys want to help take a stab at it?
5
FAQs and Tutorials / Hello New Steam Owners of Final Fantasy 7! Please Read Me!
« on: 2013-07-06 19:54:54 »
Hello! I am Halkun and I'm a mod from around here. I decided to pull myself out of semi-retirement to congratulate you on purchasing FF7 steam and answer a lot of questions that are coming up over and over again. Also, because my cell phone's email account is linked to the web site, I've been getting messages nonstop about newbies and so I'd like to address some concerns with that was well.
First of all, let me give you a little bit about the law of the land here.
Here at Qhimm forums we come from an older culture of internet users. The website itself has been up for over a decade and we maintain a particular type of etiquette which may seem strange for newcomers. We are a community of hackers. Not in the sense that we do anything illegal, but we the older definition of "hacking" that involves taking things apart and see how things work, and putting back together again in strange ways. There are some caveats to this which I will get to below. Without further adieu, I'll get to the FAQ.
1) About modding the game.
I want to get this out first as it's probably the reason why you have come here. You probably have noticed that there is no Steam Workshop with this release of FF7. There is a very good reason for this. Unlike some other game companies, Square-Enix is openly hostile towards game modification. They have shut down modding communities in the past, and on May 9th 2009 completely obliterated the Chrono trigger/Chrono Cross modding community by banning the mere discussion of the data formats for the games. This comes about because Square-Enix is a Japanese company, and any alteration of a game is seen as tarnishing and disrespecting the work as a whole. Our community here has also has light brushes with Square's legal team so we tread lightly on eggshells. We have modding rules here that seem strange to someone just coming in. You can find these FAQs in the modding forums. Now that I have that out of the way, you are probably looking for Bootleg, and a a tutorial for modding FF7 can be found here.
Now that I got that out of way, let's work on the FAQ proper.
2) What did I just buy?
You have purchased the 2012 re-release of the 1998 US version of Final Fantasy 7 for PC. This makes the version a re-re-release of the program. This means there are three "versions' of FF7 for PC.
1) The 1998 version. This is the moddable one
2) The "Square Online Store" version that was released in 2012
3) This version, which I will call the "steam version"
Ok, now. Here is the kicker about all three versions. They are all the same thing!
In 2008, the FF7 mod community noticed that the game used a modular graphics driver. The original driver was OpenGL and was with the PC demo released in 1998. It was changed to DirectX for the 1998 commercial release. A new OpenGL driver was written by the modding community and fixed many problems with the PC port allowing it to run on current machines.
In 2012 Square released the game with their own driver and hacked in cloud saves, achievements and such and such. THE ORIGINAL 1998 GAME EXECUTIBLE IS STILL BEING USED. It's just "wrapped" by the new driver and leads us to believe that Square has lost the original PC source code to the game.
The Steam version is just the 2012 version with a few Steam hooks. That's it
So, if you want to make FF7 moddable, you need to remove Square's graphic driver and replace it with the moddable fan-made one. You will lose cloud saves and achievements, but the original game didn't have them and if you look at the list of achievements, they are things you do in the game as a matter of winning it anyway. You honestly lose nothing.
3) Why didn't Square-Enix recompile the game/re-port the game?
Looking at what Square-Enix has done to make the game runnable on newer systems, it almost directly mirrors how we do it. It would appear that they either have lost the original source code, or it's in such a state of atrophy, that it worthless to port.
4) What's up with the joypad controller support?
You are buying a game that was released in 1998. The only real controllers that were used for PC back then were a joysticks. WASD and mouselook were new technologies, and not even all FPSs had that!
5) The graphics look like crap!
Yes, the original 3D background art was lost, and the 1998 port team had to use the low resolution PSX graphics. We have some mods to help with that.
6) But it looked so much better on my TV!
That's because a television cira 1997 was a low-resolution analogue device. The best fidelity you could get out of it was around 512x240 non-interlaced. FF7 ran originally at 320x240.
----------------------
For now I'm going to leave this thread open. I'll be around to answer any questions you may have or push you to an area that can better help you.
First of all, let me give you a little bit about the law of the land here.
Here at Qhimm forums we come from an older culture of internet users. The website itself has been up for over a decade and we maintain a particular type of etiquette which may seem strange for newcomers. We are a community of hackers. Not in the sense that we do anything illegal, but we the older definition of "hacking" that involves taking things apart and see how things work, and putting back together again in strange ways. There are some caveats to this which I will get to below. Without further adieu, I'll get to the FAQ.
1) About modding the game.
I want to get this out first as it's probably the reason why you have come here. You probably have noticed that there is no Steam Workshop with this release of FF7. There is a very good reason for this. Unlike some other game companies, Square-Enix is openly hostile towards game modification. They have shut down modding communities in the past, and on May 9th 2009 completely obliterated the Chrono trigger/Chrono Cross modding community by banning the mere discussion of the data formats for the games. This comes about because Square-Enix is a Japanese company, and any alteration of a game is seen as tarnishing and disrespecting the work as a whole. Our community here has also has light brushes with Square's legal team so we tread lightly on eggshells. We have modding rules here that seem strange to someone just coming in. You can find these FAQs in the modding forums. Now that I have that out of the way, you are probably looking for Bootleg, and a a tutorial for modding FF7 can be found here.
Now that I got that out of way, let's work on the FAQ proper.
2) What did I just buy?
You have purchased the 2012 re-release of the 1998 US version of Final Fantasy 7 for PC. This makes the version a re-re-release of the program. This means there are three "versions' of FF7 for PC.
1) The 1998 version. This is the moddable one
2) The "Square Online Store" version that was released in 2012
3) This version, which I will call the "steam version"
Ok, now. Here is the kicker about all three versions. They are all the same thing!
In 2008, the FF7 mod community noticed that the game used a modular graphics driver. The original driver was OpenGL and was with the PC demo released in 1998. It was changed to DirectX for the 1998 commercial release. A new OpenGL driver was written by the modding community and fixed many problems with the PC port allowing it to run on current machines.
In 2012 Square released the game with their own driver and hacked in cloud saves, achievements and such and such. THE ORIGINAL 1998 GAME EXECUTIBLE IS STILL BEING USED. It's just "wrapped" by the new driver and leads us to believe that Square has lost the original PC source code to the game.
The Steam version is just the 2012 version with a few Steam hooks. That's it
So, if you want to make FF7 moddable, you need to remove Square's graphic driver and replace it with the moddable fan-made one. You will lose cloud saves and achievements, but the original game didn't have them and if you look at the list of achievements, they are things you do in the game as a matter of winning it anyway. You honestly lose nothing.
3) Why didn't Square-Enix recompile the game/re-port the game?
Looking at what Square-Enix has done to make the game runnable on newer systems, it almost directly mirrors how we do it. It would appear that they either have lost the original source code, or it's in such a state of atrophy, that it worthless to port.
4) What's up with the joypad controller support?
You are buying a game that was released in 1998. The only real controllers that were used for PC back then were a joysticks. WASD and mouselook were new technologies, and not even all FPSs had that!
5) The graphics look like crap!
Yes, the original 3D background art was lost, and the 1998 port team had to use the low resolution PSX graphics. We have some mods to help with that.
6) But it looked so much better on my TV!
That's because a television cira 1997 was a low-resolution analogue device. The best fidelity you could get out of it was around 512x240 non-interlaced. FF7 ran originally at 320x240.
----------------------
For now I'm going to leave this thread open. I'll be around to answer any questions you may have or push you to an area that can better help you.
6
General Discussion / Hello New Steam Owners of Final Fantasy 7! Please Read Me!
« on: 2013-07-06 19:45:59 »
Hello! I am Halkun and I'm a mod from around here. I decided to pull myself out of semi-retirement to congratulate you on purchasing FF7 steam and answer a lot of questions that are coming up over and over again. Also, because my cell phone's email account is linked to the web site, I've been getting messages nonstop about newbies and so I'd like to address some concerns with that was well.
First of all, let me give you a little bit about the law of the land here.
Here at Qhimm forums we come from an older culture of internet users. The website itself has been up for over a decade and we maintain a particular type of etiquette which may seem strange for newcomers. We are a community of hackers. Not in the sense that we do anything illegal, but we the older definition of "hacking" that involves taking things apart and see how things work, and putting back together again in strange ways. There are some caveats to this which I will get to below. Without further adieu, I'll get to the FAQ.
1) About modding the game.
I want to get this out first as it's probably the reason why you have come here. You probably have noticed that there is no Steam Workshop with this release of FF7. There is a very good reason for this. Unlike some other game companies, Square-Enix is openly hostile towards game modification. They have shut down modding communities in the past, and on May 9th 2009 completely obliterated the Chrono trigger/Chrono Cross modding community by banning the mere discussion of the data formats for the games. This comes about because Square-Enix is a Japanese company, and any alteration of a game is seen as tarnishing and disrespecting the work as a whole. Our community here has also has light brushes with Square's legal team so we tread lightly on eggshells. We have modding rules here that seem strange to someone just coming in. You can find these FAQs in the modding forums. Now that I have that out of the way, you are probably looking for Bootleg, and a a tutorial for modding FF7 can be found here.
Now that I got that out of way, let's work on the FAQ proper.
2) What did I just buy?
You have purchased the 2012 re-release of the 1998 US version of Final Fantasy 7 for PC. This makes the version a re-re-release of the program. This means there are three "versions' of FF7 for PC.
1) The 1998 version. This is the moddable one
2) The "Square Online Store" version that was released in 2012
3) This version, which I will call the "steam version"
Ok, now. Here is the kicker about all three versions. They are all the same thing!
In 2008, the FF7 mod community noticed that the game used a modular graphics driver. The original driver was OpenGL and was with the PC demo released in 1998. It was changed to DirectX for the 1998 commercial release. A new OpenGL driver was written by the modding community and fixed many problems with the PC port allowing it to run on current machines.
In 2012 Square released the game with their own driver and hacked in cloud saves, achievements and such and such. THE ORIGINAL 1998 GAME EXECUTIBLE IS STILL BEING USED. It's just "wrapped" by the new driver and leads us to believe that Square has lost the original PC source code to the game.
The Steam version is just the 2012 version with a few Steam hooks. That's it
So, if you want to make FF7 moddable, you need to remove Square's graphic driver and replace it with the moddable fan-made one. You will lose cloud saves and achievements, but the original game didn't have them and if you look at the list of achievements, they are things you do in the game as a matter of winning it anyway. You honestly lose nothing.
3) Why didn't Square-Enix recompile the game/re-port the game?
Looking at what Square-Enix has done to make the game runnable on newer systems, it almost directly mirrors how we do it. It would appear that they either have lost the original source code, or it's in such a state of atrophy, that it worthless to port.
4) What's up with the joypad controller support?
You are buying a game that was released in 1998. The only real controllers that were used for PC back then were a joysticks. WASD and mouselook were new technologies, and not even all FPSs had that!
5) The graphics look like crap!
Yes, the original 3D background art was lost, and the 1998 port team had to use the low resolution PSX graphics. We have some mods to help with that.
6) But it looked so much better on my TV!
That's because a television cira 1997 was a low-resolution analogue device. The best fidelity you could get out of it was around 512x240 non-interlaced. FF7 ran originally at 320x240.
----------------------
For now I'm going to leave this thread open. I'll be around to answer any questions you may have or push you to an area that can better help you.
First of all, let me give you a little bit about the law of the land here.
Here at Qhimm forums we come from an older culture of internet users. The website itself has been up for over a decade and we maintain a particular type of etiquette which may seem strange for newcomers. We are a community of hackers. Not in the sense that we do anything illegal, but we the older definition of "hacking" that involves taking things apart and see how things work, and putting back together again in strange ways. There are some caveats to this which I will get to below. Without further adieu, I'll get to the FAQ.
1) About modding the game.
I want to get this out first as it's probably the reason why you have come here. You probably have noticed that there is no Steam Workshop with this release of FF7. There is a very good reason for this. Unlike some other game companies, Square-Enix is openly hostile towards game modification. They have shut down modding communities in the past, and on May 9th 2009 completely obliterated the Chrono trigger/Chrono Cross modding community by banning the mere discussion of the data formats for the games. This comes about because Square-Enix is a Japanese company, and any alteration of a game is seen as tarnishing and disrespecting the work as a whole. Our community here has also has light brushes with Square's legal team so we tread lightly on eggshells. We have modding rules here that seem strange to someone just coming in. You can find these FAQs in the modding forums. Now that I have that out of the way, you are probably looking for Bootleg, and a a tutorial for modding FF7 can be found here.
Now that I got that out of way, let's work on the FAQ proper.
2) What did I just buy?
You have purchased the 2012 re-release of the 1998 US version of Final Fantasy 7 for PC. This makes the version a re-re-release of the program. This means there are three "versions' of FF7 for PC.
1) The 1998 version. This is the moddable one
2) The "Square Online Store" version that was released in 2012
3) This version, which I will call the "steam version"
Ok, now. Here is the kicker about all three versions. They are all the same thing!
In 2008, the FF7 mod community noticed that the game used a modular graphics driver. The original driver was OpenGL and was with the PC demo released in 1998. It was changed to DirectX for the 1998 commercial release. A new OpenGL driver was written by the modding community and fixed many problems with the PC port allowing it to run on current machines.
In 2012 Square released the game with their own driver and hacked in cloud saves, achievements and such and such. THE ORIGINAL 1998 GAME EXECUTIBLE IS STILL BEING USED. It's just "wrapped" by the new driver and leads us to believe that Square has lost the original PC source code to the game.
The Steam version is just the 2012 version with a few Steam hooks. That's it
So, if you want to make FF7 moddable, you need to remove Square's graphic driver and replace it with the moddable fan-made one. You will lose cloud saves and achievements, but the original game didn't have them and if you look at the list of achievements, they are things you do in the game as a matter of winning it anyway. You honestly lose nothing.
3) Why didn't Square-Enix recompile the game/re-port the game?
Looking at what Square-Enix has done to make the game runnable on newer systems, it almost directly mirrors how we do it. It would appear that they either have lost the original source code, or it's in such a state of atrophy, that it worthless to port.
4) What's up with the joypad controller support?
You are buying a game that was released in 1998. The only real controllers that were used for PC back then were a joysticks. WASD and mouselook were new technologies, and not even all FPSs had that!
5) The graphics look like crap!
Yes, the original 3D background art was lost, and the 1998 port team had to use the low resolution PSX graphics. We have some mods to help with that.
6) But it looked so much better on my TV!
That's because a television cira 1997 was a low-resolution analogue device. The best fidelity you could get out of it was around 512x240 non-interlaced. FF7 ran originally at 320x240.
----------------------
For now I'm going to leave this thread open. I'll be around to answer any questions you may have or push you to an area that can better help you.
7
Completely Unrelated / So I made a blog...
« on: 2013-03-23 02:19:05 »
I know I don't post much, and I don't even think I've ever posted in here for the last decade or so I've been on the site. If you guys want to know what I've been doing lately, I made a blog. It's not FF7 related, but it's about making video games.
I could really use the readership.
I post everyday and I try and not make the content boring. I invite you guys to read. You can click below.
I'm not trying to sound like spam, but guys, read my stuff!
I could really use the readership.
I post everyday and I try and not make the content boring. I invite you guys to read. You can click below.
I'm not trying to sound like spam, but guys, read my stuff!
8
Scripting and Reverse Engineering / FF7 Original Sourcecode Directory Listing.
« on: 2012-11-01 02:54:57 »
I'm just trying this as an experiment to see how this looks. This is one of the coolest things you can dig out of the debug info in the FF7 PC executable.
Look... Look with your "Special eyes!"
MY BRAND!
Look... Look with your "Special eyes!"
Code: [Select]
C:.
├───ff7
│ ├───chocobo
│ │ ch_app.cpp
│ │ ch_chr.cpp
│ │ ch_ddraw.cpp
│ │ ch_init.cpp
│ │
│ ├───coaster
│ │ psxdata_c.cpp
│ │
│ ├───condor
│ │ cd_app.cpp
│ │ cd_ddraw.cpp
│ │ cd_init.cpp
│ │ cd_tim.cpp
│ │
│ ├───field
│ │ └───src
│ │ ad_app.cpp
│ │ ad_bk.cpp
│ │ ad_cdr.cpp
│ │ ad_data.cpp
│ │ ad_ddraw.cpp
│ │ ad_human.cpp
│ │ ad_image.cpp
│ │ ad_list.cpp
│ │ ad_obj.cpp
│ │ ad_pal.cpp
│ │ ad_tile.cpp
│ │ tutaddr.cpp
│ │
│ ├───highway
│ │ psxdata.cpp
│ │
│ ├───snobo
│ │ memory.cpp
│ │ tmd.cpp
│ │
│ └───src
│ ├───battle
│ │ │ b3ddata.cpp
│ │ │ battle.cpp
│ │ │
│ │ ├───battle3d
│ │ │ amptoanm.cpp
│ │ │ bdata.cpp
│ │ │ char.cpp
│ │ │ enemy.cpp
│ │ │ limitbrk.cpp
│ │ │ lmd.cpp
│ │ │ mdl.cpp
│ │ │ stage.cpp
│ │ │
│ │ ├───myoshiok
│ │ │ lasboss3.cpp
│ │ │
│ │ ├───yama
│ │ │ coloss.cpp
│ │ │ init.cpp
│ │ │ inits.cpp
│ │ │
│ │ └───yasui
│ │ deadsef.cpp
│ │ sting.cpp
│ │ vahamut0.cpp
│ │
│ ├───credits
│ │ credfile.cpp
│ │
│ ├───main
│ │ initpath.cpp
│ │ main.cpp
│ │
│ ├───menu
│ │ ├───btlmenu
│ │ │ └───english
│ │ │ callback.cpp
│ │ │
│ │ └───english
│ │ loadmenu.cpp
│ │
│ ├───movie
│ │ sm_movie.cpp
│ │
│ └───wm
│ wmdefine.cpp
│ wmfile.cpp
│
└───lib
└───src
├───graphics
│ │ psx.cpp
│ │ psxgraph.cpp
│ │ render.cpp
│ │ shp.cpp
│ │
│ └───sw
│ sw.cpp
│ sw_vert.cpp
│ z.cpp
│
├───input
│ input.cpp
│
├───list
│ list.cpp
│
├───mem
│ heap.cpp
│ mem.cpp
│
├───movie
│ movie.cpp
│
├───polygon
│ anm.cpp
│ plytopd.cpp
│ polygon.cpp
│ rsd.cpp
│ tim.cpp
│
├───sort
│ sort.cpp
│
├───sound
│ │ acm.cpp
│ │ dx_snd.cpp
│ │ midi1.cpp
│ │ sound.cpp
│ │
│ └───creative
│ sfutils.cpp
│
├───stack
│ stack.cpp
│
├───thread
│ thread.cpp
│
├───token
│ token.cpp
│
└───trans
trans.cpp
MY BRAND!
9
Completely Unrelated / What has halkun been doing lately...
« on: 2012-03-24 19:52:20 »
Oh, this and that... Hawking the wiki... and doing things with ponies
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om4PM3K6eyQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om4PM3K6eyQ
10
Scripting and Reverse Engineering / FF8 opcodes
« on: 2012-02-12 02:39:49 »
Just noticed that FF8 Opcodes are being added to the wiki by Myst6re and Aali. How about did you guys come by this information?
All always here BTW. I secretly hawk the wiki fro changes (I have an RSS feed set up for it). Some new breakthrough?
All always here BTW. I secretly hawk the wiki fro changes (I have an RSS feed set up for it). Some new breakthrough?
11
Completely Unrelated / More 3d stuffs I've been playing with
« on: 2011-08-17 05:16:16 »
I've been modeling again. This is a character for my make-believe video game I'll make one day.
12
Completely Unrelated / Game ideas for a small apartment.
« on: 2011-08-06 19:43:47 »
So last night I got boerd and made my apartment in sketch-up. I was looking at it and thought it would make a pretty cool game level for something really small. Like a bug simulator or something. The question is... What? You guys have any ideas?
13
Scripting and Reverse Engineering / FF7NES. Fire up the wiki guys!
« on: 2011-07-26 02:31:17 »
Ok, I as I announced in the projects thread. I've decided to disassemble and reassemble FF7NES so it's more like it's PSX counterpart. The thread asking for help is there, but I decided to to a memory dump of what I have so far so you guy can see how it's put together. These are pretty much my notes off the top of my head. I may add more, but it also may just go in the wiki.
Here's how it works...
The FF7NES game is a ROM weighing in at 2MB in size. This is split into 64 banks of 32K, labeled $00-$1F. Each bank is a module onto itself. On reset, bank $0F in switched in and boots the initialization code in bank $00. (This is as far as I've gotten). Each bank resides in NES memory from $8000 to $FFFF
There are some Key things that I have discovered that is mechanically different between FF7NES and FF7PSX that I will get into here.
1- Because the game is in Chinese, the characters eat memory, both PPU video memory and ROM space. This can be completely cut out.
2- The engine may look cosmetically similar, but is massively different under the hood.
3- The materia slots are gone. It works more like the FF6 method where you have one "ball" for each spell you learn.
4- The game is massively imbalanced, with no real way of correcting it
5- The growth curves are linear, with no exponential growth.
6- The batte system is a shell of itself. The only thing it has over the FF1 is is the ability to have 4 digit health. No ATB.
7- There is no 7
8- Becuause of the PPU being used for Chinese, little space is left for better graphic tiles.
9- Massive graphic/code duplication
10- The sprites are mostly ripped from other games.
I can go on, but the game deserves better than this.
Now for the big question... What about the Legality?
Well, what is done is done. The game is out and people are playing it. Either Square decided to blind-eye it, or it's under the radar. It's been around for a while now, so I'm gonna consider this "dead code" (Not out of copyright, mind you. There is a difference.) Trust me, if there are murmuring of issues, I'll be the first to know. For now, I'm going forward. Am I being a hypocrite? Well, kind of. But I like to think of this as an old car that has been abandoned. Anyways, the first stages to get this rebuilt is disassembly and reassembly. And that's not relevant because it's not Square's code.
So Yea, off to the Wiki I go. Lemme know if you want info about how things work, be it on the FF7NES side, or just the NES in general. I'll be here to help.
Here's how it works...
The FF7NES game is a ROM weighing in at 2MB in size. This is split into 64 banks of 32K, labeled $00-$1F. Each bank is a module onto itself. On reset, bank $0F in switched in and boots the initialization code in bank $00. (This is as far as I've gotten). Each bank resides in NES memory from $8000 to $FFFF
There are some Key things that I have discovered that is mechanically different between FF7NES and FF7PSX that I will get into here.
1- Because the game is in Chinese, the characters eat memory, both PPU video memory and ROM space. This can be completely cut out.
2- The engine may look cosmetically similar, but is massively different under the hood.
3- The materia slots are gone. It works more like the FF6 method where you have one "ball" for each spell you learn.
4- The game is massively imbalanced, with no real way of correcting it
5- The growth curves are linear, with no exponential growth.
6- The batte system is a shell of itself. The only thing it has over the FF1 is is the ability to have 4 digit health. No ATB.
7- There is no 7
8- Becuause of the PPU being used for Chinese, little space is left for better graphic tiles.
9- Massive graphic/code duplication
10- The sprites are mostly ripped from other games.
I can go on, but the game deserves better than this.
Now for the big question... What about the Legality?
Well, what is done is done. The game is out and people are playing it. Either Square decided to blind-eye it, or it's under the radar. It's been around for a while now, so I'm gonna consider this "dead code" (Not out of copyright, mind you. There is a difference.) Trust me, if there are murmuring of issues, I'll be the first to know. For now, I'm going forward. Am I being a hypocrite? Well, kind of. But I like to think of this as an old car that has been abandoned. Anyways, the first stages to get this rebuilt is disassembly and reassembly. And that's not relevant because it's not Square's code.
So Yea, off to the Wiki I go. Lemme know if you want info about how things work, be it on the FF7NES side, or just the NES in general. I'll be here to help.
14
WIP / Halkun's new Project... Introducing N-gears
« on: 2011-07-26 02:00:12 »
Hi all
So for the last week or so I've been playing in my lab coming up with a pretty keen project, I was wondering if anyone wants to help. I figure as I kicked off the "Gears" project which became The Wiki, then creating the Q-Gears project, which was gracefully taken over by Akari, I decided to add something back to the community.
Introducing N-Gears.
N-gears is the systematic disassembly and reassembly of the FF7 ROM for the NES, recoded so that it's more like it's PSX counterpart.
Over at Romhacking.net someone decided to make a little project to take the Chinese FF7NES rom, translate into English, and give it a graphical makeover. I saw what they were doing and decided while they were doing that, why not balance the game and convert scene.bin over to the NES to make it more like it's PSX counterpart...
Sadly, the game's engine is broken on the inside. I'm not going to enumerate what's wrong with it, but after a week of trying to shim in my changes, I have declared the engine beyond repair and in need of a rewrite...
Here's how it's going to go down...
1) Set up a toolchain so that I can compile a 2MB nes game.
This is done, I'm using the same mapper as the FF7NES, Mapper 163, It needs tweaks, but does generate a 2MB rom. For those not in the know, the largest game over made by Nintendo in the NES era was Kirby's Adventure, which was 768K.
2) Disassemble FF7NES.
The game weighs in at 2MB. Lucky for us, the code is an inefficient mess. I saw almost 512K of blank space in there, and the code is all over the place. I've got the disassembly scripts started, if anyone wants to help, I can show you how to use da65. You need to have a good handle on NES architecture and 6502 code.
3) Reassemble FF7NES into workable code
The code that is disassembled will be rewritten as source code. The dissembler does about 70% of the job, minus the symbol names. This will require keeping track of variables and routines in a 2MB game. The good news is all the important global variables are in the save map.
4) Rewrite the parts that suck.
This is the big part, throw out the linear growth curves, create a small LZW routine. Import a tiny version of kernel.bin, scene.bin and savemap. Get muti-slot Matreria working. Keep things that "work" like the event system, but expand the mapping. My dream is to have this compatible with Black Chocobo
Feel free to tell me I'm insane. Post here if you want to help or ask questions. This might be fun, this might be a complete waste of time. Who Knows! I'm off to post the mechanics in "Reverse Engineering" now.
So for the last week or so I've been playing in my lab coming up with a pretty keen project, I was wondering if anyone wants to help. I figure as I kicked off the "Gears" project which became The Wiki, then creating the Q-Gears project, which was gracefully taken over by Akari, I decided to add something back to the community.
Introducing N-Gears.
N-gears is the systematic disassembly and reassembly of the FF7 ROM for the NES, recoded so that it's more like it's PSX counterpart.
Over at Romhacking.net someone decided to make a little project to take the Chinese FF7NES rom, translate into English, and give it a graphical makeover. I saw what they were doing and decided while they were doing that, why not balance the game and convert scene.bin over to the NES to make it more like it's PSX counterpart...
Sadly, the game's engine is broken on the inside. I'm not going to enumerate what's wrong with it, but after a week of trying to shim in my changes, I have declared the engine beyond repair and in need of a rewrite...
Here's how it's going to go down...
1) Set up a toolchain so that I can compile a 2MB nes game.
This is done, I'm using the same mapper as the FF7NES, Mapper 163, It needs tweaks, but does generate a 2MB rom. For those not in the know, the largest game over made by Nintendo in the NES era was Kirby's Adventure, which was 768K.
2) Disassemble FF7NES.
The game weighs in at 2MB. Lucky for us, the code is an inefficient mess. I saw almost 512K of blank space in there, and the code is all over the place. I've got the disassembly scripts started, if anyone wants to help, I can show you how to use da65. You need to have a good handle on NES architecture and 6502 code.
3) Reassemble FF7NES into workable code
The code that is disassembled will be rewritten as source code. The dissembler does about 70% of the job, minus the symbol names. This will require keeping track of variables and routines in a 2MB game. The good news is all the important global variables are in the save map.
4) Rewrite the parts that suck.
This is the big part, throw out the linear growth curves, create a small LZW routine. Import a tiny version of kernel.bin, scene.bin and savemap. Get muti-slot Matreria working. Keep things that "work" like the event system, but expand the mapping. My dream is to have this compatible with Black Chocobo
Feel free to tell me I'm insane. Post here if you want to help or ask questions. This might be fun, this might be a complete waste of time. Who Knows! I'm off to post the mechanics in "Reverse Engineering" now.
15
Completely Unrelated / U.S. Version of Top Gear... With Video.
« on: 2010-08-08 13:03:51 »
For all you fans out there. Top Gear is coming to the U.S. Watch the video and tell me what you think...
Here is the trailer
Here is the trailer
16
Completely Unrelated / Like my new Avatrar?
« on: 2010-08-02 14:07:25 »
Yea, It's pretty rad. For fun, describe what you see
17
Completely Unrelated / Why Politics in Japan is awesome...
« on: 2010-05-24 03:43:14 »
I think this is funny as hell.
First a little back story.
On April 14th Al Kamen wrote an article in the Washington Post that described Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama as "increasingly loopy" when tying to work the international spotlight. The Japanese online community jumped on this and next thing you know "Loopy" has now come synonymous when criticizing Japan's PM.
Enter Tamayo Marukawa, a popular Democratic Representative from the greater Tokyo area. She is pretty famous for being a TV personality before hand. (Kind of like a Japanese Al Franken, but a woman). She's not a big fan of the current PM.
So, during a session of the Diet (The Japanese one-house congress) Prime Minister Hatoyama starts to address the dais. Out from the back Marukawa yells out "Loooopppppyyyyyy!!!!" and disrupts the session. (At the 15 second mark). The rest of the chatter is half the house telling Marukawa to shut the hell up and the other half agreeing.
I wish congress in the U.S ran like this
Loopy! <---- Youtube Video
Looks like she forgot to use her "inside voice"...
First a little back story.
On April 14th Al Kamen wrote an article in the Washington Post that described Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama as "increasingly loopy" when tying to work the international spotlight. The Japanese online community jumped on this and next thing you know "Loopy" has now come synonymous when criticizing Japan's PM.
Enter Tamayo Marukawa, a popular Democratic Representative from the greater Tokyo area. She is pretty famous for being a TV personality before hand. (Kind of like a Japanese Al Franken, but a woman). She's not a big fan of the current PM.
So, during a session of the Diet (The Japanese one-house congress) Prime Minister Hatoyama starts to address the dais. Out from the back Marukawa yells out "Loooopppppyyyyyy!!!!" and disrupts the session. (At the 15 second mark). The rest of the chatter is half the house telling Marukawa to shut the hell up and the other half agreeing.
I wish congress in the U.S ran like this
Loopy! <---- Youtube Video
Looks like she forgot to use her "inside voice"...
18
FAQs and Tutorials / Video Tutorial: How to make improved FF7 backgrounds in Sketchup
« on: 2010-04-21 06:54:00 »
I know I'm double posting, but this is my forum so nya-nya-nya 
For those who don't go into Team Avalanche, I posted there some videos there about how to use Skechup to make FF7 backgrounds. You may find them useful. To keep the postings in one spot, I'll lock this thread, follow the link below.
Click here
For those who don't go into Team Avalanche, I posted there some videos there about how to use Skechup to make FF7 backgrounds. You may find them useful. To keep the postings in one spot, I'll lock this thread, follow the link below.
Click here
19
Team Avalanche / Video Tutorial: How to make improved FF7 backgrounds in Sketchup
« on: 2010-04-21 02:27:04 »20
Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Final Fantasy 1 NES : The other Final Fantasy
« on: 2010-03-14 19:54:30 »
This is going to be long...
A few days ago my main computer made 4 popping noises and shut off. My motherboard seen to have blown 4 caps explosively and about 8 more were melted. It also took out my main hard drive, and my graphics card. It wasn't that big of a loss. I've been running a Pentium 4 with a PNY G-force 5200 AGP with 160GB hard drive for a while and needed an upgrade anyway. My new system is a Core 2 Duo 7500 with a G-force 210, 4 gig of ram running win 7 64bit and a TB hard drive.
As I slowly recover from my backups. I discovered a few projects that have been collecting dust. One of which was me disassembling FF1 for the NES and putting it into compilable 6502 code. It was more of a documentation project to show how the original game worked using the real code.
If anyone wants to help, I can get you started with the tools and how to take the game apart. It's actually pretty simple, just tedious. In a perfect world. A *real* FF7 remake would be cool for the NES. (There are a few hacks, but not a rewrite like I'm thinking). The biggest ROM a NES can hold is 1024K Prog and 1024K char. (with an MMC5 mapper) that would be more than enough. The original NES FF1 used MMC1 (256K) and the biggest was FF3 that was 512k. Still not that big.
Here was some of that silly experiment...
Anyway, anyone want to help, or just have any questions?
A few days ago my main computer made 4 popping noises and shut off. My motherboard seen to have blown 4 caps explosively and about 8 more were melted. It also took out my main hard drive, and my graphics card. It wasn't that big of a loss. I've been running a Pentium 4 with a PNY G-force 5200 AGP with 160GB hard drive for a while and needed an upgrade anyway. My new system is a Core 2 Duo 7500 with a G-force 210, 4 gig of ram running win 7 64bit and a TB hard drive.
As I slowly recover from my backups. I discovered a few projects that have been collecting dust. One of which was me disassembling FF1 for the NES and putting it into compilable 6502 code. It was more of a documentation project to show how the original game worked using the real code.
If anyone wants to help, I can get you started with the tools and how to take the game apart. It's actually pretty simple, just tedious. In a perfect world. A *real* FF7 remake would be cool for the NES. (There are a few hacks, but not a rewrite like I'm thinking). The biggest ROM a NES can hold is 1024K Prog and 1024K char. (with an MMC5 mapper) that would be more than enough. The original NES FF1 used MMC1 (256K) and the biggest was FF3 that was 512k. Still not that big.
Here was some of that silly experiment...
Anyway, anyone want to help, or just have any questions?
21
General Discussion / So, Final Fantasy 13 is pretty rad...
« on: 2010-03-11 00:03:29 »
Ok, Here goes a semi-official Final Fantasy 13 Thread.
It's pretty cool.
Vanilla is really cute!
It's pretty cool.
Vanilla is really cute!
22
Completely Unrelated / Fututre Fantasy 7
« on: 2009-12-15 00:58:16 »
Here, I know you guy get a kick out of this stuff.
23
Completely Unrelated / Today is "Talk Like a Pirate Day."
« on: 2009-09-19 19:52:52 »
In Qhimm tradition, let's talk like pirates!
So, I was Totally downloading Crisis Core on Limewire for my PSP, I was running that new firmware that allowed to to run ISOs, you know. Anyway I was thinking maybe we could rip some of these models and put them into a copy of FF7 Ultima Edition, cuz that would look really cool.
Anyone have any Vanessa Carlton MP3s I can have....
Wait, am I doing it right?
I ment to say...
ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!
So, I was Totally downloading Crisis Core on Limewire for my PSP, I was running that new firmware that allowed to to run ISOs, you know. Anyway I was thinking maybe we could rip some of these models and put them into a copy of FF7 Ultima Edition, cuz that would look really cool.
Anyone have any Vanessa Carlton MP3s I can have....
Wait, am I doing it right?
I ment to say...
ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!
24
FF7 Tools / [PSX/PC] File Reconstruction Project!!
« on: 2009-08-21 10:29:42 »
Ok, here's how this works....
I created a publicly accessible spreadsheet that anyone can edit. The idea is to ID every last of the 3009 files that make up FF7. What I have done is I dumped all three disks, combined them, and put them in such a way that you can label what file is what and also the contents. You can also add links to the wiki for the proper format. More than one person can also edit the file at the same time.
Why am I doing this?
Well, I tired of all the loose files describing what goes to who for example, aacd.hrc is what? Enemy024.lzs is what? Once we can ID the graphic assets, we can then flag off any that need improvement. How's that for a plan. It also gives any enterprising hackers out there who can't program very well a project to do! (I know, stroke of genius!)
I just started with a bare file list for now, the PC data isn't in it yet, but some enterprising soul can add that.
If you want to view the document you can click...
here
To gain access, PM Lazy Bastard he took over the project
I created a publicly accessible spreadsheet that anyone can edit. The idea is to ID every last of the 3009 files that make up FF7. What I have done is I dumped all three disks, combined them, and put them in such a way that you can label what file is what and also the contents. You can also add links to the wiki for the proper format. More than one person can also edit the file at the same time.
Why am I doing this?
Well, I tired of all the loose files describing what goes to who for example, aacd.hrc is what? Enemy024.lzs is what? Once we can ID the graphic assets, we can then flag off any that need improvement. How's that for a plan. It also gives any enterprising hackers out there who can't program very well a project to do! (I know, stroke of genius!)
I just started with a bare file list for now, the PC data isn't in it yet, but some enterprising soul can add that.
If you want to view the document you can click...
here
To gain access, PM Lazy Bastard he took over the project
