FF3 PC [Steam] Graphical Modding - Need Help!

[4aiman]

Hello there!


What is this?
An early stage of FF3 HD mod.
No GeDoSato or any other external application needed.
-=INCOMPLETE=-
I need some help from more knowledgeable than me people.


Examples?

Spoiler: show

How did you do this?
- Used BatchZ77 to unpack ntxp.lz files
- Stripped the header from unpacked files and saved it
- Renamed the ntxp files to give them nsbtx extension (for ease of further use)
- Used MKDS Course Modifie to extract textures for mosters, NPCs and playable characters
- Used Waifu2x to scale textures up 4 times
- Imported enlarged textures back to nsbtx files*
- Re-applied header (have no idea what I'm doing here. Just glued the stripped in #2 header back. Probably the source of all the troubles? I failed to find/comprehend the structure of the ntxp file)
- Packed everything with BatchZ77

* Some files had a wrong or no palette. Had to use NitroModel_ConverterGUI to recreate files WITH a palette. Didn't work for o***.nxbt files (textures become unreadable resulting in a model with pure white texture) but seemed to work fine for f***.nsbtx files with monster textures.


How to test
Get this archive, unpack and replace the files in SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Final Fantasy III


Cool! What's the name of the project?
The project has no fancy name like Remako or Moguri.


Can I suggest a name for the project?
It's too early for that, but you're welcome


Ok, gotcha. What help do you need?
There are issues with the files, and I don't know where to start fixing those.
1. First of all, some enemies have no graphical representation in battles. They load and behave just fine, but you can see only their shadow.

Spoiler: show

2. The thing above is inconsistent. Some enemies load just fine in quantities more than 2, but some disappear when they're second or third (have never more that 3 enemies so far).

Spoiler: show

3. Sometimes the game crashes when it tries to load something it doesn't like. I need to find a way to know what files are loaded by the game to revert the changes back. Not afraid of debuggers (are those the only way?), but it's been a long-long time since I used any. Need someone to show me what to do there specifically for this game. (One may say I'm to lazy to google, but look at the sheer amount of manually extracted and re-inserted textures )


Do you have any save files with problematic places?
Take this file and put it in %localappdata%\FF3_Win32\*****************\ folder (Start the game, save once with a quick save and that should generate the folder structure for you).
If you're using SteamPlay (Linux), try this path instead <Steam-folder>/steamapps/compatdata/239120/pfx/
Just wander around the desert or take a ship to sail the sea.
I bet the very 1st fight will have those issues I described above.


Is the patch stable?
See the #3 in "What Help do you need section".


Buggy, but AWESOME! Are you serious about this? Are you willing to replace ALL the textures?
If I will know the way to fix those issues, then YES, Absolutely.


WOW! The Playstation-style input prompts! Gimme!
It's just a PNG.
Get this file and put it near the rest of the files in SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Final Fantasy III (replace).


P.S. I sure hope I didn't do something that is already has been done 😅.



EDIT:
It seem the problem is with the j***.nxtp files. Enemies work just fine w/o those!
I'd say wait for an update!
Lol, editing the post before a moderator approved the whole thing...
Also, just realized, it's the wrong place for a thread... Sorry 

[4aiman]

Checked every j***.ntxp.lz file and while there are issues with those, I cannot pinpoint the exact way to fix those as of yet.

All I know is:
- those are textures for jobs;
- all the jobs for Luneth, Arc and Refia are working fine (wind, fire and water crystals)
- as soon as I swap in Ingus's textures the game freezes upon loading battles
- only some of Ingus's textures are broken (Dragoon j413.nxtp.lz for example)
- some stone textures j***_stone.nxtp.lz are broken as well.

And that's because the texture swap produces a broken file
You can see that when you change jobs, but apparently battles have a different way to process textures.

Spoiler: show

I've tried to re-do the whole thing: extract, strip the header, export png, upscale, import png, rename, glue the header, compress.
So far no luck.

Weirdly enough, I can easily rename, say j401.nxtp.lz, to replace the j413 file and it works (although, the process of upscale is the same).


So, one can safely use j101 through j323 files without _stone files.


EDIT:
It seems it's not about the broken files.
When I look through the monsters in a bestiary, their textures load just fine.
The real battles is a different story tho.

What I did:
- replaced j*.ntxt.lz files for Luneth, Arc and Refia;
- went through multiple battles.

Results:
- 2 enemies load just fine;
- the 3rd one is missing the texture regardless of the type of the enemy.

Judging from this and the fact that replacing all the j*.ntxp.lz files result in only 1 enemy on the screen (i.e. not only the texture, but the model won't load as well),
it ooks like there's some limit to how much memory can be used to load textures and models to.

More over, the game loads those models and textures separately (for 3 enemies of the same type it will load the corresponding texture and model 3 times).

So, before continuing, I need to find a way to increase that "memory pool" 16 times. (right now the game uses around 100Mb of RAM on my system, and 16x isn't that much nowadays)
Alas, I have no idea how to do that.
Will try to google my way through, but I'm a noob at this, so the hope is very slim.

If anyone's willing to help, please, do be so kind