[FF7PC-98] Higher Resolution (v1.00)(Discontinued, use Aali's driver)

[EmperorSteele]

Ok...

In the snowboard minigame, the sky and time/points menu is only rendered on the left half of the screen.  A minor annoyance, doesn't affect gameplay.

The Bike game actually goes at a decent speed ^_^

Still got gridlines though... i'm gonna try this patch on my win98 box and see if that clears anything up....

[edit] typing and grammar

[Locutus]

Hi i will describe here my ff7 experience with geforce 6 (geforce 6800 gt) and with high res patch. (this will be a little of topic but i will also talk about high res patch)

Tested in Windows XP.

1 -runing ff7 version 1.00 - 8 bit pallete test failed.
geforce 6 (and i heard that geforce fx also) doesn't support 8 bit pallete in ff7

2 - running ff7 version 1.02 - game runs fine but there is gridline outside battle.so background is a mess
fsaa tribes, official and unofficial doesn.t solve anything

3- running normaly  ff7 version 1.02 with high res patch - it was not possible on my comp. becouse i have lcd that doesn' support 1280x960

4- i installed high res patch on 1.02 version and then i installed cetra window patch. now i was abble to run game
in windowed mode (Desktop resolution 1280x1024) (game window has resolution 1280x960). Another unsolvable gridline problem with background where Antialiasing does'nt help (without fsaa gridline is also present).Background scrolling is not fluid.

Conclusion - you can't run ff7 on geforce 6 and solve gridline problem, gridline is presen't in high res patch.

i had geforce 4 before.it supported 8 bit pallete color. in ff 7 1.00 i was able to solve gridline problem by using "secret" fsaa modes. in ff7 1.02 i was unable to solve gridline problem with fsaa. without fsaa gridline was also present.
so 1.02 version introduced unsolvable gridline problem for geforce cards.

in ff8 there was also a problem with gridline on geforce cards but Square released patch and problem is solved.

Solution:for geforce fx,6,7 and future geforce cards - for now there is no solution to run ff7 on this cards without gridline problem.
Future solutions

1- nvidia introduces 8 bit pallete color(i am talking here about 8 bit textures here and not normal 256 color screen mode) support in their drivers for new graphic cards.then you can play ff 1.00 with special fsaa without gridline.

2-someone will create special patch for ff7 (similiar to ff8 geforce patch) to resolve background ff7 problem.


High res patch is working but probably it will be useless for some geforce players becouse of gridline problem
of course this is not Saint fault but nvidia and ff7 game engine.
Thanks Saint for your's hard work.
Last Question to Saint: would it be possible to create patch to solve background gridline problem?

[The SaiNt]

I won't say it's impossible to fix the background texture alignment problem, but honestly speaking it will be reaaaaaly difficult and I'm gonna have to put a lot of time into it, something I seriously lack.

Also it will be hard to fix the Geforce 6 series problems as I do not own such a card. I have an ATI Radeon 9600XT atm so I can only debug ATI problems easily.

My Geforce 6600GT is due back sometime next month (it broke for some reason so I had to return it), so maybe I'll take a look then.

[Borde]

Hey Locutus, I have a GF 6600 GT and the game runs perfect for me .The grid-lines only appear if I turn on FSAA. Maybe it's a drivers issue.
Oh ice_cold513, I supose you refer to the Zack model. I'll post the few models I've done so far (well, only 3 actually ) when I finish renaming the files (ugh... sure that's boring). Hope It won't take long.

[EmperorSteele]

Hey Borde, care to tell me which drivers you're using? Because i get gridlines on the same card no matter what =/  (heck, i even built myslef a 98 machine to try and avoid the problem... and guess what? hehehe)

Oh, btw, noticed anothed bug (May have been already documented), but when you have a battle menu with a red arrow next to it (To denote multiple targets or some such), the arrow appears halfway through the word instead of next to it.

And for some reason, words are no longer AAed in fsaa mode o_O

But these are minor nitpicks.  The arrow thing i think needs to be addressed eventually, but the words are fine =)

[Borde]

I'm using ForceWare 71.84.
FSAA= controlled by aplications
Antisotropic Filter= x16
Sistem preformace= Great quality.
In the FF7 configuration I've checked the NVIDIA fix and TNT.
Hope this helps.

[Locutus]

Thanks Borde you are right ff7 works without gridline.
I was sure that i checked game under every possible conditions.
probably i had tried tnt option with fsaa and not without it.

So ff7 works ok on geforce 6 configured as Borde described.


To Saint: Is high res patch compatible with cetra window patch?
I run ff7 with cetra window  patch and high res patch without problem but i am not sure if it will not cause any problems in later parts of the game and now i have got no time to play whole game and to check stability?

[KojiroTakenashi]

Lower Anisotropic filtering and try different FSAA modes using Rivatuner.

Trust me, I'm pretty sure the problem is in your AA filter use. I've been able to get FSAA running perfectly fine in the past...

[savage-xp]

Awsome patch!

Saint, Thank you very much!

[Div]

Ok, all I get is a never-ending black screen. Allow me to describe what I did.


1. Freshly installed FFVII off the good old CDs.

2. Installed the 1.02 patch.

3. Opened FF7Config and made sure it was set to 640x480 Full Screen mode.

4. Installed this beta patch (it worked, and it said everything was patched.)

5. Enabled Compatibility for Windows 98.

6. Run the new patched ff7.exe.

7. Hit Ctrl+Esc and force close FF7. Why? Because there is a black screen sitting there doing nothing, and I would rather be doing other things than staring at a black screen!


I know there are others who have my problem, so I know it isn't just me.

I am running on Windows XP with SP2.
AMD Athlon 3000+
1.25 Gigs of ram
GeForce 4 Ti4600 128mb

*EDIT*

Ok, so I got it working.

All I did was install the latest drivers (71.xx) for my GeForce card. If you are having these problems, update your drivers. If you have your latest drivers and it still doesent work, then restart anyway and try again.

[EmperorSteele]

Borde:  Thanks, thos setting work perfect =D

..wait, this means i made a new machine for like, nothing.  FRAGGITALL =P

Anyways, new bug: Pandora's Box Enemy skill isn't properly rendered; the lines that flow out from behind it only appear in the upper quarter of the screen.  Again, only a minor nitpcik; doesn't adversly affect gameplay.

I've noticed that the sounds skips out for a second inbetween going from field, to battle, to menu, to field.. maybe its my settings.

And more wierdness: The world map looks really skewed (less spherical and more ovular), and oh yeah, the Meteor icon/texture thingie is upside-down o_O  That last item i think needs to be addressed above all else =)

edit:more stuff =)

In KotR, theres a part where a starfield scrolls in the background; it only occures in the upper left corner though.  The rest of the summon looks fine =)  In the E-Sill Shadow flare, only the upper left part of the screen turns white.

And in the Bizaro Sephy battle, when it asks if you're worried about the others, the two responses "maybe a little" and.. whatever the second choice is (where you keep your current party) overlap.

I'm loving this mod, if only because it makes fsaa not so critical, and hense, i can avoid those pesky lines =D  Also, with the battle/field mod underway, as other have said, this is a great time for ff7 PC indeed =)

Screw an offical "remake", you people are doin' it yourselves =P  Now if only there were some way to edit the backgrounds...

[The SaiNt]

Do me a favour and post screenshots and saves to the areas where the bugs occur. This helps me debug the problem quickly.
Explanations are helpful but like they say a picture is worth a thousand words.

[crimsondante]

hi,  i have a few questions, is the newest update for this patch found on the first page on the first post or is there another new version somewhere in this thread. has it caused any problems with anyones game and finally, this patch, is it the version with the little models, or the battle models, turned into field models, if it was battle models into field models, what battle/field models are not done, and who is workin on this battle --> field models, many thanks
crimsondante

[voodoo47]

the latest patch is posted on the first page,and it does not use any of the battle models.check the battle model thread here.

ok,I have a first bug.nothing serious though:

http://www.inc_exe.szm.sk/ff7bug.jpg

MOD EDIT: Once again... do not post big pictures directly...

edit: sorry.didnt know 640*480 is big.and actually,I can see now that the bug has been posted already.duh.

[KojiroTakenashi]

For the backgrounds, isn't there an unpacker for them?

Then we just need to scale up, then repack...

[EmperorSteele]

Not really, becasue that wouldnt work on animations, plus, up-scaling them would still make them pixelated; we'd need to be able to actualyl EDIT the files and take out the pixelyness once it's expanded.

EDIT: Saint, i'll get you screenshots as soon as my photoshop WORKS again /=.

[Marc]

Hasn't rescalling the background already been tried and failed because the game would treat the scaled images as if they were only 320x200 images like the originals and cut off some parts while scaling them ?

If it were possible however, I think I remember from way back then that using corel draw 7 to expand pictures gave me amazing results compared to paint shop pro (that was the version 4 at the time if I'm not mistaken).  I really know nothing about this but couldn't some program have better algorithms than others to do these things ?  If so, assuming that the game a) will accept bigger background b) some program could scale up the images better than the other c) we get a tool than can unpack and repack the background files d) someone actually can take the time to do this it could be done.  I'd think it'd probabaly be simpler to try an apply some kind of filtering to the background images for someone with the knowledge of such things like Saint suggested in his readme than to go through all of this, but then again I have no real idea of the scope of the work involved in modifying the ff7 engine.

BTW, I'm going to try the patch pretty soon so if I get any bugs, I'll be sure to let you know.  Great job on the release.

[EmperorSteele]

ok, screenshots of bugs i've come across:

Kotr: one of the background files needs to be resized.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v398/emperorsteele/Betapics/Kotrbackgroundbug.jpg

Load game: For some reason, it won't load the entire color palet for the big "part" (For lack of a better word) but it will for the small one.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v398/emperorsteele/Betapics/Mismatchedcolors.jpg

Pandora's Box: Speed lines only appear in upper left corner.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v398/emperorsteele/Betapics/Pandorasbox.jpg

Shadowflare: White area only occures in upper left corner.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v398/emperorsteele/Betapics/shadowflare.jpg

Sleep and silence: The icons appear very tiny, doubled-up, and distorted.  When looking close, the actual textures form, but in normal view, blue boxes blinke on and off.  Couldnt get an up-close screenshot =(
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v398/emperorsteele/Betapics/sleepel.jpg

Snowbaording: background and score only appear in upper left.  PAY NO ATTENTION TO MY BAD SCORE, i broke my joystick and can't do snowboarding on a numpad ;_;
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v398/emperorsteele/Betapics/Snowboardingbug.jpg

World map: Meteor and clouds appear lower than they're supposed to (not upside down like i reported, my bad); whole world map has taken on a different shape, and the draw distance seems to have been shortened (the background sky clips through distant terrain).  Terrain and water also change shape as you run/ride/fly across it o_O  As you can see in the second screenshot, flying low makes meteor and clouds retain thier normal positions, but the water looks funny =)
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v398/emperorsteele/Betapics/Worldmap1.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v398/emperorsteele/Betapics/worldmap2.jpg


[edit] new one: neo bahamut's background is effed up: the sublayer of space dust only appears in, you guessed it, the upper left corner =)
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v398/emperorsteele/Betapics/neobahamutbg.jpg

Hope this all helps =)  I couldn't get a screenshot of the sephy-battle bug, cuz, i suck and forgot.

[Aaron]

Load game: For some reason, it won't load the entire color palet for the big "part" (For lack of a better word) but it will for the small one.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v398/emperorsteele/Betapics/Mismatchedcolors.jpg

Have you tried this without the patch?  I think it uses the default colors for most of the menu, and colors each saved game "choice" with the colors you had it set to when you saved that game.

[Contra]

When the game is paused in battle, all battle help text and textures slowly "scroll" through the texture sheet moving to the upper left.

It actually makes for a cool screensaver in battle, but... it's probably not intentional

http://bin.mypage.sk/FILES/texturescroll.gif

Check it out.

Oh, and I'm not gonna post a pic for this one, but the Game Over image doesn't scale. It takes up... *drumroll* The upper left hand corner of the screen.

[Zophixan]

If anyone ever decides to enhance the background,  s-spline is a program which makes scales images really nicely...

[EmperorSteele]

Load game: For some reason, it won't load the entire color palet for the big "part" (For lack of a better word) but it will for the small one.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v398/emperorsteele/Betapics/Mismatchedcolors.jpg

Have you tried this without the patch?  I think it uses the default colors for most of the menu, and colors each saved game "choice" with the colors you had it set to when you saved that game.

Before, it displayed yellow in the corner like it was suppsoed to.  Post-patch, it doesnt =/  However, the colros display correctly everywhere else.  Just comapre to my other screenshots.

[Zack]

When the game is paused in battle, all battle help text and textures slowly "scroll" through the texture sheet moving to the upper left.

It actually makes for a cool screensaver in battle, but... it's probably not intentional

http://bin.mypage.sk/FILES/texturescroll.gif

Check it out.

This happens with my FF7 even without the high resolution patch

[The SaiNt]

Yes, it was a bug / feature introduced in the NVidia patch.

On a side note, been pretty busy lately so I can't work on the patch till maybe a lot later.

[Contra]

Well then... my appologies to The SaiNt. I guess I've never paused the PC version, so I figured a graphical glitch had to do with the patch. Anyways, thanks for clearing that up.