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Miscellaneous Forums => Scripting and Reverse Engineering => Topic started by: KojiroTakenashi on 2002-07-11 20:22:57
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Would it be possible to apply a patch to FF7 or FF8, so that they can run in a plugin-type system for graphics? Or with SuperEagle applied to textures or backgrounds?
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as this was discussed long time ago,
this involves intercepting direct3d calls and then applying filters, juggling with frame buffers, 3d api etc
can be done but it is madness :D
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Hey, Skillster. Long time no see. :D
Anyway. What does SuperEagle do?
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It's a scaling effect which also smooths everthing. It's used in SNES emulators and now, thanks to the debate I THINK I sparked, which went off and on for about a year, it's part of Pete's Graphics Plugins for PSX emulators, as well. Somehow, it smooths down everything while imaged stay sharp, provided you don't do any stretching. The PSX Plug I talked about does it for textures now (actually, a similar but less-nice-looking effect by the same person, 2xSAI scaling). I'm serious...Maybe if I'm feeling less lazy I'll go through the time to make screenshots...
Hmm, so it would be messy for D3D? What about software? Why not SuperEagle the whole thing? :D
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Well, I think it's possible. However, as Skillster said: It's madness.
Since you don't have the source code of the FF7/8 engine, you would have to disassemble the binary and intercept the Direct 3d calls. This would be a kind of "emulation", and as you know from several emulators, they're workin really slow. So patching FF7/8 would most probably decrease the 3D Power instead of increasing the quality and speed ...
However, it was a nice idea...
- Alhexx
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Well, instead of changing the code to actually call upon a different sound, maybe it would be possible to just switch the compressed sound files around? I think that would definately be not too hard to do in FF7, as we know how the compression works and can add/remove files.
I dunno, it's an idea.
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Uh...sound?
Hehehe...Emulation...I must introduce you guys to Pete and the gang XD Madness.
So yes, no direct 3D, but what about software? Hell SuperEagle in software with maybe some kind of smoothing wouldn't look too shabby...
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There's a minor problem with using the FF7's Software Renderer. It seems to have a speed limiter on it. I've got a 1.5Ghz machine, and almost every time I've tested its performance in software mode, the battle scenes still have jerkiness. While you'd think a 1.5Ghz can handle the software rendering and the supereagle filtering, it seems the engine's speed limitation itself may cause it to be even more sluggish.
However, applying the SuperEagle filter in software seems the most feasible thing to do.
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There's a minor problem with using the FF7's Software Renderer. It seems to have a speed limiter on it. I've got a 1.5Ghz machine, and almost every time I've tested its performance in software mode, the battle scenes still have jerkiness. While you'd think a 1.5Ghz can handle the software rendering and the supereagle filtering, it seems the engine's speed limitation itself may cause it to be even more sluggish.
However, applying the SuperEagle filter in software seems the most feasible thing to do.
The same goes to FF8 as well. Whenever I used software renderer on my 1.2GHz machine some of the scene still jerks... hmm bad porting? :P Or maybe Square set a FPS limit in Software... dunno...
Well I thought SuperEagle needs quite a decent processor to run it smoothly??... Hmm...
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Wait......
The jerkiness could come from the engine attempting to cap the framerate, sorta like a fish tryin' to swim upstream. If the SuperEagle filter puts enough additional load on the CPU to make the thing not need an FPS cap to stay at, say, 60fps, then perhaps the jerkiness would cease, since the engine's not struggling so much.....
Do you guys follow me here?
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Wait......
The jerkiness could come from the engine attempting to cap the framerate, sorta like a fish tryin' to swim upstream. If the SuperEagle filter puts enough additional load on the CPU to make the thing not need an FPS cap to stay at, say, 60fps, then perhaps the jerkiness would cease, since the engine's not struggling so much.....
Do you guys follow me here?
Mmm.. yeah sort of. But wouldn't slower machines suffer if more load is added on the CPU :P ?? I mean this method will work for faster CPUs... right??
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Right, but it seems that the jerkiness only applies to machines that are too fast. The SuperEagle thing oughtta be a selectable option in the config, so that slower users can turn it off. As it is, most people want to use their Hardware Acceleration anyway, and wouldn't be able to use it.
Plus, if SuperEagle is as processor intensive as you make it sound to be, chances are only the machines that are too fast for FF7 would be able to use it anyway.
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SuperEagle isn't that intensive. I can run it on textures (using a PSX emulator plugin) WITH screen-smoothing (hardware drawing trick, looks nice) AND 4xFSAA. And I have a Geforce 2 Pro ~_^. It's all in how you optimize, baby. I think Eagle might have a slowdown on machines slower than mine if, say, you put it on full screen. Then again, we're talking about a slow resolution here. 2xSAI could be used instead, maybe. Hmm...I think I just opened up a can of worms...again ^.^;
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i guess i hve to eat my words
pete has 2x sai hi res in his gpu plug ins, and it roxors :)
but intercepting/wrapping 3d api would be a long thing.
ps: yea 1st post in many, but i do read topics, have been for a few months :) keeping an eye on the remake which seems to have gone into reverse :P
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As for the software FPS limitator: I'm not sure how it is with the latest FF7 patches, however, I remember having some problems with the scene on the bike. You know which one? When you have to escape, your group in a lorry and you on a bike. When I changed my machine from my PII 266 to Duron 800, I wasn't even able to handle that scene. It was simply too fast ... but if I'm right, that was aon hardware renderer .... ??
- Alhexx
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Yes, large parts of FF7 does not have internal timing, instead they depend on the PSX processor speed. When they ported it to PC, it seems they "forgot" about the bike race :-?
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Yes, large parts of FF7 does not have internal timing, instead they depend on the PSX processor speed. When they ported it to PC, it seems they "forgot" about the bike race :-?
Oh true.. yeah now I remember that. When I was using my old P2 350MHz the bike worked well (hardware full screen) but when I used my 1.2GHz everything went too fast ... lol it's like.... motor racing hehehe...
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You know, replaying that scene with my newer hardware, I have NO idea how I survived that. Hehe...must be the reflexes... Actually, I think the race depends mostly on GPU speed. I remember having an old Voodoo2 and it ran sort of slow, then I upgraded the drivers, and it ran pretty fast...blarg, with all the updates I made to this machine as of late it was so fast I couldn't let myself blink.
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Actually, when you run the bike scene in the software mode, the road textures (you know, the lines on the road) are not there. In hardware mode, everything's there, and yeah, if you think its too fast on a 1.2Ghz, try it on a 1.5Ghz!!!
But, why are the road textures missing in software mode?
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I think the game was written with hardware mode in mind. (Most everyone plays with hardware mode, anyway.) Maybe they didn't test it as much with software mode and didn't notice their texture error. Maybe the bike chase game was tested much anyway because of the speed problems.
Heck, that would've been one of my favorite parts to test :-p
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True, but was that still the case back then? I think 3d hardware wasn't as common back then.
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Actually, when you run the bike scene in the software mode, the road textures (you know, the lines on the road) are not there. In hardware mode, everything's there, and yeah, if you think its too fast on a 1.2Ghz, try it on a 1.5Ghz!!!
Uh, I'm using an Athlon 1.2GHz, not a Pentium4 1.5 GHz so you can't really say that a P4 1.5GHz will perform faster than an Athlon 1.2GHz in this case, cause the benchmarks do tell that.... I'm not trying to start off a war of Intel vs. AMD here, I'm just stating the "truth". (CPU clockspeed doesn't always win all the time, :wink: )
And also, the CPU speed is already so fast for the game,so I think the bike game speed difference is negligible at such CPU speeds as well.
Edit - and oh yeah goku, you're right. I don't think 3d hardware was really that common that time. I was using my Intel 8MB i740 gfx card to play FF7 during that time, and I think the 8MB vid. card was quite expensive for that time. (Of course the V2 was the most expensive one) Bear in mind that I played FF7 quite late too..........
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I was just speaking generally about the 1.5Ghz thing. I forgot to take into account the Athlon's logic-defying performance-per-clock thing.
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Way back then, if you were lucky enough to have a video card that passed all of FF7's "requirements," then you could probably play the game fine.
However, if you didn't, you were stuck in software mode (most likely on a 133-300 mhz machine) - crap! For those people the game ran way too slow to worry about a missing texture in the bike race I guess (I know several people who bought FF7PC for their 1xx mhz comps and no 3D support).
However, I bet the designers all had nice 3D hardware systems to test on. :P
Dunno, maybe they were just too lazy to fix it. What a surprise.
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Uh now I recalled something. It wasn't my 1200MHz system which caused the bike game unplayable, it was my Voodoo3 3000!
I was using a P2 350MHz/64MB RAM/8MB i740 when I played FF7 for the first time, it worked fine.
However, my father upgraded my PC (one year later?) and I had 128MB of RAM and 16MB Voodoo3 3000. That's where the problem started. I tested my V3, and the bike game was unplayable.........
Also, whenever there is a battle , the spinning thing will spin so fast .... hehehe....... 8)
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Lol yeah, I remember a couple computers spending 30 seconds on the battle swirl. :P
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This is turning into an "On my * GHz machine the bike race scene is even faster than on your (slow) *GHz machine ... " :D
- Alhexx
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FFTactic_Boy, its not the card. Its the drivers. If I remember correctly, the 1.03 driver set ran the game at a normal speed, without any problems.
Any newer driver set will super-accelerate the game, and during battle scenes will cause that random lock-up when a character animation started at the same time a command window opened.
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FFTactic_Boy, its not the card. Its the drivers. If I remember correctly, the 1.03 driver set ran the game at a normal speed, without any problems.
Any newer driver set will super-accelerate the game, and during battle scenes will cause that random lock-up when a character animation started at the same time a command window opened.
Well I dunno it's been hell long ago since I played FF7 on my V3... well maybe yeah. I didn't test it on my GF2 GTS tho... cuz I think my GTS will cause problems anyway. That's one thing I hate about nVidia cards... if you don't update them.. heh heh :P
Maybe it was the drivers. If I'm not mistaken I was using the 1.07 drivers which really made the bike race so fast!!!
Talking about this reminds my of my V3... sigh I think it's better than my GTS for older games.... heh.
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Remember, I have a V3. I've done the testing of the drivers myself. This is the case.
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hmm
AFAIK there is a refesh rate limit to s/f mode (60hz?)
and 3dHAL mode isnt limited in the 3d SUB GAMES
thats right the chocobo race is alot faster, the bike race is insane and dont start about the speed square...
this is on my athlon 1900xp ati radeon 8500DV AIW
so theres a bug in there, or something left out. maybe @ the time the game was made 3dHAL wasnt even that fast (voodoo 1/rush, ati rage 4mb, S3 virge DX, matrox etc)
speeds of the cpus then was like 300mhz, win95!
remember tech has flown ahead, pity ff8 isnt that fast (yawn)
2xsai on psx emu does lose detail tho and isnt full speed on my setup.
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Heh.
I remember reading that, back when they were still testing FF7PC before it hit stores, that they were sayin' that they were having problems getting the current 3d hardware to hit PSX version framerates.
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ROFL :lol: