Qhimm.com Forums
Miscellaneous Forums => Archive => Topic started by: Kazurin on 2003-08-05 23:49:22
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Okay, so once upon a time, I think I saw a utility that would increase FFVII's resolution up to 1024x768. I haven't seen for a long time, nor do I remember where I found it. If anyone knows any way to increase the res past 640x480, I'd love to know (and I'm sure plenty of others would too).
Also, is there any way to be able to just use the anti-aliasing in Animevamp's XP patch so that one doesn't have to worry about the music?
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High-res? I don't think so, unless you're using a PlayStation emulator.
XP patch? Just install the 1.02 Riva/TNT patch from Eidos and our Chocobo patch and you should have the same thing (http://forums.qhimm.com/viewtopic.php?t=1656).
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I doubt that would work because certain things would be messed up in the game (like text). And the main thing that needs revamping, the rendered backgrounds, would still be 320 x 240. So, I don't think that utility exists because it sounds like some hoax.
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I think there is a patch that will allow to run with 32bit colors. Somewhere....
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There is. Ficedula made it. It works, but the movies are screwed up. Not worth it in the long run.
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I doubt that would work because certain things would be messed up in the game (like text). And the main thing that needs revamping, the rendered backgrounds, would still be 320 x 240. So, I don't think that utility exists because it sounds like some hoax.
So why shouldn't there be an unoffical patch for higher resolution?
I agree with the rendered backgrounds, but think of the battle scenes, where everything happens in a real 3d area.
And I think that there shouldn't be any problems with messed up text or things like that...
- Alhexx
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WHY?!?!....why....it wont make the blocky backrounds or skinnyelbows/hugeblockhands go away. It would help the battles a little. Antialiasing helps the low res, but not much. TVout on your vidcard helps alot.
I vote for a more needed patch. A 100% working winxp patch, and a mini-game slowdown patch... The game needs to be able to run before you can improve the quality of the graphics or music.
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Alhexx, why do you think they have 2 sets of fonts for the 2 different resolutions the game runs in? We could probably make a new set of fonts for the different resolution, or else scale them. But it all comes down to tons of work with very little payoff.
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Yes, the 2 sets of fonts is my point. A better resolution would mess up text because the game uses small pictures instead of actual fonts as we know them. So, improving the resolution would make the 2D elements of battles get crappier and it would probably mess the camera up, too.
Edit:
I have a feeling that Eidos would have released this with at least 800x600 resolution if they could have without a lot of extra work.
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You could just run FF7 in a PSX emulator, like ePSXe. Think about it...:
PROS:
- You can run in whatever resolution you want.
- The music should sound like the PSX music.
- You should be able to get the backgrounds to stretch with filters so they don't look so blocky.
- The minigames run at the correct speed.
- The game doesn't (shouldn't) crash at places we've been hearing about it crashing at.
- You can still find it in stores.
CONS:
- You lose the higher resolution in the text and menus, oh no.
- You can't use soundfonts.
- It may or may not be harder to get the game working right.
So I guess it just depends how you want to play the game. Heck, I think I might have just convinced myself to get a PSX version.
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I've wanted to get FFVII-PSX but never got around to it... It's pretty cheap nowadays (I know my Blockbuster has one for $10). ePSXe does have some problems when you set it up, though. It took me probably 30 minutes to an hour to get Xenogears running the way I wanted (it uses framebuffer like crazy and slows down). And anti-aliasing is pretty bad on low-resolution sprites...
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Not worth it in the long run.
...except for making the in-game screenshots I take look better so I can impress my FF7PSX friends. ;)
I agree with the rendered backgrounds, but think of the battle scenes, where everything happens in a real 3d area.
I haven't worked much with the battle scenes, but the way I understand them is that just about every one is just a simple 3D cube with textures slapped on the walls that make the environment *look* more 3D (even though it's not, just the walls are.)
My point? Just a nitpick, really, I guess: I'd think Higher-res would help the battle models, but not the scenes themselves.
and a mini-game slowdown patch... The game needs to be able to run before you can improve the quality of the graphics or music.
Well, in theory, improving the resolution would probably slow the game down somewhat.
I have a feeling that Eidos would have released this with at least 800x600 resolution if they could have without a lot of extra work.
I doubt it. Eidos was just the publisher and didn't really do any of the actual porting. The team of Square programmers who ported it (who were not the original FF7 team) cared very little about there project and were given a very small amount of time to get it working. They actually considered modifying the battle models because they were too "high-res" (a high-level machine back then was a Pentium 200.)
- You should be able to get the backgrounds to stretch with filters so they don't look so blocky.
I agree...Getting somebody who can write an Eagle filter or whatever would probably be the best way to solve the background problem on FF7PC as well.
More cons with FF7PSX:
- The notoriously bad translation is actually worse than FF7PC's because the PC translators cleaned things up a little bit. On the PSX, you're back to Aeris saying, "This guy are sick."
- More limited saves.
- It's not as easy to edit the game.
- For me, at least, every emulator I've tried doesn't display FF7's menus (makes battles very hard.) Of course, that was over a year ago. =P Hopefully that's not a problem anymore.
-Srethron
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Well, in theory, improving the resolution would probably slow the game down somewhat.
Yep, definately, but not by too much. The only way we'll be able to do it for now is by underclocking our video cards. It can easily be done with Powerstrip (http://www.entechtaiwan.com/ps.htm). I wonder how hard it actually will be to cap the FPS in the minigames. To be honest, I really don't even see it becoming a reality. FF7PSX is the way to go if you just want to play it without having problems. To me, FF7PC will always be the only way I imagine FF7. The motorcycle chase going by in 50 seconds will always be how I imagine it. Since it's always a learning experience getting things to work, it ends up helping me anyways.
Now eagle filter....that would definately shape up those backgrounds.
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Well, ill try ff7 on xbox (psx emu) see how it runs. I hear most games run perfect at higher resolutions and filtering textures, etc...
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For me, at least, every emulator I've tried doesn't display FF7's menus (makes battles very hard.) Of course, that was over a year ago. =P Hopefully that's not a problem anymore.
-Srethron
It's not. The problem you ran into, was one of off-screen drawing. These days, all you have to do to get 'em to show, is set the "Off-Screen Drawing" level to "Standard" or higher on Pete's D3D/OGL plugins; or if you have a Voodoo card and can use Lewpy's Glide plugin, you simply enable "Experimental Flipping"...though you should probably set "Off-Screen Drawing" to "Extra+FBR", as it may help with getting the battle screen transitions to work (i.e. "swirly-screen"), because it triggers a full framebuffer read when an attempt is made to switch from pre-rendered scenes + polygons to only drawing Polygons (which basically is what happens when you enter a battle in FF7...this mode was actually designed for FF9, though...)
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I'll see if I can find anything interesting when debugging FF7...
- Alhexx
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It seems to be quite easy...
FF7.exe has to call either CreateWindowEx or ChangeDisplaySettings (or any related function) to switch to fullscreen mode. The width and height is given as a parameter there. So I'm trying around to intercept that function call and change the resolution ... let's see...
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I'll see if I can find anything interesting when debugging FF7...
- Alhexx
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It seems to be quite easy...
FF7.exe has to call either CreateWindowEx or ChangeDisplaySettings (or any related function) to switch to fullscreen mode. The width and height is given as a parameter there. So I'm trying around to intercept that function call and change the resolution ... let's see...
Here's wishing you good luck. :D
I'm also hoping you'd find some way to squash the movie player bugs while you're doing this....as I'm now getting a blank screen with sound every time I launch FF7.....and I'm convinced that something changed in how the program is supposed to use the Codec, and thus isn't displaying correctly....
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Hey, Goku7
Mine -JUST- started doing that too, I dont know what happened, but I guess I should try reinstalling.
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Hmm...did you by any chance update to DX9 recently, and if so, was that when it started to do that?
I'm wondering if the codec and DirectShow9 can't interface correctly....
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Not worth it in the long More cons with FF7PSX:
- The notoriously bad translation is actually worse than FF7PC's because the PC translators cleaned things up a little bit. On the PSX, you're back to Aeris saying, "This guy are sick."
-Srethron
yup... Psx version: "back then I just scrapped my knees..."
Pc version: "back then I just scarred my knees"
Pc version script >>>> Psx version script
Theres also the point of mouths.. they gave all the characters little mouths for the Pc version, which actually look quite nice. Playing the Psx version with no mouths looks very weird these days...
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Theres also the point of mouths.. they gave all the characters little mouths for the Pc version, which actually look quite nice. Playing the Psx version with no mouths looks very weird these days...
Did sephiroth still have his wide-open mouth in the psx version? It looks like he's gonna swallow a fly any second.
Boy, you kinda butchered those quotes, Canealot. :lol:
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FF7.exe has to call either CreateWindowEx or ChangeDisplaySettings (or any related function) to switch to fullscreen mode. The width and height is given as a parameter there. So I'm trying around to intercept that function call and change the resolution ...
That *almost* sounds like Ficedula's patch that switches FF7 to windowed mode (although I can't get Cetra to work...or Cosmo for that matter, so I can't test it.)
It's not. The problem you ran into, was one of off-screen drawing.
Nice to know it's f1x0rd. ;) Thanks for the info.
-Srethron
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I tried ff7 on pcsx for xbox, it runs perfect until you go into battle, it locks up as soon as its supposed to do that smeary screen thing. I tried it with epsxe on my pc with 4 other plugins, fooled around with them a bit, still looks like crap... I guess ff7pc is my only option for now...
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I tried ff7 on pcsx for xbox, it runs perfect until you go into battle, it locks up as soon as its supposed to do that smeary screen thing. I tried it with epsxe on my pc with 4 other plugins, fooled around with them a bit, still looks like crap... I guess ff7pc is my only option for now...
Sounds like the XBox just got "pwned" by PSX framebuffer access routines! :P
Although, I thought the latest versions of ePSXe and the GPU plugins by Pete were able to fix up the whole "swirly-screen" problem in FF7?
...I dont' have the PSX version, so its not like I can test it myself....
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FF7's swirlys are a right bitch that's true. If you are using an NV3x or a R200 or above card, you can use Pete's OpenGL2 plugin (which isn't OpenGL 2, but it's his second OpenGL plugin) which apparently sorts this issue. If you are using an NV2x card and running Win2k/XP, you are screwed unless nVidia sort out what appears to be a bug in thier drivers.
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There's a small success I have to report after spending hours in front of my debugger:
Screenshot #1 (http://www.alhexx.com/ff7_high1.jpg)
Screenshot #2 (http://www.alhexx.com/ff7_high1.jpg)
I know it's not what we wanted, however, it's a beginning...
- Alhexx
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That's about what I expected. The game isn't designed to run in other resolutions than 320x240 and 640x480, so just changing what resolution it changes the screen to would result in what you get in Alhexx's screen shots, probably even in the full-3D scenes (i.e. World Map, battles).
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Nah, that just I means I haven't rewritten all needed functions. Until now, I just rewrote the function that changes the screen resolution. I am currently searching for the function which creates that rendering device. Since FF7 uses DirectX, and am not very familiar with Directx, so it could take some time to rewrite the right functions. (Since Directx works with system than opengl, I first have to look at the code clearly...)
- Alhexx
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That's great progress, Alhexx. Nothing I could ever do with my current (lack of) skill :P
But once we find a way to make it all "stretch", won't the fonts look a little..um...stretched out? By the way, have you tested the movies yet?
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I have an idea that could deal with the Font res/scaling problem.
Remember how in the Remake project, it was planned to have some high-resolution fonts for use in the game? Assuming that that font set actually does exist in a useful state, it might not be a bad idea to also use that to replace the existing "low-res" FF7pc font data, while its in the middle of patching the .exe to allow for higher screen resolutions....
I don't know if its possible to do that on a standard install (the font data might be among the stuff that's read off the CD on a standard size install, for all I know)....but I'm betting it may not be possible, which would mean that this solution requires a Full Install....
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Actually, what you're talking about is pretty much cake compared to the type of stuff normally being attempted around here.
FF7PC's current font sets are in cr_us.lgp (in .TEX format.) It's a fairly small file, and *is* put on the hard drive with the Standard Install. There are two sets, one for the full screen modes, and the other for quarterscreen.
Which of course means, in theory, all you have to do is extract them as .BMPs with LGP Tools; scale them appropriately in a graphics prog; convert back to .TEX with TexTool; reinsert your replacements, make an LGP patch; and distribute.
...if only it were that simple. From my experience, you're going to run into trouble, though, changing the size. FF7 doesn't like it when you modify the size (or palette, as Ficedula correctly points out in TexTool's readme.) This leads me to believe that the size definitions are stored/called elsewhere, but I'm not sure how or where.
My guess is that this is where another DirectX layer *might* be helpful. Obviously, keep in mind, I'm quite a buffoon when it comes to knowing about how texture rendering can work--this is merely theorycraft.
Assuming you could get around this one problem, keep in mind you also will have to repeat this process with FF7's other textures (various splash screens--i.e. "Game Over"--, field model eyes, portraits, menu images--including battle slot reels--, not to mention all the various textures used in 6 minigames and the World Map, and magic.lgp) I can't remember if battle.lgp has any textures, but I'm assuming it does. Not all of these files are copied to the hard drive with a Standard Install.
All in all, it's still worth doing, and not *too* much work for someone who doesn't mind it. To be honest, I've already done some of it. =D
Backgrounds, as already stated, you pretty much have to wait on because we need to get rid of the black dots and other display problems.
Assuming that that font set actually does exist in a useful state
IIRC, it doesn't. Although if it does, it seems unlikely you'd see it until after the whole Remake is finished.
Anyway, I think a smarter option is to just do an effects filter of some kind. It works for emulation, and it can work for us. All we have to is either:
1) Find someone with the know-how who is willing to program one for FF7PC.
or
2) Do it ourselves. (DirectX layer time again?) This makes the most sense to me, because the source for 2xsai (http://elektron.its.tudelft.nl/~dalikifa/) (which was based off of the discontinued Eagle library (http://www.retrofx.com/rfxtech.html)), both of which are used in various SNES emulators (like ZSNES) is GNU and freely available. In case you're wondering, it's C, but compiled as C++.
it wont make the blocky backrounds or skinnyelbows/hugeblockhands go away.
If I may, I'd like to direct you to \char.lgp\doga.hrc:
It's Tifa's hand, in higher detail. If somebody *really* wanted to, they could use it to create a hand model template. Then, they'd just have to replace every field skeleton's hands with their new model (which would involves lots of find/replace as well as modifying copies to match coloration and other defining characteristics of different model's hands.)
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...if only it were that simple. From my experience, you're going to run into trouble, though, changing the size. FF7 doesn't like it when you modify the size (or palette, as Ficedula correctly points out in TexTool's readme.) This leads me to believe that the size definitions are stored/called elsewhere, but I'm not sure how or where.
My guess is that this is where another DirectX layer *might* be helpful. Obviously, keep in mind, I'm quite a buffoon when it comes to knowing about how texture rendering can work--this is merely theorycraft.
Methinks that you'd need to look for checksum routines, in that case. :P
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http://forums.qhimm.com/viewtopic.php?t=2335
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it wont make the blocky backrounds or skinnyelbows/hugeblockhands go away.
If I may, I'd like to direct you to \char.lgp\doga.hrc:
It's Tifa's hand, in higher detail. If somebody *really* wanted to, they could use it to create a hand model template. Then, they'd just have to replace every field skeleton's hands with their new model (which would involves lots of find/replace as well as modifying copies to match coloration and other defining characteristics of different model's hands.)
With what? Ultima? I still haven't gotten that program to work because the required DLL's never install right. Back when I did have interest in getting rid of those infernal skinny elbows I was going to try to take a stab at it. However, this may be all too impossible because of field .p models limitations. Or not.
We'd have to re-do a few animations too, such as the running animations. Imagine the run that cloud does with his field model used with the battle model. *shudders*
It's going to be hell to do anyways.
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Methinks that you'd need to look for checksum routines, in that case. :P
Quite likely. Which is something I hate doing. =P
With what? Ultima?
Actually, I was thinking someone could do most of it with a hex editor and mirex's .P doc. doha.hrc is in essence just a single .P file, which means the only real changes that need to be made to match different hands is vertex coloration on a case-by-case basis. Of course LPG tools, along with the Techdoc's HRC dumps would be the tool of for the actual find/replacing.
Yeah, Ultima probably would work, though. If Mirex finishes his .ASE importer (http://forums.qhimm.com/viewtopic.php?t=2309), Biturn might, too.
We'd have to re-do a few animations too, such as the running animations. Imagine the run that cloud does with his field model used with the battle model.
I'm not talking about doing a battle->field model replacement--just taking a higher detail field model and letting it have a bunch of kids. Of course, the kids are cannibals who eat their ancestors, but apparently that's just survival of the fittest. =D
Besides, since we've already deciphered the battle animation format (although converting to field animation would be another unbelievable headache) we *have* access to animations of battle Cloud running. Practically every melee attack involves him running up swiping, and then running backwards to his spot (if I was a lazy Square programmer in charge of the battle engine, I would have just made the animations playable in reverse...which, chances are, they did)
It's going to be hell to do anyways.
Which is why someone would *really* have to want to do this. :P
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This slowly turns into a FF7 remake topic :P
- Alhexx
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This slowly turns into a FF7 remake topic :P
- Alhexx
...............and that's a BAD thing?! :P
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no not at all
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Actually, it seems to me like this is turning into a razz thread. We sure have a lot of tongues sticking out around here.
-Srethron (tongue-in-cheek)