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Miscellaneous Forums => Scripting and Reverse Engineering => Topic started by: Goku7 on 2004-07-03 02:38:17

Title: *looks through XG.lgp* Hey, what are THESE doing here?!
Post by: Goku7 on 2004-07-03 02:38:17

Ok, so far I've really only looked through xg.lgp, but I think it's safe to assume these two files are in the other MIDI datasets as well (ygm, AWE, and MIDI.lgp).

Yes, I'm well aware that comical.mid is unused, and that practically NOBODY has any idea why they kept it in there.  That file, though, is not what I'm talking about.

It's these two files:  "fin.mid" (file 33), and "oa.mid" (file 58).

Ok, the first one -- "fin.mid".  It appears to be the musical score from the ending FMV, in MIDI format.  As we know, the PC version has the score from the PSX version built-in to the audio track of the PC FMV version.  So it begs the question:  WHY?  It's redundant!  :P

Same thing with the first minute or so of "oa.mid", before it jumps into the bombing mission music.  The first part of it is the MIDI version of the musical accompaniment of the opening FMV.  Again, it's practically never used or heard in-game, though the latter part of it is -- it IS definitely the bombing music track file that is used in the beginning, as opposed to it just using ob.mid (which is just the bombing mission music -- this track, I believe, is used for the rest of the times in the game when this music plays).

I would imagine that the first part of oa.mid is actually played simultaneously with the FMV, just muted.  Then, with some accurate timing, they fade in the already-playing MIDI file (via the program's internal volume control, I'm guessing), right as the FMV's backround music ends, giving you a nearly seemless transition from FMV audio track to in-game MIDI track.

Regardless, that still doesn't explain fin.mid's existance -- the song in its entirety is already part of the FMV's audio.  So....any ideas?

Title: *looks through XG.lgp* Hey, what are THESE doing here?!
Post by: Aaron on 2004-07-03 03:39:35

Here's my theory:

Whoever was in charge of converting all of the PSX music to MIDI files did those songs as well, and when they weren't used, no one bothered to take them out. :P

Title: *looks through XG.lgp* Hey, what are THESE doing here?!
Post by: Darkdevil on 2004-07-03 08:02:05

Remember, There is another peice of redundant music in the game.  I don't remember its name off hand, but its a lively jig.  If it helps it's listed in (I think) LGP tools under the music player mode as "Not Used in Game?" I think...

Perhaps what we have here, is another part of the game Squeenix took out before release.....We already have the premise of a

Spoiler: show

Reviving scene/fmv for Aeris/th

so its completely possible we have some music from a section that was taken out of the game, or infact music left in after the story was changed.  This would make sense as Goku said one is the end of the intro FMV leading into the bombing fun music.  Perhaps that was the original premise for the opening scene, and it was one of the very many things that were changed.

Just my ideas, correct me if ive said anything out of place here.

Title: *looks through XG.lgp* Hey, what are THESE doing here?!
Post by: halkun on 2004-07-03 12:35:27

You know, I swear, every stupid theory about whats-her-name is absolutly and utterly false. What transpired is exactly what was supposed to happen and there was nothing that was going to change it later on in the game. Give it a rest, she's fish food!

Heck, even with Advent Children she's *STILL* fish food. You would think that with a budget of millions of dollars and a chance to make a "do-over" The fact still remains that she's at the bottom of the lake and isn't coming back.

I'm looking at pretty much all the event scripting code involving that charatcer and there is no cruft I can see that even remotly suggests what you are saying.

There as a lot of cruft too!

I love going through the event scripts, I want to lay this roumor to rest once and for all.

Title: *looks through XG.lgp* Hey, what are THESE doing here?!
Post by: Darkdevil on 2004-07-03 14:43:15

How come she has speach later on in the game, all the way up untill disc 3 ?
¬_¬

Im not saying there is, im not saying there isn't, all im saying is that there are a few things that raise the wtf flag with the "deleted scenes" that pop up now and again...

Title: *looks through XG.lgp* Hey, what are THESE doing here?!
Post by: halkun on 2004-07-03 16:05:05

I'll let you know when I get the the disk 3 events, I'm still working on the debug rooms.

Title: *looks through XG.lgp* Hey, what are THESE doing here?!
Post by: Sukaeto on 2004-07-03 22:57:09

She DOESN'T have speech later on in the game.  When you put her in your party with tools like Qhimm's, and she talks, she's just saying things that one of the other characters is SUPPOSED to say during that event.

I've seen a few of these screenshots of Aeris speaking after Disc 1, most of what she says is actually what Vincent would say if he were in your party at that time.

Title: *looks through XG.lgp* Hey, what are THESE doing here?!
Post by: EmperorSteele on 2004-07-03 23:48:11

Maybe fin.mid was added just for the fun of it?  Or like someone said, people being lazy and dumping the whole thing.

"comical" doesn't sound like it'd be used in a resurection sequence.  It sounds more like a "cait sith/yuffie" song.  And i'm sure there WERE deleted scenes, or parts that never made it into the game (such as the "secret cave" in coral valley on the way to the ancient capitol).  Though i don't think a resurection sequence was one of them.

Perhaps the song was supposed to be used at some point, but they decided to go with something else?  I can see this song being used when you confront Yuffie after your battle with her.. its got the same kinda jibe.

Title: *looks through XG.lgp* Hey, what are THESE doing here?!
Post by: Goku7 on 2004-07-04 01:48:42

Quote from: Darkdevil

Remember, There is another peice of redundant music in the game.  I don't remember its name off hand, but its a lively jig.  If it helps it's listed in (I think) LGP tools under the music player mode as "Not Used in Game?" I think...

You're probably thinking of "comical.mid"; but I've already mentioned that file in my first post.  Though technically, it wouldn't be redundant UNLESS its already being used as an audio track to one of the FMVs, and since it isn't, its not redundant. :P  Just unused.

Quote

Perhaps what we have here, is another part of the game Squeenix took out before release.....We already have the premise of a

Spoiler: show

Reviving scene/fmv for Aeris/th

so its completely possible we have some music from a section that was taken out of the game, or infact music left in after the story was changed.  This would make sense as Goku said one is the end of the intro FMV leading into the bombing fun music.  Perhaps that was the original premise for the opening scene, and it was one of the very many things that were changed.

Ok, wait a minute -- are you refering to the two files I brought up, or something else?  Because the two files I brought up are from scenes that did make it into the game, its just that 1 & 1/2 of them are already FMV audio tracks. :P

-edit-

And about raising the dead -- unless cloud and company bought all the Time Materia that the world has, fused it into a chunk of Huge Materia, and used it to open a time/space rift to correct the biggest mistake of that fateful day, I don't think there'll be any revival scene. :D

Title: *looks through XG.lgp* Hey, what are THESE doing here?!
Post by: halkun on 2004-07-04 02:01:35

Ok, you guys made me go and edit a script so I could play the credits...

The original PSX version was't did not have music playing in the background, actually, it wasn't an FMV at all.

I'm thinking that they just tossed in all the dependencies into the LGP file and let the script sort it out.

The credits are called with a SPECIAL command (Kernel function). So they just probably changed the kernel hook to play an FMV as opposed to haveing to reprogram a credits subfunction.

You know, you guys really have to jump into this scripting language. I really don't want to be the only one who knows how it works ;_; It's so lonely.

Title: *looks through XG.lgp* Hey, what are THESE doing here?!
Post by: Goku7 on 2004-07-04 02:07:05

I'm not talking about the credits, but the main FMV that shows how they get out of the Northern Crater and encounter Meteor, etc.  THAT FMV's musical score/audio track is the one that fin.mid is redudant for.

Title: *looks through XG.lgp* Hey, what are THESE doing here?!
Post by: halkun on 2004-07-04 02:41:34

Oh, in that case, the answer still stands. You have to remeber that the people who ported the game were not the same people who made the game. They probably had no clue that that song wasn't used, but included it anyway was it was in the PSX version. Soneone probably added the muic post-production and then some QA tester noticed that the music was playing twice. Then a programmer disabled the call from the script, but left the music in, just in case.

Title: *looks through XG.lgp* Hey, what are THESE doing here?!
Post by: trickstar66 on 2004-07-04 16:07:18

You know, I don't know why people were sad that

Spoiler: show

Aeris dies

I wasn't sad when Selphie and Irvine never shagged in FF8 or thinking about making a patch or make them (which by the way, would make it a hentai game) :lol:  What? Are real girls not pretty enough? Forget it! She doesn't even help the story out! It's just a useless character like Yuffie! If

Spoiler: show

Yuffie died

you wouldn't be crying now would you? Tifa would probably be the only real problem if

Spoiler: show

she died

because she's a big chunk in the past. It's not as bad as someone actually

Spoiler: show

dying

but yet you've been

Spoiler: show

mourning

a bunch of polygons and textures for about 7 years! If she was of any importance, would she

Spoiler: show

die

so early? Not even Cloud cared that she had

Spoiler: show

died

by the end of the game. And you've finished the game about 4 billion times over haven't you?

Note: Not trying to start a flame war.  Just trying to inform the general public on why Aeris (or Aerith which sounds like a brand of pill for menopause which is what most Aeris

Spoiler: show

mourners

have because they won't stop bitching 7 years later.)

Spoiler: show

dies.

Title: *looks through XG.lgp* Hey, what are THESE doing here?!
Post by: Darkdevil on 2004-07-04 17:32:19

¬_¬ black squares > you

Title: *looks through XG.lgp* Hey, what are THESE doing here?!
Post by: halkun on 2004-07-04 18:35:03

You know, I think we have all played these games, you don't have to worry about saying that Aerith is dead when we all know it and planly put it in other postings. If you are that worried about it, make spolier space, but those black boxes are annoying as hell. The board is about the techncical aspects of the game. I rip apart field files on a daily basis and look at the guts of every single aspect of the game. Most everyone here guts the game in one way or another.

Could you tone it down a notch?

Title: *looks through XG.lgp* Hey, what are THESE doing here?!
Post by: fa_pa on 2004-07-04 19:55:30

hm i think its just garbage they left in because they were to lazy to remove it. in many games you can find such things like never used placeholder textures old sound files etc

Title: *looks through XG.lgp* Hey, what are THESE doing here?!
Post by: Topher on 2004-07-04 23:18:38

Quote from: trickstar66

you've been mourning a bunch of polygons and textures for about 7 years!

Aren't the characters vertex-shaded, not textured? Except for the eyes, that is. :P

Title: *looks through XG.lgp* Hey, what are THESE doing here?!
Post by: Darkdevil on 2004-07-05 07:27:15

Quote from: Lord Ramza

Quote from: trickstar66

you've been mourning a bunch of polygons and textures for about 7 years!

Aren't the characters vertex-shaded, not textured? Except for the eyes, that is. :P

That was some excelent pwnage of Trickstar then XD

Title: *looks through XG.lgp* Hey, what are THESE doing here?!
Post by: trickstar66 on 2004-07-05 15:45:17

I really think it's about time people let go. I wasn't this annoying when my grandfather died!! :lol:  It's fictional!!! Your family isn't!! She wasn't even that hot!! :wink:

As for the junk left in video games, play FF5 in ZSNES and disable some layers. You'll see what mean. So much crap under what's actually visible!! I don't even leave that much shit in my RPG Maker 2000 games... :)

Title: *looks through XG.lgp* Hey, what are THESE doing here?!
Post by: Cyberman on 2004-07-05 17:48:02

Geesh... mourning polygons... this is really scarey people! LOL

Well in any case (ahem), stop obsession over data that's left in.

Dosage of reality for people ;) (I'm good at that), if it's not broken do not fix it.  IE they probably wrote a utility that did a char blanc conversion to the PC (IE SEE TOOLS) from what they had from the PSX developement team.  They found a bug 'music playing in stereo and it's slightly out of sync' OR 'music playing in background during movie doesn't sound right damn it' 'lets put it in the AVI instead!' 'Disable the playing of that score though'
This is how stuff happens, deal with it, it's not the end of the world.  They had a time constraint and in such nothing is perfect LOL.

Cyb

Title: *looks through XG.lgp* Hey, what are THESE doing here?!
Post by: sfx1999 on 2004-07-05 18:41:13

Vertex shaded? What does that mean? Is that when you calculate the light for each vertex and then interpolate it?

Title: *looks through XG.lgp* Hey, what are THESE doing here?!
Post by: Cyberman on 2004-07-05 18:44:28

Quote from: sfx1999

Vertex shaded? What does that mean? Is that when you calculate the light for each vertex and then interpolate it?

The polygons consist of 3 or 4 vertices each having a color.  Guroud shading is used to blend the color from one vertex point to another on the polygon giving it a smooth appearance.

Cyb

Title: *looks through XG.lgp* Hey, what are THESE doing here?!
Post by: EmperorSteele on 2004-07-07 21:46:47

Yeah, basically what that means is, you know how you can change your menu color by selecting colors for the 4 corners Under CONFIG?

Every single one of the polys in the game is also colored like this.

Which explains why you have some tripped-out funkadelic enemies, like those rainbow-bug things in Wutai.  The designers got a little bored, t'would seem =P

Getting back on topic, it's too bad we can't see what's been done, THEN erased/altered in terms of programming.  That way, we could see where comical.mid was SUPPOSED to be.  I always figgured it to be Zack's theme, if anything.  I dont think they were so sloppy as to leave prgraming fragmetns all over the place.  Though i wish they did... not that i'd be able to do much witht hat, of course, but it'd be fun to ahve proof of extra sceens and locations.. *sigh8

Title: *looks through XG.lgp* Hey, what are THESE doing here?!
Post by: Goku7 on 2004-07-07 21:52:52

Ok, now I've got another question.

What, exactly, does FF7 use to signify the loop points in the MIDI files?  I went and extracted fan2.mid (the victory fanfare), because I needed to get rid of that 1 second delay on the start of the song (did that by copying the version from ygm.lgp to xg.lgp), modify the drum set that was being used,and increase the reverb on it up to max in order to more emulate what it sounds like on PSX.

So, I do that, save, and re-intergrate the edited file into XG.LGP, and test it out in game....only to find that at some point the loop point information was lost.  So, now I need some help trying to figure out how they did it in the first place.

Title: *looks through XG.lgp* Hey, what are THESE doing here?!
Post by: halkun on 2004-07-07 21:58:47

It uses a MIDI control code as a pointer. I don't know what it is, you will have to do a MIDI data dump and see if there are any unsusal undefined control codes being used.

That's how they looped in RPGMaker

Title: *looks through XG.lgp* Hey, what are THESE doing here?!
Post by: Goku7 on 2004-07-07 22:04:52

Hmm....could it possibly be found in SysEx data, or should I just be focusing on the normal MIDI controller data inside the actual tracks?

IIRC.....I remember using CakeWalk on what might have been a dumped MIDI from FF7...they had these little "Flags" above the track display in places which turned out to correspond to the loop points.

It was sorta obvious, though, as those flags were labled "LoopStart" and "LoopEnd", if memory serves.

Alas, I don't have CakeWalk anymore (it was a demo version I think), and my current MIDI sequencer doesn't appear to display those flags like CakeWalk did.

Furthermore.....is there any chance that LGP tools somehow parsed that loop data during extraction?

Title: *looks through XG.lgp* Hey, what are THESE doing here?!
Post by: halkun on 2004-07-07 22:29:21

I'm sure they are intact. It's part of a standard midi file. I'm guessing that that midi program just wrote out the notes and excluded all the contol codes it doidn't understand