Messages

1

7th Heaven / Re: Getting 7th Heaven to Work on Wine

« on: 2020-06-08 14:14:10 »

Just a heads up: wine-staging 5.10 just landed in the repos and is even more borked, as in completely borked. Roll eyes. This has been going downhill since about 5.7 where the devs started messing up with the dll loading code. Just downgrade to the last functioning version, instruct pacman to not upgrade wine-staging (have to edit pacman.conf, see the arch wiki for the details). Probably, will have to wait a few versions until this whole mess is fixed.

2

General Discussion / Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] Multiple mods and Modding Framework-The Reunion [R06f]

« on: 2020-06-08 13:43:03 »

I'm sure this question has been asked a million times but this forum is complicated and difficult to navigate. I installed r06 without issue to a clean steam copy of FF7. However when I run the game the mods aren't working. I hear this may be a ddraw.dll issue but I don't know what that means or how to fix it.

In the off-chance that you are running FF7 through wine, then you must configure winecfg to load the builtin ddraw coming with Reunion.

On the other hand if, as it is most likely, you are on windows then I am sure the fine gentlemen here can help you.

3

7th Heaven / Re: Getting 7th Heaven to Work on Wine

« on: 2020-04-26 15:26:34 »

Wine 5.7 has landed on the Arch repos and confirming that now the game loads. But crashes on start of the game with a failed assertion deep in the bowels of the mulltithreading code, so stick to 5.4.

4

General Discussion / Re: [SPOILERS] FF7 remake discussion time!

« on: 2020-04-16 12:16:28 »

Sure, having the original FF7 with updated graphics and sound would be nice, but in my humble opinion what we got is much better than that. If I wanted to play a game that's exactly like the original but with better sound and graphics I can still play the original with community mods .

This strikes me as a fair position, but as I stated here http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=19696.msg274987#msg274987 it depends on the assumptions you bring to the discussion. One can turn the tables and ask the question: the original FF7 endured for more than 20 years as these forums are a testament. Novelty is the shallowest of aesthetic experiences and shinyness wears off fast; replay value, a vibrant modding scene that shows the enduring value of the original vision, etc. are the true testament to a game's quality. Will the remake endure 20 years? Only History, the finest and most accurate aesthetic judge we ever had, will tell.

5

Troubleshooting / Re: [SOLVED] 7th Heaven 2.0 mods via [FF7 PC 1998] & Wine

« on: 2020-04-13 19:02:39 »

Anyone, please? I really want to give it a try on my Manjaro instead of having to grub to windows (which I truly despise).

Make sure to follow all the instructions in the post where the details for installing 7H are -- not this post, it is somewhere in the forums, although my summary here in this thread is pretty accurate. Besides that, there is not much that I can say to help you besides this: even with mods it sometimes took wine <= 5.4 and 7H a couple of tries to load FF7. Try to start small, with just one mod, a small one in terms of memory footprint, and then go from there. Otherwise the only thing we linux users can do is wait for improvements in the graphics driver (as there are problems in Windows as well) and that wine fixes things -- it is well known that .NET has always been very iffy on linux. I have no idea what the problem is exactly or even how to go about diagnosing it and at this point do not have much time to look into this.

6

General Discussion / Re: [SPOILERS] FF7 remake discussion time!

« on: 2020-04-12 16:04:08 »

This subjective excuse creeps into every single debate and every time I call nonsense on it because it is.

What is even more bizarre is that no one even bothers to argue the position, they just state it. But absent an argument why should anyone accept it? And if one would try to assay an argument, that would be implicit acknowledgment that the matter can be adjudicated rationally, which is precisely what the position denies. It is likewise subjective, nothing but emoting, so it cannot be expressing a judgment, much less a true one.

My suspicion is that no one really believes this. They retreat into extreme relativism because neither do they like to see their opinions challenged -- and having poor taste, or being ignorant of great art, is not an indictment on the person's character', just like being ignorant of mathematics is not -- nor can they rationally articulate and defend them. But of course there are objective standards by which we measure the quality of any art piece, and therefore there is real knowledge to be had. Not of course, knowledge in the sense of the modern empirical sciences, and not at their level of rigor and precision, but still knowledge.

7

General Discussion / Re: [SPOILERS] FF7 remake discussion time!

« on: 2020-04-12 12:14:50 »

Part of the problem here is that people are talking at cross purposes, since they come with different assumptions to the discussion. If you view a game as mere entertainment and you just want to have a fun time in the X amount of hours you spend on it, then some of the criticisms expounded will mean nothing to you; on the other hand if you want something more out of the experience, a simple thing like a crappy plot device will probably tarnish it. If you think there is no fact of the matter about the quality of a game, that all opinions are equally valid and there is no real knowledge to be had, then a criticism, any criticism, may start to sound like "invalidating your experience" (to paraphrase someone on the thread); on the other hand, if you do think there are objective standards through which the quality of a game is to be measured, then the first questions you ought to be answering are what are those standards and how are they to be gauged. If you think fidelity to the original story, maybe even the mechanics (turn based with ATB is very different from action RPG), is an important factor since after all the game does bear FFVII in the title, then the deviations will matter; if you are not that concerned with fidelity, a paltry resemblance to the original will suffice and any deviations will probably be a welcomed novelty.

In the original game, Jessie is a minor character with very few lines. Her last lines are spoken on the stairs to the plate, and are a recognition of the stark effects of her actions and an acceptance of her fate. Through acceptance, she gains dignity, atones and redeems herself, and in redeeming herself she redeems all mankind. This is all done in a few lines of text. Is this Shakespeare? No, not really, but shows solid craftsmanship, an awareness of tragedy and real human sympathy by giving what is a minor character a moment to shine.

It seems in the remake they give Jessie much more airtime, even some flirting with Cloud (from a love-triangle to a love-square?). Avalanche's actions are not really terrorism because it is Shinra that eventually destroys the reactors and causes all the death and mayhem. It seems Jessie will not die, so she will not have a tragic end but neither will she have her redemption. Is this in any way better? Does it flesh out a real character, or is it just padding the game with cutscenes and dialogue? Does it even matter? It depends on how you answer the previous questions -- which themselves are subject to rational discussion, I should add. With the caveat that I have seen very little footage, it seems to me there is a real loss here in story quality, in tragic pathos. But then I am not going to buy the game anyway -- not because of any ill will towards it, but because I only have a PC and with not a powerful enough graphics card, and I have better things to do anyway.

8

General Discussion / Re: [SPOILERS] FF7 remake discussion time!

« on: 2020-04-11 22:57:14 »

Post deleted by me -- nothing interesting in it.

9

General Discussion / Re: [SPOILERS] FF7 remake discussion time!

« on: 2020-04-11 21:38:09 »

Oh well. We all love a trier eh. Please do better though.

It is hard to disagree with you here, and yet, for all its poorness, it is still infinitely wittier than your puerile schoolyard taunting.

10

General Discussion / Re: [SPOILERS] FF7 remake discussion time!

« on: 2020-04-11 19:37:06 »

Its not what you say its how you say it.

Really? So let us take this gem:

I mean, we got socially awkward, on the spectrum, basement virgins debating if Aerith is innocent or slutty... WTF!

And sure, Sephiroth is a transgender super soldier far less manly than y'all. You extremely macho folks. 

This thread is a hilarious pool of tears. And the salt... Oh my. I love it.

Stay triggered my friends, stay triggered.

Suppose I had responded: "I imagine the sense of humor varies. Personally I find it hilarious that a eunuch frog in a cape, that does not even rise to the indignity of being a basement wanker, is triggered by watching others getting triggered." The problem would be the tone or the content?

Look, I have no problems with insults flying and exploding everywhere. I have been in forums where it is a real jungle, and I dished it as much as I took. I am a big boy, so it is no skin off my back. At the same time -- and this is a purely personal reflection -- I am trying to tone down my natural aggressiveness to better reflect what I actually believe in, but let's not paper over it calling it "the way you said" when of course there were real insults.

11

Troubleshooting / Re: 7th Heaven 2.0 mods via [FF7 PC 1998] & Wine

« on: 2020-04-09 22:44:27 »

If you check the forums there is a post specifically getting 7th heaven to work with wine -- that is the good news. Summary: make a 64bit prefix, install dotnet452 with winetricks and set windows version to 7. The bad news is that I am seeing the same thing: it worked with wine 5.4 it does not work anymore, so this seems to be a regression in wine. I have no solution atm.

note(s):
- I use wine-staging but I do not think that matters.
- Reunion still works, but then you loose the better mod availability.

12

General Discussion / Re: [SPOILERS] FF7 remake discussion time!

« on: 2020-04-08 10:35:18 »

Just as a point of clarification and a parting shot, because as I said this is not a fight I want to have: I did not use the word "hot", Orichalcon did; I used the word "beautiful". Every man has had the experience of finding a woman beautiful without having his lust aroused (now, there's a double entendre for you), especially if you are past a certain age, are weary and jaded, to the point where virtue and exhaustion are indistinguishable. Neither do I disagree with DPLB's characterization of the love triangle, which I do not, I just disagreed with his assessment of Aerith (the "tart" part) in the remake -- from the little I have seen of the trailers, that is.

And Barret's histrionics are really awful (in one of the review's someone said a "bad impression of Mr. T". Ah!) And Cloud does look like a dweeb. And I do not like action RPG's. And the parallel universe storylines with overseers, quite apart from the fidelity to the original story, is a crap plot device inserted to give the authors leeway to retcon willy-nilly, with no rhyme or reason. And I have better things to do anyway.

13

General Discussion / Re: [SPOILERS] FF7 remake discussion time!

« on: 2020-04-07 22:24:34 »

This is not my battle as I have no intention to buy the game, but one obvious weakness of making the game more realistic is that character acting stands out much more, and from the what I have seen of the trailers it can be atrocious: Barret's histrionics are so damned awful... I will say though that, contrary to DPLB, I do find Aerith very beautiful and not slutish in any way, shape or form.

14

Releases / Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.5)

« on: 2020-03-29 01:35:29 »

I have tried multiple ways, both New Threat and New Threat Vanilla combat, to install this with the bundle gameplay mod that is included in 7th Heaven 2.0's default list.  It never installs correctly.  Only by downloading the file from here and installing it individually, but still via 7th Heaven 2.0, was I able to install it correctly.

For whatever is worth, I have used the regular install, the reunion install and 7th heaven and all worked out of the box (7th heaven has some known problems, but those are not NT specific). What you are describing sounds like a mod conflict -- so you probably should tell what is this "bundle gameplay mod that is included in 7th Heaven 2.0's default list" and people here might offer some help.

15

7th Heaven / Re: Getting 7th Heaven to Work on Wine

« on: 2020-03-24 19:59:24 »

I have done more or less the same, with a few major differences:

(1) I have not installed vcrun2010. It seems to make no difference (note: arch is a rolling release, so I get the latest development version of wine to run 7th heaven and steam proton to run ff7), and my *impression* is that actually it makes things worse (more unstable) but YMMV.

(2) Used cdemu to load the iso that comes the 7th heaven. Maybe I have not done things right, but messing with the drives in winecfg did not work for me. And cdemu is very useful anyway.

(3) Never used Lutris, did not even know it existed!

Later edit: by the way, none of the ln commands should need sudo as both source and destiny are under the home folder, so the owner should have read/write permissions (unless you have been doing something funky weird).

16

7th Heaven / Re: A couple of questions on 7th Heaven

« on: 2020-03-24 12:09:50 »

I guess I'm not understanding you. Worst case, you should just be able to directly type the names on the keyboard that you want. Backspace deletes, escape gets the cursor out of the character selection screen I believe, and enter should confirm the name or take the cursor over to the options on the right.

Sorry, my bad for not being more explicit. Almost everything you say works, including entering names directly, backspace, etc. but: when setting up the game I chose steam keyboard (or whatever it is called) which maps the 4 directions to the four arrows and the ok/confirm to x. But in the name selection screen only the numpad keys work and to select/confirm had to hit numpad enter not the x key. The same when Flash0429 taught me how to instruct 7th Heaven to load my customized setup key: the directional keys do not work, the ok key does not work, only the numpad keys.

As I said this is a very minor inconvenience, as it only concerns the name selection screen. And maybe I am misunderstanding things and this is by design, say because a user could remap the directional keys to *any* keyboard keys (e.g. say the rogue set because he is an old-school fan of rogue-likes) and then screw up entering names directly, but it does strike me as odd.

17

7th Heaven / Re: A couple of questions on 7th Heaven

« on: 2020-03-24 01:33:40 »

The solution to your first question is the same as the second. Game Launcher settings as explained in last post unless I'm misunderstanding something.

I was afraid it might be, but then got to test it when Aeris joined, and no, it does not work. Only the numpad keys work, neither the custom steam keyboard (which was my first setup until Flash0429 made me realize there was a small save button in there) nor my customized setup which by then was already being loaded by 7th Heaven -- but I will test it again once I get Red XIII.

18

7th Heaven / Re: A couple of questions on 7th Heaven

« on: 2020-03-23 17:52:36 »

Thanks. Now that you have pointed it out it is obvious. That just leaves the first question, but that is more of a minor minor nuisance than anything else.

19

7th Heaven / A couple of questions on 7th Heaven

« on: 2020-03-23 15:06:43 »

Finally managed to get 7th Heaven to work on my arch linux -- well sort of. The program is a bit wonky (but .NET is known to be very iffy in linux). Sometimes it refuses to load ff7 with code 5 errors (and code 5 fix does not fix anything) and sometimes it crashes when transitioning screens (but this seems to be a persistent problem only solvable with heavy work on the driver).

Anyway, what I want to ask are the following newbie-ish questions. For input I use the keyboard, and I have the following two problems:

1. When selecting names for characters, my customized setup does not work, not even the original steam works, but only the numpad. Is there a way to fix this?

2. More grievously, every time I reload the game I have to re-customize the original steam to my preferred setup (as well as the sound volumes). Is there a way to make these persistent through saves?

Thanks in advance.

20

Releases / Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.5)

« on: 2020-03-19 16:15:29 »

Ok, thanks for all the answers on Morph-ing. I knew that in vanilla there was a heavy damage penalty and that Yuffie's conformer bypasses it, but given the extra importance of morphs in getting good items on the mod (as evinced by the enemy spreadsheet) I thought maybe there was a trick I was missing.

On a completely unrelated note. Maybe this is not the best thread but I will just go ahead and ask anyway. I am on linux (arch linux to be precise) and can run ff7 with the new threat installer through wine just fine -- which is the most important to me, but I am missing on all the audio and graphical improvement mods, because all my attempts at installing either Reunion or 7th Heaven have failed. Has anyone here managed to get them running? And if yes, what were the precise steps you took? Or more modestly, has anybody a link to someone somewhere that has managed it, because my google fu is weak and has turned up nothing.

21

Releases / Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.5)

« on: 2020-03-18 14:37:39 »

Newbie question: when morph-ing I only do damage in the double digits (start of the game, just reached Costa del Sol). Is this normal damage or is there some way to make morph more effective? Because as it is, I have to waste several turns to whittle down about 100 damage as about then every attack outright kills. I have not tried it yet but if gravity is percentage damage (of *current* hp) it could help, the problem is that so many enemies are immune to it.