Messages

1

Archive / Question about Vincent bug (SPOILERS)

« on: 2006-12-30 16:07:09 »

One of the more annoying bugs I found in FF7 (since it makes a perfect game seem a little bit less perfect  ).

When you go to Forgotten City, down where Aeris dies...
If you have Vincent with you at that point, his world model is totally weird. He holds one of his legs horizontal and his cape is standing straight up, as if he was falling down through the air.

I'm using PC version, 1.02, and chocobo patch, I also checked v1.00 .exe and it's the same story.

I already mentioned the bug in a remake topic 3 years ago, but now I'm trying to get more specific with the bug itself.

My question is, has anyone else encountered this bug? Has it been fixed somewhere? Does the PSX version also have it? It seems that wrong model is used or something.

2

Releases / [BETA RELEASE] Higher Resolution FFVIIPC [v1.00] - Part II

« on: 2006-03-12 11:07:28 »

Here's a screenshot of a scaler, that is based on hq2x. I don't know if that means it's the same, but here goes:

http://freeweb.siol.net/rmihor/scalers/2x%20vs%20hq2x.png

Note that here the original image was hand-drawn and the result might be better for FF7.

3

Releases / [BETA RELEASE] Higher Resolution FFVIIPC [v1.00] - Part II

« on: 2006-03-11 18:33:32 »

EmperorSteele:
yes, the HQ works just like a filter - drop in an image and get a larger version of it. Scaled in a special way that retains sharpness and smooth lines. The examples you and Borde showed, are very blurred. I'd say that HQ works much better than that. I'll try to post an example tomorrow (if I'll get it to work).

Borde:
backgrounds are a collection of polys... That sure complicates things. But I don't think any kind of filtering on them will produce a good result, especially when you take those edge artifacts into consideration.

Shaher:
Exactly. HQ would work best if you just gave it a low resolution image and let it do the scaling. An extra layer, to put it simply. So, that kind of patch would be different than what SaiNt made. It would only take the original 320 or 640 image and scale it, so it would work as a wrapper, that adds an extra layer. I think it would work like a charm, especially since FF7 would leave a lot of free CPU on today's computers. Unfortunetely, I'm only a beginner programmer and have not the knowledge to make it.

4

Releases / [BETA RELEASE] Higher Resolution FFVIIPC [v1.00] - Part II

« on: 2006-03-10 11:33:24 »

Beautiful patch, SaiNt!

BTW, have you checked these out (wink, wink ):

scale 2x
http://www.hiend3d.com/hq2x.html

scale 3x
http://www.hiend3d.com/hq3x.html

scale 4x
http://www.hiend3d.com/hq4x.html

100% asm optimized code is available (among other versions).

5

Releases / [BETA RELEASE] Higher Resolution FFVIIPC [v1.00]

« on: 2005-10-30 20:39:43 »

"The Ur-Quan Masters" (sort-of remake of Star Control II) has five scaler options. Perhaps a demonstration is in order. I took screens and bunched them together in this .gif, with no quality loss. The scaler names are as they appear in options. The first image is just a direct x2 scale, the other four are x2 scale using scalers.

http://freeweb.siol.net/rmihor/scalers/scalers.gif

My point is: a well-chosen scaling algorithm can do miracles. For FF7, as well. The biggest change can be made here, SaiNt, since it would improve the backgrounds. Bilinear looks too blurry to me. "biadapt" and "biadv" seem like a much better choice. And "triscan" preserves sharpness better than the other.

UQM link: http://sc2.sourceforge.net
Source code is available for download, so perhaps you could check out those scalers, eh They all seem to be fast, as well.


EDIT: images seem to misbehave all of a sudden... adding a direct link to the image

6

Archive / New Hardcore Mod

« on: 2005-09-17 08:28:39 »

one thing im not sure on is should i increase the health of standard monsters.

I wouldn't, but it's your call.

7

Archive / New Hardcore Mod

« on: 2005-09-12 09:32:25 »

elemental defense not damage..

Oops... sorry about that.

stops players from doing stupid stuff like ice on a metal boss who would just shrug it off in real life

So you're thinking of a complete overhaul? I was more hoping for a simple difficulty increase to start with... Perhaps someone won't like all these changes and would only want difficulty increase, it would be nice to have that patch first, and then upgrade it further to the next level, having both versions available.

you would think that a boss with full magic def would be immune to magic.. but it doesn't work that way

I was hoping for the same thing when morphing for those sources... didn't turn out as good as I hoped I always wondered how Ruby Weapon can then be so resistant to physical attacks and assumed that monster statistics work different than players...

hehe .. imagine having to fight more than one of those basterds.. i know i would lose

You could increase it to two. I wouldn't mind

8

Archive / New Hardcore Mod

« on: 2005-09-08 14:26:11 »

Just noticed one thing: if you give all enemies elemental damage, it will make the game easier, not harder. The player will just figure out the element in the first battle, and then equip absorb equippment. He will become invincible to that monster, effectively. And if ALL monsters will allow for such twinking, the game will become a joke. Physical and non-elemental DMG are the only way to go, if you want the monsters to really be more powerful.

Actually, having played Elementor's patch up until Cloud's flashback I think that his patch was just right. He did change hitpoints and damage but that didn't necessarilly make the fights longer, maybe one or two rounds longer for normal enemies.

Two rounds more than... original two or three rounds?

9

Archive / New Hardcore Mod

« on: 2005-09-08 08:35:55 »

You must beware of overdoing it. A creature must be beatable in many ways, if you make it so resistant that only a few strategies work, then all the people that don't know the game damn well will get shafted. That's OK with Weapons, but not much else.

what do yous think about 100% or 50% win & steal rates??

Win rates are fine as it is. Perhaps raise them slightly? Steal rates should be increased somewhat, but certanly not as high as 50%. I also fail to see, what this has to do with increasing difficulty. It reduces it, if anything.

also im thinking about significantly increasing each creatures unique feature.. so if a creature is meant to be fast he will become extreamly fast.

There are too many creatures to make them really unique based on the (few) stats. I also think you should focus on simple changes that make the biggest difference first, instead of starting a huge task of fine-tuning each creature right away. It might take a bit too long and I'd personally like a mod that's not half-complete as so many others.

That's why I suggested only two simple changes to start with, which are really all you need for a good start, and you can continue from there, if you'll still be up to it.

10

Archive / New Hardcore Mod

« on: 2005-09-07 20:34:49 »

Hi, smithie! Here's what I'd like:
 - enemies deal increased damage (x2) - Weapon monsters excluded
 - increase Sephiroth hitpoints (1,000,000+)

That's all that's really neccessary. Increased enemy damage means enough added pressure and challenge in battles.

Here's what I would NOT like:
 - increased enemy hitpoints (except Sephiroth), since prolonged battles would impact the game's great fluidness - short battles are fun and there's plenty of them to make up for that anyway
 - added draining enemy attacks (as suggested by Kinseek above), since it effectively means exactly the same as adding hitpoints - prolonged battles

11

Releases / [BETA RELEASE] Higher Resolution FFVIIPC [v1.00]

« on: 2005-08-12 16:30:53 »

Even higher resolutions are possible but I wish to make one that completely works on this resolution first.

SaiNt, your patch is fantastic. I hope you will add the 1600x1200 resolution :love:

12

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Engine building. If we make it, will they come?

« on: 2005-01-19 10:45:52 »

I think the guys making CT:R made a serious mistake: they were about to, with their project, make freely available a game, that is in all aspects better copy of the original, AND (if I remember correctly?), it being functional did not require the original game.
So if you can make the new engine unconditionaly require the original game (data?) to function... But then again, big companies sometimes just shut down projects for no good reason at all, so I can't say anything for sure

This is, as someone may or may not have said, more of a technology demostration. Sort of like writing an emulator, but emulating the game environment instead of the console environment.

One thing: the PS emulator needs the BIOS, which isn't supplied with it. So officialy, the thing doesn't work and is not supposed to. That makes it pretty safe from being shut down, don't you think? An emulator of a software enviroment might not have that luxury, though. Except if you successfuly translate the concepts: BIOS >>> original game data?

13

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / "Gears" - The FF7 Documentaion Project

« on: 2004-06-27 14:43:48 »

halkun:
In case it helps any, I remember one PC version bug: Ribbon, when equipped, not only protects you from negative statuses, but also from Haste. I hate that bug

14

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / ReWriting the FF7 Engine

« on: 2004-06-25 10:13:49 »

Cyberman: the movies should work fine in any format as it is. Mine are divx5 with mp3 audio and they work perfectly (and yes, I do own 3 original copies of the game, in case anyone wondered - I'm not joking here ). We only need the filtering and perhaps higher color depth

15

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / ReWriting the FF7 Engine

« on: 2004-06-24 18:07:07 »

A project, well worth the effort. It'd make the best game of all times work decently once again.
If you made it, perhaps it wouldn't be too complicated to enable/include movie and background filtering too? Since that could count as a full remake in terms of quality improvement
Makes me wish I wasn't just a beginner programmer

16

Archive / [ff7pc] Hidden AA modes in ForceWare 52.16

« on: 2003-12-14 09:28:13 »

I've a question about ALL of these AA modes in FF7: does any of them NOT screw up the backgrounds?

17

Archive / Help needed, FF7 with 45.23 detonators and AA, please

« on: 2003-10-25 09:11:35 »

So do you guys know a way to get rid of those squares on the backgrounds when using AA? I'd really appreciate it

18

Archive / Help needed, FF7 with 45.23 detonators and AA, please

« on: 2003-10-23 17:50:03 »

I tried 43.51 detonators and at first thought they work - got into hardware mode and the fonts were OK. Luckily, I checked a save from world map, to find out the sea has no textures (deep water type surface was just one white plane). Didn't even try to manage AA after seeing such horrors . Besides, when I restarted computer, it was throwing me back to the desktop just like with 45.23. I gave up and reinstalled 30.82. You won't be able to convince me to try another version for a long time ... BUT, now I must ask you about this:

(if you use old Detonator 30.82, you can disable "texture sharpening" and AF, then enable "multisample masking". FF7 should work fine with 4xS AA)

Well, the texture sharpening cannot even be enabled, and I assured AF was disabled. I tried 4xS AA then, but it was just as I remember from when I tried this last: the backgrounds (and fonts) were a horrible mess of colored-border squares. It was the same with 'multisample masking' enabled or disabled (OK, it was a bit better with enabled, but still...). Help? :weep:

19

Archive / Help needed, FF7 with 45.23 detonators and AA, please

« on: 2003-10-23 14:24:59 »

Yes, I used RivaTuner 2.0 RC14 all along. In fact, it's my first time using a RivaTuner at all, I downloaded it yesterday ... Can't anyone figure out what could be wrong? I want AA and AF

20

Archive / Help needed, FF7 with 45.23 detonators and AA, please

« on: 2003-10-23 12:31:49 »

Cyrus XIII:
I tried your patch before I even posted this thread - it ended the same .

halohalo:

If you want to use FF7.exe from TNT patch, don't check the option "NVIDIA" in FF7config and enable DX7 8bit paletted textures support with Riva Tuner at the same time. The two option conflicts.

I know. That's my point, as I mentioned, the game worked with 30.82 detonators and the settings you mention here, but doesn't with the newest detonators installed. Seemingly 30.82 already had 8-bit texture support, since the config said 'pass'. I only disabled the 8-bit textures and used 'NVIDIA', 'TNT' option in config to fix messed-up fonts (and it worked).
But, now that I have 45.23 detonators, the config always says 'fail' for 8-bit textures, it doesn't matter if I enable or disable them with RivaTuner. I mentioned this, it is why I wrote that the 'NVIDIA' box (sort of) has to be enabled.

Because new Detonators have 8bit paletted textures support, you should use original FF7.exe.

OK, I tried it - no difference. And I tried with 8-bit textures enabled and disabled, but as I said, the config said 'fail' in both cases. I also tried the old config. Failed, of course. It shoots back to the desktop just the same.

Maybe you can reinstall Detonator 45.23 and see if 8bit paletted textures support works correctly (You have to enable it with rivatuner)

... I'm not sure I understand... I believe I uninstalled previous detonators completely, so what could be wrong... you mean I should check if the 8-bit textures work correctly - with what? I did enable them with RivaTuner if that's what you mean.

(if you use old Detonator 30.82, you can disable "texture sharpening" and AF, then enable "multisample masking". FF7 should work fine with 4xS AA)

Wow, thanks! I'll gladly try that - if we cannot solve the situation with 45.23 detonators. I would just like to get optimal graphics in FF7. By the way, I don't really understand what anisotropic filtering does - it smoothens the textures? Does it really improve the graphics that much? I'd like to try to solve 45.23 because as I understand I cannot get nice AF in FF7 using 30.82?
I'd also like to ask you what effect would AF have on backgrounds, fonts and movies.

Thanks!

21

Archive / Help needed, FF7 with 45.23 detonators and AA, please

« on: 2003-10-22 16:40:57 »

I'm running FF7 v1.02 (both .exe and config) with Chocobo Patch on Windows ME, so far I used GF4 Ti4200 with 30.82 detonators and DirectX 8.1. Today, I found a really useful topic on these forums that helped me repair the screwed fonts in hardware mode (disabling 8-bit textures for DX7 applications with RivaTuner). I also wanted to try the antialiasing, which should work correctly according to
http://forums.qhimm.com/viewtopic.php?t=2477&sid=ad6bbeae1fb44be55d7ecb7e85760965
(posts by halohalo)

So I uninstalled the 30.82 detonators using uninstalation and Detonator Destroyer, and then installed the 45.23 detonators. I wanted to try the 2x2 AA. But, I cannot run the game in hardware mode at all. The 'NVIDIA' box has to be checked in both cases; 8-bit textures enabled or not, since the config always says 'fail' there, and I also tried to force 2x2 AA and to disable antialiasing completely. I even tried to choose 'RIVA128' instead of 'TNT' in the config.
In every case, the screen goes black, of course, when the game is launched, but it immediately darts back to desktop without any error message. :weep:

With previous detonators it worked in both cases: with 8-bit textures enabled ('NVIDIA' box disabled), which produced messed-up fonts, and with 8-bit textures disabled ('NVIDIA' box checked, 'TNT' selected), which worked fine in every way except AA. The RivaTuner only listed about five AA options with 30.82 detonators, 2x2 and 8xS were NOT included - that's why I decided to upgrade the detonators in the first place. Now I have those choices, but cannot run the game in hardware mode at all ...

I would really like the game to work with AA without messing up backgrounds, fonts... it would suppress my wish for a remake for a while
Also, what's the Rendition patch halohalo mentioned?

Please help. Thanks!

22

General Discussion / FF7 Remake

« on: 2003-10-11 10:03:51 »

Only Square can rerender the backgrounds, providing they didn't delete the scene definitions after rendering them as they are now. Ironically, Square would have so little to do, to make an awesome FF7PC remake. They probably have the definitions for backgrounds and movies, right? Simply rerender them - movies at full 640x480 and backgrounds so, that a full 640x480 resolution area of any background would always be shown in-game. It would look awesome. Then, fix those few bugs (some gramatical and some graphical, like that Vincent model in the ancient's city that I mentioned in my first post ). Third, they should remake character models to a higher polygon count - perhaps the world models only (replace them with battle models?), battle models can be left alone (giving Square even less work ). And lastly, repair the game's code, so that it'll work perfectly on all Windows, including the newest. But it's important, that the game would otherwise stay as close to original as possible.
Four relatively simple steps, the bugs are probably widely known and could be pointed out by the FF7 community, only fixing the code could take a while - I don't know, with a giant like Square - maybe a month or two? Less?
In the end, they would have a (currently ) perfect version of a perfect game. I'd buy two immediately, hehe.

23

General Discussion / FF7 Remake

« on: 2003-10-04 09:22:43 »

Alhexx
I really think that if you are making an engine that'll look like FF7, you should do an actual remake (as well as that prequel?), that'll have better support for modern graphics cards, maybe playing movies more like media player (which smoothens them somehow, and I think the details actually improve somehow , no sharpness is lost). A support for antialiasing that doesn't screw up the backgrounds and/or menus would also be very much appreciated.

24

General Discussion / Anyone else encountered wrong Vincent model bug?

« on: 2003-03-04 12:43:34 »

Hi everyone!

I took Vincent with me in the city of the Ancients down to where Aeris dies. The party waits for Cloud to hop to Aeris alone. But the Vincent's 3D model is wrong all the time, from the moment he and the other member separate from Cloud ('walk' out of him ). Even after the battle with Jenova, where Cloud picks Aeris up, the Vincents model is completely wrong.

Let me describe it: it appears to be the model of him landing from the air; he holds one of his legs horisontaly in front of him and his cape is rised up instead of down (as if he'd be falling through the air). Looking like that, he walks around etc... I mean, it looks idiotic!

Has anyone else experienced this? Maybe I can send screenshots (if I'll be able to take them), or post them here (just tell me how to ).

BTW, what's up with Ficedulas homepage? It seems to be down a bit too long this time and I'd like to get a tool to translate FF7