Messages

1

General Discussion / Whelp

« on: 2004-07-16 18:33:51 »

Used the program, worked fine,

but when I rebooted, my XP installation was totally hosed. Wouldn't even boot into safe mode. Couldn't repair it from the install disk, either.

I had to install a new copy of XP over the old one, which breaks any installed programs that use the registry as many people might already know.

Never seen XP do anything like that on a whim. And your program was the only one I downloaded and used yesterday.

2

Troubleshooting / Suggestions for Ultima 4.0 Alpha 2

« on: 2004-07-09 22:28:44 »

Well, using ray intersection should work during any step during the transformation process.

Another option, however, would be to check for clicks after the scene has been transformed into screen coordinates. You could then just check the mouse x/y value against the now 2-dimensional vertex x/y coordinates. Or something.

Anyway, there are several different ways to go about doing it, none of which are incredibly simple, but all of the ways can be found in the internet, I'd bet.

3

Archive / Stretching FF8

« on: 2004-07-09 18:52:29 »

Well, you could try to hex-edit the calls the game makes when setting the window size and replace the values with something you like more. There's no telling how the game would respond to it. Sometimes games are coded in relation to an exact window size, and sometimes they're written in relation to current window width/height.

Somebody might have already written a tool for what you're trying to do, though.

4

Archive / Need a little direction (format of files, or existing tool)

« on: 2004-07-09 17:32:55 »

I have to agree, I prefer my T&A to be real, I much prefer the ability to touch and taste rather than just see on paper or screen as the case may be. Sorry if that was too blunt for anyone, but if maturity isnt in short supply, then there should be no problems.

There's absolutely no reason you can't have both. Heh.

As I mentioned somewhere above, porn and girlfriends aren't mutually exclusive. In fact, they blend together rather well.

-----

I've started work on a tool to edit FF7 .p models in C# using managed DirectX. My goal is to add a few things that Ultima is missing, such as selection of vertices by clicking on the model, color selection from a pallet, and real-time updating of any changes you make.

It'll probably be a few weeks. I'll let you guys know how it turns out. Once its done though, recoloring vertices (and possibly moving them around) will be so simple anyone could do it.

Mod Edit: Edited a double-post into a single-post.  Please don't double-post, edit your post instead.

5

Archive / Need a little direction (format of files, or existing tool)

« on: 2004-07-09 07:35:00 »

If this is the case, I have a suggestion. I see the nude mod idea as pointless except to show that it can be done, because a deecnt one would take a great deal of work and a large amount of change to the game. But with the knowledge you do have, Im sure you could be helpful to the community if you put that knowledge to work in assisting with cracking the remaining formats in the LGP files, and other such tasks which have yet to be accomplished. Not only will this make your nude mod idea possible on a better scale in the future, but it will also help everyone else here in any projects they chose to pursue in the future.

I'll be all too glad to help in any way I can, but my talents lie in programming, not reverse engineering/cracking other people's programming

To put it another way, with my particular skill set, it would be easier and faster for me to program a whole new FF7 engine and file storage system from scratch rather than figure out how square did thiers  :weep:

There are a lot more experienced crackers out there than me. My professional programming experience never takes me anywhere near any 'cracking'. That's not to say I wouldn't be good at it -I've just never had occasion to crack anybody else's code or formats other than debugging my own, and I'd be so far behind the capabilities of some of the team members here that my abilities would be better put to use on other things. If I'm provided with file formats by others, I can whip up tools for the formats without a problem.

6

Troubleshooting / Suggestions for Ultima 4.0 Alpha 2

« on: 2004-07-09 05:09:49 »

I only have 3 major beefs with this program:

1) The vertex editing window should really be a sidebar on the left that is always visible. Drop the "Save vertex" button and make all changes immediately reflected in the view window on the right.

2) Selecting a vertex color should not be limited to hand-inputting RGB values. Adding in a drop-down color pallet to fill in the values automagically would be very simple to do (there's already windows controls for it) AND if you implement step (1) above, you can have the color of the vertice updated in real time as the user drags the color selector around to see what value is best.

3) Selecting vertices by mouseclick would make this a positively killer tool. Create a new tool on the toolbar called "select", and then let the user click to select a vertice. If you implement step (1) above, the newly selected vertex's info would appear to the left, ready for editing. If you are unsure how to go about doing this -here's the psuedocode:

a) While updating the scene, detect mouseclicks.
b) If there was a mouseclick in the viewport and the tool is set to "select", then shoot a ray into the viewport.
c) Grab the first triangle the ray from the mouse intersects with.
d) Transform the coordinates of the 3 vertices from that triangle into screen coordinates, do the same with the mouse ray.
e) Use the distance formula to determine which vertice of the triangle is closest to the mouse ray, and highlight/select that vertice.

This was the first algorithm that came to mind. Its probably not the most effecient. Hell, you could probably just convert every vert to screen coordinates every frame and check which was closest to the mouse ray. I believe there is a DirectX SDK sample that shows how to select triangles based on mouseclicks. It could probably explain better than I could!

7

Archive / Need a little direction (format of files, or existing tool)

« on: 2004-07-09 03:18:13 »

I just think it's a stupid idea.

And you are entitled to your opinion, sir. But be aware that there are a great many people who would make the same claim about modding FF7 at all. Or playing video games at all. The "stupid/waste of time" line is as subjective as the "pornography" line, and more often than not I find people tend to place both lines where it serves them best to judge other people.

The models in FF7 are truely works of art. Have you looked at the detail that's in these models? Can you name me one program in 1995-1997 that used vertex coloring with transpencies as a way to color a material?

Of course not. How many games in 95-97 had a budget in the millions and a team of hundreds working on it? The quality of the models is comparable with later games that had a similar budget and talent pool. But yes, games with quality models that use entirely RGB verts could probably be counted on one hand.

For fun look at Hi-res Sephy. I pick him because he *HAS* his shirt off. Do you see all the muceles? Each one of those are a set of vertex colors. Someone actually colored all those points by hand. I can do 3d modeling, but I could never do something like that.

It is indeed a remarkable model. Coloring the points by hand might be a stretch -I'm sure they had tools to make it a little easier on the modellers. But I am familiar with coloring RGB verts by hand. I already made Tifa's shirt "disappear" by manually typing in new red, green, and bue values for about 100 verts with no way to identify which was which except for the index number. The result looked okay, but appeared "plastic-y" and of course, lacked nipples. When I imported it, the result looked more like a pink sweater than breasts. I have not had to color an entire high quality model using RGB verts (I am a programmer -not a modeller), and I probably never will. I don't see why anyone would anymore, either -considering how fast and easy it is to set up texturing and vertex/pixel shaders.

That's why I see your idea as lame.

And you can see it any way you wish. However, I wish to point out again that to most people (obviously not on this forum), spending a large amount of time modding FF7 (or any game, or even just playing games) is a pretty "lame" idea. Your comment, objectively, amounts to the pot calling the kettle black. Why not embrace all creative ideas rather than just the ones you like?

 It's not like in Tomb Raider were you can just toss on a new skin. There are no skins. It's not like in NWN where you can grab Poser and import some stock body shape into gmax. You are going to have to make a torso from scratch, you will have to make sure all the vertexs line correctly and then shade each point on the whole model correctly. You are going to have to color-match the original model in hundreds of places.

I think I already mentioned it somewhere above, but I already color matched the shirt to skin by hand-editing (read: typing in) the individual RGB values for about 100 verts identified only by thier vertex number. It was a quick effort -took about a half hour, but the color still needs some slight adjustment to be a perfect match. If I had some sort of tool where I could just click on a vertex in a viewer and then move a color slider until it matched, it would make the whole ordeal a lot less painful. This is why I asked for an existing tool or a file format descriptor so I could make my own.

If you are going to put that much work into making boobs, why not just make a whole new character?  Maybe a hi-res version of Tifa or Arieth to go with Cloud? I think more people will appricate that the characters will have fingers than the fact Tifa's running around topless.

Because I'm not a modeller. I'm a programmer. I have absolutely zero artistic talent. My usefullness is in the realm of game engine programming, applied math, and physics. Anything beyond that is somebody else's job. Heh. I can get meshes into a game, but somebody else needs to make'em for me.

I'll pass on your idea of high-res models to a friend of mine. He's been wanting to do some high-res remakes for a while now. The man's a Maya and 3DSMax wizard.

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Archive / Need a little direction (format of files, or existing tool)

« on: 2004-07-09 02:10:34 »

There's one for everything and I really think it's time we take a stand and stop a least one from being released. I'm tired of seeing nothing but porn everywhere I look on the internet. I believe porn is 78% of the internet. The other 22% are kids websites and business sites.

Eh... I don't agree with censoring something just because its not something I like/practice/agree with -especially on the Internet. I never was one for censorship or regulation of the Internet in any form (my rights usurped today, your rights usurped tomorrow), but I do understand where you're coming from.

And if you think that looking at any kind of porn crosses the line of perversion, I urge you to look again at the definition of the word and reconsider your view. 80% of the internet is porn because that's what's in demand. People like making it, and people like looking at it. Whatever psychological motives are behind this trend are out of the scope of this conversation (and indeed all conversations not between two psychologists well versed in the matter).

You do know that most women enjoy pornography, too, right? Its not perverse by any measure, and in fact, most couples enjoy it together.

Your stout opposition to pornography has made me curious about your background. Are you a fundamental Judeau-Christian of some sort? A very protective parent? I'd be interested to know where your opposition to pornography took its roots.

Anyway, this is one of those things like religion or politics. You don't have to agree with it, but that doesn't mean we can't get along and work together. Live and let live.

9

Archive / Need a little direction (format of files, or existing tool)

« on: 2004-07-09 00:54:16 »

Heheh.. oh god are you for real Yare? This is so funny...

Why wouldn't I be for real?

Dude... Get a video/girlfriend/porn website account...

What if I already have all 3? Does that mean there is no hope for poor Yare?  

Anyway, as I mentioned before, things like that have absolutely no bearing on what I'm working on. Your own personal hangups on nudity aside, its no different from any other mod project.

I urge anyone who is uncomfortable with the topic of fictional nudity to please refrain from posting. I'm aware that there are some really conservative opinions out there regarding nudity and the few media it is acceptable in, so telling me how you feel about it is nothing short of redundant.

Also, for any children (or child-like adults) out there who get thier jollies from hopping on the bandwagon and ridiculing anyone who differentiates themself by being honest and straightforward with themselves and others  -please also desist in posting flames.

When I made this thread, I knew a lot of people would reply with things like "LOL OMFG pr0n!!!11!1eleven!", but I made the thread anyway because I'm capable of discussing it openly and honestly without shame, and I know that there are other people out there grown up enough to do the same -so I will weather the children and wait for more constructive posts.

Some people and the levels of hipocrisy they can reach never ceases to amaze me.

Like none of you have ever had sex right? Or ever looked at pornography? The only difference is that I'm secure enough to discuss it without blushing, and if I hear other people discussing it, I don't feel compelled to ridicule them as if I don't do it.

Where is the "pervert" line drawn? Porn? Computer porn? Hentai? Computer hentai? Or do you draw the line where its convenient for you to harrass other people?

Anyway, thanks to anyone who provided constructive information so far. I've all but abandoned the topless patch since the result isn't up to my standards. One of my good friends and coworkers is a very skilled 3D modeller, however, and I may toss it his way to see what he can do with it.

Now I'll probably shift to altering the costume colors of the characters, since that part was essentially a no-brainer. Are there any specific requests for changes? Dark-haired cloud in a red suit? Blonde Tifa in black leather? I don't particularly like/dislike any of the original costumes so I'm open to suggestions.

10

Archive / Need a little direction (format of files, or existing tool)

« on: 2004-07-08 21:33:43 »

Thats a very poor excuse.

You misunderstand my statement. I wasn't making an excuse, but offering a reason.

I tinkered with the verts' RGB values and managed to make all of the shirt verts her flesh tone rather than the white/grey shirt color, but I left the suspenders.

I imported it into the game, but it just doesn't look right without nipples.

Doing regular color changes to create a new wardrobe would be easy to do for all the characters. Easier than adding nipples, that is.

11

Archive / Need a little direction (format of files, or existing tool)

« on: 2004-07-08 18:23:01 »

halkun,

So go ahead and make your boobs, make em jiggle if you want! But please bear in mind that the most harmess of fun can be back-ported into a PSX ISO. Then it goes from God's mouth, to Square's ear, to you, to me, to the cleaners.

I was not aware of the legal troubles you have had surrounding FF7 modding. I don't hold it against you for not aiding me in this endeavour, since I have no desire to see Square/Enix pursue legal action against you as a result of something I did.

to the person who referred to me as "kid",

The use of the word 'kid' implies that I am a minor. Since I am not a minor, and haven't been for some years now, I find your use of it when describing me very derogatory. Also, I'm aware that there is plenty of Tifa Hentai out there. I enjoy creating things, but I am no artist by any stretch of the imagination. Its not so much me wanting to see Tifa's boobs, as providing that chance to other people in the original media rather than with hand-drawn art.

That probably made no sense at all.

Meh.

I'll continue looking into it on my own, and if I make any progress I'll post a patch here (if that's alright).

12

Archive / By Barrets Beard ¿!?

« on: 2004-07-08 07:38:08 »

I remember some time back about labels in Half Life showing up in or behind the surfaces they were supposed to be on. Had something to do with a hardware setting on some cards that wouldn't make the labels sit on top of a surface by default and needed to be changed from 1 to 0 or -1 until it showed up finally.

I don't know if your card or FF7 have any setting like that, but it might be something to look into.

Its wierd though since his eyes and mouth look alright.

Who knows.

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Archive / Need a little direction (format of files, or existing tool)

« on: 2004-07-08 06:47:21 »

Yes, I'm attempting to work with the battle models. I'm not trying to do a full nude -I'm not a 3d modeller by any means and would not be able to alter the model.

I wanted to just do a topless mod to start. That would lead lead into more legitimate (read: non-nude) re-skins (though skin may be the wrong term) of other characters and monsters.

Since its not as simple as editing a texture, it may be too much of a hassle. I could manually alter the vertex colors for Tifa's chest model, but I'm not sure how the result would look. Probably sub-par.

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Archive / Need a little direction (format of files, or existing tool)

« on: 2004-07-08 05:50:53 »

Halkun, I'm sorry you feel that way.

There are many nude patches for many different games. The reason is that there is demand. Why do you work on your projects? There is demand for what you are doing and satisfying that demand makes you feel a sense of accomplishment. What I am trying to do is no different. That is, unless you look down on nudity as some sort of terrible thing.

You seemed like a decent enough person while I lurked the forums, but you jumped to so many conclusions about me and my life based on a single post in this forum that I have to call your wisdom and maturity into question.

Rather than offer a helping hand by providing me with the information I was missing and possibly recruit another person into helping hack/mod FF7, you've pretty much killed the interest I had in wanting to work with you guys on your projects (you certainly don't NEED my help, but I would have liked to help).

Also, your exaggerated spelling, punctuation, l33t speech, and alternating "!"'s and "1"'s makes no sense at all, since my posts was written in proper formal English.

Forgive my assumption but I figured that everyone here was a mature adult, and wouldn't have any kind of problem handling adult-oriented topics without reacting like a child. If you are not adult enough to handle topics discussing nudity, of if you think that liking porn somehow makes a person juvenile or unintelligent, then I apologize for bringing it up and I pity you.

Do you know about color interpolation across a normal with arbitrary colored vertices?

Yes, actually. Its a very archaic/beginner technique that's not used often anymore today, but I and anyone else versed in more advanced vertex formats would have begun by learning it and thus be familiar with it. Any non-textured meshes you see today (in professional apps, that is) are rendered with a vertex or pixel shader, rather than RGB verts. And even that is rare. Almost everything now is textured AND pixel/vertex shaded and sometimes I forget about pure untextured unshaded RGB verts since they really aren't used professionally anymore and haven't been for a long time. But I've gotten off the subject.

I am aware of the differences between texture-mapped vertices and RGB-shaded vertices. Looking at the files in the viewer again, I can see now that they aren't using textures. There was absolutely no need to jump on me simply because I assumed the game used textures. You have infinitely more familiarity with the FF7 files than I do, and your reply could have been a simple "No textures. RGB verts." and it would have sufficed. The rest of it was essentially unprovoked personal attacks, which is very immature.

The fact you want to see polygon breasts calls your whole ability to code into doubt.

No it doesn't. Those two things are 100% unrelated, and if you think somehow that they are, then you are committing a HUGE logical fallacy. The specific fallacy you committed is called "ad hominem". If you search around a bit on the internet I'm sure you can figure out what it is.

Textured vertices require a VECTOR3 for the "xyz" location, a VECTOR2 (or Point) for the "u" and "v" texture map values (ranging from 0.0 to 1.0, one each for up to 8 texture passes).

RGB vertices, on the other hand, don't require the VECTOR2 for the uv values, and instead have a DWORD for the RGB(sometimes A) values.

Both require a VECTOR3 for the normal if the vertices are untransformed. If the vertices ARE transofrmed before you light/shade them, they will need a FLOAT value containing the reciprocal of the homogenous w instead.

Also, I'm not sure how girlfriends fit into all of this, but in case you are unaware -porn and girlfriends are not mutually exclusive.

//EDIT
If you want to start over fresh and be mature/civilized, please let me know. Despite your knee-jerk reaction to my post, you still seem like a fairly intelligent and knowledgable person.

15

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / ReWriting the FF7 Engine

« on: 2004-07-08 03:04:38 »

...we know that FF7pc was written in C++. Therefore, we must think within the limitations of that language when trying to reconstruct how FF7 can access and decode battle operations, etc, and that includes file I/O, and memory storage.

That leaves us with commands like ".read"; ".get"; and ".getline" for loading the battle animation data into memory, if I'm not mistaken...

C++ doesn't really have any limitations. Its not uncommon for most video games to have a lot of the operations that need to run very very fast (thousands of times per seconds, in some cases) written in ASM (assembly) blocks.

.read, .get, and .getline are not really effecient for the very specific and repetative purposes of a lot of the FF7 files. I would be more surprised if they didn't write thier own low-level file and memory IO functions than if they did.

They teach that in intermediate C++ classes. Its a fairly common practice as far as I can tell.

Remember that C++ and ASM pretty much go hand-in-hand, and you can write ASM directly into your C++ programs.

But then, Square programmers may also be a fairly lazy lot. So who knows?

And in case anyone is wondering, PSX games are programmed in a version of C++ as well -hooking into a propriatary Sony hardware API.[/b]

16

Archive / Need a little direction (format of files, or existing tool)

« on: 2004-07-08 02:22:35 »

Actually, a pervert is defined as a person whose behavior deviates from what is acceptable especially in regards to sexual behavior.

Since I don't intend to derive sexual stimulation from this (indeed, there is plenty of FF7 porn out there for that without making such an effort), it would be technically innacurate to label me as a pervert.

I tend to think of it more as "fan service" or perhaps a "technical demo"  =P

17

Archive / Need a little direction (format of files, or existing tool)

« on: 2004-07-08 01:04:13 »

I got the idea in my head to try and hack out a nude patch for FF7. I searched around and extracted the file "ruam" from battle.lpg, which is Tifa's chest bundled with a texture, so far as I can tell.

Is there any utility currently available that can open/edit the texture part of these bundled files, or is there a file format whitepaper on them somewhere?

I'm a fairly accomplished C++ / Java / C# programmer so writing a utility isn't the problem, but I'd like to save myself the trouble of decoding the file format since somebody else already obviously has (or the LPG tools wouldn't be able to display it. heh).

Any help in this matter would be greatly appreciated.