Custom graphics driver for FF7/FF8 [v.1-.7.6]

[obesebear]

Aali, seriously, your driver is getting ridiculous.  I suppose next you'll find out that you can bypass the 15 and 30fps limiters, so the whole game runs smoothly at 60fps.

Keep up the amazing work!

[Hellbringer616]

60FPS? if you do that Aali i will love you haha 

Awesome job man, You are one of the best modders here

[DLPB_]

Aali, seriously, your driver is getting ridiculous.  I suppose next you'll find out that you can bypass the 15 and 30fps limiters, so the whole game runs smoothly at 60fps.

Keep up the amazing work!

That is definately needed....not so much for battle screens but in the towns, it has always been a little jerky.

[magixts]

It's working without your "mod"- but when I activate it, It just starts and turns then to the destop^^

Sound-Initialasing IS the last line in the log...

Having the same problem on my stationary PC. I've tried changing all of the options in the cfg without success.

On my laptop the 0.5 driver works but I still get graphical glitches in the backgrounds.


Edit. ran a quick debug session and the log is showing:

Code: [Select]

Debugged application message: INITIALIZE DD/D3D END
.
Debugger: Library loaded: C:\Windows\SysWOW64\hid.dll
Debugger: Library loaded: C:\Windows\SysWOW64\wintrust.dll
Debugger: Library loaded: C:\Windows\SysWOW64\crypt32.dll
Debugger: Library loaded: C:\Windows\SysWOW64\msasn1.dll
Debugger: Library loaded: C:\Windows\syswow64\imagehlp.dll
Debugger: Thread started: id=00000648, entry=77008770.
Debugger: Thread started: id=00000FE0, entry=77008770.
Debugged application message: initializing sound...
.
Debugger: Library loaded: C:\Windows\syswow64\clbcatq.dll
Debugger: Library loaded: C:\Windows\SysWOW64\MMDevAPI.dll
Debugged application message: DIRECT SOUND ERROR
.
Debugged application message:    ERROR: No sound driver is available for use. in FILE C:\lib\src\sound\dx_snd.cpp LINE 68
.
Debugger: Thread terminated: id=00000648 (exit code = 0x0).
Debugger: Thread terminated: id=000001D4 (exit code = 0x0).
Debugger: Thread terminated: id=000012F0 (exit code = 0x0).
Debugger: Thread terminated: id=00000FE0 (exit code = 0x0).
Debugger: Process terminated (exit code = 0h).

If you run the config utility and select the correct sound device and then run the .reg file provided with Aali's custom driver it should work. It did for me.


Apart from the above mentioned problems pertaining to my laptop I still get a few graphical glitches in the menus and on effects like the damage numbers in combat on my stationary PC. This only happens in resolutions that a not evenly dividable by the original resolution and I prefer to run it in 1940x1440 with no scaling in the monitor (Nvidia apparently finally got around to fixing this - I'm impressed) so it's not a big deal.

On the laptop it’s a bigger problem though native resolution of 1280x800 only allows for a max evenly divisible resolution of 640x480. The graphical glitches are also more evident on the laptop.

[Aurenasek116]

Funny thing because I'm also using laptop with these settings:

Code: [Select]

window_size_x = 1280
window_size_y = 800
preserve_aspect = false
fullscreen = true

internal_size_x = 1280
internal_size_y = 800
And I don't have any glitches other than movies not playing (But that's seperate bug from what Aali said). I don't have any problems with model parts not showing up and so on o.O Weird stuff.

[Aali]

Apart from the above mentioned problems pertaining to my laptop I still get a few graphical glitches in the menus and on effects like the damage numbers in combat on my stationary PC. This only happens in resolutions that a not evenly dividable by the original resolution and I prefer to run it in 1940x1440 with no scaling in the monitor (Nvidia apparently finally got around to fixing this - I'm impressed) so it's not a big deal.

I'm aware of this problem, its those textures that have both low and high quality versions that mess it up (low quality versions are meant to be used with 320x240, high quality versions need a multiple of 640x480 to look good).

Set internal resolution manually if the automatic detection gives you a "bad" (320x240-compatible but not 640x480-compatible) resolution.
In 0.6b I'll add a "prevent_more_rounding_errors" option that does this automatically


Not sure whats up with that sound driver issue, but you should always run FF7Config before installing the driver to set any other options you might want. The only options the .reg file will override are Renderer and any Nvidia options you might have set.

:EDIT: Oops, display resolution is set to 640x480 by the reg file, my bad

[Hellbringer616]

FF7 has textures? haha How do i tell which textures i have? I'm running at 1280 x 960?

Also, last i knew you could only do this through rivatuner, But with your graphics driver you can use the nvidia control panel to up the AA and the AF

Here is a picture showcasing 16XQ AA and 16X AF (what the point of it is, I don't know)

[Aali]

FF7 doesn't even have a system for 2D graphics, everything is done with polygons and textures.

If you have the low-res textures, fonts will look like they do on the PSX.

Any AA and AF settings should work just fine, AF is not that important since there's not much perspective scaling going on and most textures look like crap anyway.

[Hellbringer616]

Yep using high quality textures, fonts look way better.

And i noticed AF doesn't do much, think might have even made it crappier haha, Cause maybe it was always there, But i can see where Clouds legs are clipping. And how his arms aren't connected to his torso haha

[Aali]

Yeah.. those things aren't even textured, so you're just pulling that out of your ass.

[Aurenasek116]

Yeah.. those things aren't even textured, so you're just pulling that out of your ass.

Indeedy, it's anti-aliasing that made clipping on models more visibile The only textured parts on character models in FF7 are eyes and some minor things like Soldier logo on Cloud's belt in final battle version of his model.

[magixts]

Aurenasek116:
I suppose it could be because you have preserve_aspect set to false. I did not try this option.

Aali:
I gave it a try setting the internal resolution to 4 * 640 x 480 = 2560 x 1920 and it does work! No artifacts as far as I can tell.

Now if it could only use the internal- to actual resolution scaling on the backgrounds and render the 3d objects independently when FSAA is enabled the stretching would not be noticeable at all.

I think the sound problem was an effect of me reinstalling the creative drivers a few days back but seeing as d33eniz had the same problem with it silently failing at the “initializing sound...” line I thought it be worthy of posting.

Anyway, the driver is really coming along nicely! Good job!


Edit.
Forgot to say that the artifacts are nowhere to be found using a multiplier of 640 x 480 for internal resolution on my laptop aswell. Movies show, everything works great!

[Hellbringer616]

Yeah.. those things aren't even textured, so you're just pulling that out of your ass.

Haha like i said, I THINK but looks like it's the AA doing it, Doesn't happen on the high poly models from the PRP, So. no worries 

[Grimmy]

Grimmy, there are no limits for menu and avatars. I actually took the original .bmp for menu which was 256x256, resized it to 2048x2048 and then placed my own render of buster sword in place of old one, saved and put ingame. Worked wonders.

I did that and the only portion of the new menu pic I could see was the original size of the top left corner. I will do it again as a black and white bmp at 2048x2048 with grid lines set every 25 pixels, however I suspect it will only show the original image size. If you could paste a link to this 2048x2048 menu that works I will be less skeptical.

[Aurenasek116]

Yes, that's what I did but I really didn't explain properly.
What I did was:

1. Make the whole image 4096x4096 (So that 1/4 of it would be 2048x2048)
2. Place my 2048x2048 render in the top left corner 1/4

That's about it, sorry for not describing it better in earlier post

[Aali]

Its quite odd that it doesn't just stretch the texture..

By the way, I fixed the whirlwind maze glitch.
Turns out there is a driver call for writing to a palette, I just hadn't realized what it was for. (d3d driver writes to the dd palette ...which is never used when the nvidia fix is on)

Oh and while this is most obvious in the whirlwind maze, A LOT of field background animations were missing without this functionality. It's mostly small things like pulsing/moving lights but it does make a difference to the overall atmosphere and I'm very happy I finally nailed this glitch.

[Aurenasek116]

Its quite odd that it doesn't just stretch the texture..

Yeah, no matter what how much space you will fill on buster.bmp only the original 1/4th will be displayed at the center of the screen, all space around it is automaticly turned pure black by the game itself.

[Red46]

It also fixed the part in which Sephiroth disguises in order to get the black materia from the party, last time i saw that part rendered correctly was back when I had a pc with an ati rage pro turbo, too bad I still get that crash after the cscene3.avi ends, but that has to do more with my windows config/hardware than with the driver,  awesome joob Aali .

[Hellbringer616]

Great job Aali, about to test if some of the PRP models are still invisible

[Grimmy]

Well I can see all those invisible things now, like the first two guards. But now I've got a green grid on all Field maps like this

.

I reset to 0.5 and they are rendered correctly, so what's making it do that with 0.6.

[Hellbringer616]

I was just about to post the exact same thing Grimmy.

[Aali]

Oh, total bummer, I left out the code that overrides your Nvidia settings.
Just disable everything in FF7Config and it'll work.

[myst6re]

The game crash when I enter a battle!
crash.dmp + APP.LOG

[Grimmy]

That worked. Great job, by far the best thing for FFVII PC ever. Write your self a post it note about adding the nvidia settings override to the next release.

[Hellbringer616]

just disable the nvidia options in the config right?