Custom graphics driver for FF7/FF8 [v0.8.1b]

[Aali]

Those animations rely on the field script being able to modify the palette in real-time (changing the actual colors in the palette, not just switching between different palettes). Obviously that cannot work with your upscaled images since there is no palette to speak of. In theory it would be possible to create upscaled images that use the original palettes but that would kind-of defeat the point not to mention be difficult to implement and since there's no hardware from this millenium that supports paletted textures it would run incredibly slow even if you could make it work.

I have been thinking long and hard on this one, I figure the best bet would be to somehow analyze the field script to figure out what effect it is trying to accomplish and implement it with a shader. That is unfortunately only slightly more feasible than the above "solution".

[Kaldarasha]

What actually is the point of the new timer?
The game seems to run faster if it is enabled. On field I have 34 FPS instead of 30. If I disable it everything seems to run as it should.

[Aali]

The old "timer" uses this mechanism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Stamp_Counter

Under Windows platforms, Microsoft strongly discourages using the TSC for high-resolution timing for exactly these reasons, providing instead the Windows APIs QueryPerformanceCounter and QueryPerformanceFrequency

Which is exactly what the new timer does.

I've never had a problem with FPS being wonky but DLPB has discovered a strange piece of code that might cause field FPS to be slightly higher than normal and the issue is machine-dependent. I will be looking into it.

[Kaldarasha]

Thanks for the explanation. 

[DLPB_]

What actually is the point of the new timer?
The game seems to run faster if it is enabled. On field I have 34 FPS instead of 30. If I disable it everything seems to run as it should.

As Aali said, the piece of code could cause that.  Get HextLaunch and make a hext file (or just use a memory editor) and change this:

007B7848 = 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

With hext file you can do

7B7848 = 00 : 8

This will remove what seems to be the erroneous value from the field calculation.  Let me know what happens.  You will need to enter a field from the world map, or load the game, for this to take effect.

[Kaldarasha]

Yeah this works. 

[DLPB_]

Yeah this works. 

As I thought... that value has NO place being there at all. Well, not anymore anyway.  I'll leave it to Aali to see what's what

[yarLson]

Those animations rely on the field script being able to modify the palette in real-time (changing the actual colors in the palette, not just switching between different palettes). Obviously that cannot work with your upscaled images since there is no palette to speak of. In theory it would be possible to create upscaled images that use the original palettes but that would kind-of defeat the point not to mention be difficult to implement and since there's no hardware from this millenium that supports paletted textures it would run incredibly slow even if you could make it work.

I have been thinking long and hard on this one, I figure the best bet would be to somehow analyze the field script to figure out what effect it is trying to accomplish and implement it with a shader. That is unfortunately only slightly more feasible than the above "solution".

So would you have to write the shaders by hand or is it theoretically possible to procedurally generate them based on the code in the field scripts?  Either way it seems like a lot of work.  Also, if current hardware doesn't support paletted textures how do the originals show up correctly in game.  Just trying to wrap my head around this.

[Aali]

So would you have to write the shaders by hand or is it theoretically possible to procedurally generate them based on the code in the field scripts?  Either way it seems like a lot of work.  Also, if current hardware doesn't support paletted textures how do the originals show up correctly in game.  Just trying to wrap my head around this.

Writing the shaders by hand would be insanity, generating them from the field script or perhaps analyzing the palettes themselves is the only practical way of doing it. Original textures are converted to plain BGRA textures on the fly. That's already kind of slow but acceptable on modern PCs, a 4x resize however would require 16x the amount of CPU power and GPU bandwidth.

[BesideTheVoid]

The last thing, which bugs me are the shadows in battle.

Well, I guess I should say that the whole transparency system for the effects doesn't look right. On PSX the transparency faded from the center to the edge, but I don't know if it is possible to create this effect on PC easiely.

(Noone replied to Kaldarasha's question other than someone saying his screenshot was stretched from 4:3 to 16:9)
Aali, is there any answer to whether this (or dynamic shadows) is possible?

[Aali]

The shadows (and probably other effects) in battle were changed pretty drastically for the PC version because graphics cards at the time didn't support subtractive blending. While it's technically possible, there's no easy way to bring back the PSX shadows.

Dynamic shadows is not happening until we get q-gears running though, the graphics engine would need to be pretty much rewritten with that in mind to make it work. And even then every single battle scene would probably have to be remodeled to make it look okay.

[Kaldarasha]

The question is what's wrong with the average blending channel. It actually should support textures which have different Alpha values ,but it also adds a translucent to the texture. If the easiest solution would mean that we have to change a lot off textures than it's the way it is. We need to redo the magic effects anyway and other textures shouldn't be a huge problem to make them as they were before. Maybe you will add an option to switch between the old and new rendering of the average channel. So we can change the textures, while the other can still play with the normal textures.
Maybe I'm wrong but I guess the change you had made in the previous version was maybe a correct one.

Edit:
I have currently rolled back to the previous release 0.8b and tested some magic effects. They look better, if not as they look as they should (even the savepoint looks better). So because only a few textures were affected I suggest you will implement it again and we will fix the textures by hand.

For the shadows: I need to know how the texture looks in kage.dat or even if there is a texture present, which I start to doubt. Maybe we need to hack a texture in? 

[Aali]

The problem is that the engine abuses and misuses the average blending mode. It should never have been used for "real" alpha blending, there should have been a separate mode for that. As a result the change I did in 0.8b improves some things and completely breaks others. It's not an issue for modpath textures and never was, those always use alpha blending so all you have to do is turn off the PSX blending modes to get proper blending without the average effect.

Since the PSX does not have alpha blending it's safe to assume that any alpha blending used in the PC port is some kind of hack to make up for the lack of subtractive blending.

IIRC the shadows on PC are just a vertex colored triangle fan, there's no texture.

[Kaldarasha]

I guess I need to search for my test shadow field model and make some tests to see if I understand what you say right...

Edit:
Maybe I got you wrong but this is the result of my tests:

I have tried to replace the shadow texture with its external counter part, but no matter which setting I use it doesn't use the correct alpha blending:


As you can see I need to change the status for the shadow part to average to get alpha blending to work, but that's not as I had planed that it should look like. I wasn't sure if I replaced the shadow texture right, so I painted an big red A on it. Well I had done it right...

Here is the same with the driver built before and that's what I expected the shadow should look like. Though I still need to set the blending for the part to average:


So for me is it better to fix a few textures and have a blending mode which works. The other way would mean that I have to clean all the models from any kind of average blending and then create external textures for them, but only if the external textures would blend right (which they currently fail to do). Also I don't know how to clean the average blending from the magic effects. 
Maybe you meant it in another way, but for me looks the 'fix' from the previous version as the best way, because it would involves the least work.

[BesideTheVoid]

I agree that the previous version's blending fix is necessary though there are issues. I would be glad to help clean textures. I can write programs to manipulate the bit depth or generate the images automatically if needed. I also have an algorithm that replaces 1-bit or color key transparency with 8-bit alpha so if that helps I can adapt it to this. The "discs" are really obvious and date the game (actually, that issue predates the game since it is more like a NES shadow than a PSX shadow). Please clarify what would need to be done and I for one would be glad to help.

[Aali]

I guess I need to search for my test shadow field model and make some tests to see if I understand what you say right...

Edit:
Maybe I got you wrong but this is the result of my tests:

I have tried to replace the shadow texture with its external counter part, but no matter which setting I use it doesn't use the correct alpha blending:

As you can see I need to change the status for the shadow part to average to get alpha blending to work, but that's not as I had planed that it should look like. I wasn't sure if I replaced the shadow texture right, so I painted an big red A on it. Well I had done it right...

Here is the same with the driver built before and that's what I expected the shadow should look like. Though I still need to set the blending for the part to average:

That is quite strange and not how I intended it to work. Could you send me the files you used to test this? And just to be sure, can you check that fancy_transparency is on? I don't see why anyone would turn it off but that would disable the alpha blending.

[Kaldarasha]

https://mega.co.nz/#!yBlTRB6I!ecdl9g_hyhp6RYenhrsDDHQ5fbgt67nebcPC3_1c_Wc

I made two versions for you. One with average shadow and one with normal.

[LeonhartGR]

Are those errors about the missing textures normal?:

Code: [Select]

[00000000] INFO: FF7/FF8 OpenGL driver version 0.8.1b
[00000000] INFO: Auto-detected version: FF8 1.2 US English
[00000000] INFO: NVIDIA Corporation GeForce GTX 760/PCIe/SSE2 4.4.0
[00000000] INFO: OpenGL 2.0 support detected
[00000000] INFO: Using PBO
[00000000] INFO: Found swap_control extension
[00000000] INFO: Max texture size: 16384x16384
[00000000] INFO: Original resolution 640x480, window size 1280x720, output resolution 1280x720, internal resolution 1280x960
[00000000] INFO: Shader limits: varying 124, vert uniform 4096, frag uniform 2048
[00000001] MATRIX INITIALIZE
[00000001] INITIALIZING SOUND...
[00000001]   initializing direct sound
[00000001]   EAXDirectSoundCreate
[00000001]   creating primary buffer
[00000001]   initializing audio data
[00000001]   OK
[00000001]   initializing streaming
[00000001] SOUND INITIALIZED
[00000001] DIRECT MUSIC - Enumerating Ports...
[00000001] PORT 0: Microsoft MIDI Mapper [Emulated]
[00000001] GUID={0x71951757,0xa58a,0x43de,0x95,0x62,0x9f,0x68,0xd6,0xe7,0x4a,0x76}
[00000001] PORT 1: Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth [Emulated]
[00000001] GUID={0x3cceaa76,0xbe14,0x4339,0xb3,0xdf,0xdf,0xf,0x7a,0xda,0xa8,0xba}
[00000001] PORT 2: Microsoft Synthesizer
[00000001] GUID={0x58c2b4d0,0x46e7,0x11d1,0x89,0xac,0x0,0xa0,0xc9,0x5,0x41,0x29}
[00000001] Creating Port1...
[00000001]     [00000001] Microsoft Synthesizer[00000001]
[00000001]   Port1 supports XG data
[00000387] BinkClose
[00000389] ERROR: couldn't open file c:\games\Final Fantasy VIII/mods/mods/cache/data\eng\menu\hires\sysfld00_00.ctx for writing: No such file or directory
[00000389] ERROR: couldn't open file c:\games\Final Fantasy VIII/mods/mods/cache/data\eng\menu\hires\sysfld01_00.ctx for writing: No such file or directory
[00000389] ERROR: couldn't open file c:\games\Final Fantasy VIII/mods/mods/cache/data\eng\menu\hires\iconfl00_00.ctx for writing: No such file or directory
[00000389] ERROR: couldn't open file c:\games\Final Fantasy VIII/mods/mods/cache/data\eng\menu\hires\iconfl01_00.ctx for writing: No such file or directory
[00000389] ERROR: couldn't open file c:\games\Final Fantasy VIII/mods/mods/cache/data\eng\menu\hires\iconfl02_00.ctx for writing: No such file or directory
[00000389] ERROR: couldn't open file c:\games\Final Fantasy VIII/mods/mods/cache/data\eng\menu\hires\iconfl03_00.ctx for writing: No such file or directory
[00000389] ERROR: couldn't open file c:\games\Final Fantasy VIII/mods/mods/cache/data\eng\menu\icon_00.ctx for writing: No such file or directory
[00000389] GLITCH: missed palette write to external texture data\eng\menu\icon
[00000978] SdMusicPlay ()
[00000978] sd_music_play (number=0, song_id=79, volume=0)
[00000978] midi_play...
[00000978] Stopping Performance
[00000978] Loading DLS...
[00000978] midi_play FAILED!:  returning 0
[00001854] ERROR: couldn't open file c:\games\Final Fantasy VIII/mods/mods/cache/data\eng\menu\hires\sysfld00_02.ctx for writing: No such file or directory
[00001854] ERROR: couldn't open file c:\games\Final Fantasy VIII/mods/mods/cache/data\eng\menu\hires\sysfld01_02.ctx for writing: No such file or directory
[00001855] ERROR: couldn't open file c:\games\Final Fantasy VIII/mods/mods/cache/data\eng\menu\hires\Face_b00_00.ctx for writing: No such file or directory
[00001855] ERROR: couldn't open file c:\games\Final Fantasy VIII/mods/mods/cache/data\eng\menu\hires\Face_b01_00.ctx for writing: No such file or directory
[00001855] ERROR: couldn't open file c:\games\Final Fantasy VIII/mods/mods/cache/data\eng\menu\hires\Gf_big00_00.ctx for writing: No such file or directory
[00001855] ERROR: couldn't open file c:\games\Final Fantasy VIII/mods/mods/cache/data\eng\menu\hires\Gf_big01_00.ctx for writing: No such file or directory
[00001855] ERROR: couldn't open file c:\games\Final Fantasy VIII/mods/mods/cache/data\eng\menu\hires\sysfld00_03.ctx for writing: No such file or directory
[00001855] ERROR: couldn't open file c:\games\Final Fantasy VIII/mods/mods/cache/data\eng\menu\hires\sysfld01_03.ctx for writing: No such file or directory
[00001856] ERROR: couldn't open file c:\games\Final Fantasy VIII/mods/mods/cache/data\eng\menu\start00_00.ctx for writing: No such file or directory
[00001856] ERROR: couldn't open file c:\games\Final Fantasy VIII/mods/mods/cache/data\eng\menu\start01_00.ctx for writing: No such file or directory
[00001857] ERROR: couldn't open file c:\games\Final Fantasy VIII/mods/mods/cache/data\eng\menu\hires\iconfl01_02.ctx for writing: No such file or directory
[00001859] ERROR: couldn't open file c:\games\Final Fantasy VIII/mods/mods/cache/data\eng\menu\hires\sysfld00_07.ctx for writing: No such file or directory
[00001859] ERROR: couldn't open file c:\games\Final Fantasy VIII/mods/mods/cache/data\eng\menu\hires\sysfld01_07.ctx for writing: No such file or directory
[00002667] ERROR: couldn't open file c:\games\Final Fantasy VIII/mods/mods/cache/data\eng\menu\hires\iconfl00_01.ctx for writing: No such file or directory
[00002667] ERROR: couldn't open file c:\games\Final Fantasy VIII/mods/mods/cache/data\eng\menu\hires\iconfl00_02.ctx for writing: No such file or directory
[00002667] ERROR: couldn't open file c:\games\Final Fantasy VIII/mods/mods/cache/data\eng\menu\hires\iconfl01_01.ctx for writing: No such file or directory
[00003014] ERROR: couldn't open file c:\games\Final Fantasy VIII/mods/mods/cache/data\eng\menu\hires\iconfl00_05.ctx for writing: No such file or directory
[00003104] ERROR: couldn't open file c:\games\Final Fantasy VIII/mods/mods/cache/data\eng\menu\hires\iconfl00_23.ctx for writing: No such file or directory
[00003104] ERROR: couldn't open file c:\games\Final Fantasy VIII/mods/mods/cache/data\eng\menu\hires\iconfl00_07.ctx for writing: No such file or directory
[00003104] ERROR: couldn't open file c:\games\Final Fantasy VIII/mods/mods/cache/data\eng\menu\hires\iconfl01_23.ctx for writing: No such file or directory
[00003104] ERROR: couldn't open file c:\games\Final Fantasy VIII/mods/mods/cache/data\eng\menu\hires\iconfl02_02.ctx for writing: No such file or directory
[00003104] ERROR: couldn't open file c:\games\Final Fantasy VIII/mods/mods/cache/data\eng\menu\hires\iconfl02_23.ctx for writing: No such file or directory
[00003104] ERROR: couldn't open file c:\games\Final Fantasy VIII/mods/mods/cache/data\eng\menu\hires\iconfl03_23.ctx for writing: No such file or directory
[00004444] WM_CLOSE
[00004444]
Releasing Performance...

[00004444]
Releasing Loader...

[00004444]
Releasing Port1...

[00004444]
Releasing DirectMusic interface...
[00004444]
Releasing COM...
Of course I can't disable those messages popping up with the new driver can I?

Thanks!

[Aali]

That log doesn't say anything about missing textures so I don't know where you got that from but those error messages are certainly not normal. It looks like it might be a bug in the driver, you should be able to work around it by manually creating the path its asking for. (create the directory c:/games/Final Fantasy VIII/mods/mods/cache/data/eng/menu/hires)

[LeonhartGR]

Thank you Aali! I'm actually deleting the cache everytime before testing my game. That might be the case?

Also noticed that cache is empty everytime I launch the game.

Also this is an interesting fix in your new driver:
https://obsproject.com/forum/threads/obs-capturing-part-of-the-screen-when-using-game-capture.18156/

Update: I copied the whole mods folder into cache adn now it is asking for the icon folder as well. I'll try to create it and see what more is missing...

Update 2: Keeps asking for the "icon" folder

Code: [Select]

[00000000] INFO: FF7/FF8 OpenGL driver version 0.8.1b
[00000000] INFO: Auto-detected version: FF8 1.2 US English
[00000000] INFO: NVIDIA Corporation GeForce GTX 760/PCIe/SSE2 4.4.0
[00000000] INFO: OpenGL 2.0 support detected
[00000000] INFO: Using PBO
[00000000] INFO: Found swap_control extension
[00000000] INFO: Max texture size: 16384x16384
[00000000] INFO: Original resolution 640x480, window size 1280x720, output resolution 1280x720, internal resolution 1280x960
[00000000] INFO: Shader limits: varying 124, vert uniform 4096, frag uniform 2048
[00000001] MATRIX INITIALIZE
[00000001] INITIALIZING SOUND...
[00000001]   initializing direct sound
[00000001]   EAXDirectSoundCreate
[00000001]   creating primary buffer
[00000001]   initializing audio data
[00000001]   OK
[00000001]   initializing streaming
[00000001] SOUND INITIALIZED
[00000001] DIRECT MUSIC - Enumerating Ports...
[00000001] PORT 0: Microsoft MIDI Mapper [Emulated]
[00000001] GUID={0x71951757,0xa58a,0x43de,0x95,0x62,0x9f,0x68,0xd6,0xe7,0x4a,0x76}
[00000001] PORT 1: Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth [Emulated]
[00000001] GUID={0x3cceaa76,0xbe14,0x4339,0xb3,0xdf,0xdf,0xf,0x7a,0xda,0xa8,0xba}
[00000001] PORT 2: Microsoft Synthesizer
[00000001] GUID={0x58c2b4d0,0x46e7,0x11d1,0x89,0xac,0x0,0xa0,0xc9,0x5,0x41,0x29}
[00000001] Creating Port1...
[00000001]     [00000001] Microsoft Synthesizer[00000001]
[00000001]   Port1 supports XG data
[00000387] BinkClose
[00000389] GLITCH: missed palette write to external texture data\eng\menu\icon
[00000978] SdMusicPlay ()
[00000978] sd_music_play (number=0, song_id=79, volume=0)
[00000978] midi_play...
[00000978] Stopping Performance
[00000978] Loading DLS...
[00000978] midi_play FAILED!:  returning 0
[00001773] WM_CLOSE
[00001773]
Releasing Performance...

[00001773]
Releasing Loader...

[00001773]
Releasing Port1...

[00001773]
Releasing DirectMusic interface...
[00001773]
Releasing COM...

[redheadturkey]

I used the game converter then installed the driver. I'm getting an error t hat says Open GL 2.0 not supported, my graphics drivers are plenty up to date. I'm running the Windows 10 TP, and I thought that might have something to do with it, but I'm not sure what. Compatibility mode also not working, and I'm not sure what else to do. I installed it in order to install the MO, which needs the driver. I could downgrade back to 7 and reinstall but it's a hassle I'd rather avoid if possible. Is there any way to make this work?


Edit: Also with the 7.1 driver I *can* get the game to run but I get an error that says "Texture size too large, skipping" and no graphics.

[Vgr]

The Menu Overhaul is outdated. Use Reunion instead.

[redheadturkey]

Well, meaning Reunion, but yeah. And I figured out the opengl error. (Drivers for Win 8/above do not have opengl enabled by default, had to install one for 7 in compatibility mode.) but now have the sound buffer error some have said they had.  Gonna look into the fix for that.

[CirasdeNarm]

Hi,

wie kann ich mit diesem Treiber das Kampfmenü wieder transparent machen?
Diese Option fehlt leider hier. Ich kann den Screens hier im Thread entnehmen,
dass andere immer noch ein transparentes Menü haben.

Danke

Und sorry, dass ich nicht englisch schreibe. Da bin ich einfach noch nicht gut genug drin. Verstehen ist aber kein Problem.

[Xpred]

If by mistake, I open FF7Config.exe after the registry has been applied, would all I have to do to resort back to the custom driver is simply re-open the registry file again?

I posted this in the 7H thread, but I figured here would be best. I had mistakenly opened FF7Config.exe by error after installing Tifa's Final Heaven mod catalog. When the game tried to load, it went half the resolution with a black screen and froze. I had to re-open the registry file and re-activate it. It seemed to fix the problem but I wanted to make 100% sure this was correct and that re-opening FF7Config.exe did not have any long-lasting effects.