FF7Music Crashing FF7 at song change

[GameMusicMaker]

hi, i have ff7 pc, i patched the ff7.exe with FF7Music by Ficedula, and it sounds great, except that when theres a song change (ex in the intro when the train stops, or getting into a battle) the whole game crashes, giving me a blue death screen. then i have to restart! ahh! so whats going on? i have all the settings correct i think, because the music works. If i unpatch the ff7.exe then the game works just fine....using my own gm midi bank of course (crappy). So does anyone know what could be happening? any ideas? thanks

Mike

[xeriouxi]

Hi!

Try updating to the new FF7Music program at http://ffsf.cjb.net. It should fix your problem.  

xeriouxi.

[Rubicant_II]

That may fix it, xeriouxi, but he hasn't really given us much info as to what version of ff7music he is using. Keep in mind that he is saying that when a song changes the game is crashing. However, when the transition between opening.avi and ob.mid's replacement happens, it is hardly a song change. The opening movie's music is part of the avi, which I know you are fully aware of.  

Gamemusicmaker, do you have any save games past the opening that are also acting up during a song change? Also, could you tell me some of your system specs (cpu, operating system, anything else you feel is important), because this kind of sounds like an unique problem.

[GameMusicMaker]

ok, well first off, i uninstalled ff7 a month or so ago, so i havent checked to see if there were any updates to anything, but im dying to play again

anyway, The game always freezes, for example, right when a battle begins, like on the world map, you here the whoosh right before it goes to the screen (i think you hear it) then it just stops, maybe a note is permanently sustained, again, cant remember, and i cant recover the game....i also cant get back to windows, ctrl alt del, ctrl esc, nothing works. I have to install it again, then try it out again with any updates, but i dont know when thatll be, so ill let you know.

System:
Windows XP Pro, SP1
mobile AMD Athlon(tm)XP 1800+ Laptop
1.5GHz
512 RAM
ATI Radeon IGP 320M I believe, 64mb

IF theres anything else you guys need, please let me know, thankyou so much!

FF7 is the best game ever!!!

[Rubicant_II]

I don't know...it just may be a windows xp problem. I have never gotten ff7music to run in windows xp to this very day...I would suggest asking someone else about this matter. Aaron, perhaps? As for me...I am lost for suggestions.

One last thing, though...what output plug-in are you using?

[Fremen^SF]

I have got exactly the same problem under Windows 95. So it seems it isn't caused by Windows XP. And I didn't find anything to fix it.

I give you my config, maybe it could help to localize the problem :
Windows 95 4.0B
AMD AthlonXP 2200+
576 Mo SDRam
ATI Rage 128
SoundBlaster AWE64

I'm using out_ds plugin.

The next time I play to FF7, I'll try to change my plugin.
If I find something which can help, I will post again.

[Rubicant_II]

You're using windows 95? Uh..er..okay, whatever keeps you going.

I think it may have something to do with your output plugin. Dsound always has problems..so change it.

[GameMusicMaker]

so which plugin should we use?

i used the plugin that came with the little package with the midi files and a few plugins and stuff....

[Aaron]

Try using out_wave.dll instead of out_ds.dll.  It works better for me.

[GameMusicMaker]

i tried both output plugins, wave and ds, and both gave me exactly the same problems....

[Rubicant_II]

I blame windows xp. By the way, scratch that crap I said above about me not getting ff7music to work to this date. I got it to work for awhile about 3 months back, and then it suddenly messed up. I haven't tried using xp on my computer ever since anyways, 'cause let's face it....(you know what I'm going to say next)

GMM - Are you using the chocobo patch with these operations?

[Fremen^SF]

Thanks for your help but I tried different plugins, and I got the same problem.

Maybe does it come from a "synchronization" problem. In fact this problem seems to only appear when there are "big" disk access. For example, when I use out_disk plugin, FF7 will always crash very quickly. And, as we see, this problem occurs when the playing music is changed.

Of course it is a supposition. I didn't find anything else.

(At last, I have to remind you to excuse me for my english mistakes ^^)

[Rubicant_II]

Fremen, I'm assuming you are unaware of what out_disk really is. It basically takes winamp inputs, and outputs it as a .wav file. This means tons of disk activity and loss of performance. Not wonder it crashed so fast. Not to mention no audio is actually heard.

Try out this version of nullsoft's directsound plugin. It has pretty much no problems with me. As for you problem..I am still puzzled.

[Aaron]

Actually, I think he knew exactly what out_disk.dll does.  He said that FF7 crashes when there is lots of disk activity, and since he was using out_disk.dll, it crashed very quickly (because there was more disk activity).  He used out_disk.dll to further his theory about his other crashes being related to disk activity.

[Rubicant_II]

I dunno...the whole "big disk access" seems a little flimsy. I really can't see why it'd be related to that...but I suppose anything is worth considering in this case. I tested it myself and when music would start, the game would just sit there, so I figured it'd be the same for him.  I can't figure why disk access would have something to do with this, unless the game is having trouble with reading music from an outside source when it is already loading other things. Maybe it's a hard disk driver problem.

Sorry Fremen, I overlooked you and didn't see the logic behind your tests. My fault.

[GameMusicMaker]

well rubicant, i think I did use the chocobo patch...I definitely used the XP patch of course....now i wonder if i tried it without the xp patch...that would have been smart i guess, but i cant remember, it was a while ago.  

of course, freman got the same problem with 95....does anyone think its ficedula's program itself? Have there been any updates to it?

[Fremen^SF]

Rubicant_II : Please don't be sorry for that, I know that my bad english can not be easily understood. And thank you for the plugin out_ds, I'll try it, maybe would it work better.

Thank you Aaron for the explaination of what I said. In fact, I only wanted to say that disk access may be the cause of those crashes. Or maybe not.