Hi folks. First post here...
Ficedula's FF7Music is fantastic but I had a world of problems getting it working. I finally managed to find everything I needed to know on these forums eventually but I couldn't find it all in one place. So I thought I would have a crack at writing a guide so all the info is in one place if anyone searchs.
This is what I did under xp to get it going
Getting started
You will need:
Ficelib version 1.10
FF7Music
Cetra (FF7 patcher)
Official 1.02 Patch
FF7Music and the official patch can be found via the compilation of FF7. Ficelib 1.10 doesn't apear to be on Ficedula's site (link to it seems dead) but Aaron has it archived
here(Thanks
) I had a liitle toruble with the zip file windows built in zip support didn't quite work but winrar worked just fine.
IMPORTANT: at time of writing this You do need Ficelib 1.10, the current version does not work with FF7Music.
Idealy you also want a fresh install of FF7. If you don't do a fresh installl and it doesn't work try the fresh install.
Check that FF7 is working to begin with. If you don't have any saves play up to the first save, it will save time if you need to test multiple times later.
put all the music you want to use in one directory.
Step 1
Install the patch to version 1.02 (Just unzip the archive and copy the excutables over the existing ones in the FF7 directory). Run the configuration then check FF7 is still working.
Step 2
Make a new directory and unzip the content of the Cetra and Ficelib archive into that folder, when I got it working I used Ficelib 1.10 for this too.
Create a folder called Ficedula inside your FF7 main instal folder. unzip the content of FF7Music and Ficelib there (Ficelib may not be needed there but it works for me and I dare not fiddle). Copy FF7Music.dll (not FF7Music.exe like I did the first time) to the main FF7 directory and put the content of Ficelib there too.
Step 3
Run Cetra, set the FF7 and Cetra directorys. Run the FF7Music patch in Cetra
Now run FF7Music.exe (which is in the Ficedula directory inside the FF7 directory). First thing is to select the winamp plugins in the first tab. I used in_mp3.dll and out_ds.dll in the plugins directory of the latest version of winamp 5. You don't need winamp installed to use the plugins. Make sure the details box below isn't greyed out under the plugin, I had this and when it tried to play music FF7 crashed. Setting the plugins again fixed it.
Next go to files, set the directory to where you put all the music. Add a profile. Set a track for testing. If you saved next to the first save the music there is "makoro" otherwise the main battle song "bat" is good. (personally I like to replace "bat" with the paino version or jump by van halen)
Play back options are probably fine on default for now
It should now all be working. I like to leave the midi there but mute it from the menu in game so I can turn it on if I've missed a track.
I sucsessfully did the higher quality cloud and chobo race patch afterwards.
Trouble shooting
Runtime error 217 when you try to run FF7 - could be because you are using an incompatible version of Ficelib (see above). When I made that mistake just replacing it didn't work, I'd fidled quite a bit though. The only thing that worked was a fresh install and starting from scratch.
When music tries to play FF7 crashs to desktop - Check the the plug-ins have details displayed beneath them in the FF7Music program if not reselect them. I had this bug but might be an odd one.
I get run time error 216 when I sellect a plug in - I had this when I selected plugins that weren't of the right type
I still here the old music as well as the new - Mute it in the config menu in game or the games config
My music doesn't loop - apparantly the loop option doesn't work with some formats (MP3 for example). There is no fix I know of. A winamp plugin that looped the file would be a work around but I can't find one that does it. I'm tempted to make a wraper plugin myself.
I hope this will help somebody.
