Texture Problems

[Joefess53]

Hi, I finally got a copy of FF7 for my pc and sadly I have been having a few problems. For reference:

CPU: AMD K7, 504MHZ
RAM: 256mb
GFX Card: NVIDIA GeFore4 MX 440
Yeah I know there not the greatest specs but they should be more than enough for this game.

How it was without any patches:
It config program passed all tests yet was unable to be set into hardware acceleration mode. While using software mode the movies would be very jumpy and while playing (movie or game) the screen would flash black.

What I did first:
I copied the game movies onto my computer and changed the registery to pick them up from the folder I put them in. Luckily this worked and stopped the movies from jumping. I installed the 1.02 patch and tried running the game under TNT mode in hardware acceleration but sadly that caused it simply to crash.

What I did second:
Since it had originally passed the 8-bit texture thread I thought that might have been causing it to crash. I used RivaTuner to disable the 8-bit textures and cried running the game once again in TNT mode with hardware acceleration. The movies still work fine and the screen no longer flashes yet I am unable to see characters. In the title screen the words text is EXTREMELY garbed and unreadable. Actually in game right after the initial movie I can only see floating eyes, where the characters should be.

I would appreciate it if someone could help me fix my problem, or point me in the right direction. Thanks.

[siirsp]

I also have bizarre video issues.

disabling 8-bit textures causes the game to die.
when viewing most areas of the game everything looks like this:


when I try to use tnt mode it crashes on start-up.


normally and always (nothing fixes it) I have insane transparency issues in a few places like this (the gridliines are caused by high-res patch, and are not normally there though)



I have an nvidia fx5500



my bet's that it's a video driver issue.

joefess, do you have the nvidia settings icon in your system tray?
because I don't,
it could be that we're not using the real nvidia drivers, but are messing with stuff as though we did.

(I lost my system tray nvidia stuff when I had to reformat my computer about two years back, and I never had an nvidia disk or anything.)

[EmperorSteele]

If your monitors support high resolutions, try the saints high-res patch.  It fixes background gridlines and stuff.

Also, update your video drivers by going to nvidia.com or guru3d.com

[siirsp]

the high-res patch is what causes the gridlines. (those screenshots were scaled down)
normally they're not there.


and I installed updated nvidia drivers earlier today, just after I posted previously
but I haven't gotten around to installing FF7 again, since it's currently uninstalled to conserve HD space (after you put all of music on my HD I only have 20gb left xD)
so I'll check in just a second.


edit:
updated drivers have fixed the transparency issues
and the text isn't garbled w/o using version 1.02 like it previously was.

edit 2:
installed 1.02
installed high-res
set to TNT so it wouldn't crash at start-up
ah, no gridlines!
works great.


and by Joefess53's description of his problem, I'd guess we were having the same issue
so joefess, if you don't have an nvidia in you system tray, actually even if you do (you might have outdated drivers maybe?) (can't hurt to try at least)
go here:
http://www.nvidia.com/content/license/location_0605.asp?url=http://download.nvidia.com/Windows/91.31/91.31_winxp2kmce_english_whql.exe
click agree and then dl it (it's the right one for your GPU)
run it. (restart)

then tell me if it works fine now

[EmperorSteele]

See?  Doubt not my near infiite wisdom, mortal =P

jk, glad everything's workin' for ya ^_^

[Joefess53]

Awsome siirsp, glad you got it working. I had forgotten I had down-gradded drivers to 77.7 in an attempt to make my 8-bit textures fail without using RivaTunner, thanks for reminding me. Everythings working great.