Hi Everyone,
I recently rediscovered this old gem and came online searching for mods to spice it up. I'm currently looking into some hard type mods, but I wanted to upgrade the subpar graphics - this is a fantastic site I have spent the past few days researching the mods, and how to install them. Here are my system specs:
Intel Core2Duo 2.0Ghz
2GB Ram
Intel GMA 950 (945 chipset) - may be the problem
Windows XP
I've gone ahead and installed the following on top of the native FF7 install from my old disks:
FF7 1.02 patch
FF7 Music Patch
Opengl-0.7.2b
APZ Cloud Model
FF7 Rejuvenation Project (I copied the 00.LGP and 01.LGP to their respective places in the native folder)
High resolution Avatars
YAMP (9999 limit breaks, GYPT)
When I initially installed the first three patches (1.02 patch through the opengl) I seem to recall everything working great - battle swirls were working great as far I remember. The thing is, it has been so long since then I have a foggy recollection (i've spent the past few days searching for solutions)
Now with all of these mods applied once I skip the initial movie and start my first combat (with the the 2 shinra soldiers) I have no battle swirl but a white screen that fades into the combat. That I can deal with. Continuing along I encounter my first set of enemies, and I find that 90% of the time if I beat them I can keep going, but if I flee the game crashes as the battle mode fades out. If I manage to get to Barret I can fight a few fights with him but the game crashes after the2nd or 3rd battle, even if I don't flee. When I flee initially, here is the end of the app.log
Entering FRAME_INITIALIZE SWIRL
Exitting FRAME_INITIALIZE SWIRL
Swirl sound_effect1
stop_sound
End of Swirl sound_effect1
Entering FRAME_QUIT SWIRL
Exitting FRAME_QUIT SWIRL
Entering MAIN
Exiting MAIN
[BATTLE] Entering FRAME_INITIALIZE
[BATTLE] Scene# 307
[BATTLE] Exitting FRAME_INITIALIZE - First battle with 2 shinra soldiers
[BATTLE] Begin main battle loop
[BATTLE] End of current battle
[BATTLE] Begin end battle stuff
SET VOLUME 1: 127
stop_sound
[BATTLE] Entering FRAME_QUIT
[BATTLE] endof battle. - where I try to flee
[BATTLE] Exitting FRAME_QUIT
Entering MAIN
ERROR: unhandled exception
I've tried everything I can think of. I removed the updated graphics mod and replaced them with entirely the originals and this still happens, so I can eliminate those. I've tried re-applying the music/graphics patches and I get the same thing. Ive played around in the opengl.cfg and the only change I can see, is that if I change the resolution to 0,0 (default resolution), I get a black screen instead of a white screen, instead of seeing the battle swirl. The game still crashes at the same points.
My suspicions is that it is either my graphics card (lit is a POS but it did run fine at one point) or I somehow messed up the graphics installation (although I'm not stupid and the directions WERE pretty clear
). In my opengl config I use the following settings:
use_shaders = yes
enable_postprocessing = no
window_size_x = 1024
window_size_y = 768
preserve_aspect = yes
fullscreen = yes
prevent_rounding_errors = yes
enable_vsync = yes
minigame_framelimiter = on
battleswirl_framelimiter = on (off doesn't work - the white screen just changes to battle faster)
use_new_timer = yes
use_stable_timer = no
linear_filter = off
direct_mode = off
I've played around with a few of the settings to no real difference. There is one problem that I think might work but I have not been successful yet. I tried to patch the YAMP minigames patch but then my game wouldn't run. I tried a few hours later to re-apply the patch but every time the ff7.exe would become corrupt - no idea what is causing this. I came across this
http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=8306.msg113404#msg113404 topic but the download is no longer available, and changing to graphics settings didn't help.
Does anyone have any idea what might be causing the constant crashing after a few battles (100% of the time when I flee) and the white screen instead of the battle swirl? I have a feeling it is connected to the graphics drivers somehow but I am stumped and after a few days of searching for solutions I thought I'd turn to you guys for help. Thanks for reading!
EDIT: Again, something that wasn't there initially but cropped up after installing a mod or two - everytime I run FF7.exe I got a popup from Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime Library Stating "Runtime Error! Program C:\Progra~1\Square~1\finalf~1\ff7.exe R6034 error"
Once I click OK, I get another popup when the screen fades out "No useful indirect path found, check app.log for details". These don't prevent anything as far as I see, but here is APP.log for when this happens (I Alt-F4ed when the Eidos logo popped up"
INFO: Auto-detected version: FF7 1.02 US English
INFO: FFMpeg movie player plugin loaded
INFO: FFMpeg version SVN-r19334, Copyright (c) 2000-2009 Fabrice Bellard, et al.
INFO: Intel Intel 945GM 1.4.0 - Build 7.14.10.4926
INFO: No OpenGL 2.0 support detected, shaders won't be available
INFO: Found swap_control extension
INFO: Original resolution 640x480, window size 1024x768, output resolution 1024x768, internal resolution 640x480
INFO: No NPOT texture support
ERROR: init_indirect failed, scaling and postprocessing will be disabled
INFO: internal resolution clamped to 1024x768
LOCK UNLOCK TEST
MATRIX INITIALIZE
INITIALIZE DD/D3D END
initializing sound...
creating dsound primary buffer
reading audio file
loading static sounds
sound initialized
INITIALIZING MIDI...
selecting device 0:Microsoft GS Wavetable SW Synth, mid=1, pid=102,
midi data type: AWE SOUNDFONT MIDI
using midi data file: C:\Program Files\Square Soft, Inc.\Final Fantasy VII\Data\midi\awe.lgp
midiOutGetVolume returned: ffffffff
MIDI INITIALIZED
set music volume: 127
MIDI set volume: 127
100% of 127 = 127
set music volume: 127
MIDI set master volume: 100
MIDI set volume: 127
100% of 127 = 127
Entering MAIN
Exiting MAIN
START OF CREDITS!!!
INFO: F:\FF7\Movies\eidoslogo.avi; truemotion2/pcm_u8 320x240, 15.000000 FPS, duration: 10.133333, frames: 152
WM_CLOSE
END OF CREDITS!!!
Field Quit
MIDI stop - OK
resetting MIDI driver volume - OK
UNINITIALIZE DD
END UNINITIALIZE DD
