8-Bit Paletted Textures failing in FF7... help! (also, some

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Krrgh... damn WindowsXP (and Windows2000 for that matter), neither of those OSes seem to like cooperating with 8-Bit Paletted Textures. Windows95? Fine. Windows98? No problem. Something that involves NT? Yeah, right. Anyway, I'm not making this thread to rant... I'm here for help, of course. I'll need all the info you guys can throw at me about getting 8-Bit Paletted Textures to work in XP. Here's my system specs just in case you need 'em:

Processor: Intel Pentium III Slot 1 @ 550MHz
Motherboard: Spacewalker AV61 v1.4
Sound Card: Creative Labs Soundblaster PCI128
Video Card: ATi Radeon 64MB DDR VIVO
Memory: 128MB PC100 CAS3 SDRAM (Generic)
Monitor: Azura 17A+
Operating System: Microsoft Windows XP Professional

Yes, I have the latest drivers for my video card. Yes, I have the latest crap from Windows Update. Yes, I have the latest 4in1 drivers for my mobo. No, I will not play FF7 in software rendering.

Now it's time for me to brag... you may skip past this part if you don't care to hear my ramblings (and quite frankly, I don't blame you...)

I just bought and installed my ATi Radeon 64MB DDR VIVO today... and I experienced Unreal Tournament and Half-Life in hardware rendering for the first time in my life. There are not enough words in the English language available for me to express my pure amazement. Rockets have smoke trails? Blood can stick to walls? Explosions leave carbon ash stains on the floor? Wow. Just... wow. Heh... This card puts my old ATi Rage Pro to shame in so many categories it's not funny. GET OUTTA MY AGP SLOT, BIATCH! MAKE ROOM FOR YOUR NEW GOD.

I am in complete bliss with this new card of mine. Heaven on Earth, I tell you.
[edited] 269 2002-02-02 15:07
 
Heh... I remember my first time playing HL on my system with HW acceleration. I agree that it is hard to describe. You'll eventually get used to it, and soon, you'll forget those days without it, like they were a rightfully forgotten dream.

On to your problems: First, From what I hear, the Radeon cards seem to be having troubles in that area. Fice or someone else that actually HAS one of those card (or something similar) might be able to help you more. But even for us NVidia users, getting FF7 running can be a pain in the butt.

You also have to remember that FF7 was built with DirectX 5 in mind. Win2k shipped with DX7 installed on it. I'm assuming WinXP came with DX8. Despite MS saying it's backwards compatibile, we all know that it isn't completely backwards compatible. Otherwise FF7 would run without any problems no matter WHAT version of DX(5+) you were running. However, there MAY be something within the OS itself that is causing the problems. There's nothing we can really do about that. MS will have to fix it, but most likely, they won't, because they don't see the need to.

And sadly, that's that.

Sephiroth 3D

"I don't understand..." "You don't have to understand." - Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within

Sephiroth 3D.com
[email protected]
 
The Radeons, so far as I know, don't support paletted textures. Period. I suspect they might be able to, but unlike the GeForces, there isn't a long history of drivers so you can't go back a few years to the point where the drivers *did* support paletted textures.

However, as far as FF7 goes, I got it working fine on *my* Radeon (not as good as yours ... grrr!) very easily. Installed the 1.02 NVidia patch and turned either of the NVidia modes on. So long as I had a 500MB+ swapfile (which is insane, but that's what the patch wants) the game ran perfectly.

As for backwards compatibility: I'm pretty sure DX *is* actually fairly reliable at the backwards-compatibility thing. Windows, OTOH, isn't - not quite as much, anyway. I can run FF7 fine with DirectX8 ... but only on Win98.
 
On 2002-02-02 04:53, ficedula wrote:
The Radeons, so far as I know, don't support paletted textures. Period. I suspect they might be able to, but unlike the GeForces, there isn't a long history of drivers so you can't go back a few years to the point where the drivers *did* support paletted textures.
Click to expand...

You see, when I was using my old Rage Pro, I was able to get 8-Bit Paletted Textures working on Windows98SE when I used to have my 98SE/XPPro dual-partition dual-boot setup, but now I've got everything on one big NTFS partition with WindowsXP. No Win9x OSes anymore for me... I'm trying to wean myself off of them, and it seems to be working for the most part.

Now if a Rage Pro can do it, I highly suspect that the Radeon also can. Only problem is, I'll need to use a Win9x series OS (which I really don't want to do). Please don't tell me to reformat and set up a dual boot again... I already reformatted and reinstalled last week and I don't have the time or patience to do it again anytime soon.

On 2002-02-02 04:53, ficedula wrote:
However, as far as FF7 goes, I got it working fine on *my* Radeon (not as good as yours ... grrr!) very easily. Installed the 1.02 NVidia patch and turned either of the NVidia modes on. So long as I had a 500MB+ swapfile (which is insane, but that's what the patch wants) the game ran perfectly.
Click to expand...

500MB?! Jesus Christ, that's nearly half a gig... I've only got a 10GB hard drive, and I can't sacrifice that kind of space without clearing out some of my porn and music (both of which I cherish and value immensely.)

Ugh... I don't wanna have to do this... are there any alternatives, even if they're risky and/or stupid? I can always enable system restore before doing whatever needs to be done. For the record, I usually have system restore disabled (like everyone should), but I always turn it on when I'm about to do something that seems a little dangerous.

On 2002-02-02 04:53, ficedula wrote:
As for backwards compatibility: I'm pretty sure DX *is* actually fairly reliable at the backwards-compatibility thing. Windows, OTOH, isn't - not quite as much, anyway. I can run FF7 fine with DirectX8 ... but only on Win98.
Click to expand...

Heh heh, Amen to that. :). I just don't know whether to blame Eidos, Squaresoft or Microsoft for all of this... at least ONE of them screwed up SOMEWHERE along the line when it comes to FF7's compatibility problems. *sigh...*
 
Gah... that was me. Forgot to log in, sorry.

Why is anonymous posting enabled, anyway? I don't really see a point in it... registration takes two minutes flat, and from an administration point of view, mandatory registration is good for cleaning out notorious spammers and trolls (read: banning.)

If Qhimm ever stepped down and left this message board in my hands (not friggin likely, I should imagine... but whatever), anonymous posting would be the first thing I'd disable.
 
No, Radeons *don't* AFAIK support 8-bit paletted. The hardware is probably capable but I'm saying I don't know of *any* drivers for it (for any OS) that support it. I could be wrong ... but that's what I've found. You simply can't get it so far as I know.

The only way is the NVidia patch.

500MB? Well, it's not *that* much. But there may well be an alternative. Once you've installed and setup the NVidia patch, go into regedit, to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESoftwareNV3D3D. Now, there's a key in there called TEXHEAP that's (if it's measuring in KB) set to 500MB exactly. Coincidence? Probably not. Try changing that down to whatever virtual memory you *do* have and it *may* make it work with less.

Note I've never tried this because I have that much virtual memory, so it's not a problem for me. I don't know whether it'll work - but it seems plausible.
 
IMO if you can't get your Radeon working properly I think you'd better stick to software like me....
Sorry, can't really help much. I don't own an ATi card b4, I only use 3dfx and Nvidia. One thing I noticed though: FF7/FF8 works fine with the 3DFX series.
Damn... I don't really like nVidia when it comes to compatibility with old games.   :x
 
My problem is I can't get my Voodoo2 working in Win2k along with my Anniliator 2. Hopefully, I can get my 2nd computer's CD-Drive working, cause then I can install another 1gig HD and have plenty of room to install Win98 AND FF7!

Sigh...

Sephiroth 3D

"I don't understand..." "You don't have to understand." - Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within

Sephiroth 3D.com
[email protected]
 
On 2002-02-02 15:42, ficedula wrote:
No, Radeons *don't* AFAIK support 8-bit paletted. The hardware is probably capable but I'm saying I don't know of *any* drivers for it (for any OS) that support it. I could be wrong ... but that's what I've found. You simply can't get it so far as I know.
Click to expand...

Crap. Would this be a hardware-related problem, or a driver-related problem? Meaning, is it a physical limitation of the card that has no chance of being changed, or is ATi's stupid support department to blame for releasing new drivers every two years or so on average?

I mean, Jesus... the latest supported WindowsXP Radeon driver was released on October 15, 2001. Yeah, I know there's the BETA drivers they released five days ago, but with ATi's reputation for buggy drivers, I'm really not willing to take the risk and put my trust in these completely unsupported, non-qualified drivers.
 
I'm saying I *suspect* it's capable in a hardware sense (although I don't *know* that for sure) but the drivers don't support it; and, more to the point, never *will* since no modern games will even think of using paletted textures. On  a modern card there is quite simply no point whatsoever.

Of course, for backwards compatibility it's annoying, but ... there you go.

I suggest you use the NVidia patch because it works fine for *me* and you may be able to reduce the hard disk requirements using the registry edit I suggested.

As a side note, I've found the latest Radeon driver set to be fine. Unlike earlier ATI drivers (which were *notorious* for problems) the current ones work great for me, no problems at all.
 
On 2002-02-04 18:27, ficedula wrote:
I suggest you use the NVidia patch because it works fine for *me* and you may be able to reduce the hard disk requirements using the registry edit I suggested.
Click to expand...

Meh, don't worry... I'll be reformatting and repartitioning again some time this week. I didn't want to do it, but there's some stuff of mine that simply MUST be run in Windows9x, even after trying all the compatibility mode stuff.

On 2002-02-04 18:27, ficedula wrote:
As a side note, I've found the latest Radeon driver set to be fine. Unlike earlier ATI drivers (which were *notorious* for problems) the current ones work great for me, no problems at all.
Click to expand...

Uhm, sorry... are you referring to the currently supported drivers or the new betas? The above quote uses too many pronouns to properly understand its context... at least to me it is.
 
Muhahaha!

I just got myself a DVD drive for my computer! That, coupled with my 4.0 speaker system, AND a copy of the Robotech series (Macross Saga only right now), I'm so happy!   :love:   :love:   :love:

But because I got that, I dumped my CD-drive into my second computer, which means when I get some time tomorrow, I can install Win98, get that sucka networked, and install FF7so it'll work with my Voodoo2! Damn, that gonna rock! Plus I can play FF8 if I'm stingy with HD space...  :love:   :love:

Beware! I have Proto-culture!   :D

Sephiroth 3D

"I don't understand..." "You don't have to understand." - Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within

Sephiroth 3D.com
[email protected]
 
Hmm ... actually, I'm running the 4.13.7115 drivers which I note aren't quite the latest ones .... but they've been fine for me, anyway.
 
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