Custom graphics driver for FF7/FF8 [v.1-.7.6]

  • Thread starter Thread starter halkun
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Get ready for some nitpicking :P

The texture sampler should always be called "tex", it will be set to the right texture unit from the driver. (Obviously it's working anyway, but you shouldn't rely on this)
 
Well, there are other filters that look less blurry, like 2xSai or HQ2x, but personally I don't like how they look on hi-detail images. Besides, you'd need to write a fragment shader that does the job.

I guessed the the texture sampler should be called tex Aali, but I changed the name to see what happened and it still worked so I didn't care anymore :-P I'll keep it in mind in the future though.
 
Shader looks great ingame. My fps drops to 20 in the field though ^_^

And yeah, it's a little blurry - but still better. Makes the text look nice and smooth - and if you haven't noticed by now, I'm funny about the text.
 
If you want nice text you could always replace the fonts with high-res textures.
 
I'd love to, but I have no idea how to do that! I could learn though, I have a week off work with nothing to do but relax (I'm so happy right now).
 
If you want nice text you could always replace the fonts with high-res textures.
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Probably did the textures wrong, But when i tried that the game didn't load up any text i used a 512x512 256 color bitmap
 
Hmmm, it's definitely too blury, plus the fps drops to an unplayable level (very weird indeed). But it's a nice start.
 
You can also make that shader filter only the text by rising the width and height variables in the shader.
By the way, I didn't think this shader would be so power demanding. It works fine in my machine (I've got an 8800GT, though).
 
I have a 7600GS, more than enough for FF7 and custom shaders (at least it should be).
 
Scaling and/or postprocessing is essentially drawing a full screen worth of pixels, twice. Without FBO support, this alone will be sucking a lot of performance.

But even if you have FBO support, this shader does a number of texel fetches per pixel and performs some less-than-trivial math on them. This is waaay more GPU-intensive than what FF7 normally does.
 
Aali, our team worked on the Italian translation of the game but we use a modified EXE from the spanish version. Since i know that your driver does checks on the executable, is there a way you could add those checks in the config file? let's say, a list of the various CRCs or whatever other check you do on them?

I know you don't want people to use nocd versions of the EXE so you could somehow check the specific offsets for the typical instructions and still be able to accept any other EXE.
 
There is no CRC check, and unless you have modified the code in any way, your modified EXE should still identify as the spanish version and work fine.
 
This is truly a great improvement to the way FF7 can be played. I remember just a year ago having to search through a bunch of patches to get the correct ones yet there still existed some (luckily though quite minor) problems, but with this one they all seem to be fixed under one single label (well except for that FMV sound mute, does anyone know of any workaround by the way?)! And I never even dreamt about being able to play the game with my native widescreen resolution but it seems like this patch makes just about everything possible :D.

I don't know if anyone has reported it yet, but it seems like the fake_midi does cause some problems with FF7 Music. That is I've experienced the music getting cut off after a battle during two events. First time was when you were supposed to go help Barrett in preventing Shinra from destroying that one pillar (very close to the start of the game). This suspension music starts playing and and it keeps playing when you enter the first random encounter. However once you win the encounter the music goes completely silent (until another track is supposed to start playing). Same thing happened when I was going for the first visit to the Shinra headquarters. I took the straight path in and again the suspension music started playing and then after the first battle the music was again completely silent. And yeah it happens each time after the first battle.

And yes I've checked that it is caused by this fake_midi setting, because if I don't use it the music doesn't stop playing after this first battle but then I either have to play with no sounds or with both MIDI and my enhanced music playing which isn't that great :-P.
 
I see, I'll have to test that when I get home. fake_midi was not tested beyond generic battle/worldmap/field transitions, there may very well be some bugs.

Please keep reporting any odd music-related issues you run into with this setting :-)
 
And yes I've checked that it is caused by this fake_midi setting, because if I don't use it the music doesn't stop playing after this first battle but then I either have to play with no sounds or with both MIDI and my enhanced music playing which isn't that great :-P.
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This is a fake_midi problem? I'd assumed it was a problem with FF7Music. Hmm, I'll have to mention that in my FF7Music tutorial.
 
Well, as I understand it, if music cuts out after *any* random battle, you have bigger problems. But if it only happens during "special" scenes (scripted or otherwise) it could be a problem with fake_midi.
 
Well, as I understand it, if music cuts out after *any* random battle, you have bigger problems. But if it only happens during "special" scenes (scripted or otherwise) it could be a problem with fake_midi.
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Just wanted to poke my nose in and say I've experienced the same thing as Litude. Typically fake_midi works wonderfully with FF7 Music, but in those few scenarios there does seem to be a conflict. Other than that, GREAT job, and a hearty thank you from this fan!
 
I'll have to look into that then. It's probably due to some check I'm not performing before telling FF7Music to shut up :)

Starting with the next release, all music and movie code will be open-source and accessible to anyone. This is something I've already implemented, music and movies are already handled by plugins in my local environment.
 
Will any custom shader work with this driver? I'm having a look around the net just now to see what I can find.
 
Any shader could be adapted to this driver, but they probably wont work with this out of the box.
 
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