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

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for me, it just doenst play at all... idk why :(
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Check the thread I made on setting up your FF7 Music, then use Aali's newest driver .7.1 and make sure to uncomment the plugins part of the .cfg.  And it should run just fine
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did u say... ff7 music? oh god no! the process of installing ff7music is sooo complicating that i wont even touch it! tho i wish i could but i dont want to f*** anything up  :oops:

EDIT: sincerest apologies for going off-topic
 
Aali, FF7 music is fixed, you put a # before the music patch you mades path, Remove it and FF7Music works like a charm
 
i realize this is probably very premature, but is there any chance of you adding bumpmapping to a future version of your driver?

lee
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What would bumpmapping do? None of the game's assets use it.
 
well, older games (such as deus ex) have implemented bumpmapping and the effect is tremendous.  The world map with bumpmapped textures, weapons, enemies, player models, etc... could all be outfitted with bumpmaps.  Obviously this would only apply to custom content, the stock textures and materials would not show them by default.  Not sure if it is even possible due to the fact that the game has static lighting, so most bumpmaps would not really change depending on angle of viewing.  Still, i thought it might be interesting.

Just a question.

lee
 
To be fair, it doesn't have static lighting, try moving around at the bottom of the north crater for example, the green light is clearly coming from the center of the screen.

However, the lighting system is pretty simple, and it may not contain enough information about the lights to do all kinds of effects.

Of course none of this matters if I can't be arsed to actually understand how the software lighting works, something which I have yet to do.
 
To be fair, it doesn't have static lighting, try moving around at the bottom of the north crater for example, the green light is clearly coming from the center of the screen.
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i stand corrected :)  However, most of the game seems to take place in the same level of lighting(battles, world map, alot of scenes/backgrounds)  and i was just curious.  It's a piece of cake to create textures and bumpmaps for them, but alas, i lack the understanding to even begin to see how the light systems actually "lights".  I wish you the best of luck, you've done an excellent job so far!  Even without, the tools you've already provided have given a much needed boost to the FF7 (and FF7+) modding community.

lee
 
Aali, just a few basic questions on your driver (and a possible request)

From sl1982: Are semi transparent pixels on pngs ignored with your driver?

And now, when your driver loads up many PNG's at once there is lag. Is it possible to preload some of these textures (mostly for the menu/limit break i'd think) into memory without to much impact on performance? normal requirement for FF7 is 32mb, and 90% of PC's today have AT LEAST 512 so i'd think it wouldn't be to bad. But i don't know much about that.

If we can't preload them, Is it possible to make them load faster?

Thanks for your time in making your driver by the way, It is a must have if you play FF7
 
PNG files are not the most efficient file formats in the world. They take time to decompress. If yo need quick, you may want to try something with a little less compression.
 
Found another potential issue with the sound in FF7.  During the part in the Wall Market where you infiltrate the inn to get a vending machine item, after you get the item from the vending machine, the music immediately restarts from the beginning.

It may have always done that, but it seemed a little odd so I thought I'd let you know just in case.
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When the Sector 7 plate falls, the battle music doesn't stop playing when it should.
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Upon waking up after Jenova's escape from Hojo's lab, the "resting" music continues playing until you inspect the guard.
Something also happened while RedXII and Aerith were in the tank, but I don't remember what  :-P

I figure I'll just keep modifying this one post with all the Music problems I discover
 
PNG files are not the most efficient file formats in the world. They take time to decompress. If yo need quick, you may want to try something with a little less compression.
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I'll bring that up. Can Aali's driver load anything other then png? what format would you recommend?
 
Nevermind that, the next version of the driver will only ever load external textures once.

Right now it'll reload the texture every time FF7 reloads the original texture, and that's pretty often.
 
:-D :-D :-D Sweet! :-D
but....wont that make FF7 eat up RAM or VRAM or something?
 
Means that for sl1982's GUI mod on top of FF7 you'll be using 35.5mb of RAM haha So i don't think it will

EDIT: Aali, what about semi transparent pixels? sl1982 wants to use AA'd fonts but can't because his semi transparent pixels show up solid.

Anyway to implement this?
 
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Nevermind that, the next version of the driver will only ever load external textures once.

Right now it'll reload the texture every time FF7 reloads the original texture, and that's pretty often.
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And how much memory will you consume as a consequence? Remember the more memory you consume without releasing it the more likely you'll have:
1 a memory leakage issue
2 a slower program due to swapping because other programs running need memory.

Microsoft assumes that RAM is theres (not a joke it's a fact) and they do use a HUGE chunk of it even if it doesn't look like it.  This means you'll always have SWAPPED out memory.
Any time you have large chunks of allocated memory you will get slower hard disk performance. This is because of SWAPPING caused by loading more data into memory. It seems part of there allocation scheme for memory involves swapping data out immediately (to keep more room for ... something).

Anyhow.. windows is ill behaved with large memory allocations.  Hence I recommend you consider a texture caching scheme before you make it difficult to implement.

Genius is the art of planning ahead.

Cyb
 
I'm an idiot
A word of advice to anyone who stumbles upon this message.  DO NOT delete any of the files in the wm folder...
The .p files in the other folders seem to be fine to delete, but the ones in 'wm' are important.  Let this be a warning to anyone else who foolishly goes around deleting stuff in their folders :P
 
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hey can anybody tell me what happened here?

its on temple of the ancients after you solve the puzzle with the 'ancient'..it said error opening 'BLDD.chi' file..i was modding sephiroth prior to this and then this happened..i tried to put the original sephiroth but problem not solved..anybody help? cause i didnt back up my files.. :cry:

http://www.mediafire.com/?ynzzymmkjmz
 
Heys, I'm a newb here.

I can't seem to download the FF7 custom driver, I don't know if the link is dead or that my internet has got a problem.
Could you please kindly upload a mirror? :S I really wanna try this out, looks awesome!

BTW, does this support resolution 1366x768 (16:9)?

P.S: Sorry for any inconvenient caused.
 
I think that the driver will support any resolution, but you should configure it to preserve aspect ratio when playing on a widescreen monitor (unless you want the picture to be stretched out).

BTW, I'm getting a timeout from Aali's link as well :|
 
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