Engine building. If we make it, will they come?

[Locutus]

About legal things.

I think that what square cares most  are money and  square's image.
So in building custom engine we must think that this engine should be used only  with oryginal, legal version of ff7. In ff7 there is only a cd check protection. So in my opinion our engine should have  cd check protection that would check if oryginal cd is in the drive.

I would'nt call engine as an engine but i would call it a "FF7 FRONTEND GRAPHIC INTERFACE" becouse it is using oryginal ff7 data - animation , story , graphic and only displays it with different way (different resolutions, different codecs, sound plugins)

New 3d models should be an option as ad in module (in this case cd check is   guaranting that user has got oryginal ff7 game and that Square earned money) models should be packed and protected so no one could extract them normaly and used in wrong way.
In creating new models we must think about Square's image. New models should be based on Squares concept art (can be found in net)  or ff7 AC  and should be of high quality. Of course models creators should state that they only created models and That Square has at least partialy rights to this models becouse of Squares ideas and concept arts.

While building this" engine" it is important to -

1 make sure that users have orygiinal ff7 so Square earned money
2 Make sure that story of ff7 is not altered in any way.
3 In creating graphic ensured that this graphic is of high quality  ant that it has the spirit of FF7 and this way it is not  altering Square's image as high quality games creators.

 

[L. Spiro]

The graphics will not be altered at all, and “in the spirit of” will do nothing to ease their tempers.

Chrono Trigger: Resurrection had fine graphics in the spirit of the original.
Yet graphics were 80% of why it got shut down, with story being the remaining.

If you change the graphics at all, then the better you make them, the worse it makes your situation.

The more professional they look, the more “threat” your product poses to their property.


L. Spiro


P. S.:  We have mentioned this many times.
It won’t be my project but they already stated, no new models.
No new art.
No new content.
You CAN’T create a legal product if you recreate their visuals.

This isn’t about remaking the game with flashy graphics.
This an engine that runs their existing content, possibly so far as to allow people to play through the game entirely on this engine, with the only additions being up-to-date code, higher resolutions, and faster framerates.

 

[Locutus]

Look if  graphic will not be altered then i see no point in creeating ff7 engine other that learning coding ( of course for people writing this engine)

I have geforce 4 and i can play ff7  with fsaa and only new engine will not make it better.

Any higher resolution or anything (without changing graphic, media content )will not make ff7 better. Why ? Becouse movies, backgrounds were created in shity 320x340 resolution and rising resolution even to 1280 x 1024 can't make it better.

And if you have problems with compatibility you can play ff7 on playstation or even on playstation emulator in 1280 x 1024 resolution.

I am sure that many ff7 fans will not be interested in engine without upgrading content at least i will not be interested. Since i have no programing skill so i will be not working on engine  - i only wanted to share my opinion.

This legal things are insane .  If you want to do something legaly then you can do nothing.
Square is to lazy to remake ff7, or it can see no profit in it.
And if you a  ff7 fan you can't remake ff7 for free becouse it is illegal . That is the world

 

[Cyberman]

Look if  graphic will not be altered then i see no point in creeating ff7 engine other that learning coding ( of course for people writing this engine)

I might point out is your sole interest in the engine is different than others.  This is your perspective always keep in mind your perspective may not be shared by everyone.

I have geforce 4 and i can play ff7  with fsaa and only new engine will not make it better.

Mmmm better is highly subjective. I enjoy playing games that do not have cool graphics.  Perhaps we aren't interested in cool graphics?  I think the idea was running the content provided in a stable manner, with the way we want it to run.  New models etc. are additions to the basic work done.  I think you are putting De'Cart before De'Horse in this case.  It's something you can worry about once the content can be even run.

Any higher resolution or anything (without changing graphic, media content )will not make ff7 better. Why ? Becouse movies, backgrounds were created in shity 320x340 resolution and rising resolution even to 1280 x 1024 can't make it better.

First off it's actually 320x214 to be precise. Secondly you appear to be only interested in changing game esthetics which are actually the LAST part of developement. Again you are interested in something way way way down the road in possibilities.  I don't think you are interested in actually getting it to work.  That is actually the BIG challenge.

And if you have problems with compatibility you can play ff7 on playstation or even on playstation emulator in 1280 x 1024 resolution.

Whiich I do all the time.  What has this to do with the original idea?  It's not to play the game it's to be able to even run the game to begin with.  I think you are disolusioned about the purpose, most are intersted in learning how the engine works to begin with.  I love the game but the engine is pretty facinating too.

I am sure that many ff7 fans will not be interested in engine without upgrading content at least i will not be interested. Since i have no programing skill so i will be not working on engine  - i only wanted to share my opinion.

You are entitled to it, but I think you have recast Halkun's idea into what you want.  I'm sure other people want it, but to be honest it's probably not what the people working on it would want.  Does that make sense to you?  It has nothing to do with 'popularity', to be honest most people could care less about the project in the general population.  

This legal things are insane .  If you want to do something legaly then you can do nothing.
Square is to lazy to remake ff7, or it can see no profit in it.
And if you a  ff7 fan you can't remake ff7 for free becouse it is illegal . That is the world

It's always best to take yourself off there hit list first. Then you can work and acomplish something.  You can't finish what you never start, and you can't start tell you have a plan.  So this is called PLANING.  Sometimes things aren't practical.  Anything is possible just not practical.  Everyone has other projects and things they do to make a living as well.

Cyb

 

[Chesso]

You'd be better off decompiling it and updating it to take advantage of newer hardware etc that would be awsome i think. Course i know pulling that off succesfully wouldnt be easy.........

 

[Locutus]

I might point out is your sole interest in the engine is different than others.  This is your perspective always keep in mind your perspective may not be shared by everyone.

I never said that may point of view is shared by anyone . It is only MY point of view

Mmmm better is highly subjective. I enjoy playing games that do not have cool graphics.  Perhaps we aren't interested in cool graphics?  I think the idea was running the content provided in a stable manner, with the way we want it to run.  New models etc. are additions to the basic work done.  I think you are putting De'Cart before De'Horse in this case.  It's something you can worry about once the content can be even run.

I like games with outdated graphic if content is right, but Square made terrible work with ff7 and ff8 transfering it to pc almost exactly like they were on psx. In ff7 models have 1000-3000 polygons without almost no textures (there are few exceptions).
In ff8 models are only 1000 poly  with textures. Becouse of texture use and other things models have generaly less polygons then in ff7 and are blocky.Backgrounds in low resolutions. Only ff8 movies are good.
Square does not care about pc. Terrible ff7 translation into english.
Square should make ff7 and ff8 for pc first and then convert it to psx. Of course in Japan psx is more popular.
Square cares little about other markets then Japan. In Japan they will sell any game even without marketing and in high quantities.

 And about models as addition - L .Sipro stated that this engine will newer has any (or hypoteticaly will never has) any new content becouse off legal issues.

First off it's actually 320x214 to be precise. Secondly you appear to be only interested in changing game esthetics which are actually the LAST part of developement. Again you are interested in something way way way down the road in possibilities.  I don't think you are interested in actually getting it to work.  That is actually the BIG challenge.

I had in mind resolution 320x240 (340 typo) .Movies are in 320 x 224 exactly.  I am not interested in getting it to work becouse for me ff7 works now (i know that it is selfish) , and knowing how this engine works is not important for me becouse i know too little about programing and has no practice and can't learn from this project . Of course i would like to help in programing engine but it would take too long for me to catch up with programing level of  many people on this board. So programing engine is not for me .

It's always best to take yourself off there hit list first. Then you can work and acomplish something.  You can't finish what you never start, and you can't start tell you have a plan.  So this is called PLANING.  Sometimes things aren't practical.  Anything is possible just not practical.  Everyone has other projects and things they do to make a living as well.
Cyb

Planing is important but i have seen people who were planing on such big scale that planing was more important than engine and they newer went beyond planing.

Of course everything above are only my opinions.

 

[Cyberman]

You'd be better off decompiling it and updating it to take advantage of newer hardware etc that would be awsome i think. Course i know pulling that off succesfully wouldnt be easy.........

Actually decompilation is a nontrivial task. I've done it when I had to convert an old controler based on a Z80 to a new system based on a PC104 module.  It took the better part of 5 weeks to convert 32K of ROM code it 53 C modules and 54 headers.  This was just decompilation working about 9 hours a day 5 days a week.  There is no way something as large as FF7 would be as easy as that.  Decompiling also hits on an ethics problem.  DMCA essentially torpedo's this idea.
Remake actually worked somewhat.  We know something about the original content (browse this forum).  We also know something about the scripting engine etc.  I believe it will take less time than attempting to decipher there original code. This is because we create the specs from the presented data, more importantly this is not Reverse engineering and doesn't consist of 'stealing there code' which is copyrighted.

I like games with outdated graphic if content is right, but Square made terrible work with ff7 and ff8 transfering it to pc almost exactly like they were on psx. In ff7 models have 1000-3000 polygons without almost no textures (there are few exceptions).
In ff8 models are only 1000 poly with textures. Becouse of texture use and other things models have generaly less polygons then in ff7 and are blocky.Backgrounds in low resolutions. Only ff8 movies are good.
Square does not care about pc. Terrible ff7 translation into english.
Square should make ff7 and ff8 for pc first and then convert it to psx. Of course in Japan psx is more popular.
Square cares little about other markets then Japan. In Japan they will sell any game even without marketing and in high quantities.

1) Square soft did not port FF7 OR FF8 to the PC  and yes FF7 was a really nasty port
2) Translation to English was actually fairly good.  It's hard to translate between langauges especially expressions, gestures even are a problem.
3) Starting with the PC first and porting to the PSX can have mixed results.  It's better to leave things open for later porting than code for one platform and then attempt to port to another.  It's a difficult situations irreguardless to make the game that way.
4) I know a LOT about the FF7 model information there polycounts I suppose I could give you exactly if I took the time to gather statics from them.  I could also give animation count texture size (if any) etc.  Been playing with them for well over a year now (scarey now that I think about it).
5) FF8 has several different model sets There are high res models and low res models for the field for example. Battle models I've no clue about but I know where they are located at least  The hi rez sets have 2 texture's that are 8 bit depth and palatized. All textures are 128x128 pixels. Vertex counts I can get as well as face count. They are stored a bit differently (ok a LOT differently) than in FF7. The have no lighting characteristics nor any vertex normals etc.  So yes they are limited, but in my view they are pretty good considering they were made quite a while ago.
6) Japan is a totally different world than the US.  Same as Europe and the US.  That's the way things are.  

I had in mind resolution 320x240 (340 typo) .Movies are in 320 x 224 exactly. I am not interested in getting it to work becouse for me ff7 works now (i know that it is selfish) , and knowing how this engine works is not important for me becouse i know too little about programing and has no practice and can't learn from this project . Of course i would like to help in programing engine but it would take too long for me to catch up with programing level of many people on this board. So programing engine is not for me .

214 was a typo I didn't notice for a while yes it's 224 for everything.  Ok so you basically have no interest in the project.  That's cool.

Cyb

 

[halkun]

Cyb: Squaresoft *DID* port FF7 to PC.

The porting process was done by a contract team, but under Square's control. Edios at no time had the source code, they simply distributed the program.

Actually, what Square did was "up-port" the code. At the time, Square's sharefolders were chomping at the bit because of the exclusive contract with Sony. They wanted the company to diversify and Square started to rewrite thier old games to more portable and device-independant code. FF7 was kind of in a quasi-state as it was written with a moderen language, but was still tied to it's propitary platfrom. In effect it's port suffered because it *WAS* a port, and not a rewrite of the engine. The FF1/2 code is *EXTREAMELY* portable. (These both use the same engine, with different data, it's why they are always bundleled togeather). On the flip side FF6's rewrite, using the SNES engine program flow as it's base, was still a rewrite and not the same engine as the remakes of FF5, 4, or 1-2

It was, at the time a good business desision, but bad timeing on chosing FF7. They should of waited and ported FF9 to the PC as it as it was just beginning deveopment at the time.

 

[Locutus]

First Cyberman . I see that you like saying everything precise. anything said generaly is wrong

1) Square soft did not port FF7 OR FF8 to the PC  and yes FF7 was a really nasty port

Maybe not Square but someone made ff for pc for Square and Square aproved that ff version

3) Starting with the PC first and porting to the PSX can have mixed results.  It's better to leave things open for later porting than code for one platform and then attempt to port to another.  It's a difficult situations irreguardless to make the game that way.

I was speaking here about media,graphic. When you have high resolution backgrounds,movies,textures on pc then it is easy to convert them to low
resolution psx. From low resolution media you can't make high one.
You need to render them again in high resolution. People creating pc version has got generaly psx media . (only movies in ff8 were rendered again in 640x480) or maybe they had high res movies in first place and encoded them to psx native resolution.

4) I know a LOT about the FF7 model information there polycounts I suppose I could give you exactly if I took the time to gather statics from them.  I could also give animation count texture size (if any) etc.  Been playing with them for well over a year now (scarey now that I think about it).

I am also playing ff7 models for long time and i was speaking generaly. I was not speaking about exact numbers.  From watching ff7 models and few ff8 models i got felling that they could be better on pc becouse pc is not limited by strict specifications like psx (of course pc is limited by economical boundries).  For example - today no one can release game that is playable only on geforce 6800 ultra .( one can release such game but will not earn much from it)


 

  Ok so you basically have no interest in the project.  That's cool.

What is cool about it?  I don't know . You know this is as cool as saying that nick 'Cyberman" is cool becouse word  cyber  is in it (not that i do not like nick Cyberman). no offense but i heard little flaming in your words.

 

[Synergy Blades]

I for one don't want to see a remake with half-assed fan made models. It'd be a great challenge to make a new engine with Square's original content that has greater compatibility.

 

[Qhimm]

You can certainly make custom models for FF7 already, with enough knowledge of the file format. The new engine will not provide any additional functionality to make it easier than that. It should do the exact job the original engine does (but better), not take on any new "additions" to the game. halkun: ...right?

This is, as someone may or may not have said, more of a technology demostration. Sort of like writing an emulator, but emulating the game environment instead of the console environment. I'm still not sure about the reverse-engineering issues though, even the current base of FF7 information is certainly in many places the result of reverse-engineering/disassembly. We (at least I) base the new code on the functionality of the original, not the code of the original; but it's a bit murky since a lot of the existing knowledge of the functionality comes from observing the original code...  :-?

 

[ragnarok13]

I think the guys making CT:R made a serious mistake: they were about to, with their project, make freely available a game, that is in all aspects better copy of the original, AND (if I remember correctly?), it being functional did not require the original game.
So if you can make the new engine unconditionaly require the original game (data?) to function... But then again, big companies sometimes just shut down projects for no good reason at all, so I can't say anything for sure :roll:

This is, as someone may or may not have said, more of a technology demostration. Sort of like writing an emulator, but emulating the game environment instead of the console environment.

One thing: the PS emulator needs the BIOS, which isn't supplied with it. So officialy, the thing doesn't work and is not supposed to. That makes it pretty safe from being shut down, don't you think? An emulator of a software enviroment might not have that luxury, though. Except if you successfuly translate the concepts: BIOS >>> original game data?

 

[halkun]

Here are the goals I would be intrested in.

1) Update the engine for modern computers and graphics cards.
Why? beause the old one has atrophied. It can't run on XP, and now Duck has dropped support of TrueMotion.

2) Create a cross-platfrom engine
A native engine will always prefrom better than one in an emulated environment. Using FF7 on a PSX emu example, even if you play the game at 2048x1024, you are stil using a 320x224 "grid" and the polygon vertexs "snap to the grid" even though the edges are in higher resolution. It would be nice to be truely scaleable. I also, selfishly, want to play FF7 as a native Linux game.

3) Create an extendable engine that you can write your own content for
What the difference between FreeSCI running Sierra's "Hero's quest" and a new engine running the FF7PC? Geep in mind there is also the "SCIStudio" where you can make your own content. I'll jus be happ if you could use somewhat sane formats and real directory tree.

I have to get to work. I'll probably whine later, I have to dig my car out of the snow now....

 

[Qhimm]

First of all, I'd like to say I like this discussion. Both because it's important, but because the people in it have very well-formulated opinions.

3) Create an extendable engine that you can write your own content for
What the difference between FreeSCI running Sierra's "Hero's quest" and a new engine running the FF7PC? Geep in mind there is also the "SCIStudio" where you can make your own content. I'll jus be happ if you could use somewhat sane formats and real directory tree.

Now this is where we it starts getting dangerous... that being getting close to a point where the FF7 original data is just a "game pack" and our engine and future development tools (?) allows people to toy with Square's original content. They're leaving people who do small-scale hacking alone, but while the distinction between the small-scale "providing a new engine for FF7" and the slightly larger-scale "providing the ability to use FF7 data in a new, extendable context" is a small one, it's a most important difference of motive. We're talking about taking something entirely based on SquareEnix's ideas and property (the engine) into entirely new uses. Let's not kid ourselves that any soul out there would create a new game using this highly primitive and restrictive engine, the main public interest would clearly be to make (half-assed) customizations to the FF7 game itself. And since I'm assuming we'd have to figure out a way to prevent such use of the original data just as a "please don't sue" gesture for SquareEnix, what would then be the point to spend even more huge amounts of work to build a game customization engine that either no one will or can use legally?

The challenge is to build something that will run FF7 as it was intended. That's a rather specific and unique goal, with plenty of work involved. If we want to make a general-purpose engine (which would also run FF7), we're talking incredibly more work for very little reason. Any team willing to spend the work to create the amount of content needed for a game running in the FF7 engine would most likely want to write their own engine too, to get exactly what they want. Sure we could start a new project later for a RPGMaker-style engine that would let you make games similar to FF7, but I really feel we should keep the two concepts entirely separate. If we actually get together and create the latter engine (using what we've learned from this project about engine design), we would actually have a viable product. It would be a real shame then not to be able to do anything with it or even protect it, due to some legal issue regarding its origin because it was developed from the FF7 engine.

My point, which could probably have been written much shorter, is mainly that the new FF7 engine and the extensible RPG engine are and should be two entirely separate projects. If nothing else, than for the simple reason that the FF7 engine by necessity is messy, while a new engine (especially an extendable one) should be written "by the book" so to speak. You would not want to try and combine the two philosophies in a single software development project, trust me.

 

[Alhexx]

It seems like we've got a two-problems-discussion in here:
1. Argueing about who ported FF7 to PC and the Quality of the Port.
2. Writing our own Engine

I'l try to concentrate on the second one...

I've got to agree with Qhimm. I thought that making self-made additions to the engine would be an option, however, I've been tought here that this is going to be a risk for the whole project. So let's forget about this one first.
A "Naked Engine" is what we have to work on.

This is one of the points that makes my head ache:

1 make sure that users have orygiinal ff7 so Square earned money

The engine *should* have a cd-check or any sort of pseudo-copy-protection to ensure the end-user has a legal copy of FF7.
Problems:
1. If this is going to be an open-source project, then we can totally forget that. Everyone could download the source and recompile it without the protection. (what means that Open-source isn't such a good idea at all)
2. AFAIK FF7 did not have any copy protection on their original discs, so there won't be a way to check if the end user has a legal copy. But this is Square's Problem I think...


And something else:
Some months ago I was trying to write a 2d-jump-and-run engine, however, the project was cancelled.
But I was writing some sort of "Virtual Directory Manager", and I think this maybe could be helpful for that FF7 engine...
That manager consist of 2 Classes: A Directory and a File class.
Once you specify a path to the directory and "mount" it, the directory class scans the path for files, and creates an array of File classes.
Then, it checks if there are any archive files (LGPs in FF7), and if there are, it reads out the Header of the archives and add the files inside of that archive to the File class array. Of course, this only works when the archives are not compressed, but AFAIK, all LGPs are uncompressed in FF7 PC.

Advantages:
1. You do not to decompress those archives to tempory files, you can access them directly from the archive (as use it as a usual file that is not packed into an archive). Of course, this is only working well if you want to have Read Access to those files - it's tricky when you want to change a file inside an archive.
2. Because of that File array, you do not need to search for the files you want to open - you just get them from your array.

Disadvantage:
Once a directory was "mounted" it does not recognize any changes in that directory until it is "remounted", which means closing all files, destroying the file array and mounting again.
(However, I was thinking about making an "Silent Remount" which will not require closing and destroying *all* objects...)

Unfortunately, my last file backup f**ked up, so I lost the source files.
However, I have already started rewriting those two classes. It will take some time until I can send you some code, however, maybe this would be a way to solve some of our cross-platform problems...

What do you think?

 - Alhexx

 

[Cyberman]

First Cyberman . I see that you like saying everything precise. anything said generaly is wrong

If you say things generally they generally are wrong.  It sounds odd but it's true. It's best to be specific so people won't be misled or get wrong ideas.

Maybe not Square but someone made ff for pc for Square and Square aproved that ff version

Ummm Ok in any case we agree it's a crummy port.

I was speaking here about media,graphic. When you have high resolution backgrounds,movies,textures on pc then it is easy to convert them to low
resolution psx. From low resolution media you can't make high one.

Mmmmm maybe there is a detailed discusion about FF7's porting to the PC somewhere in this forum read that.  Porting is very difficult.  Even with highly portable code (See Nethack as an example) is quite difficult to port, I can attest to that. It really depends on what you are developing for.  PC games about the time FF7 was released were not as good as playstation games in terms of developement and quality.  Keep in mind you are looking backwards on the progression and not what the authors had to do.  It's not what people can do now it's what was available then.  At the time of the initial game writting the playstations video hardware did much better than the PC's.  That's just the way things were.  Now it's reversed.

You need to render them again in high resolution. People creating pc version has got generaly psx media . (only movies in ff8 were rendered again in 640x480) or maybe they had high res movies in first place and encoded them to psx native resolution.

Please read the discusion of the porting of FF7 it's somewhere in this forum.  I think you'll understand things a lot better.  I would also like to point out that if you don't make a game with the intent to port to begin with, this will be the typical situation.

I am also playing ff7 models for long time and i was speaking generaly. I was not speaking about exact numbers.  From watching ff7 models and few ff8 models i got felling that they could be better on pc becouse pc is not limited by strict specifications like psx (of course pc is limited by economical boundries).  For example - today no one can release game that is playable only on geforce 6800 ultra .( one can release such game but will not earn much from it)

Well I've not been manipulating models I've been rendering them from the original content.  As for if they could be better sure, Qhimm posted some rather startling images from FF8 content rerendered.  We know enough to grab the PSX data from the disk and give an OK rendering of it as a result. This is without enhancements.  The whole point of the engine is to actually get the data and make it work correctly.  Doing additional things to the data won't help unless the engine can run the original content to start with.  That's the primary focus of the project.

Cyb

 

[Chesso]

ummmm i doubt this is any help but....... what if this newly made engine just applied special effects on top of the original gfx to get a nicer or different look then there's no content modification.....

Im not sure what you would call it and whether it would work for this but you might be able to enhance the graphics and stay out of trouble somewhat.

 

[L. Spiro]

Some special effects such as distance blur and stencil-depth shadows could be applied (assuming there was a light source, and in the battle scenes there are none), and I personally have little opinion about whether it is a good idea.
I consider it with my own engine but never get around to doing it, primarily because I need more done.

Changing the graphics is not acceptable, but applying modern graphics-enhancing effects, well, depends on what the makers of the engine want.

I am completely against modifying the models or game content but for my own engine I am considering making shadows and blur to be options the user can select if he or she wants to see a more modern game.

Besides that, right now, with a fully-loaded battle scene and all characters on the field, I am getting over 1,000 frames-per-second at 1280×1024.
I need something to slow that down.


L. Spiro

 

[Qhimm]

Enhancing as in how emulators enhance (2xSAI filtering, increased resolution, anti-aliasing) should all be relatively OK. These are merely ways of showing the original content, and do not depend or interact with the content in question. We could, for example, apply a gauze effect (a la Prince of Persia: SoT) for the world map, but say adding motion blur to the Bahamut summon would be a bit closer to the edge of "manipulating original content" -- the only difference being that we let the engine do it in real-time without modifying the Bahamut summon files. I don't know, but this is in any case definitely something to think about late in the project, not during the planning stage.

 

[Chesso]

Ahhh yes of course i just wanted to suggest it as it doesn't brake any laws or atleast not to my knowledge and it shouldn't.