Higher Resolution in FF8

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Alhexx

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Is it possible to increase FF8's screen resolution via hacking some files (perhaps FF8.exe) ? If anyone knows, please let me know,too :wink:

 - Alhexx
 
I've had questions about that too :wink:

Jari's right: You'd need a DirectX layer that filtered calls through, translating them into a higher res.

It'd be a LOT of work for (possibly) no end result, so nobody's taken it on yet...
 
I'm not a graphic programmer, so this is a shot in the dark:

What about updating the midi config ver. 2 program to allow for higher resolution, then adding a simple resolution scale code in the .exe that came with it?

Would that work, or am I just restating the obvious??
 
No, it wouldn't work ... not that easily.

The midi program filters DirectMusic calls ... they're totally separate to DirectDraw/Direct3D so it doesn't give you any head start whatsoever using the music configurator.

You'd need to do the same SORT of thing, but to DDraw ... except DDraw is far, far bigger than DMusic, so it's a lot of work ... plus it might not even work, since DDraw is pretty sensitive to hacks.
 
To be honest, using a higher resolution in FF7 or 8 isn't necessary. Just run 640x480 with the best level of FSAA your card supports.
 
Yes but the problem with that is the FSAA slows the game down, also the charecters get very blurry.
 
Well the 3dfx Voodoo5 class cards should not present a blurring problem with FSAA (they did, after all, do a better job than nVidia in not making menu screens "melt") and the newer Geforce2 and 3 cards that process 600 Gazillion triangles per second should not have a problem in the speed area.

Well, if your still interested in the possibility of getting directx to do it, then perhaps this place is a good place to learn about the inner workings of DirectX:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/nhp/default.asp?contentid=28000410

There's a lot of technical articles, but they also have examples of (I think its C++) code to tell DirectX how to do stuff.

Would that help, or answer your questions?
 
I think the biggest problem most people have with 8 is with the backgrounds and not the 3d battle mode (although the world map needs serious help, too)-so would changing the resolution have any effect on that at all?  Or are backgrounds rendered in some funky way that it might be possible to alter?
 
Actually, the backgrounds would be the hardest part to do.

In full 3d mode, you just set up a camera position, and draw objects in some other 3d position ... you aren't really dealing with the exact resolution of the screen at any time, not much, anyway.

With the 2d backgrounds, you're drawing 2d tiles to exact pixel positions on the screen - so then, you ARE worried about the resolution. What'd probably happen if you forced the resolution up to (say) 800x600, is that the game would just draw on the first 640x480 of the screen, since it's sending a 640x480 image straight to the video card...

*Could* be worked around perhaps, but that'd be the biggest problem ... how to deal with parts of the game that draw to an exact pixel position on the screen...
 
There may yet be a way around the 2d background problem.  It seems to me that emulators like ePSXe can do it all the time, when they're playing ff7,8,9,etc. at 640X480 and higher.  All the textures and backgrounds in the psx version are stored below 640X480 resolution, yet when played higher than that they still fill the screen.  Perhaps ripping a page from the emulator book might work......
 
On 2001-10-05 16:11, M0T wrote:
Yes but the problem with that is the FSAA slows the game down, also the charecters get very blurry.
Click to expand...

And rendering in a higher resolution also slows it down...And the characters don't get blurry..they look much better.
 
Yeah, emulators do it ... but they have TOTAL control over the output of the game. Everything passes through them anyway, so it's easy for them to alter stuff. On the PC, you don't ... that's the point: IF we could write a FULL DirectX layer, then yes, we'd have total control over the output (like epSXe does) so we could do stuff like that. But actually DOING that is hard.
 
lol
emulator writers have a hard time writing the directx layer in the first place. Look at the amount of problems most plugins for epsxe have. Although the emulator emulates it properly, the plugin might not :wink:
 
Well, in that case, what about trying to get it to use another api?

I'd love to see FF7 or FF8 be played in OpenGL or even Glide! (so the neat little 3dfx splash screen is displayed before the game starts.  I really like seeing it before playing a glide game.:smile:)

If we could, then we could also go ahead and give the option of higher resoulution, since we wouldn't have to worry about trying to hack DirectX....
 
Do you know what you just suggested? Exactly how are we supposed to rewrite the whole graphics system of a game we don't have source code to?

Sorry, don't mean to sound bad but ... there is NO way that could practically be done. At least a DirectX layer just means coding DLL's with similar structures to the DirectX DLL's and forcing the game to accept them ... but we can't go in and radically rewrite the EXE code to make it do totally different things (like use a different graphics API!). Not without source code, which Square aint gonna provide. :wink:
 
Is it my imagination or do I remember Halkun saying that the native resolution for the PSX was 320x240? (or something close)  So if I'm thinking straight (Ha!) when square ported ff8, they came across some of the same problems rendering backgrounds, right?  They would have had the same issues-if tiles are placed in a particular "spot" on the screen in native resolution, then they had to overcome that to get backgrounds to correctly display in higher resolutions on the PC.  

Not that it would be particularly easy to decipher how square did that, even if that is what happened.

Real life is such a drag...
 
The PSX version runs in 320x240. When you run the PC version at 640x480 it stretches the 2d files by 2x and draws the 3d as usual. This makes the 2d look alot worse than it does on a PSX. The 3d looks a hell of a lot better though. This is also why running in higher resolution is even worse, as the 2d has to be stretched even more. Thus, FSAA is the best solution. That or completely re-render the 2d for higher resolutions.
 
Reznor: That's probably what SquareSoft did, simply re-render the scenes in the higher resolution.  Actually, It was probably easier for them to do that, since they probably still had the psx files in a decompressed form, still ready to be edited, when they decided to make a pc version.

Ficedula: Sorry for causing the choking! Still, technically, you do have the source code.  I believe its in a little file called "FF8.exe".  Actually, since the midi config runs the game using a different executable ("PlayFF8.exe") that was based on the original executable, it sounded to me like editing the source code was feasible. But hey, like I said earlier, I'm no graphic programmer.
 
That aint source code. Source code is code written in plain text that can be easily understood. EXE files are compiled and are in ASSEMBLER which isn't so easily understood. Or edited. Like, you can't insert commands in because it throws off all the references in the file...

Yes, I DO know assembler but there's no fscking way you can make MAJOR changes to an EXE without the source code. MINOR changes (like the way I patched FF7.EXE to run in 32-bit colour), yes. But that's pretty small and it still wasn't easy...
 
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