It's been awhile

[omega res novae]

It's been nearly 2 years since I've been on here. What new break throughs are out or rather what do I need to catch up on

 

[DLPB_]

FeliX has been awol a while and so looks like World Map mod is never going to get fully completed
Q gears is making some progress
Pitbrat has been offline 2 years and so vgr has taken over Bootleg
7th Heaven (which allows separate mods to be installed) has also been created
Aali's driver has been updated and now supports ogg music in FF7
I released Roses and Wine for FF8 and so it now has full ogg support
I released DLPB Tools that allow modders to change memory and binary files using plain text
I released Ochu, a FF7 trainer
Reunion R01 was released, but R02 is coming any day now with the FINAL revision of the retranslation project among other things
Kaldarasha is continuing his comprehensive work on models, which covers all models in the game.
Makou Reactor has had a fair few updates and is a lot more stable
Black Chocobo is also more refined
Nightmare 7 was released and is a hardcore mod
I am working on a final FF7 FMV update as we speak, which should be the best we are ever likely to get


I can't think of anything else off top of my head.

 

[Covarr]

• FF7 and FF8 have been rereleased on Steam. They're mostly the same as the '98/2000 versions with Aali's driver, but without Aali's modding features, much easier to install, with higher quality FMVs, built-in OGG support and PSX soundtrack (only on FF7; FF8 sounds exactly the same as the 2000 version with DirectMusic), and no discs to worry about. Precisely what a vanilla experience should be.
• Significant progress has been made on Team Avalanche, with Mayo Master in particular producing new renders at a rather alarming rate.
• Behind the scenes, Q-Gears development has picked up the pace quite a bit.
• Sega Chief's "New Threat Mod", a gameplay rebalance, was released. It's more difficult than the retail game, but not meant to be actively hard.
• Major progress has been made on getting battles to run at 60fps (two versions, one with interpolated smooth animations, and one which just fixes the battle menu to be 60fps like in the PSX version.
• Rodimus Primal made a "Ted Woolsey Uncensored Edition" of FF6, which aims to reproduce what it could've been if Woolsey had more time, more freedom, and fewer technical limitations.
• More model replacements than I care to count (but really just stick with Kaldarasha's work if you care about consistent design).

I would advise looking through the mod release subforums. It's all been organized, so it's easier than ever before to see what's new. There's bound to be some things I missed, or some things that I didn't think were worth mentioning but you might (especially models).

 

[Mcindus]

Omzy released Tonberry, which allows for texture injection for the Steam port of FF8 which is a HUGE deal.
With it's release, it enabled the following mods:

- Project Eden by Omzy - Entire Field Background 4x Upscale
- SeeD Reborn by MCINDUS (and sl1982) - A GUI/Text/Icon and Magazine Replacement/Upscale that completed/continued sl1982's work from the original SeeD mod that's available for Aali's driver.
- Tripod by MCINDUS - Complete Triple Triad Overhaul
- HorizonPack by MCINDUS - Full World Texture and World Map Replacement/Upscale (Updated last night!)
- BerryMapper by Shunsq - Magochocobo's FF8 character textures can now be imported into FF8 through this thread, although the actual mod enables you to find the hash codes of textures so that you can replace them on your own.  This is the thread to follow for finding out updates on FF8 texture modding progress.
- Hash codes and textures have been found for all Game Summons - they are just waiting for someone to fix them up.  I'm working on a Shiva teaser, but I think I may only do Shiva, Ifrit, Quez, and Siren.  All of these mods have been extremely time consuming as it is.

With all of that happening for FF8 - and 7th Heaven and Reuinion R02 for FF7, there's plenty to catch up on.

 

[DLPB_]

FeliX News:

[18:22:22] Daniel Burke: Have you given up on us qhimmers!
[18:22:25] Daniel Burke:
[18:23:03] FeliX Leonhart: too busy with real life T_T

Hopefully, one day, he'll be back!

 

[omega res novae]

I was on when the ff7 pc  re-release came out before the steam release. I communicated with dlpb (I believe you were more interested in pure differences of the old and new releases) , the creator of black chocobo, and I believe someone else to figure out how to get the re-release to stop deleting edited and imported saves. I found a work around by switching the save file at a certain screen while the game was on. Then shortly after black chocobo was updated to edit the metadata.Xml  so saves wouldn't be deleted.

So much stuff though. Is there any grunt work that  can be done? I'm no coder and my modeling is easily outdone visually and with less polies and my texturing is even worse. I have a general knowledge of batch files and a fair share of experience on qhimm.

 

[Kaldarasha]

I was on when the ff7 pc  re-release came out before the steam release. I communicated with dlpb (I believe you were more interested in pure differences of the old and new releases) , the creator of black chocobo, and I believe someone else to figure out how to get the re-release to stop deleting edited and imported saves. I found a work around by switching the save file at a certain screen while the game was on. Then shortly after black chocobo was updated to edit the metadata.Xml  so saves wouldn't be deleted.

So much stuff though. Is there any grunt work that  can be done? I'm no coder and my modeling is easily outdone visually and with less polies and my texturing is even worse. I have a general knowledge of batch files and a fair share of experience on qhimm.

An invisible but general change is that the forum has moved on a new server. Ficedula is back to and has created a very great but overlooked tool (as well as Dan's little tools are) Ultrasound. It can add voice dialog and ambient sound to a field and replace existing sounds. Shard is working on two voiceover projects one for 8 and one for 7. Sadly no one seems to be interested to use ultrasound to create ambient sound effects.

 

[ficedula]

So much stuff though. Is there any grunt work that  can be done? I'm no coder and my modeling is easily outdone visually and with less polies and my texturing is even worse. I have a general knowledge of batch files and a fair share of experience on qhimm.

Sadly no one seems to be interested to use ultrasound to create ambient sound effects.

So, y'know, if you were interested in doing something, finding background sound effects to apply to the scenes might be worthwhile...

I'm sure freely available background/ambient effects won't be available for every scene in the game, but surely there'll be some that are suitable.

 

[Shard]

If nobody else is looking, me and Aussieroth were thinking of browsing through freesound and similar sites to at least make SOME of the areas more lifelike. At the very least, it would help find any bugs that might still be in Ultrasound, or improvements that need to be made.

 

[Mcindus]

So - I'm a musician, producer, recording engineer and amateur voice actor.  Foley Work is fun - I can generate sounds for whatever projects people are working on if you guys are interested.  Let me know if I can help in any way.

 

[Kaldarasha]

So - I'm a musician, producer, recording engineer and amateur voice actor.  Foley Work is fun - I can generate sounds for whatever projects people are working on if you guys are interested.  Let me know if I can help in any way.

I made once a scene analysis for the first scene:
https://www.ff7catalog.com/posts/202988/

I think if we could cover upper and under Midgar it would be a very impressive demo. If you are interested I assume that Mayo Master would be glad if you could cover the HD scenes he has made for his video presentation.

 

[ficedula]

I made once a scene analysis for the first scene:
https://www.ff7catalog.com/posts/202988/

I think if we could cover upper and under Midgar it would be a very impressive demo. If you are interested I assume that Mayo Master would be glad if you could cover the HD scenes he has made for his video presentation.

If there's people interested in getting this moving, consider me available for the technical side of things, of course: let's get something going.

 

[Shard]

Once we start getting some voices recorded for the voiceover project (we're almost done with the casting process), I'll start a list of which areas we plan to use for demos and teasers so we can showcase both the voices and the new ambient sounds.

 

[ficedula]

Eh, if there is anyone wants to get started sooner I don't see any harm in starting work on background sounds sooner - the work won't be wasted even if it doesn't totally match up to the areas the voiceover project starts with.

 

[Shard]

I wasn't suggesting that we wait. I'm just saying I will let you guys know what areas we plan to have in demo videos when we get there.

 

[ficedula]

Good stuff. So:

So - I'm a musician, producer, recording engineer and amateur voice actor.  Foley Work is fun - I can generate sounds for whatever projects people are working on if you guys are interested.  Let me know if I can help in any way.

...are you interested in putting together sounds for a project?

 

[Mcindus]

Good stuff. So:

...are you interested in putting together sounds for a project?

I would love to - my free time is limited, however.  I would love to work on something a piece at a time, though - if that's alright?  What kind of sounds/soundscapes do you have in mind?  Any areas from the game you would like me to start on?

I made once a scene analysis for the first scene:
https://www.ff7catalog.com/posts/202988/

I think if we could cover upper and under Midgar it would be a very impressive demo. If you are interested I assume that Mayo Master would be glad if you could cover the HD scenes he has made for his video presentation.

There are so many cool projects to do and not enough time.
I wish streaming hours of boring mod trial/error would make me money :X
I'm going to look into Mayo Master's stuff in a few and see if I get any ideas.

 

[ficedula]

I would love to - my free time is limited, however.  I would love to work on something a piece at a time, though - if that's alright?  What kind of sounds/soundscapes do you have in mind?  Any areas from the game you would like me to start on?

It's up to you, really, but - absent any suggestions from Shard etc. - I think Midgar is a pretty good place to start: you've got lots of fairly confined, urban areas that could plausibly have all sorts of background things going on. Wall Market is meant to be sort of bustling - in places at least! and it has quite a few different areas, too - the sewers after you complete Wall Market could be enhanced with some underground, wet sounds, the train sequence after the first bombing mission could be upgraded with some good sound effects, and so on.

 

[Shard]

Oh my, I knew this thread was here but I forgot which one it was!

We're thinking of releasing a very early teaser, and it will be of the dialogue between Cloud and Aerith on the gondola at Gold Saucer. As far as background sound, all that area really needs is some muffled fireworks going off every few seconds, and perhaps a faint whirring sound of the motor carrying the gondola on its track.

 

[ficedula]

Cool; any vague ideas of timescale on that? Weeks, months, days...?