Minor problem with FF8, probably no helping it

[#Sen-chan#]

Okay, just on the off-chance this happened to someone else, I decided to ask. Here are the specs I'm running antialiasing FF8 on this older machine.

OS: Windows 98 Special Edition 2
Video: GeForce3 TI 200
CPU: 500 Mz Pentium III
RAM: 120 MB
Sound: Sound Blaster (not audigy or live, but can't remember which else)

Lowest end of the spectrum, but it runs it. Just not...well. My ONLY problem with this (besides the fmv, but that's no surprise) is that every time I go into a new area (not including World Map that's just fine), the video and sound will stutter once or twice in any given area. It's in towns and areas, though the world map is just fine.

I tried turning off all antialiasing/touch ups, put the machine on high performance, closed down EVERYTHING running in the background, tried running the iso in Daemon Tools to speed it up, nothing changed that stutter. Even went down to low-res text and graphics, but still no. Haven't tried software mode. If it works in software mode, I might as well play it on my XP machine since the reason I play it on the old machine is for hardware acceleration in the first place. (The video card is so old it PASSED the 8-bit texture without tweaking).

Has this happened to anyone else? I expect there's no way around it, probably lack of RAM or CPU, but...in case it's not...

 

[Cazador]

In my opinion it is definatly  a lack of pc power

time for an upgrade  :-D

 

[#Sen-chan#]

That sucks. We don't use the computer enough for my Mom to consider upgrading it. I don't even know which should be updated, RAM or CPU (definitely not the video card, though...)

 

[Landarma]

In my opinion it is definatly  a lack of pc power

time for an upgrade  :-D

Lack of PC Power?  I don't think so.(As I remember, I could run it without much problems with such machine(with almost same or worse graphic card) years ago)

 

[#Sen-chan#]

Was it on software mode or hardware mode? Because if it was hardware mode without any problem with sound or video, then that means it's something wrong with my game...I don't know what though, all things considered. I didn't add in any patches, other than the official nvidia 1.02 patch, Samuel's soundfonts (which I tried with both the original that came with the game in case that was it and it still did it), and the antialiasing with RivaTuner. I can't see what might make it do that.

Landarma, if you had the problem, what did you do to fix it...?

 

[Cazador]

I just found a review of FF8PC and the guy said what the spec of the PC he played it on was

Which Were

" Windows 98
DirectX 7.0a
Intel Pentium III 500Mhz (required a patch to work)
3DFX Voodoo3 2000 AGP (16 megs)
128 megs of RAM
40x SCSI CD-ROM
Sound Blaster PCI512 ( Environmental Audio enhanced)"

so it seems it was wrong ... according to this guy you need a patch. but he doesn't say which

 

[#Sen-chan#]

Hmm...I did a search and came up with someone mentioning to have DMA enabled on the drive, so I will check that in the morning, though I don't think that's the case. I'm also not sure which direct x I have installed on there...Wish he'd mentioned what patch he had used >< Since that config is close to what I have.

UPDATE: for those of you who have FFVIII fully installed on your machine but are getting stuttering and pauses every new scene of music and video, I have found the solution, thanks to another thread here.

Though all my cd/dvd drives already had DMA enabled, my harddisk did NOT. I enabled it, restarted, and it worked just fine. It's lovely now and I'm going to replay what I did yesterday now that I'm happy with it.

AHHHHHHHHH i solved it!!! i was installing Samuel Slight's DLS from http://aaronserv.dyndns.org/hosting/ffsf/download_8.html , and i quote from the readme:

   5. If your disk and/or cd-rom support DMA (try this to see if it does), enable it :
       a) right-click on "My Computer" then "Properties"
       b) click on "Device Manager" tab
       c) double-click on "Disk drives" then double-click on your drive
       d) click on "Settings" tab
       e) if DMA is not checked, check it then click "OK".
       f) before closing "System Properties", repeat step b) to e) for other drives
          and cd-rom that you may have.
       g) after clicking "OK" on "System Properties" window, your computer will restart.
          If your drive support DMA, it will remain checked.
     
      Note: By doing so, FF8 will no longer hesitate after moving from scene to scene.
            And also it improves a lot your drive performance in any case.


YES!!!!! this after years of tolerating the annoying pauses from scene to scene!

EDIT again: Oi vey, I just keep finding them. I did wonder at one point if my game was going to crash every time I got in a random battle, but it was just Rinoa down in the sewers it did that on. However, my big problem is with the fmvs. It does not matter if they're on high or low-res, I get the same result. First, before I did the above that solved the pausing, my game would crash if I had them on high-res. But since I put on DMA for my HD, I thought I should try to play the fmvs.

However, the video gives major video corruption, so bad that even in the in-game text the graphics are corrupted and I can't even read it. Think of it like this: dvds are interlaced and have two fields of top and bottom. Taking that analogy and apply it to the fmvs (even though I doubt their interlaced). It's like one of the fields of video got stuck while the rest continues and the video stutters its way through, though the sound is fine.

I will try to get a screenshot for you.