what happened to the "old" FF7 demo?

  • Thread starter Thread starter BloodShot
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
More than likely diskspace but in retrospect it seems like they made a lot of mistakes when developing this.  I mean even at their base resolution the backgrounds look much worse than the originals must have.  Also pictures don't take up THAT much disk space they could have decided to not downsize the images since most monitors were bigger than those background image sizes anyway.  Idk I just feel that this game lost a lot of its graphic and audio potential in the packaging process.
 
WAV is uncompressed, so I think it would have taken a huge amount of disc space. It's just a pity that the psf format couldn't have been ported over to the PC version, since it allows quality close to mp3s but file sizes more reminiscent of MIDIs :'(

I know little of PC hardware from back then, so I can't say whether WAV music would have made the game harder to run; I don't imagine it would have made it any easier to run...
 
System requirements between midi and wav should not be too different as wav is uncompressed and midi is just a file telling the soundcard to place a certain note at a certain pitch for said amount of time. Compressed audio would have been much more demanding.
 
More than likely diskspace but in retrospect it seems like they made a lot of mistakes when developing this.  I mean even at their base resolution the backgrounds look much worse than the originals must have.  Also pictures don't take up THAT much disk space they could have decided to not downsize the images since most monitors were bigger than those background image sizes anyway.  Idk I just feel that this game lost a lot of its graphic and audio potential in the packaging process.
Click to expand...
No, the backgrounds were IDENTICAL to the PSX version. They only look worse because of the differences between the way a PC monitor and a CRT television display images.


WAV is uncompressed, so I think it would have taken a huge amount of disc space. It's just a pity that the psf format couldn't have been ported over to the PC version, since it allows quality close to mp3s but file sizes more reminiscent of MIDIs :'(

I know little of PC hardware from back then, so I can't say whether WAV music would have made the game harder to run; I don't imagine it would have made it any easier to run...
Click to expand...
Pretty much any PC capable of playing this game could handle either WAV or MIDI music, no problem. PSF, not so easily. While it's very lightweight by today's standards, it's rather processor-intensive by 1998 standards, especially given that the first usable version of Neill Corlett's PSF plugin for Winamp wasn't even released until 2002 and wasn't nearly as optimized as current versions. Combine this with the fact that FFVII-PC already doesn't run at full speed on computers that meet-but-don't-exceed the system requirements, it would have been a disaster. Even MP3s were too taxing to use, they had to use an audio format that could be completely handled by the soundcard, without help from the processor (WAV and MIDI both fit this requirement).

As for WAV, the disc space pretty much sums it up. You couldn't fit all the songs in the game in uncompressed WAV format at a decent quality on one CD, as evidenced by the fact that the soundtrack took four (CD-audio is virtually identical to uncompressed WAV). Even if you cut out songs that are only used in specific discs, similar to the FMVs, you couldn't fit all the music, especially alongside game data and FMVs. The only way to manage it would be to significantly lower the audio quality to 8KHz or so, at which point the music would sound significantly worse than the MIDIs, more akin to AM-radio.
 
What I meant by the downsizing was when they were in production the artists must have made a much larger image then shrank it to save disk space even though the trade off of a small amount of disk space for shoddy quality was p dumb.

The same goes for the wav files.  I mean if they just had multiple install disks and saved most of the game onto the computer like most current day PC games all of these problems could have been solved.  I assume the higher ups said make it for playstation and port it to pc as an afterthought.  Quite sad. :'(
 
The images were ported right from the psx version. Identical resolutions.
 
I understand that, but before they put it onto the playstation disks the artists MUST have had a higher quality image.
 
I understand that, but before they put it onto the playstation disks the artists MUST have had a higher quality image.
Click to expand...
Most likely. Or at least they had the original 3d scenes that could be re-rendered for a higher resolution. Unfortunately they got rid of all of it before the pc port was made.
 
I understand that, but before they put it onto the playstation disks the artists MUST have had a higher quality image.
Click to expand...
Most likely. Or at least they had the original 3d scenes that could be re-rendered for a higher resolution. Unfortunately they got rid of all of it before the pc port was made.
Click to expand...
The PSX versions were rendered at a lower resolution because the visible difference was pretty much nonexistent given the PSX's low resolution.

I'm not so sure that the got rid of the original 3D scenes, but Eidos did not have access to anything that wasn't in the PSX version when they were making the port. For all we know, Squaresoft had all the files, but Eidos never bothered to ask for them.
 
There was a thread about this MONTHS back.  I don't know if anyone ever found it, but feel free to search.

I think I posted up 2 old PSX demos, and someone else posted up a PC one. 

Report back with your findings at once!
 
The old thread is here.

It's not advisable to install it unless you plan on uninstalling FF7 first, then reinstalling when you're done with the demo. There's a link to the download that broke after about five minutes somewhere in that thread if I remember correcty. I don't plan on installing it.
 
Its really not worth installing at all tbh, theres nothing interesting about it.
 
I actually found my PC gamer disc with it on it since i started that thread - still want to try it on an older computer, but i wouldn't try it if i were you because it messes up your FF7 registry

entries. Unless you have a PC without an FF7 install don't bother.


Maybe one of the reasons it was removed and forgotten mostly was because of the bugs? Way back when i tried it it crashed a LOT.
 
Hey, i used to have the demo, came with my tomb Raider disc( the first one)  was never able to get it working though.
 
As for WAV, the disc space pretty much sums it up. You couldn't fit all the songs in the game in uncompressed WAV format at a decent quality on one CD, as evidenced by the fact that the soundtrack took four (CD-audio is virtually identical to uncompressed WAV). Even if you cut out songs that are only used in specific discs, similar to the FMVs, you couldn't fit all the music, especially alongside game data and FMVs. The only way to manage it would be to significantly lower the audio quality to 8KHz or so, at which point the music would sound significantly worse than the MIDIs, more akin to AM-radio.
Click to expand...
I suppose it have been at all possible to compress the WAVs, then extract to disk, but hard drive space was pretty scarce in those days.  Whilst I guess Square *could* have offers two options with regards music, that would have been twice the amount of audio to test and manage. The only alternative I could think of would be a customized MIDI player, but that would be its whole own project, that would have cost a fair bit for (potentially) only one port.

How did FF8-PC deal with music?
 
aaaaaaaaahhhh.......... sweet memories. well i don't really know why they had to remove the text in the opening sequence.
Intro-demovii.png


also helping biggs , an event not in the final version.
Biggs-demovii.png
 
aaaaaaaaahhhh.......... sweet memories. well i don't really know why they had to remove the text in the opening sequence.
Intro-demovii.png
Click to expand...
This would have clarified up a lot of things for me the first time I played it. I didn't even know what Shinra was for a while. I just had to accept the fact that they were evil.

also helping biggs , an event not in the final version.
Biggs-demovii.png
Click to expand...
Likely because it's out of the way and they don't bother developing Biggs as a character later. They don't bother developing Jesse either, but she has more of a role in the first 30 mins than Biggs does.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top