Final Fantasy 7 Hi res patch

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shortylickens

shortylickens

No Lifer
Jul 15, 2003
80,287
17,081
136
I know this has been posted before but I cant find it.

I have the full, regular, legal version of FF7 for Windows. Downloaded the Official 1.02 patch and the chocobo race fix and the upside down movie fix.
Also have the less than official 16MB WinXP fix. I dont know exactly what it does but I have it. (Havent used it)

Got the unofficial Hi-res patch version 1.0, which is only supposed to be used with game version 1.02 (the TNT patch).

Ran it as per instructions (applying only the official 1.02 patch, then ran special patch on top of it) and while the main game will start & play, the whole program crashes every time I go into battle and randomly when running around.

Have tried running it with and without the enhanced character models (the NPC patch where you have to extract, hack and then recompile your char.lgp file).

The new models work fine, but no matter what happens the hi-res patch always crashes my game. Had to the good sense to backup both my 1.0 and 1.02 files. Whenever I go back to them the game plays fine in software. When I use the 1.02 and check the box for TNT support (ignoring 8-bit pallets) the game will run in Direct3D mode, 640x480 fullscreen.

I know there is supposed to be a special way to do things so you can run the game without issues all the way from beginning to end with no crashes. I've done it before but that was on an older system. I think I may be forgetting something or have an old version of the official or hi-res patches.

Right now I have:
Dual core Athlon 64 socket 939
2GB of DDR
EVGA 7900GTX
Audigy 1
Windows XP Pro with SP2 and Direct X 9.0c

The system it used to work on had a single core socket 754, 1GB of DDR, a Radeon X800 Pro and Windows with SP1 and I think it had Direct X 9.0 or maybe A or B.

Has anybody made it work with a similar setup? If so, in exactly which order did you apply the patches and which ones were they?
 
shortylickens

shortylickens

No Lifer
Jul 15, 2003
80,287
17,081
136
Again its been a long time so......

BUMP!


Come on guys, I know for a fact its not just me. Somebody here told me about these patches because they had been running them for a while.
I managed to play through an entire game with both patches installed and had no issues. But that was a long time ago with an older system.

Maybe the newer Nvidia cards just dont like FF7.

But it definitely makes the game enjoyable once again, and I'm sure I'm not the only guy with the Windows version of Final Fantasy 7. There must be plenty of folks interested in this.
 
I

I4AT

Platinum Member
Oct 28, 2006
2,631
3
81
Have you tried setting the affinity to one core? That sometimes causes problems with a few older games, really the only thing I can think of other than trying random drivers until one works.
 
shortylickens

shortylickens

No Lifer
Jul 15, 2003
80,287
17,081
136
Originally posted by: biostud
maybe run it in compatibility mode for win98.
Click to expand...
Dont wanna sound unappreciative but I already did all the obvious stuff. It didnt function.
Incidentally I have NEVER had an older game work simply by enabling Compatibility Mode.
It always requires a lot more work than that.

Tried running in dual-core and single core for CPU 0 and 1, nothing worked.
That wasnt a suprise either. The game does run, just not in battle mode, which is the first place you have an all 3D screen. Before that its a small 3D object (the character) on a 2D map.
I also tried using the high-res patch and setting the official config program to Software Render and it doesnt work. In that setup the game crashes instantly.

Will see if the unofficial XP patch will install on top of the hi-res patch, but something tells me that wont do it.

If anyone is curious: The official "upside down movie" patch has not been needed. I havent got to the chocobo races yet but I suspect if 3D works by then, the official chocobo race patch wont be needed either.

Going backwards through drivers isnt an option.
When I set up Windows XP with my new system I had a heck of a time making it work with all my modern games. The latest drivers at the time were NOT the best, but really old drivers didnt work right either. I love FF7 but losing function in all other games isnt good.
 
meltdown75

meltdown75

Lifer
Nov 17, 2004
37,548
7
81
I finished this game on the PC within the past year. I started playing it but never finished for a looong time and picked it back up just to finish it and I'm glad I did. Raising chocobos gave me headaches but it was well worth it :)

I will see what version and any patches I have installed... I am running xp pro sp2 but the game was not purchased in a store...
 
meltdown75

meltdown75

Lifer
Nov 17, 2004
37,548
7
81
Sorry OP, I removed the game a while back and was unable to find any remnants of it on my system.
 
shortylickens

shortylickens

No Lifer
Jul 15, 2003
80,287
17,081
136
Originally posted by: Tiamat
hmm, I take it you tried win95 mode right?
Click to expand...
I did. And 98 and NT and 2000. They dont work, which is not a suprise.
Heck Win95 didnt even support 3D acceleration so I wouldnt expect it to help me in this situation.
In the meantime I'm enjoying the game at 640x480 with heavy AA.
 
shortylickens

shortylickens

No Lifer
Jul 15, 2003
80,287
17,081
136
Originally posted by: Born2bwire
I can't remember, does it run at all in a DOS environment or just windows?
Click to expand...
I dont think I've been explaining this properly.

Its a 3D accelerated game (Direct3D). 3D acceleration was not supported in Windows 95 or DOS.

The game isnt quite THAT old folks. It came out for Playstation in late 1997 and Windows in late 1998 or early '99, I cant quite recall. But it was in the early days of 3D acceleration and ran very well on ATI Rage cards and Nvidia Vanta's.
But all those early gen cards supported something called "8 bit pallets" which is when you use only 8 bits color depth for somthing (256 colors) but instead of the standard colors used in a 256 color scheme (which is all DOS supported for a long time) you actually use 16 bit (65,536 colors) and pick the 256 colors you want to use for a certain program or task.
You can do this quite easily in software but they werent thinking when they converted FF7 to Windows. They wanted everything to be done on the video card or nonthing at all.

They had set features required by their game and when you run the config program it checks to see if your 3D card supports them before it will allow you to enable Direct3D mode.
Most accelerators after the 1st generation dropped that silly little feature because aoftware devs figured its more efficient and makes more sense to just work in 16 or 24 or 32 bit color. You have to remember that FF7 was made by a bunch of Japanese console people when American computer people were just talking about moving the 3D workload to a seperate processor.

The problem with FF7 is you cant just tell it to see if a card is DirectX 5 compatible. It still looks for specific functions and they never fixed that with later patches.
The problem I am having is this hi-res patch was made for a specific game version and likely a specific Direct 3D version too.

The rumor going around is when they redo it for the PS3 they might redo it for Windows as well. If so they would likely just make it OpenGL 3.0 (I think) or DirectX 10 compliant and let it go at that.

Here's hoping. :beer:
 
GZFant

GZFant

Senior member
Feb 18, 2003
437
0
76
I do understand exactly what you are talking about. I too had FF7 with a high res patch in 1999 or so. I dug up my old CDs about 6 months ago and could not get the same patches to work. I am sorry it doesn't work. I wish it did so much.

Yes, here is to hoping :beer::beer:
 
shortylickens

shortylickens

No Lifer
Jul 15, 2003
80,287
17,081
136
Once again I.......
BUMP!

Here are some helpful links for those of you who keep asking me about the patches.
http://www.gzanime.net/index.php?gz=dl&name=ff7

The directions at the top of the page are very clear.
"These are the patches you need, and the order in which you should install them."

I only used the Hi-res patch and the NPC Reconstruction mod.
It worked on my old game system, but the new game system wont run the hi-res patch. The game looks OK at 640x480 with heavy anti-aliasing.
 
Ika

Ika

Lifer
Mar 22, 2006
14,264
3
81
I got a honkin' for FF7 PC again earlier today, so I dug up the CDs and installed a bunch of patches. Most of the patches I got seem to work (NPC reconstruction mod, whatever else I installed, can't remember them now), except the High resolution mod would crash the game immediately upon start. Not really sure what to do. At least the NPC character reconstruction mod will tide me over for a while. shortylickens, did you ever find a solution?
 
J

jandrews

Golden Member
Aug 3, 2007
1,313
0
0
lmao, OP I dont think this is the right place to look, just by reading your responses you are the type of guy that can help others but you seem to have done everything any of us would ever think of and more :/
 
Ika

Ika

Lifer
Mar 22, 2006
14,264
3
81
Originally posted by: Capitalizt
Just play the PS1 version and be happy.

It's just not the same on a PC ;)
Click to expand...

But it looks a ton better ;)

CLOUD'S HEAD IS NOW NORMAL SIZED :Q:Q:Q

I'll post a screenshot next time I play (which won't be for a while, midterm essay:().
 
Oyeve

Oyeve

Lifer
Oct 18, 1999
22,066
882
126
Wasnt there a Glide-wrap thingy for that game years ago? Its been a long time.
 
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