FF7

I'm having a problem with Final Fantasy 7. Basically it installs without any error, including the TrueMotion video codec. But when I start the game and the first logo comes up (it must be square or something) I can only hear the sound and the screen remains black. After this, nothing happens, all I do is sit there waiting for it to go on but it never does. Eventually I have to power off my laptop to get it to restart.

I had a little luck trying to find an answer on google, as I found some other people that had the same problem, but no answer was ever found.

Any suggestions?

Final Fantasy 7 came out before windows xp in the days of windows 98. As such the game does not work at all before being patched on windows xp systems.

also in the general config menu set your render method to software for the time being if you get it up and running ill tell you how to make it look better later on.

However no patch appears to be perfect for running the game for everyone so you need to mess around with a few patches to try to get it to work, some are official others are user created. If you can't find the patches pm me and I can start a torrent.

What other FF7 patches are there?

i'm currently using one, but i didn't know that there are others out. Do do anything different, or help anything else out?

And what tips do you have for making it look better? I'v tried some stuff, that does help and all. But just wondering if there is anything i havn't heard of yet.

Oh, right, I have the xp patch and the chocobo patch. I forgot to mention. This appears to be a problem with the True Motion video codec. Still, I can't get it to work.

Alrighty, I think I got it. I reinstalled without installing their version of the TM video codec, then I installed that separately via a codec pack. Seems to be working.

I seem to be a little late, but VMWare can also be a viable solution for running your older games in XP.


odin

zexmarquies01 said:

What other FF7 patches are there?

i'm currently using one, but i didn't know that there are others out. Do do anything different, or help anything else out?

And what tips do you have for making it look better? I'v tried some stuff, that does help and all. But just wondering if there is anything i havn't heard of yet.

Click to expand...

The patches are Animevamp's (Controversial) XP Patch, Chocobo Races Patch, FFVII Official Patches, Cyrix Processor Patch, Numeric Keypad Patch, Riva 128 and 128ZX Patch, Riva TNT Patch, Upside Down Movie Patch, and no cd patch.

first try to set your render method to direct 3d render via FF7Config then set the resolution to full screen 640x480. Then you need to click the nVidia check box, you can try this even if you use ati s3 or intel graphics, and try both riva tnt and riva 128. If neither works patch your game with both the riva tnt patch and riva 128 and 128zx patch then try it again.

If it works with hardware render you can create game profiles via nVidia or ATi's control panels. Set AF to max for FF7.exe, you could max out AA but most people don't do it as AA is not built into the port of the game so using AA creates a maze of green squares when you are around a static 2d background. I personally don't use AA when im following the story but when im leveling, no matter where, I'll enable AA as it makes the character models look absolutely stunning. Also when you are on the world map the background is 3d rendered so you can use AA without any worries.

I have gotten hardware rendering to work with a 6800nu, a 6200go, and a x800gto2. I havent tryed to get it to work on anything else.

yeah, i always messed with the AA settings and all.

one time a while ago, i was able to get AA working, without it affecting the 2D backgrounds. But that was with one of my older video card, with different settings. can't remember for the life of me what i did, and how i got it to work. All i remember is that i messed with settings, and went in and out of the game, for over 3 hours straight, trying to get it.

Then...i eventually either had to re-do windows, or I got a new video card. forget which came first. but i lost my settings, and i no longer remember what i did.

My friend got it to work with AA without the green lines too, but that was on a FX5200. I have a 6800se, and i havn't really done any deep testing. i keep thinking about it, but i never get to it.

and yes, AA REALLY helps for overworld, and battles. It makes the 3D modeling look sooooooooo much nicer!

Edit: i have gotten hardware rendering to work on a Geforce 3 TI200, a FX5500, and my 6800se. And my friend can do it with his FX5200.

I am going to be reinstalling this here soon so thanks for patch ideas. Its been so long I forgot what to look for.

zexmarquies01 said:

yeah, i always messed with the AA settings and all.

one time a while ago, i was able to get AA working, without it affecting the 2D backgrounds. But that was with one of my older video card, with different settings. can't remember for the life of me what i did, and how i got it to work. All i remember is that i messed with settings, and went in and out of the game, for over 3 hours straight, trying to get it.

Click to expand...

If you ever find out how to get that to work please post it! I'm sure that I'm not the only one here who would like to get that working.

After hearing that I think I'll mess around some. Up until now all that I really did was test FF7 with all levels of AA.

I'm also surprised anyone else actually uses AA besides me. Most people that have tried AA said it looked like crap and never tried it at all after looking at what it does to 2d backgrounds. Leave it to OCForums to find people not like that.

Wouldn't it be good if Square-ENix created an updated version that would work for XP code. Maybe a few tweaks her and there and better sound and music instead of crappy MIDI.

I know I bought it a few years back for my Compaq AMD K-6 350mhz PC I had 384mb SD-RAM, 32mb Hercules PCI Card and 20GB Maxtor 7,200rpm drive. The game couldn't play the graphics where soo slow and I couldn't find a decent PCI card has AGP was the way to go.

I traded the game in but kept the mouse matt that came with the game as a bonus had it for nearly 8 years now.