The PC version uses the original uncompiled PSX data for 3D animation and model bones. This makes it *much* more smooth in higher resolutions. The battle module would be awesome to take from the PC verison, but I think we can make due with the PSX data. We don't have a buggy GTE to deal with.
Another tip:
The PSX had a buggy Geometry co-porssesor. One of the critial rendering maths totaly fucked up the floating points and gave a massive round error. This, however, was correctable to a point after the fact, but required the bad data from the GTE to be calculated first. Because of the reliance on the bad data to make the data "good" (or "gooder", but still screwy), Sony coudn't fix the GTE or mess up everyone's programs that relied on it. That's why you see the horrable texture warping and bad vertex placement in PS1 games. When you play the game on the PS2, it actually emulates the GTE bug, even though COP2 works just fine now.
I was talking about the datafiles, not the video....
So was I, though I didn't use an example. I used FMV and CD Audio examples because that's the biggest payoff, but you can move to a track on Diddy Kong Racing (N64) and watch as it loads the level for a flyby preview. Because ROM maps to memory, the only reason it has to load is because it has to decompress into the portion of the memory map containing RAM. A cartridge basically increases system RAM if data can be read directly, but the N64 sacrifices this for compression. DKR was supposed to be the first 128mbit N64 game but it ended up being scaled back to 96mbit. I remember getting Mario 64 textures for a Quake 2 level I was making using a Mario 64 decompression tool... Mario 64 was only 62mbit on a 64mbit chip in Japan to make a point about cartridge size being more than enough for next-gen games. You can use a similar tool to get text and textures from Zelda TOoT.
Dextrose.com has tons of decompressors for various N64 games (many used newer forms of compression). If those could be applied to FFVII data, I'm sure we could get MUCH better compression rates, but then again a modern PC compressor not designed for decompression speed is probably better. I'm only assumng that N64 compression is superior because Nintendo had huge incentive to make it the best compressin available, but it was vastly superior to anything the PSX was doing regardless.
The PC version uses the original uncompiled PSX data for 3D animation and model bones. This makes it *much* more smooth in higher resolutions. The battle module would be awesome to take from the PC verison, but I think we can make due with the PSX data. We don't have a buggy GTE to deal with.
Another tip:
The PSX had a buggy Geometry co-porssesor. One of the critial rendering maths totaly fucked up the floating points and gave a massive round error. This, however, was correctable to a point after the fact, but required the bad data from the GTE to be calculated first. Because of the reliance on the bad data to make the data "good" (or "gooder", but still screwy), Sony coudn't fix the GTE or mess up everyone's programs that relied on it. That's why you see the horrable texture warping and bad vertex placement in PS1 games. When you play the game on the PS2, it actually emulates the GTE bug, even though COP2 works just fine now.
Halkun, you clearly know your shit about PS1 (and maybe even Ps2) architecture. I'd be very interested in some documentation or other resources if you have some. Though I know it will never, ever happen (my programming skills were stunted long ago), I like to tell myself that some day I'll work on games as a hobby. As it is, there's a slim possibility I could work on the hardware.
Halkun, you clearly know your shit about PS1 (and maybe even Ps2) architecture. I'd be very interested in some documentation or other resources if you have some. Though I know it will never, ever happen (my programming skills were stunted long ago), I like to tell myself that some day I'll work on games as a hobby. As it is, there's a slim possibility I could work on the hardware.
Heh, PSX documentaion? I wrote the book on it! ^_^
Right click and save the link below....Or take a peek, if you want.
Halkun, you clearly know your shit about PS1 (and maybe even Ps2) architecture. I'd be very interested in some documentation or other resources if you have some. Though I know it will never, ever happen (my programming skills were stunted long ago), I like to tell myself that some day I'll work on games as a hobby. As it is, there's a slim possibility I could work on the hardware.
Heh, PSX documentaion? I wrote the book on it! ^_^
Right click and save the link below....Or take a peek, if you want.
Anyone know if there is a way to play it with the playstation soundtrack instead of the Pc versions midis? The midis just dont do much justice.
Oh yes, the other crappy thing about the PC version of the game.
By the way, in regards to getting it to work in its current form, isn't there some official XP patch that works pretty good? I at least had no problems, and I think I might have even got hardware acceleration to work with my Radeon 9800.
Tiny update. The walkmesh is fixed. As for right now, the PC is represented by the cyan box, which walks around. That will be filled in by a field model when we get the model loader going.
Turns out the reason why the walkmesh was messed up was because it assumes there was the GTE math bug. We hade to multiply the y inverse by a factor of 1.5 as opposed to 2. Now everything lines up
Quicmk question: Would it be possible to use Q-gears as a tool to create new RPGs based around the same engine? Is that doable?
Yup, we are setting up the code so we can "jettison" the Square data when it becomes mature. The user-made data will be in XML format. Right now, as a test, we actually export some of the square data into XML for Q-Gears to read.
We really don't want to have the abilty to make "fan mods" of the actual game, but inspire total conversions.
What's really cool about the old engine is that, for the most part, you can tease the data out of the game, however, putting new data into it is harder then holy hell without the whole system puking. It's really unforgiving about it's data, not only it's format, but where it's placed. Bump it one byte and the whole system crashes.
That might not seem very cool to you, but to us hackers, it's a godsend. I can't tell you how many newbs have entered the forums saying they want to make a "mature patch" with a topless Tifa or somesuch. The first thing they ask is where the "skin" is stored.
When we explain that there are no "skins" for the characters, and the models are all pretty much vertex shaded, they have no idea what we are talking about. I guess they all assume that in order to color a polygon, you have to have some kind of texture map. When we are pressed on how to edit the model, we tell them that without modeling a new torso for Tifa, correctly placing and coloring the vertex points, and exporting the thing through no less then three different programs, he's better off looking for tifa's boobs on the internet.
Halkun, you clearly know your shit about PS1 (and maybe even Ps2) architecture. I'd be very interested in some documentation or other resources if you have some. Though I know it will never, ever happen (my programming skills were stunted long ago), I like to tell myself that some day I'll work on games as a hobby. As it is, there's a slim possibility I could work on the hardware.
Heh, PSX documentaion? I wrote the book on it! ^_^
Right click and save the link below....Or take a peek, if you want.
Halkun, you clearly know your shit about PS1 (and maybe even Ps2) architecture. I'd be very interested in some documentation or other resources if you have some. Though I know it will never, ever happen (my programming skills were stunted long ago), I like to tell myself that some day I'll work on games as a hobby. As it is, there's a slim possibility I could work on the hardware.
Heh, PSX documentaion? I wrote the book on it! ^_^
Right click and save the link below....Or take a peek, if you want.
Kind of a quiet update, and to give the topic a bump.
Version .11 of the Q-Gears engine was released. You can now take your little avatar up and down ladders. (The avatar is still a blue-green box) also directions aren't implemented yet. (up only increases the X axis). Lots done, but so much more to do.
The white box is the bounding box for the viewport. For the moment, you can see what's on the outer edges what doen't make it into the game. Not only this, looking at he above screenshot, you can see a platform at the very top that you can't access in the game. It looks like you could climb the ladder in an eariler version, but they removed the ladder at a later time.
Posts
Another tip:
The PSX had a buggy Geometry co-porssesor. One of the critial rendering maths totaly fucked up the floating points and gave a massive round error. This, however, was correctable to a point after the fact, but required the bad data from the GTE to be calculated first. Because of the reliance on the bad data to make the data "good" (or "gooder", but still screwy), Sony coudn't fix the GTE or mess up everyone's programs that relied on it. That's why you see the horrable texture warping and bad vertex placement in PS1 games. When you play the game on the PS2, it actually emulates the GTE bug, even though COP2 works just fine now.
So was I, though I didn't use an example. I used FMV and CD Audio examples because that's the biggest payoff, but you can move to a track on Diddy Kong Racing (N64) and watch as it loads the level for a flyby preview. Because ROM maps to memory, the only reason it has to load is because it has to decompress into the portion of the memory map containing RAM. A cartridge basically increases system RAM if data can be read directly, but the N64 sacrifices this for compression. DKR was supposed to be the first 128mbit N64 game but it ended up being scaled back to 96mbit. I remember getting Mario 64 textures for a Quake 2 level I was making using a Mario 64 decompression tool... Mario 64 was only 62mbit on a 64mbit chip in Japan to make a point about cartridge size being more than enough for next-gen games. You can use a similar tool to get text and textures from Zelda TOoT.
Dextrose.com has tons of decompressors for various N64 games (many used newer forms of compression). If those could be applied to FFVII data, I'm sure we could get MUCH better compression rates, but then again a modern PC compressor not designed for decompression speed is probably better. I'm only assumng that N64 compression is superior because Nintendo had huge incentive to make it the best compressin available, but it was vastly superior to anything the PSX was doing regardless.
Halkun, you clearly know your shit about PS1 (and maybe even Ps2) architecture. I'd be very interested in some documentation or other resources if you have some. Though I know it will never, ever happen (my programming skills were stunted long ago), I like to tell myself that some day I'll work on games as a hobby. As it is, there's a slim possibility I could work on the hardware.
Heh, PSX documentaion? I wrote the book on it! ^_^
Right click and save the link below....Or take a peek, if you want.
http://www.zophar.net/tech/files/psx.pdf
^
I wrote this about six years ago
Thanks,
Oh yes, the other crappy thing about the PC version of the game.
By the way, in regards to getting it to work in its current form, isn't there some official XP patch that works pretty good? I at least had no problems, and I think I might have even got hardware acceleration to work with my Radeon 9800.
Turns out the reason why the walkmesh was messed up was because it assumes there was the GTE math bug. We hade to multiply the y inverse by a factor of 1.5 as opposed to 2. Now everything lines up
Neato.
A couple of months ago I had a major problem with Quake 3 where it would lost my brightness setting all of a sudden and go really dark.
Then I found ioQuake3, which is a remake of the engine, and that completely fixed my problems.
Long story short, I really appreciate modern engine recreations, because they allow you to fix problems that would never get fixed otherwise.
Of course, with Quake 3, they had the open source engine to work off, so what you're doing is slightly harder, I'm guessing.
Yup, we are setting up the code so we can "jettison" the Square data when it becomes mature. The user-made data will be in XML format. Right now, as a test, we actually export some of the square data into XML for Q-Gears to read.
We really don't want to have the abilty to make "fan mods" of the actual game, but inspire total conversions.
What's really cool about the old engine is that, for the most part, you can tease the data out of the game, however, putting new data into it is harder then holy hell without the whole system puking. It's really unforgiving about it's data, not only it's format, but where it's placed. Bump it one byte and the whole system crashes.
That might not seem very cool to you, but to us hackers, it's a godsend. I can't tell you how many newbs have entered the forums saying they want to make a "mature patch" with a topless Tifa or somesuch. The first thing they ask is where the "skin" is stored.
When we explain that there are no "skins" for the characters, and the models are all pretty much vertex shaded, they have no idea what we are talking about. I guess they all assume that in order to color a polygon, you have to have some kind of texture map. When we are pressed on how to edit the model, we tell them that without modeling a new torso for Tifa, correctly placing and coloring the vertex points, and exporting the thing through no less then three different programs, he's better off looking for tifa's boobs on the internet.
Because it's on photobucket, I have a clicky link. Can someone rehost for fun?
http://i85.photobucket.com/albums/k61/ultima_espio/yuna.png
Internet LOL!!!!!
This is the document you were talking about in the Platformers podcast, yeah? Interesting, even if I don't understand a word of it.
That's... uh...
What is that?
Using Clouds Body type no less!
And Aeris' arms.
[spoiler:d158d46d7f]Body snatcher body snatcher lol[/spoiler:d158d46d7f]
Version .11 of the Q-Gears engine was released. You can now take your little avatar up and down ladders. (The avatar is still a blue-green box) also directions aren't implemented yet. (up only increases the X axis). Lots done, but so much more to do.
New screenshots can be seen here.
The white box is the bounding box for the viewport. For the moment, you can see what's on the outer edges what doen't make it into the game. Not only this, looking at he above screenshot, you can see a platform at the very top that you can't access in the game. It looks like you could climb the ladder in an eariler version, but they removed the ladder at a later time.