The Gaming Extra

INTRODUCTION

Since I’ve ran out of new games to cover (and I’m saving up my resources for a trip to the US this April), I’ll drop back to an old game that I was playing since the PSOne and Windows 95/98 era…. Final Fantasy VII. Of course I’ve played this first in my old PSOne, which is now property of my siblings and my PS2 cannot play the old game, even if Sony touted backwards compatibility {shame}.

Since the PSOne’s no longer with me, I purchased FFVII for the PC from Datablitz. Unfortunately, Final Fantasy VII for the PC had terribly written code, and because of it, it was a chore to play on Windows XP (especially in SP2), since we all have to set some things to make it work. This also pose a problem for Windows Vista. The symptoms range from not being able to see the screen, seeing choppy graphics, the game crashing on start, and more

  I used various search engines to look for answers. and one site was able to help me out. Here is the link: http://ntcompatible.com/Final_Fantasy_VII_c522.html

SETUP INSTRUCTIONS

Now out of all the replies there on how to make run FFVII on Vista, there’s one sure fire way. It came from this post and it reads (part):

• Note : Not tested on isos, I used the original game. So use the original game like me! 😉
• First : Install your FF7 Game (Uncheck the Yamaha, the directx and the directshow cases) and choose the Maximum install.
  Follow the steps until the end.
• Second : When installed, apply :
      1.02 patch,
      the chocobo patch,
      truemotion codec
  in this order. *Available at : http://wiki.qhimm.com/FF7/Technical/Customising*
• Third : Apply the goodies if you want.
      Avatar mod for Advent children avatar in the menu
      *Available at : http://wiki.qhimm.com/FF7/Technical/Customising*
      HD Patch to have better graphics for some characters (all mains and many others).
      *Available at : http://www.ffdream.com/out.php?table=file_2&id=833322&type=*
      (Accept the popup below the adress bar to download it)
• Fourth : Run FF7.exe, and the config utility will pop-up,
•     Graphics : I used 640 x 480 Full Screen and checked NVIDIA TNT
      with renderer Direct3D hardware acceleration.
      Sound : Don’t touch it.
      MIDI : MIDI Driver Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth and MIDI Data General MIDI
• Fifth : My game started perfectly and it plays well!!!!!!

Now the instructions are simple, but let’s not end at that point, there are still some issues to take care of.

BUILD SAMPLE

In my build of Final Fantasy VII for the PC I have the following PC Specs:

Intel 805 Dual Core 2.66GHz OC’d to 3.1GHz
2x 1GB DDR2 800 RAM *upgrade
MSI 8600GTS OC 256MB RAM *upgrade
160GB Seagate SATA
Windows Vista Ultimate + Service Pack 1 RC1 *upgrade

*All of these images came from the PC running at 640×480 resolution.

ADDITIONAL SETTINGS

In order to play the game and prevent from "crashing" at start, change the compatibility settings of the game .exe file to run as Administrator. With that we can start the game normally.

However, in the process of making things smoother, I discovered that messing around with NVIDIA’s settings can cause the game’s graphics to shot black lines as well as the tiled effect. To remedy this, either switch to Software Render mode (and lose any Anti-Aliasing properties the game already has), or reinstall the video driver to make sure everything is set to default.