Steam version of Final Fantasy VII

PornoSatan said:
Leave it how it is in my opinion. It's place in history isn't tarnished like it could be if it were to recieve some sort of "update"
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Yea I recall how terrible the PSX Chrono Trigger update was. Please don't ruin FF7 too Square.
 
I wonder if they'll at least fix the music. The MIDI tracks COULD sound decent, but they couldn't do voice for a specific track. Also, if you didn't have a sound card that could properly playback the bundled Yamaha MIDI "font" or a Creative card with proper Soundfont support, the tracks sounded awful.

On top of that, I'd love to see the video cleaned up (they were lower quality than the PS1 versions). Truth be told, I'd love a reason to buy this, but right now, I don't see them enhancing the game in any way over what they've announced. The PS1 version on an emulator shits on the old PC version. I actually threw my PC copy in the garbage years ago after trying my PS1 copy in an emulator.
 
Medion said:
I wonder if they'll at least fix the music. The MIDI tracks COULD sound decent, but they couldn't do voice for a specific track. Also, if you didn't have a sound card that could properly playback the bundled Yamaha MIDI "font" or a Creative card with proper Soundfont support, the tracks sounded awful.
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IF you had a sound blaster AWE 32/64, the soundfonts worked perfectly and yes, even had the choir on 'one winged angel'. If you didn't have that card, it defaults to General MIDI, which is probably what you remember. I expect them to go the general MIDI route, but since NOONE uses General MIDI in 2012, I would hope they have converted the audio to its own engine.

On top of that, I'd love to see the video cleaned up (they were lower quality than the PS1 versions). Truth be told, I'd love a reason to buy this, but right now, I don't see them enhancing the game in any way over what they've announced. The PS1 version on an emulator shits on the old PC version. I actually threw my PC copy in the garbage years ago after trying my PS1 copy in an emulator.
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Umm..... did you really?
The list graphical mods for the PC version shit all over the PSX version, and have for years. You must have missed those as I cannot fathom why you did that, considering the community remedies available. I have both versions and wont go near the PSX version, unless its running on ePSXe and even then, it does not looks as good as the PC version with mods.

But, this is a new release, currently without mod support. So in this case, its all on SE. I'm not holding my breathe, but we should see soon.


EDIT:
Here you go:
http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=12503.0

There has been a shitton of mods created over the years. Try them out and you will see the PSX version was surpassed years ago. (No thanks to Eidos Interactive....)
 
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Godmachine said:
I would rather have a fully updated (graphically) version than a re-port. I would even pay full price if Square-Enix would do this..

People have been asking for over a decade now for this. Fucking Square , always doing EVERYTHING the hard way.
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Crisis core, Dirge of Cereberus (and Advert Children) are all graphical updates...kind of (has some of the same areas) :D
 
LeviathanZERO said:
IF you had a sound blaster AWE 32/64, the soundfonts worked perfectly and yes, even had the choir on 'one winged angel'. If you didn't have that card, it defaults to General MIDI, which is probably what you remember. I expect them to go the general MIDI route, but since NOONE uses General MIDI in 2012, I would hope they have converted the audio to its own engine.
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I had the original SB Live, which supported higher-end soundfonts than the AWE32/64. However, you are incorrect about the choir in One Winged Angel. MIDI by definition cannot do vocal, it just attempts to sound like vocal. Yes, Soundfont was superior to to the PSX audio in every track except One Winged Angel (in which case, it was personal preference, better audio or having vocals). Just please don't mistake improved MIDI with actually having vocals.

LeviathanZERO said:
Umm..... did you really?
The list graphical mods for the PC version shit all over the PSX version, and have for years. You must have missed those as I cannot fathom why you did that, considering the community remedies available. I have both versions and wont go near the PSX version, unless its running on ePSXe and even then, it does not looks as good as the PC version with mods.
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I ditched the game back when I was still on WinME. These mods weren't out, and I didn't need an unofficial patch to get past the chocobo races. My opinion would likely be different if I could see the game. Back then, my options were the PC version in 640x480, or the emulated version with higher resolutions, higher quality audio, and higher quality video. It was an easy decision.
 
Medion said:
I had the original SB Live, which supported higher-end soundfonts than the AWE32/64. However, you are incorrect about the choir in One Winged Angel. MIDI by definition cannot do vocal, it just attempts to sound like vocal. Yes, Soundfont was superior to to the PSX audio in every track except One Winged Angel (in which case, it was personal preference, better audio or having vocals). Just please don't mistake improved MIDI with actually having vocals.
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The choir ONLY worked on AWE32/64 cards. I had one. It was pretty awesome the first time I heard it, it was a huge surprise as you dont hear any vocals in that game at all. I'm not sure if it was a specific sound bank in the soundfont or samples, but you must have had the AWE card or you hear nothing. I upgraded to a Live! value down the road, and it killed the choir.
 
BTW, here is another excellent resource to upgrade your game.
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/no-seq...-fantasy-vii-for-pc-using-bootleg-muo-gaming/

original.jpg
 
most people want the game to stay in tact how it is entirely... just reboot it with some decent next gen graphics.



i guess i understand why they're hesitant but its still gay
 
LeviathanZERO said:
The choir ONLY worked on AWE32/64 cards. I had one. It was pretty awesome the first time I heard it, it was a huge surprise as you dont hear any vocals in that game at all. I'm not sure if it was a specific sound bank in the soundfont or samples, but you must have had the AWE card or you hear nothing. I upgraded to a Live! value down the road, and it killed the choir.
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No, it didn't. Read up on how MIDI works. It cannot do voice, merely some really good soundfonts. It's still not voice, and those same fonts worked fine on Live, it was just more work to set the soundbank for it.
 
Back in those days, having an AWE card was borderline essential. It was probably more important than a good video card for a while.
I'm a little curious how the new Steam one will turn out. While not my favorite Final Fantasy, #7 does bring back great memories.
As long as there are some graphical elements that can be updated (a la those Bootleg photos), I'd be interested in playing it again.
 
There are reports that it will NOT come to Steam. Instead, it will be sold on the Square Enix Store(?). I can't cite source as I'm at work.
 
Medion said:
No, it didn't. Read up on how MIDI works. It cannot do voice, merely some really good soundfonts. It's still not voice, and those same fonts worked fine on Live, it was just more work to set the soundbank for it.
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I'm not arguing the technicalities, I even stated I'm not sure if it was samples or sound banks, but that doesn't matter. I never said it was voice. If you had the correct hardware and was configured correctly, you "heard" the choir. Don't care about the technical details of 1998 hardware. It worked. Thats it.
 
I installed Final Fantasy 7 a few years back and got all the updated mods and such to make it look as good as possible but still feel "natural". 8x antialiasing etc. When I uninstalled it later on though it nuked some core files and XP was messed up, had to reformat and reinstall. Kinda shitty, I want to play it again
 
LeviathanZERO said:
I'm not arguing the technicalities, I even stated I'm not sure if it was samples or sound banks, but that doesn't matter. I never said it was voice. If you had the correct hardware and was configured correctly, you "heard" the choir. Don't care about the technical details of 1998 hardware. It worked. Thats it.
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Which is the same way it worked on the PSX. Unless it was playing FMV or CD audio, the PSX didn't play full PCM audio tracks either, it couldn't. It played music and sounds using it's SPU which was a wavetable type of chip. It held 512k of compressed samples that could play over 24 channels.

So all the "singing" you hear in One Winged angel is just clever use of samples. All the more impressive for that, as it is not an easy feat to make it sound good particularly in those limitations.

Well the SB 32/64/Live/Audigy/X-Fi work the same way. They load wavetables in to RAM, either on board or system RAM, and play them back. They just support larger memory sets, and more channels.

Indeed it is how any good GM/GS/XG card does things. They have a set of samples that they play back, stretch, modify, and so on to make their sound. Gives much more realistic sound than FM.

Also an extreme version of that is how a lot of music is made these days. With big drives, lots of RAM, and powerful CPUs it is quite feasible to have monkey-fuck retarded large sample libraries. You sample instruments playing many notes, levels, styles, and so on and compile it in to a sample set that software plays back in response to MIDI commands. If you want to hear singing samples choirs, have a look at the EWQL Symphonic Choir demos. The samples are really made using the sample set (and the instruments are generally from the symphonic orchestra set). I own both, they work quite well.

You'll find a substantial amount of game music these days composed with things like this, since it is easier and cheaper than hiring out an orchestra (though that is still done plenty).
 
Derangel said:
They have stated numerous times many different reasons why they won't do it. Namely it would be damn expensive since they would need to redo almost everything from the ground up and it would take an insane amount of time and money. It's not like it's some small shooter or corridor game. FFVII has a lot of content, many times more than FFXIII and they had to cut out a huge portion of that game to even get it made. The only way I would expect to ever see a remake in any reasonable amount of time in the future would be on like a cell phone or something like the Vita/3DS
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I don't care what reasons they give , they do updated versions of titles all throughout their gaming development history. They could easily do it , the game story and content are in tact and ready to go. All they have to do is hire a staff for updated artwork , porting the title with programmers and the usual management team. They don't have to come up with a new story line or add any additional content and it would sell VERY well. I can remember years ago Square taking a poll showing that an overwhelming majority of PS3 users wanted a FF7 remake or graphical updated version over everything else in Squares catalog.

So I don't really care what reason they have for it . Its bullshit that they haven't capitalized on the possible huge profit they could make from it. If they only remade it for the PS3 , I would fucking re-buy a PS3 JUST FOR a FF7 remake.
 
Sycraft said:
Which is the same way it worked on the PSX. Unless it was playing FMV or CD audio, the PSX didn't play full PCM audio tracks either, it couldn't. It played music and sounds using it's SPU which was a wavetable type of chip. It held 512k of compressed samples that could play over 24 channels.

So all the "singing" you hear in One Winged angel is just clever use of samples. All the more impressive for that, as it is not an easy feat to make it sound good particularly in those limitations.

Well the SB 32/64/Live/Audigy/X-Fi work the same way. They load wavetables in to RAM, either on board or system RAM, and play them back. They just support larger memory sets, and more channels.

Indeed it is how any good GM/GS/XG card does things. They have a set of samples that they play back, stretch, modify, and so on to make their sound. Gives much more realistic sound than FM.

Also an extreme version of that is how a lot of music is made these days. With big drives, lots of RAM, and powerful CPUs it is quite feasible to have monkey-fuck retarded large sample libraries. You sample instruments playing many notes, levels, styles, and so on and compile it in to a sample set that software plays back in response to MIDI commands. If you want to hear singing samples choirs, have a look at the EWQL Symphonic Choir demos. The samples are really made using the sample set (and the instruments are generally from the symphonic orchestra set). I own both, they work quite well.

You'll find a substantial amount of game music these days composed with things like this, since it is easier and cheaper than hiring out an orchestra (though that is still done plenty).
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Both the PC and PS1 version used MIDI (which you're describing in more technical detail). However, only the PS1 version included digitized vocals to go along with the MIDI for One Winged Angel. The omitted this from the PC release and I do not understand why.
 
Medion said:
Both the PC and PS1 version used MIDI (which you're describing in more technical detail). However, only the PS1 version included digitized vocals to go along with the MIDI for One Winged Angel. The omitted this from the PC release and I do not understand why.
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The PSX didn't really use MIDI per se, its SPC chip speaks a different, custom, language. Same idea, different details.

The PC version did have the vocal samples, but only if you used a Sound Font device, meaning one of the Creative Labs cards (or EMU pro cards). The reason is that regular GM/XG devices have no provision to load samples. They have a fixed sample bank that you can't change. While a choir is one of those samples, it is just a choir singing an "ah" sound. So any normal GM device (like a SC-55, SC-88 or the like) or XG device (like a SW60XG or SW1000XG, or Yamaha or Korg keyboards) couldn't do it. However SoundFont devices have provisions to load custom samples, which they could do and did.

That is like the PSX. The SPC on the PSX didn't have any internal sample ROM all samples were loaded by the game. Same general system as the SNES (Sony made that sound chip too).
 
Sycraft said:
The PSX didn't really use MIDI per se, its SPC chip speaks a different, custom, language. Same idea, different details.

The PC version did have the vocal samples, but only if you used a Sound Font device, meaning one of the Creative Labs cards (or EMU pro cards). The reason is that regular GM/XG devices have no provision to load samples. They have a fixed sample bank that you can't change. While a choir is one of those samples, it is just a choir singing an "ah" sound. So any normal GM device (like a SC-55, SC-88 or the like) or XG device (like a SW60XG or SW1000XG, or Yamaha or Korg keyboards) couldn't do it. However SoundFont devices have provisions to load custom samples, which they could do and did.

That is like the PSX. The SPC on the PSX didn't have any internal sample ROM all samples were loaded by the game. Same general system as the SNES (Sony made that sound chip too).
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Actually, the PS1 didn't use a soundfont, it had actual digitized voice samples played alongside the "MIDI" One Winged Angel. The PC version did not have these digitized samples, just the choir "instrument" for MIDI playback. It was a poor substitute, but was tolerable on a Creative Soundfont device (especially a Live where you weren't limited to onboard RAM).
 
Godmachine said:
I don't care what reasons they give , they do updated versions of titles all throughout their gaming development history. They could easily do it , the game story and content are in tact and ready to go. All they have to do is hire a staff for updated artwork , porting the title with programmers and the usual management team. They don't have to come up with a new story line or add any additional content and it would sell VERY well. I can remember years ago Square taking a poll showing that an overwhelming majority of PS3 users wanted a FF7 remake or graphical updated version over everything else in Squares catalog.

So I don't really care what reason they have for it . Its bullshit that they haven't capitalized on the possible huge profit they could make from it. If they only remade it for the PS3 , I would fucking re-buy a PS3 JUST FOR a FF7 remake.
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They have never done full on console remakes of any of their games. The remakes they have done have all been for portable devices or cell phones where development cost is in the tens to hundreds of thousands not upwards of 50 MILLION and can be done quickly and not damn near a decade (length of time estimate comes right from FFXIII's producer). FFVII on the PS3 would be insanely expensive and time consuming, taking far longer than the remaining life of the console. SE will remake FFVII when they feel they can do it and make enough of a profit for it to be worth it, but you have to look at it logically and not as a raving fanboy of the game.
 
Here's hoping the english translation of this release gets improved on. Also, not sure how I feel about having to buy it from Square's online store. It'd be awesome to just see these old FF games available on Steam like Sega's done with their titles.
 
SeymourGore said:
Here's hoping the english translation of this release gets improved on. Also, not sure how I feel about having to buy it from Square's online store. It'd be awesome to just see these old FF games available on Steam like Sega's done with their titles.
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I don't recall anything being terribly wrong with the english translation?
 
SeymourGore said:
Here's hoping the english translation of this release gets improved on. Also, not sure how I feel about having to buy it from Square's online store. It'd be awesome to just see these old FF games available on Steam like Sega's done with their titles.
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It's just a re-release of the Eidos-ported version made to run run on modern hardware. It's not going to get a new translation.
 
Depending on price, I wouldn't mind buying a copy. But I'd rather have a complete remake TBH.
 
six_storm said:
Depending on price, I wouldn't mind buying a copy. But I'd rather have a complete remake TBH.
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I wouldn't. The Squaresoft that made FF7 and the Square-Enix thats been in charge of all the "new" FF7 stuff shows just how very different they view the game. FF7 has fun, funny, lighthearted moments, and a very steampunk artstyle. It drooled with personality. All the Square-Enix FF7 material has been "sadness darkness darkness agnst sadness". I truely hope they don't remake the game, it would completely and utterly ruin it.

lRzKs.png
 
Cloud is for the most part a pretty dorky and likable character who says shit like "LET'S MOSEY" before the battle to save the world. I don't really get Square's infatuation with this brooding thing.

Unless I'm forgetting something, there's like that one part where he finds out he's not the super badass hero ex-soldier he thought he was and that he totally let everyone down but nobody gives a fuck because at that point it's revealed that he was a badass anyway.


They could really redo the translation though.
 
socK said:
Cloud is for the most part a pretty dorky and likable character who says shit like "LET'S MOSEY" before the battle to save the world. I don't really get Square's infatuation with this brooding thing.
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It's a combination of Noruma's character designs and what is popular in Japanese culture at the moment. Broody pretty boys seem fairly popular.
 
CHAoS_NiNJA said:
I wouldn't. The Squaresoft that made FF7 and the Square-Enix thats been in charge of all the "new" FF7 stuff shows just how very different they view the game. FF7 has fun, funny, lighthearted moments, and a very steampunk artstyle. It drooled with personality. All the Square-Enix FF7 material has been "sadness darkness darkness agnst sadness". I truely hope they don't remake the game, it would completely and utterly ruin it.

lRzKs.png
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That Cloud on the right looks like a walking rain cloud. Why would a company do this, do they think most of their player base is skinny emo kids?
 
Accidentally badass Cloud > Hardcore "put a little makeup" emo Cloud

I may still buy this but I'll need to see what people think of it before I jump.
 
please take my monies square.



they should do this for Xenogears too.. another gem.



honestly like these games I will never forget I had this banana sling chair that was leather.. and i played ff7 all night long.. i did not sleep which is quite the feat at the age of 8.. I played for so long without moving my back stuck to the leather of the chair and i had to have my brother peel the chair off my skin. My back was red for a week hahaha.
 
I don't see the differences between the two Cloud art styles as that huge. I think a lot of it is "to make a point".
 
I don't really think they could or would change the game enough to ruin it, but those illustrations do show the different focuses of Square/Enix from then and now. #7 reminded me a bit of Blade Runner.
It started with #8, which at least had a cool atmosphere and completely sunk from X on. It's like Demolition Man mating with Sailor Moon.
 
I personally don't care how they make Cloud look, as long as they stick to the story....Maybe improve it a bit by including more bits about clouds deluded mental state and how it was caused from shame, jenova cells, and trauma. Add in some more bits about the real bad ass Zack.

But considering they haven't been able to recreate any game with the open world magnitude that FF7 has on PS3, Xbox, or PC I doubt it will ever happen. I can't even remember the last RPG I played that had an airship that could fly around a world.
 
dremic said:
please take my monies square.



they should do this for Xenogears too.. another gem.



honestly like these games I will never forget I had this banana sling chair that was leather.. and i played ff7 all night long.. i did not sleep which is quite the feat at the age of 8.. I played for so long without moving my back stuck to the leather of the chair and i had to have my brother peel the chair off my skin. My back was red for a week hahaha.
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They can't do the same to Xenogears, there was never a PC version of Xenogears for them to re-release. The only other game they could do this for would be FFVIII.
 
maybe they will pack it with a emulator, some games did that before. it was the old game on a emulator
 
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