FFVII Research & Resources Thread

[Shademp]

Instead of dominating the other "Easter Eggs" thread, I'll leave it be so that maybe more casual FFVII discussions can be had there. Rather, I'll be posting little discoveries/observations/projects here, for people to (hopefully) enjoy and inquire about.

To justify this clutterboard a bit more, this will also be a "Resources" thread. This is what I can offer:


- Field Script:
If you want snippets of dialogue from FFVII, but you can't find it in any other "FFVII Script" guides, or if you desire text from a different version, here is the place to request it.
I can provide the text from the Japanese game, English PSX, English PC & French PC. (I can't rip the script from the FFVII International bonus disc though.)
It is also in my power to see instantly how and when a piece of text is triggered, which many script rips out there may not do.

- In-game Snapshots
If you badly want screenshots from the game I can easily get those too. Just specify whether you want a 320x224 snapshot that shows graphics that are truthful to original PSX performance, or something bigger and/or with upscaled field models.

- Background Rips
Although GlitterBerri's Map Analysis has *almost* every field map, each rip is there with a specific set of background animations on/off and may or may not include all the layers that create the full in-game image. Request if you want background rips with different "animation" stages.

- FFVII Versions Download Links
(This is the type of thing that the Qhimm forum would ban me for, but fortunately it won't happen here.)
If you desire any of the specific version of FFVII, listed below, send me a PM and I'll provide download links. These can be played on an emulator (see "pSX", "ePSXe" or "PCSX" emulators). They can probably be burnt into playable discs as well, but I have honestly never tried this and there might be some extra steps involved.
- Japanese Original
- FFVII International, complete with Bonus Disc
- English NTSC (American version)
- English PAL (European version)

Demos:
- Tobal No.1, Japanese (1996)
- Tobal No.1, English (1996)
- PlayStation Underground #2 Demo, English (1997)

The most difficult one to find elsewhere on the web (as a downloadable) is probably the Japanese Original. There are two PC demos as well, one of which I think I've downloaded, but no patches exist to make these playable on modern computers, so... =/



Ok, onto the clutter.
Don't expect me to spoil you with all the big secrets though. That's for future frontpage articles...

 

[Shademp]

People will recall that when you first enter Mako Reactor #5, you are on a high platform and then use a long tube as a slide down. Reactor #1 has a platform and a similar slide as well, but the player can't get here via normal means.
Teleporting Cloud here was easy, as the Reactor #1 and #5 field use pretty much the same walkmesh with the same coordinates.

You will see that there is a hole in the wall and you can actually go through it.

However there is no exit/entrance data, used or unused, so it does not take you anywhere. Remember though, from Part 1 in the FFVII:UT that the Reactor 1 maps were to be re-used for Reactor 5, which makes it clear that the place which takes you to Reactor 5 is the field that this gap was to lead to.

EXTRA: Below is a screenshot from the 1996 demo, showing slightly different designs in the upper right parts of the map.

Ok, so does the slide work in the final game?

The no-return slide works fine and Cloud will land safely on the ground.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

You keep gettin' more awesome, by the day.

 

[Shademp]

After what in total amounts to about 9-10 hours of scrolling 'n clicking, I finally browsed through all the field model animations in the PC version. Each field file has its own set of field models and animations, so there is no "field model" folder to check a complete list of all their different actions.

I searched for both messy and unused animations. In the end there were only about 25 field models that displayed errors

Spoiler

(ok, Cid displayed the oddity of having his knee caps bent THE WRONG way in about 30 fields, but that's a more mild category of "messed up")

and I have only checked with a handful of cases which ones are PC exclusive.

One thing is for certain: Without using cheats, you can only ever trigger three instances where a field model is obviously glitchy. All cases involve Vincent and are PC-exclusive.

• 
  Vincent splitting from Cloud in the Shinra Mansion Basement, right before the scene where Sephiroth talks about the Reunion then throws a Destruct materia at Cloud. These are the same faulty standing/walking/running animations that exist in the post-Aeris-death-scene glitch (although you never actually see Vincent running).

• 
  When you find Aeris in the Forgotten City and the party splits from Cloud, you should be able to see the glitch in this field (never actually seen it, but according to Makou Reactor it should be there).

• 
  The well-known, "Vincent kicks dead Aeris then kicks Cloud" scene.

Notice however that I said "obviously glitchy". Remember Shinra HQ floor 60, where you have to sneak past the guards? Two female Shinra employees stand in your way at the centre.
Makou Reactor says that these models are in great disorder.

Spoiler

So is this true to the PSX version as well? Even in a huge screencap with upscaled graphics is it not a 100% clear, but I think it looks like they suffer from the same errors as displayed in the PC game.

Spoiler

They are not used anywhere else in the game, ergo we are yet to see the completed form of this model. Would be nice if somebody could piece together the polygons properly. They only have one animation, which is to simply stand there. Not even a walking and running animation.



If you enter the debug rooms, which requires cheat codes, there are two more instances of messy field models.
BLACKBG3, Keisuke Matsuhara's room, southeast from hub:
- Aeris' field model. (PC exclusive)

Spoiler

^Snapshot of unseen running animation.

As said, in the PSX game she looks fine:

Spoiler

BLACKBG5, Kazushige Nojima's room, northeast from hub:
- Priscilla. True for all versions. Easy to miss unless you are looking for it.
Screenshot representing normal PSX performance:

Spoiler

Spoiler

^Snapshot of unseen running animation.

After this, all the other examples of models with disordered polygons require that you force the game to play animations that are normally never seen.
Just for fun, here are two of those instances:

Shinra HQ floor 67, the prison.

Spoiler

Apparently the Shinra got so tired of being easy with Aeris that they tore her arm off. How nice. *pictures gun-arm Aeris*

The Ancient Temple, entrance to Mural room.
One of the spirits, normal versus glitchy.

Spoiler

It took me quite a long while before I noticed that each field model animation has a signature by one of the event planners. Yes, just like each field file has a signature by one of the Event Planners, so does the 3D characters.

From the FFVII 10th Anniversary Ultimania "Developers' Discussion" pages:

- It’s been 10 years since FFVII was released. I think the reason fans have continued to support it for so long is because it left that much of an impression on them, but what scenes stand out most in your memories as the creators?

Nojima: For me, it’s the scene where Cloud first appears at the start of the story. That scene used the cool standing animation Toriyama (Motomu Toriyama: FFVII’s event planner) made. If I remember correctly, it was named “Cloud showing off” (laughs).

The story fits, as Toriyama's signature "tor" is right where it should be.

Spoiler

aki = Jun Akiyama (Event Planner + Snowboard Minigame Planner)
chi = Hiroki Chiba (Event Planner + Chocobo Racing Planner)

This leads me to wonder if the event planners themselves could use the 3D software to create animations, or if all they did was direct the modelers to do animations "like this and like that".

It's not really consequential, but I compared the signatures for "normal" Vincent versus "glitchy" Vincent.

Spoiler

Spoiler

So the guy responsible (?) for Vincent becoming butchered was Jun Akiyama, while Hiroki Chiba kept things real. I forgive you Akiyama, for you were the planner for the Snowboard minigame. THANK YOU!

Why are some models glitchy in the PC game but not in any of the PSX versions?​

It comes back to a fact I've mentioned before... To quote the qhimm wiki:

In the beginning, however, the PC port suffered many problems. When the contract programmers received the FF7 source code from Square, it was a horrible state of atrophy. When work started on the port, it was soon discovered that they had received an earlier, buggy version of the program. Work had to stop while Square accumulated a later version.

http://wiki.qhimm.com/FF7/History

This is also why the PC version has the unused "Comical" music track in its library and why the zeppelin propeller is still a target in the Speed Square, just like it is in the Japanese Original.


I wonder why these field models are messy in the first place. I seem to spot certain trends in how the polygons are displaced...
In the demo and in many old screenshots of the game, the field models look different. They are shorter and with generally bigger heads in proportion to the rest of their bodies.
Pre-release shots
Demo

Spoiler

versus final game

Spoiler

At some point, the team must have had a meeting and decided that all the old models were to be replaced with the new, less "cartoony" models. I wonder if they tried to automize this process somehow, which then led to models being screwed up which they had to correct...
I'm just brainstorming though. Got no real idea what I'm talking about.

EDIT: Holy Moly I did not expect this post to become so extensive, LOL.

 

[koolaidman]

I remember when looking at models for other games that sometimes have obvious unused/old models, the limbs and joints of the models can be improperly rendered due to an older format being used. Since this game marked a first for Square for many things, they must've made many revisions to their model format during production. If it's true that Eidos received an older milestone of the code (which is perfectly understandable because many companies had atrocious back up procedures back then), then the models that don't seem to be working correctly might be using a different/older format for the model structure.

Whenever there are instances of messed up models in the PSX version, they could be oversights that weren't caught in QA testing. For example, I didn't know that those Shinra HQ guards weren't being rendered correctly (but I suspected something was odd about them because they didn't look like actual people). If managing assets like sound/models for each field map meant batching up everything in one file that's specific to that field - there's probably more room for problems like that. In a way, that corrupt Aerith theme in one of the debug rooms is another example of files assembled for an older build being left in the final retail game.

So I can imagine it must've been hell for Eidos to manage everything. I mean, from what I gather from that passage you quoted, it sounds like it took a while for them to even realize they were working with an older version of the game initially. That tells me right away that FFVII's project files must've been a pain in the ass to manage.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

I wonder if FFVIII's PC port went through the same file clusterfuck. Might explain why a port never materialized for FFIX.

 

[Strangelove]

How do you go about extracting the script from the game?

 

[Shademp]

How do you go about extracting the script from the game?

Makou Reactor can view the script of each field. When viewing the Japanese game, you can activate the Japanese tables and you'll be able to see the text.

You can thank Myst6re, the creator of Makou Reactor, that I have such massive amounts of unused FFVII material to present. This program is so awesome that it doesn't matter that I'm not a "true" hacker.

Other programs are made more specifically for viewing the text entry. Hack7 is supposed to work well for that, but I've never used it since I don't need it. I think it is easier to copy-paste several entries at once from it, though.

Either way, you will want to make an image file of whatever copy of FFVII you have (use Alcohol120%, for example), then extract that file so you can see all the game's folders. It is the FIELD folder that you open up via Makou Reactor in order to see the game text.

In the PC versions however, you simply select the flevel.lgp file. Less complicated than PSX.


I do not have the knowledge to extract the entire game text all at once. However, BrutalAl has done that already so I have excel files containing the script from various versions.

 

[Strangelove]

Extracting the whole text was what I was thinking about, but if that's already done it doesn't matter. So does Makou Reactor only work with FFVII, or will it work with other games too?

 

[Shademp]

It is built only for FFVII, so I can't imagine it working with other games.

I don't know the status of the project, but Myst6re is working on an editor for FFVIII.

*averts from the flood created by Ariadne's drooling*
If he completes this program, ANYBODY out there, with the will, can take FFVIII and scour for unused/hidden content. I will not be that person though. I do not like FFVIII.

 

[Strangelove]

Damn, I was hoping for Parasite Eve/Vagrant Story/Snatcher/dozens of others

 

[Shademp]

A tiny post (came to think of this again because of the recent Let's Play I participated in).

The player is never allowed to go through the door, but if you remove the trigger which makes Cloud attempt to open door (normally it will just keep repeating and Cloud is prevented from advancing), plus remove the collision for the Demons Gate model, you can touch the actual gate. You can't see the "Demons Gate" model, but it IS there and is obstructing your path through the door.
Once you've done this, Cloud can walk through the door. There is no data for the gate to use an animation for it opening when Cloud touches it.
Then you'll be transported outside, to the JTEMPL field.

Then you can't go back, naturally. Go back in and you'll just get to the room where Tseng is.

Hmm, just noticed that JTEMPL is one of the fields where the pointer/hand above Cloud's head does not exist. Well, maybe it still *exists* but it's just unused, as I have no way to check. It uses one red cursor/arrow for the exit to the world map, but notably not one for the actual entrance to the temple.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

It is built only for FFVII, so I can't imagine it working with other games.

I don't know the status of the project, but Myst6re is working on an editor for FFVIII.

*averts from the flood created by Ariadne's drooling*
If he completes this program, ANYBODY out there, with the will, can take FFVIII and scour for unused/hidden content. I will not be that person though. I do not like FFVIII.

OH MY GOD =D

OH MY GOD =D

::FLOOD OF DROOL::

<3<3<3<3<3<3<3

 

[Shademp]

I'm sure this detail has been covered by others before, but I actually discovered it on my own.

With many of the treasures in the Forgotten City (and likely with other treasures in the game, though I haven't tried it out with all of them) the chest will have a wider detection data than you think. Or rather, a "taller" detection data.

Try it yourselves! Press the OK button while standing on these locations and see Cloud performing telekinesis to open the chests!

I wasn't able to pull this off with the "Aurora Armlet" chest, nor with the "Guard Source" chest in the other sea shell "house". I have a vague memory, possibly a false one, of pulling it off with the latter one but despite minutes of trying just now, I couldn't do it.

Many here will be reminded of the fact that, in the Ancient Temple, you can get the Luck Plus Materia even when you are standing on the steps. You don't have to go take the longer path with the vines to then go below the stairs and get the Materia. This is old news to me though.

Other than being neat, the only ones really interested in tricks like this would be speed runners. Please point it out to me if you know other cases of odd treasure chest detection!

 

[Shademp]

I will check more of the treasure chests throughout the game. After talking about it to BrutalAl, he noticed two more cases of bad z-coordinate programming.

Spoiler

Spoiler

Speed runners like GarlandTheGreat avoid glitches for his runs, so these tricks won't be of use to him.

On the subject of treasure chests, BrutalAl also told me something interesting about the interior of Gaea's Cliff.

In the field with the icicles that you strike down, the area actually has a wider walkmesh than you might think.
Like the chest with the Ribbon, I can easily see these chests being hidden in these corners.

Speculating some more, the other room also has areas where treasure chests could easily have been hidden.

Needless to say, BrutalAl is also very good at spotting interesting little details, plus he probably keeps better track on forums (like GameFAQs) where things like these are mentioned/discussed.

 

[Shademp]

I normally want to devote longer posts here, but I just want to share something I never spotted before!
In the FFVII promo VHS, you can see yet ANOTHER version of the save point.

See it at 2:13 in the second part of the video, here:

Here is part one.

*resumes work on the next Unused Text article*

 

[Shademp]

Stilzkin, representative from the German FFVII fansite Cetra Connection, just contacted me and gave me a download link to a second release of the (Japanese) 1996 FFVII demo, one that I had thought was just a rumor.

I have not found any discernable differences between the actual gameplay-demo, but this other version has the Siggraph 95 presentation!

Spoiler

Compare with the "Tobal" demo (which notably does not have the label "Extra" in its menu) that was probably released slightly earlier:

Spoiler

So for simplicity I call these the Tobal & Siggraph demos, respectively. I can't recall ever having seen the entirety of the Siggraph 95 presentation before. It was awesome!

Though it was a bit lazy of me to not find it on YouTube, as it has been up there for years. (There is also a version uploaded which shows the menu before it)

I am unaware if there was ever an English release of this "Siggraph Demo". If anybody has confirmation on which magazine(s) and/or in what type of deal this demo was handed out, please let me know.


Siggraph Demo download (.bin rip) here:
http://www.cetraconnection.de/wp-content/dl/FFVII-Sample-and-Siggraph-1995-Works.rar

 

[Shademp]

I'm doing research for future UT installments, using my familiarity with Makou Reactor to check those last pieces that I could never figure out if they were used or unused when I played the game "manually".

Sometimes, the used text is needlessly obscure. Take this line by one of the townspeople in Icicle Village.

ONLY available before Meteor has been summoned, but only after your first try at the Snowboarding course down to the glacier. Which means that to see this insignificant piece, you have to go out of your way to snowboard down the hill, then go back up to the village and talk to this NPC. Just, wow...

Another one that eluded me for a long time was this one, by an NPC in Wutai, Turtle's Paradise.
&#8220;It's been really loud and busy
outside.&#8221;
&#8220;Someone outside must
be up to something bad&#8230;&#8230;&#8221;

Thanks to Makou Reactor, after careful research I figured out that it is only available
1) Before Meteor has been summoned
2) After finding Yuffie in the house, but before punching her out of the pot

So I asked Kusabi to translate the JP version of that line.
"There's a lot of noice coming from outside since a few moments ago"
"Is somebody up to no good with the pot there again?"

Had the English text been that clear about this NPC helping you figure out where Yuffie is hiding (as though it wasn't so extremely obvious already) I wouldn't have needed Makou Reactor to see when it could be triggered.

 

[Shademp]

Haha, that was simple! I usually am very hesitant to try out new software, even the FFVII-related ones, but BrutalAl requested that I check if I could edit the script of the game. So, I downloaded Lasyan3's "Hack7" program and tried it out.
Turns out that since I have everything in my FFVII files set up for easy modding already, complete with back-ups, this was not annoying in the least.

Result:

There, now I can feel less guilty about asking more things from BrutalAl (which will be required for Part 7 in the UT series).

 

[koolaidman]

I was looking at the .DAT files a while back while I was trying to get AKAO frames and I remember something I don't think I mentioned while I was looking at the decompressed .DAT files from the US version:

http://i.imgur.com/M3nrG.png

This is from MD1STIN.DAT, the very first map when you come off the train the beginning of the game. For the strings at 0xB00, what is the purpose of these? You can find them in pretty much every .DAT file in the FIELD folder, and there aren't any strings that you can see from a hex editor in the Japanese version. They're probably there in the Japanese version as well just not translated as seen here. You can definitely tell that whoever translated those strings wasn't from the English side of the localization team ("CEFIROS" and "RUFAUS" lol). Then after these strings you can find the text from all the related reactor maps.

My guess is that these strings were for some kind of debugger that allowed the person to travel to different events on the fly without having to go to the debug rooms.

Also speaking of the Icicle Village, I'm kinda curious to see if there were any scenarios hidden inside that hint that you were supposed to go to the village at one point in the game before the end of disc 1.

 

[Flintlock]

This thread alone makes me glad I signed up to this forum. It's great to see your work, Shademp, and funny that you mention names like BrutalAl and GarlandtheGreat, both of whom I have been following on YouTube for a very long time.

 

[Shademp]

I was looking at the .DAT files a while back while I was trying to get AKAO frames and I remember something I don't think I mentioned while I was looking at the decompressed .DAT files from the US version:

http://i.imgur.com/M3nrG.png

This is from MD1STIN.DAT, the very first map when you come off the train the beginning of the game. For the strings at 0xB00, what is the purpose of these? You can find them in pretty much every .DAT file in the FIELD folder, and there aren't any strings that you can see from a hex editor in the Japanese version. They're probably there in the Japanese version as well just not translated as seen here. You can definitely tell that whoever translated those strings wasn't from the English side of the localization team ("CEFIROS" and "RUFAUS" lol). Then after these strings you can find the text from all the related reactor maps.

My guess is that these strings were for some kind of debugger that allowed the person to travel to different events on the fly without having to go to the debug rooms.

You are seeing shards of the field script there. MD1STIN contains script from one of the debug rooms, hence the "Transport to Event" options you can see. It is better if you use a program like Makou Reactor or Hack7 to view each piece of text.

Also speaking of the Icicle Village, I'm kinda curious to see if there were any scenarios hidden inside that hint that you were supposed to go to the village at one point in the game before the end of disc 1.

I can tell you right now that there are no hints of this. No doubt you are wondering about Aerith's presence in the Great Glacier, but I believe this to be no more than an oversight. Just like Cid shows reactions to Nibelheim still standing, despite him not being recruited until after your visit to Nibelheim.

The scenario writers simply were not fully aware of the game's continuity when writing the party member dialogue.

EDIT: Without a doubt, I am NOT the first person to imagine what it would be like if Aerith was there to see the recordings of Gast, her father. Unfortunately, no unseen reactions to this by Aerith exists in the game script.

 

[Shademp]

I've been modding like crazy now in preparation for Part 7 in the UT...
It's not just a matter of modding the game, but keeping notes on how the modding is done both to easier duplicate the process on the JP game (or any other version) plus for the sake of full documentation. Preparing all the necessary save files also take time, but means that I have the stuff easily accessible later on, if need be.

It is only recently I think I've found a good system on how to organize and save all this data. I now keep the saves, modded files and modding instructions all in the same folder, instead of having it separate.


Anyway, some neat stuff I like to share... The game uses two fields for the ferris-wheel-type date scenes (the unseen location name for both is indeed "Inside the Ferris Wheel", but really, we never see this floating-thingy connected to any ferris-type-of wheel). Here are the background images that are only partially seen in-game.

Spoiler: BWHLIN

Spoiler: BWHLIN2

Fusing them both together does not create the perfect match I first thought it would, but here is the result...

Spoiler: Full Background

Remember the fog in the room with all the stairs in the Ancient Temple? If you remove everything but the fog, you see the effect looks like this...

Spoiler

It is that sort of image that spawns more associations the longer you look at it.

EDIT: Oh, here's a fun game.

Spot the differences between pre-catastrophe Nibelheim and rebuilt-by-Shinra Nibelheim!

Spoiler: OLD

Spoiler: NEW

 

[Shademp]

Using this thread to ask for some advice...

I am thinking of renaming my "Unused Scenes" YouTube videos.
As it is, some of them include a key word in their title, such as "Hidden", "Secrets", "Unused".
Sector 5 Slums Hidden Text - FFVII
The Secrets of Shinra HQ - FFVII
Mount Corel, Unused Dialogue - FFVII

Many however do not include any indicators that this indeed covers unused material. Examples:
Train to Sector 7 Slums - FFVII
Honey Bee Inn Entrance - FFVII
Leaving Midgar plus Kalm & Nibelheim Events - FFVII

This means that many may mistake these videos as recordings of normal gameplay. I figure then that it is best to add a common element to all video titles, rather than having to always pick a descriptive word such as "hidden" or "unused".

So what do you guys think? I am personally fond of this:

Train to Sector 7 Slums - FFVII Unlocked
Example of what a change would be like:
Unused Sector 7 Events 1/2 - FFVII ->
Sector 7 Events 1/2 - FFVII Unlocked

Fort Condor, Hidden Text - FFVII ->
Fort Condor - FFVII Unlocked


"FFVII Unlocked" is short and mysterious. Doesn't instantly reveal what the content is about, but it is indicative enough.
I feel it would be too long to have the constant element be "Unused Scenes of FFVII", plus it restricts me from using the word "Scenes" in the first half of the video title (assuming I'm picky about not being repetitive).

Please tell me if you have other suggestions or if you think I should not rename the videos at all.

EDIT: See Playlist for all the videos and their titles.

 

[Flintlock]

Go for it, I say. The title isn't completely descriptive, as you say, but there should be some indication that the videos contain unused material, and it would be good to have them all under the same heading - and playlist?