FFVII Research & Resources Thread

Strangelove

AI Researcher
AKA
hitoshura
Looking at the text from the link, 'e room' and Sephiroth's 'i theme' seem like there are parts of the words missing. '...' seems to be where there is a character missing, judging from 49's 観...車 (where it should be 観覧車).

To try to guess, 'e room/e-shitsu' might be 控え室 (hikae-shitsu; waiting room/lobby). 63's 暗い・・・・・・気 (kurai ......ki), assuming ... = one character, could be 暗い雰囲気 (kurai fun'iki) which doesn't really change the meaning. '-i theme' is a lot more open ended so I will leave that one.
 

koolaidman

Lv. 25 Adventurer
I just figured out that 'WIND' is really the wind gust SFX (like when you see the Highwind for the first time in Upper Junon). Not sure why it was among the list of music sequence data, but there you go. I confirmed this by looking at the IDs listed on some of the maps that I suspected used the data in Makao Reactor and noticed that the ID matched.

I have some more stuff from the Tobal demo but it's not exactly that useful, probably common knowledge to others who have looked at this version as I have. FIELD.bin in the NARITA folder is much like FIELD.bin in the final version, but seems purposely truncated for the demo. The file itself contains the programming for interpreting the commands in a field's script (commands like changing X/Y positions, changing music cues, jumping maps, etc). I also assume that the file has programming for how the player moves around and how the field models are displayed too. The base address for the file once uncompressed (rename .bin to .qz and use 7zip to extract) is 800A0000. You can open the file up in IDA Pro to do a rough disassembly of the file to see the subroutines for each command and some other stuff. I think there are some strings that caught my eye for manipulating the events in game formatted as such:

Code:
ovAuthor:
Event:
   Reset
   Go
   Stop
   Step
   Actor OFF
   Word OFF
   Info OFF
Actor:
Word:

I believe these strings are also in the final version's FIELD.bin. But I'm curious if these were meant for use in game or if they were supposed to be for some kind of log. Probably the former. Reset would obviously be for restarting the event, Go for running the event, Stop for pausing the event, and Step for going through the script one command at a time.

Again nothing too interesting but something to note I guess.
 
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koolaidman

Lv. 25 Adventurer
I forgot to point this out in my original post.

The text that describes the "It's Hard to Stand on Both Feet!" track (which mentions it as being Cid's theme, ☞20:シドのテーマ{EOL}) has an entry after that describes "Open Your Heart" as "Melancholy Cid's melody is weaved in" (☞21:さりげなくシドのサビが折り・・・まれている{EOL}). And guess what? Check this out:

"Cid's Theme" at 1:08


"Cid's Theme Weaved In" at 0:08


Both tracks share a melody with each other, which means that this gives the idea that "It's Hard to Stand on Both Feet!" was Cid's original theme more credibility.
 

koolaidman

Lv. 25 Adventurer
Oh! Another thing I forgot to point out from the list.

As stated in the list, 'JUNON' is actually this track from the game:



As far as I can remember, this was only used for the Mideel scenes and Rocket Town. Yoshioka's comments in the debug room hint that the theme was originally meant for a town with a dark/depressing theme, which best fits lower Junon or upper Junon after the Weapon events on disc 2. This was also one of the last tracks being worked on before the list in the debug room was left in it's current state. It seems to me that the events in Lower/Upper Junon went through many revisions before ending up the way it is now, and that (lower) Junon itself was possibly more significant as a result.

Who worked on the Junon events again?

EDIT: Another thing. I said before that some of the entries on the list were unused, but that one of them was actually just a SFX. Well, the other unused entries are also SFX too.

HEART - heart beat, during Cloud's mental escapades.
SATO - I forget where this was used, it's just wind sfx with a high pitched ringing sound.
SENSUI - alarm sfx
 
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Area - Guy responsible for area's events

Under Junon - Hideshi Kyonen
Underwater Reactor - Takashi Tokita
Submarine Events - Motomu Toriyama
Junon - Motomu Toriyama and Yoshinori Kitase

Looks like most disc 1 events in Junon (not counting Under Junon) were handled by Toriyama and then for the disc 2 Junon events Toriyama and Kitase collaborated, with Kitase's name being on most of the relevant fields.
 
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koolaidman

Lv. 25 Adventurer
Hmm, I forgot to post my disassembly of the TOBAL demo's FIELD.BIN. Not really interesting as far as unused things go, but it's very clear if you look at the disassembly that they truncated pretty much everything specifically for the demo. They must've forked the code in the middle of the development and worked on the demo as a separate project. You need at least IDA Pro 6.1 to open the database, which I recommend using to make navigation a bit easier. But you can look at the text disassembly just fine.

You can grab what I did here.

Just to give you an idea of how much they truncated. FIELD.BIN contains functions for every individual field script command. An array of pointers to each script command function is used to quickly use byte codes from the game's script file to jump to the specific command functions in the array. The game has a "trap" command function called "???" which is called if the field command "interpreter" cannot find an appropriate function for the equivalent byte code that's used from the script. For the purpose of the demo, any pointer in the array that used to point to a particular function that would end up not getting used is replaced with a pointer to the "???" trap function. Here's what that array looks like (look at all the commands they removed, and what they left behind):

Code:
ROM:800BA4C4 CMD_CODE_ARRAY: .word cmd_ret            # DATA XREF: sub_800AAB6C+50o
ROM:800BA4C4                                          # sub_800AADCC+160o
ROM:800BA4C8                 .word cmd_req
ROM:800BA4CC                 .word cmd_req
ROM:800BA4D0                 .word cmd_req
ROM:800BA4D4                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA4D8                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA4DC                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA4E0                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA4E4                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA4E8                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA4EC                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA4F0                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA4F4                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA4F8                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA4FC                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA500                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA504                 .word cmd_skip
ROM:800BA508                 .word cmd_lskip
ROM:800BA50C                 .word cmd_back
ROM:800BA510                 .word cmd_lback
ROM:800BA514                 .word cmd_if
ROM:800BA518                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA51C                 .word cmd_if2
ROM:800BA520                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA524                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA528                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA52C                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA530                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA534                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA538                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA53C                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA540                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA544                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA548                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA54C                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA550                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA554                 .word cmd_wait
ROM:800BA558                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA55C                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA560                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA564                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA568                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA56C                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA570                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA574                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA578                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA57C                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA580                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA584                 .word cmd_key
ROM:800BA588                 .word cmd_key
ROM:800BA58C                 .word cmd_key
ROM:800BA590                 .word cmd_uc
ROM:800BA594                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA598                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA59C                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA5A0                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA5A4                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA5A8                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA5AC                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA5B0                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA5B4                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA5B8                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA5BC                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA5C0                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA5C4                 .word cmd_mes
ROM:800BA5C8                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA5CC                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA5D0                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA5D4                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA5D8                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA5DC                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA5E0                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA5E4                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA5E8                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA5EC                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA5F0                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA5F4                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA5F8                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA5FC                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA600                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA604                 .word cmd_wsize
ROM:800BA608                 .word cmd_wmove
ROM:800BA60C                 .word cmd_wmode
ROM:800BA610                 .word cmd_wrest
ROM:800BA614                 .word cmd_wclse
ROM:800BA618                 .word cmd_wrow
ROM:800BA61C                 .word cmd_wvset
ROM:800BA620                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA624                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA628                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA62C                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA630                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA634                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA638                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA63C                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA640                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA644                 .word cmd_mjump
ROM:800BA648                 .word cmd_scrlo
ROM:800BA64C                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA650                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA654                 .word cmd_scr2d
ROM:800BA658                 .word cmd_scrcc
ROM:800BA65C                 .word cmd_scr2dc
ROM:800BA660                 .word cmd_scrlw
ROM:800BA664                 .word cmd_scr2dl
ROM:800BA668                 .word cmd_mpdsp
ROM:800BA66C                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA670                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA674                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA678                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA67C                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA680                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA684                 .word cmd_batle
ROM:800BA688                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA68C                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA690                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA694                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA698                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA69C                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA6A0                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA6A4                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA6A8                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA6AC                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA6B0                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA6B4                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA6B8                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA6BC                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA6C0                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA6C4                 .word cmd_set
ROM:800BA6C8                 .word cmd_set2
ROM:800BA6CC                 .word cmd_biton
ROM:800BA6D0                 .word cmd_bitof
ROM:800BA6D4                 .word cmd_bitxr
ROM:800BA6D8                 .word cmd_plus
ROM:800BA6DC                 .word cmd_plus2
ROM:800BA6E0                 .word cmd_minus
ROM:800BA6E4                 .word cmd_mins2
ROM:800BA6E8                 .word cmd_mul
ROM:800BA6EC                 .word cmd_mul2
ROM:800BA6F0                 .word cmd_div
ROM:800BA6F4                 .word cmd_div2
ROM:800BA6F8                 .word cmd_remai
ROM:800BA6FC                 .word cmd_rema2
ROM:800BA700                 .word cmd_and
ROM:800BA704                 .word cmd_and2
ROM:800BA708                 .word cmd_or
ROM:800BA70C                 .word cmd_or2
ROM:800BA710                 .word cmd_xor
ROM:800BA714                 .word cmd_xor2
ROM:800BA718                 .word cmd_inc
ROM:800BA71C                 .word cmd_inc2
ROM:800BA720                 .word cmd_dec
ROM:800BA724                 .word cmd_dec2
ROM:800BA728                 .word cmd_randm
ROM:800BA72C                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA730                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA734                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA738                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA73C                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA740                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA744                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA748                 .word cmd_char
ROM:800BA74C                 .word cmd_dfanm
ROM:800BA750                 .word cmd_anime
ROM:800BA754                 .word cmd_show
ROM:800BA758                 .word cmd_xyzi
ROM:800BA75C                 .word cmd_xyz
ROM:800BA760                 .word cmd_xyz_0
ROM:800BA764                 .word cmd_move
ROM:800BA768                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA76C                 .word cmd_mova
ROM:800BA770                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA774                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA778                 .word cmd_fmove
ROM:800BA77C                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA780                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA784                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA788                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA78C                 .word cmd_msped
ROM:800BA790                 .word cmd_dir
ROM:800BA794                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA798                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA79C                 .word cmd_tura
ROM:800BA7A0                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA7A4                 .word cmd_getaxy
ROM:800BA7A8                 .word cmd_getai
ROM:800BA7AC                 .word cmd_anim
ROM:800BA7B0                 .word cmd_canim
ROM:800BA7B4                 .word cmd_canm
ROM:800BA7B8                 .word cmd_asped
ROM:800BA7BC                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA7C0                 .word cmd_cc
ROM:800BA7C4                 .word cmd_jump
ROM:800BA7C8                 .word cmd_axyzi
ROM:800BA7CC                 .word cmd_lader
ROM:800BA7D0                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA7D4                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA7D8                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA7DC                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA7E0                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA7E4                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA7E8                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA7EC                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA7F0                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA7F4                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA7F8                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA7FC                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA800                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA804                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA808                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA80C                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA810                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA814                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA818                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA81C                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA820                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA824                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA828                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA82C                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA830                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA834                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA838                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA83C                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA840                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA844                 .word cmd_bgon
ROM:800BA848                 .word cmd_bgoff
ROM:800BA84C                 .word cmd_bgrol
ROM:800BA850                 .word cmd_bgrol_0
ROM:800BA854                 .word cmd_bgclr
ROM:800BA858                 .word cmd_stpal
ROM:800BA85C                 .word cmd_ldpal
ROM:800BA860                 .word cmd_cppal
ROM:800BA864                 .word cmd_rtpal
ROM:800BA868                 .word cmd_adpal
ROM:800BA86C                 .word cmd_mppal
ROM:800BA870                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA874                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA878                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA87C                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA880                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA884                 .word cmd_music
ROM:800BA888                 .word cmd_se
ROM:800BA88C                 .word cmd_akao
ROM:800BA890                 .word cmd_musvt
ROM:800BA894                 .word cmd_musvm
ROM:800BA898                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA89C                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA8A0                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA8A4                 .word cmd_pmvei
ROM:800BA8A8                 .word cmd_movie
ROM:800BA8AC                 .word cmd_mvief
ROM:800BA8B0                 .word cmd_mvcam
ROM:800BA8B4                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA8B8                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA8BC                 .word cmd_???
ROM:800BA8C0                 .word cmd_gmovr

I remember reading that the FIELD.BIN file also contains a list of addresses for every individual field map in the game. I can't seem to find that here. There's a ton of NULL'd out data at the end of the file though, bah.

Looking at the text from the link, 'e room' and Sephiroth's 'i theme' seem like there are parts of the words missing. '...' seems to be where there is a character missing, judging from 49's 観...車 (where it should be 観覧車).

To try to guess, 'e room/e-shitsu' might be 控え室 (hikae-shitsu; waiting room/lobby). 63's 暗い・・・・・・気 (kurai ......ki), assuming ... = one character, could be 暗い雰囲気 (kurai fun'iki) which doesn't really change the meaning. '-i theme' is a lot more open ended so I will leave that one.

Oops! Sorry for not replying to this. :P

"Waiting room/lobby" seems to make a lot more sense. The only area that I can think of that COMICAL could also fit in relation to JUNON is the locker room where you are briefed in how to do pull off all the moves during the ceremony. This was probably composed during a time in development where the developers weren't sure if they should have the Rufus Welcoming Ceremony BGM play silently in the background or if certain maps should play BGM at different moments. Notice how COMICAL appears after the Rufus Welcoming Ceremony entry in the debug room list. I would also say, since we know Toriyama used COMICAL for the unused Honey Bee Inn events and that he was responsible for these events in Junon, the track was probably used by him at some point around that locker room area.
 
*revives thread and removes my name from it*

Researching hidden text which I can't get via raw text extractions, so I'm looking for help with some Japanese transcriptions. While I could do some of them on my own, I am at risk of making mistakes.


Discovered by BrutalAl (who seems to have disappeared from at least the Final Fantasy part of the web since 2 1/2 years back), Tifa can react to the buggy breaking down outside of Cosmo Canyon.


Uv3W2Qy.png


nbFfDi2.png


On the overworld or "world map" only Cloud, Tifa and Cid are the main characters who can walk around. You can't unlock Aeris, Barret, etc. Cid's reaction to the buggy breaking down consists solely of him doing his "scratching back of head" animation. He won't actually say anything about the malfunction.


If you manage to walk on the bottom of the sea, well, this is its location name:

WncbVWs.png


Hqoxgp7.png


Google translate turns "Bottom of the Sea" into "海の底". So it's possible that the location name is reading 海底 in the game, but I can't be entirely sure due to the font difference and low resolution.
mWxPyo8.png



Asa, the one who helped fix the faulty kanji tables with impressive precision, unlocked the following "location name" to the menu by creating a save when he was underwater in the submarine. However it appears to be merely gibberish, not relating at all to the underwater location.

1sKbpCs.png
 

Strangelove

AI Researcher
AKA
hitoshura
ティファ
「どうして動かなくなっちゃうのよ!」

(to me, that kind of reads a bit more annoyed than the english one? the のよ! bit at the end sounds more irritated than the english one but idk maybe that's just me)

海底 is the same but without the の, like saying 'seabed' instead of 'bottom of the sea' mean the same thing in the end

Tコふはバフふバばさクくク

this just looks like gibberish to me too. the character name also seems to be mangled (づキくさフ)
 

ForceStealer

Double Growth
I guess the "?!" is what they were using to convey the annoyance. Are you thinking (if you were the localizer) you would go for something like "Why the hell did quit?" or something different? (Mainly asking out of linguistic curiosity :monster: )



Also that's interesting about the other character's reactions to the buggy... might there have been plans for the party leader to be the one doing the reacting? Or is this a function of Cloud's time out of the party?
 

Strangelove

AI Researcher
AKA
hitoshura
it think it's the 'hey...' at the beginning that makes me read it as a surprised '?!'

but i think i'm about to start having fever dreams so i could be talking nonsense
 

The Twilight Mexican

Ex-SeeD-ingly good
AKA
TresDias
I guess the "?!" is what they were using to convey the annoyance. Are you thinking (if you were the localizer) you would go for something like "Why the hell did quit?" or something different? (Mainly asking out of linguistic curiosity :monster: )
The exclamation point was there at the end of the Japanese line too, so that's not really a localization choice.

If I wanted to convey annoyance, I'd have probably gone with "Are you kidding me?! Why did it stop?!" At the very least, maybe going with the same line but without the "Hey" would have made it ambiguous enough to be taken as annoyance. Like hito said, that gives more a sense of surprise.

Though the emphatic reaction could be as much surprise as annoyance, in which case the "Hey" would be justified. :monster:

Force said:
Also that's interesting about the other character's reactions to the buggy... might there have been plans for the party leader to be the one doing the reacting? Or is this a function of Cloud's time out of the party?
Probably just a result of everything where a character could appear getting something coded in for debugging exploration. Think of how Cid has lines for the Mythril Mine and Aerith has them for the Great Glacier.
 
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Think of how Cid has lines for the Mythril Mine Nibelheim and Aerith has them for the Great Glacier.
Fixed because Cid doesn't have unused lines for the Mythril Mines.

But yes, Tifa having her own reaction to the buggy breaking down is more likely a result of the world map planner being unaware of final game's order of events, or adding the event just to be on the safe side.
 

JBedford

Pro Adventurer
AKA
JBed
Asa, the one who helped fix the faulty kanji tables with impressive precision, unlocked the following "location name" to the menu by creating a save when he was underwater in the submarine. However it appears to be merely gibberish, not relating at all to the underwater location.

That's interesting to know. I'd seen Bottom of the Sea in a GarlandTheGreat gameshark video. There's actually a text in the game that just says "Sea" which I had assumed the Underwater World Map would display if it could. So who knows what that's for.

So I did some investigation. You can try this yourself: Go in Makou Reactor and set it to Japanese encoding and paste "Tコふはバフふバばさクくク" in a text. Then turn off Japanese encoding.

You get: "Área de !unon".

Obviously it's not a perfect match for the English character table, the capital letters are off. But that accented A is from a completely different area of the character table (0xA7), so it's probably meant to say "Área de Junon". Portugese? Was FF translated into Portugese?

Anyway, if you don't have it, here's all the WM text extracted from the 1997 version of PC:
Code:
Midgar Area

Grasslands Area

Junon Area

Corel Area

Gold Saucer Area

Gongaga Area

Cosmo Area

Nibel Area

Rocket Launch Pad Area

Wutai Area

Woodlands Area

Icicle Area

Mideel Area

North Corel Area

Cactus Island

Goblin Island

Round Island

Sea

Bottom of the Sea

Glacier

{CLOUD}
“We're moving!?”

{CLOUD}
“This is bad!”

{CLOUD}
“Hoo boy…There's no way
    we can walk across now.”

{CLOUD}
“Not even a Chocobo could make it across…
    Isn't there a more powerful vehicle?”

{TIFA}
“Huh? What!?”

{TIFA}
“W, wait a minute!”

{TIFA}
“Whew…The sand flows almost like a river…
    I guess we can't get in.”

{TIFA}
“Not even a Chocobo could make it across…
    Let's not go in this way.”

{CID}
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!”

{CID}
“Damn…This's a problem!”

{CID}
“You gotta be kidding.”

{CID}
“Not even a Chocobo could make it across.”

“Wark!?”

“Wark! Waaaark!!”

“!?”

{CLOUD}
“Oh man…a breakdown? Now?”

{TIFA}
“Hey…Why did it quit!?”

{CID}
“*&$*&, what energy!
    Damn! You think I'm just gonna give up!?”

{CLOUD}
“…I got the feeling
    I'm forgetting something…”

{CLOUD}
“Hey, would you stay there
    just a minute?”

{TIFA}
“…Let's see…where was I going…?”

{TIFA}
“Please, Chocobo,
    would you wait just a minute?”

{CLOUD}
“…Snow…as far as you can see…
    Better watch where I walk.”

{CLOUD}
“Now for the Chocobo…”
          Send it back to the stables
          Turn it loose

{CLOUD}
“Watch out.”

{TIFA}
“Let's see…should I:”
          Send the Chocobo back to the stables
          Turn it loose

{TIFA}
“Bye. Take care.”

{CID}
“Ok, Chocobo, I'm gonna…”
          Send ya back to the stables
          Turn ya loose

{CID}
“Take care, kid.”

{CLOUD}
“…First, I gotta do something about her.”

{TIFA}
“I can't just leave it there…”

{CID}
“Damn kid! I'll get her no matter what!”

{CLOUD}
“…I'll place a landmark, and start walking.
    (Place a landmark by pushing {CYAN}[OK]{WHITE} button)”

[Saving on the World Map]
On the World Map,
access the menu anytime and select
{PURPLE}[SAVE]{WHITE} to save your game.

{CID}
“Wh, what the hell was that!?
    That came buzzin' past here
    like a powerhouse!”

{CLOUD}
“…………?”

{CLOUD}
“Wh, what the…!?”

How to drive the buggy
Press the {CYAN}[OK]{WHITE} button to get on.
Press the {CYAN}[CANCEL]{WHITE} button to get off.

Buggy's can cross
{PURPLE}shallow rivers and deserts.{WHITE}
You can even enter Costa del Sol and Junon by
buggy, by hitching a ride on the 'Cargo Ship'.

How to fly the Tiny Bronco
Press the {CYAN}[OK]{WHITE} button to get on.
Press the {CYAN}[CANCEL]{WHITE} button to get off.

Tiny Bronco can cross
{PURPLE}shallow waters and rivers.{WHITE}
Players can get on and off it on the beach.

How to ride a Chocobo
Press the {CYAN}[CANCEL]{WHITE} button to get off.

Chocobos will {PURPLE}escape
whenever a player dismounts.{WHITE}

{CID}
“Hey, HEY!
    What're ya tryin'to do?
    Break the Highwind?
    Let's fight on the ground!”

How to drive a Submarine
Press the {CYAN}[OK]{WHITE} button to get on
                                       /move forward.
Press the {CYAN}[CANCEL]{WHITE} button to get off
                                       /submerge/float.

Players can get on and off{PURPLE}
in bays like this one.{WHITE}

If you want to see for yourself, extract world_us.lgp's "mes" file. If you view it in a hex editor, you can see the hex values. Makou converts hex to character encoding if you type in e.g."{x00}".
 

Strangelove

AI Researcher
AKA
hitoshura
there was definately a spanish version, and área de junon would match 'junon area'

is the garbled character name perhaps 'claude'? i think that was cloud's name in the spanish version?

edit: trying to decode it used the área de junon letters, the last three letters of the name are 'oud' so i am guess the first two are 'Cl'
 
Thanks for confirming what my memory told me, JBedford. I knew there was supposed to be a "Sea" location name on the overworld but upon reinvestigating the relevant qhimm threads I could not find the references and pictorial evidence. While Asa might have unlocked the location name, the images he hosted on qhimm no longer works.

I'll look into the world_us.lgp file and see if I can use a hex editor. Hopefully my knowledge gained from using Cheat Engine will help me to actually understand the hex editor.

One annoyance is that I lost the PC2012 version of FFVII when I reformatted my computer years ago, so now I've contacted the Square Enix Store to see if they can provide a new download link without me having to re-purchase the game. If this fails, I'll either buy the game AGAIN or I'll request the files from somebody on here.


It is highly unlikely that the gibberish location name found in Asa's save has anything to do with spanish, since the save comes from the second Japanese release, "FFVII:International". Asa used a mix of Black Chocobo Save Editor and a hex editor to achieve his results, which or may not explains the corrupted location- and player character name. At the time when Asa used Black Chocobo I think it had less compatibility with the Japanese versions, thus causing textual bugs.
 

JBedford

Pro Adventurer
AKA
JBed
Oh right, duh. Google translate suggested Portugese so I went with that.

I checked the Spanish version's texts and it is indeed "Área de Junon". That's
Code:
c7 52 45 41 00 44 45 00 2a 55 4e 4f 4e
Sending that back to Japanese made me realise that in the given screenshot it's ぱ rather than ば. So it is the European version's character encoding table.

And yup, that character's name does say "Cloud". Which makes it seem fairly likely that the save in the screenshot up there isn't natively from the Japanese version, but rather was a Spanish save played in the Japanese version. Edit: Well, I can't see how else the name wouldn't be katakana Kuraudo unless the save had been tampered with in more ways than originally thought.
 

The Twilight Mexican

Ex-SeeD-ingly good
AKA
TresDias
Think of how Cid has lines for the Mythril Mine Nibelheim and Aerith has them for the Great Glacier.
Fixed because Cid doesn't have unused lines for the Mythril Mines.
Sorry, it was Yuffie I was thinking of. :monster:

I knew I remembered one of them having a reaction to the dead Midgar Zolom. According to Part 6 of your Unused Text series, it was Yuffie.
 
At last I stumbled upon an FFVII commercial that I had long been wondering about, for I had only seen frames of it in page 218 of the FFVII 10th Anniversary Ultimania Revised Edition.

Download the commercial here

Pages 218-219 of the book show frames for several FFVII commercials and their variations. I think there are a few more of these commercials I still haven't seen in video form.

That CM website is quite neat. You can find loads and loads of commercials in there for easy download. As you'd expect most commercials come in low resolution though.
 
Up until now I somehow managed to miss the trailer for the original PC port of FF7.



Or as I like to call it: The PC98 port. I wonder where one might find the original trailer video file.
 
On this day I just so happened to find an article that was posted on PCGamer exactly one year ago!

- Why the hell do they have mouths: a Final Fantasy 7 PC retrospective

To my joy the article uses my FFVII Version Guide as a reference!

Spoiler: They don't find out with 100% certainty why the PC models have mouths but they did get this response from one of the people who worked on the port.
... but what about the mouths, right? Why does Cloud eternally look like an emoji-before-emojis? Why does Sephiroth look like he could swallow an entire hot dog whole? Did Greenberg know?

"Great question. I'm wracking my brain to try to remember," he said. Uh oh.

"This is not something that we added on the art side since I never changed the model files in any way. I believe I remember that the mouths were just sitting there in the original texture files for the characters. I'm pretty sure the code to drive them was probably there as well, and we just enabled it or something. I wish I could tell you more, but I just don't remember it."

Is this victory? Or defeat? Greenberg gave me what may well be the story behind the character mouths in the PC version: they were actually there the whole time, but had been disabled in the PlayStation version before it shipped. Why? My guess is that a PlayStation plugged into a typical CRT TV with a composite cable resulted in such a fuzzy, low resolution image, you couldn't really see them, anyway. The eyes were bigger, and more expressive, and so the mouths were cut.

But it's possible there's more to the story—maybe the developers wanted the mouths to animate but never got around to it, or simply ran out of time to properly implement them.


Jason Greenberg's history with the PC port is quite interesting.
Greenberg now works as the animation director at Infinity Ward and has fond memories of his time at Squaresoft.

"I was originally hired onto the project as a 3D artist," recalled Greenberg. "One of my main roles was supposed to be to help them with performance issues by reducing the polygon counts on many of the character and creature models." Luckily for the game, though less fortunate for Greenberg, the programmers were able to develop a PC renderer efficient enough to use the PS1's original models, without compromising on polygons. Instead of working as a 3D artist, Greenberg ended up doing touch-up work on the 2D art, increasing the resolution of assets from 320x240 to 640x480.

"Mostly I focused on all the fonts and menu icons, and any textures used in the UI. Doubling the resolution of the Final Fantasy finger icon was actually a pretty cool thing to work on. It's literally iconic. There were no fancy upres-ing algorithms to use back then so I was basically filling in a ton of pixels by hand. You could imagine it wasn't all that creatively challenging and not the best use of my skillset as a 3D artist."

Greenberg also worked on Final Fantasy 7's FMVs, which were compressed for the PC release rather than improved. "Unfortunately we didn't have access to any higher resolution renders and they wouldn't provide the original assets to re-render, so sadly I had compress most of the FMVs from the 320x240 versions.

Making them fit in the disc space required and playback properly was quite a challenge. In the end, I don't think they looked as good as they could have. If only Sqaure had been able to provide higher resolution frames. We had the same issue with many of the backgrounds. These were simply too dense to double resolution and touch up by hand so most of them I think were the direct PS1 versions."

In 1998, you couldn't do the kind of 3D graphics work that went into Final Fantasy 7 on a normal PC. Greenberg had a $30,000 Silicon Graphics workstation on his desk "with probably Ssoftimage and Nichimen Graphics software on it to do the low-poly modeling" he never ended up actually working on, but he did put the hardware to use once. As a big chocobo fan, he created a new Squaresoft logo cinematic for the PC version. That's one bit of Final Fantasy 7's history we can definitively put a name to.

So now we know who made that PC-exclusive FMV!


The article is chock-full with deep insight and facts about the process of porting FFVII from PlayStation to PC. The quotes above are just samples from this treasure of an article. I highly recommend you read the whole thing!
 
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Roughly half of the "Event Team" that were responsible for event planning. In other words, half of the people that have their own debug rooms in the retail editions of FFVII.

Yrg0CFt.png


From left to right: Hiroki Chiba, Kazuhiko Yoshioka, Keisuke Matsuhara, Motomu Toriyama, Kazushige Nojima and Jun Akiyama.

I scanned the photo from page 183 of the book Final Fantasy VII Kaitai Shinsho The Complete, 2nd Revised Edition.

There are three editions of this book:

- The original released in March 1997 [ISBN:4-89366-678-9]
- The revised edition released in November 1997 [ISBN:4-89366-879-X]
- The 2nd revised edition released in June 2000 [ISBN:4-7577-0098-9]

You might not find the ISBN code on the book itself, but on the detachable cover. I post about this now because the page I scanned is from the June 2000 release and I don't know if the photo of the Event Team is present in previous versions of the book. If the photo is present in earlier editions then we can narrow down the time when the photo was taken. Please let me know the situation if you own either of the two 1997 releases.
 

JBedford

Pro Adventurer
AKA
JBed
I have the other two versions of that book (well, the second printing (in April 15) of the first edition but with the same ISBN), it has that photo.

The revised edition is almost identical to the original edition except the additional chapter for International changes, an index, obviously the contents page additions, and I've only spotted one other minor difference in the obtain method of Rising Sun.

It's also worth noting that when Enterbrain bought Famitsu from ASCII, they republished a number of guides. I don't think they were republished for content reasons.
 
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