Of course this depends on whether or not you're tech savvy, but the results can be quite astonishing

Link to a series of Patches (some work in progress but mostly done.)

The Thread that talks about it.

And the results, but first a brief explanation: as you know people may or may not have complained about the Super Deformity (SD) of the Final Fantasy VII characters, well, these people are here to rectify that problem...mostly.

Also, there is word of being able to use a Hi-Rez version of Cloud in Battle, that is, the one seen in the Omnislash battle with Sephiroth.

I'll just put these screenshots right here then:

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y112/FFVI...on/802aa564.jpg
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y112/FFVI...on/ef5b38dd.jpg
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y112/FFVI...on/cd3a1b01.jpg
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y112/FFVI...on/06302a50.jpg
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y112/FFVI...on/43b53bc8.jpg
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y112/FFVI...on/60203c21.jpg
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y112/FFVI...on/fa738930.jpg
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y112/FFVI...on/fb382ef8.jpg

Simplified info for those who want the patch.

Info about Hi-Rez Cloud

And a little comparison:
http://www.yourwebspace.com/cgi-bin/dreako...oreandafter.bmp

Also, Arpy, just in case you're wanting to, they have a Text Editor for FF7 for PC, so you can mess with that if you want.

In light of FF Advent Children, this is very new and very interesting stuff.

Edit: A little bit of trivia, I got this info and links Word of Text from Human, you guys remember him, right? ^^

wow awesome post :) thank you for posting this. Works great :)

Wow. I want this, but I'm not at all Tech-Savvy. I often lamented that FFVII could've been so much better if the battle sprites were used throughout the whole game. This would be such a neat experience...

If I were to give a brief simplification of terms, think of all the LGP files as a form of Videogame Zipped Folders, but for 3D Graphics, all these guys have done is swapped the original Super Deformed Sprites, with their proportional Battle Models, the only major glitching I've seen so far are certain emote faces during close-ups (whenever Tifa and Aeris do a kind of "soulful closed eye" look it doesn't render proportionately on the face and looks rather strange).

And then of course there's Vincent, who glitched in the original sprites anyway during the city of ancients events, which is more S.E.'s fault than theirs, but other than that, things work well, although I'm still trying to figure out why the Hi Rez Battle Model of Cloud isn't working for the rest of the game, at least in my case, it seems to work for everybody else.

There's even a special patch that lets you play whatever music you want in place of FF7's music. I haven't figured out how to full get that to work either, it's not easy, but usually it's just a matter of Uncompressed files being replaced and compressed again.

Edit: Well, the Battle Hi-Rez Cloud Patch works, and it looks great. Now just a matter of getting more NPC patches to make this look even better.

I actually prefer the original Battle Cloud design. But it's definitely an improvement over the SD designs -- I guess. I don't know, their hamfists were kind of charming.

Well, the patches work for me and I decided to show a couple screenshots of my own.





As you can see, not all the NPCs are modeled, but it may or may not be a big deal to ignore the Little Kid types, but considering how many NPCs there are in the game, it's a daunting task to render them as larger. Also certain events seem to give way to problems, like Cloud dressing like a Girl for instance, that has a certain Sprite designation and event, so it's tricky to get stuff like that right.

Interesting....


Alas though, I haven't my discs in Kansas. I think they're in my dresser. In Ohio.


That, and I can't get Starcraft to work on XP, so it's no guarentee that FF7 could work. I'll have to give it a shot some day. Good work though Blade. Way to get the info.

I don't have FFVII PC, but that's not to say I couldn't get it...one way or another. What exactly is entailed in getting this to work?

Methinks I need to try this out. ;) Thanks for posting!

There is another site that had this type of patch, but it altered cloud's battle model.

Well, installing FF7 of course, but the list of patches shown and links tell how exactly to do it, like I said before, it's basically replacing one set of files with another, but just be sure to make backups of the originals just in case something goes wrong.

The majority of what you'll be doing is messing around with LGP files these files contain a bunch of subfiles for various parts of the game, including music, and one key thing you'll be using is LGP Tools by Ficedula, you'll need ficedula.dll and ficeconsole.dll which are separate zip files, but basically what LGP Tools does is extracts or creates any file with the extension LGP then all you do is replace the files with a patch, including music if you so desire (FYI FF7 for PC relies on MIDI for it's music, so I would definitely get the Midi patch, just so you can put whatever music you want in the game...make sure to turn down the In-game music for it to work though.)

Not to mentiton a 3DFX card... but no problem there.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Glide+wrapper

Runs with D3D.

...

Shit, I so need this. I have the FFVII PC game, but god dammit, I broke the install disc. ><*** As a result, I can't play it anymore, since it's no longer on any of my computers.

You don't suppose there's any way to install it without the install disc, do you?

What with all this, is it possible to hack it and have a Forum Final Fantasy VII?

Considering that there's a Text Editor, a Hex Editor, a Polygon Editor (for characters, NPCs, AND Battle Sprites), and a bunch of other things, I can pretty much say that's a big yes for Forum Fantasy VII, however, it's a daunting task to say the least. If Arpy or anyone else wanted to do this, he'd need a team of hard workers who knew what they were doing.

Also, with regard to the no-disc thing: well if you really wanted to you could get Daemon Tools and mount an ISO of the discs. They were working on a no-disc patch as long as you extract all the movies to a folder on your computer, I'm not sure how it works since I haven't tried it yet.

FF7 PC works fine on Windows XP. You just need to get the patch. Starcraft works fine on XP as well, though, so maybe you're computer just has problems.

When I played FF7 on PC, the game froze up at the chocobo race.

I was very sad.

And then I got a PS2 (my first game console that hooked up to the TV, sad, I know), and got FF7 from a friend.

She still needs to give me the last disc. >=(

2 Default Patches if I recall, one was the official Eidos Patch for Win2000/XP display and the other was the Chocobo Races patch.

::splutters::

Beh... beh... beh....



WOW!!!!!!!




....for anyone who wants the original FF7 PC game, I have what's called the "Ultima Edition." Needs no discs. PM me for details.

EDIT:

Two things I've run into here:

1. The Fice Dula program needed to access the character images won't run. I used the one that was linked to in the tutorial, but it says it needs ficedula.dll to run... which isn't there.

2. I also tried the higher resolution patch. Apparently all you need to to is patch it to the FF7 exe... but it wouldn't take. NO PATCH, it says. Wonder why....

Does it need Daemon Tools?

Oh, niiiiice. I'll have to install the copy that's laying around somewhere and try this out. It looks a whole lot better, even if the models don't have textures.

No. It comes with a nice little "setup.exe" icon, and it loads everything out for you. I don't know enough about software mechanics to explain exactly why it needs no discs, but I know it's not disc imaging, since I never actually mounted anything yet can still play it fine.

Anyway, I found the fice dula dll and went ahead with the tutorial. The "reunion patch" icon is now displayed at the FF7 title screen, and all the field characters have been successfully changed to their battle counterparts. But nothing in the "regular" screens. I followed the tutorial's instructions to the letter... multiple times. But I cannot get the battle models to appear where they would look the best.

Blade, is it possible you can upload your char.lgp file to me somehow?

For the Reunion Patch

1. Make sure that your version of FF7 has been updated by the Official 1.02 Patch released by Eidos which can be found here. Replace the FF7.exe and FF7Config.exe with the files found in this update.

2. Before doing the next step, create a backup of the following files in the Data folder: char.lgp, menu_us.lgp, and world_us.lgp this is as simple as highlighting copying pasting which turns the backup into "Copy of char.lgp" and so on. The reason for the backup of the other LGP files is because they will also be modified to fit the World Map Events. And you don't want to reinstall the game if things go wrong.

3. Get Ficedula.dll, LGP Tools, the Reunion Patch, and the Avalanche Patch, using Winrar, extract them elsewhere into their respective seperate folders.

4. Using the two .dll files you got from Ficedula, load up LGP Tools, from there, find char.lgp, then, when all the files have been loaded, click Extract All. What you should have then is a "char" folder with about 12,000 or so smaller files.

5. Use the Reunion Patch and find the Data folder in the FF7 Folder, then let it swap all the files found in the char folder you just created. In the Avalanche Patch you just downloaded, after extracting there will be 3 folders with their own set of files...grab them all and put them all into the char folder you created in the Data/Field folders, replacing the originals (i.e. just click "Yes to All" when replacing).

6. Once all the files have been "patched" Open up LGP Tools again, but this time, delete the file named char.lgp, NOT Copy of char.lgp (this is important), now, click the "Create" button, a dialogue box will open so you can find the char folder you created earlier....find the folder then click OK, now a new dialogue box will open asking what you want to name the file, name it "char.lgp" then click OK, this process may take several minutes as there are more files in the new char.lgp as opposed to the old, once done, close LGP Tools, if desired you can delete the char folder as once it's been compressed to char.lgp you no longer need it, unless you wish to keep it handy for update patches.

7. At this point you may want to test the game to make sure it works, but if you want the Hi-Rez Cloud Battle Model, read on:

~~~~~

For the Hi-Rez Cloud Battle Patch

1. First and foremost get the Cloud Hi-Rez Executable and the Cloud Quality Patch and extract them in their own separate and respective folders via Winrar.

2. Just in case things go wrong, create a backup copy of battle.lgp found in the data/battle/ folder.

3. Open up LGP Tools and go to Tools >> Patches >> Patch Converter

4. A dialogue box should open, click on the Tab "Self Extractor to LGP"

5. Click on the "..." to browse for folders, and find the "cloudquality.exe" you recently extracted in its own folder. Hit Enter.

6. Click the second "..." to browse, go to your data/battle folder, type "cloudquality" and hit enter.

7. Click Convert.

8. Wait a moment until conversion is done and then close the window.

9. Go to your data/battle folder to make sure there's a file there called "cloudquality.ffpatch"

10. Open LGP Tools again, go to Tools >> Patches >> Apply Patch

11. A file browser should open, find the original "cloudquality.ffpatch" you extracted earlier, click on it and hit enter.

12. Wait for the progress bar at the bottom of LGP Tools to fill up.

13. Go and see if the battle.lgp and the Copy of battle.lgp and compare sizes, if battle.lgp is bigger than its copy, then most likely the patch worked. If you're still confused about this and/or the patch doesn't work, let me know and I'll see about possibly replacing it through yousendit.

That's about all I know about the patches so far, as I have yet to try the Midi or Music patches.

1. Your links are bogus. Damn file hosting sites....

2. The tutorial never mentions the AVALANCHE patch, and I can't find it on the patch forum.

I can host the file for people here to download, if need be. I'd rather do that than have them run around some horrible file download site.

Odd, I copied the links as they were found on the forum, I just clicked on them now from here and they work for me.

Edit: Pezman, about the Avalanche Patch, that's called something else if you look at the link, I just call it that because it's a Patch for full-size field models of Biggs, Wedge, and Jessie.

Lastly, if you want EXACT Page Link locations:

You'll find most everything you need here.

Link to the Reunion Patch, LGP Tools, NPC Reconstruction Patch (aka Avalanche Patch)

And that should be all you need.

Edit: I decided to put everything I use into a RAR file

http://s42.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=1RXGN57...O20VA5LHESR255V

And as far as sending the char.lgp file to you, I"m not sure I can...the file is currently at 46.7 MB, plus the world_us.lgp and menu_us.lgp are 6 MB, lastly I'm not sure what all is modified in the data\battle folder besides battle.lgp for the hi-rez Cloud model to work, so you'll just have to figure this out based on the instructions.

Well, I got it to work. All of it. Not sure exactly what would have done it, since I don't recall really doing anything different. I think I may have physically extracted the programs before I ran them. Perhaps it was the AVALANCHE patch. Who knows?

But yeah, that's a great little thing you introduced us all to, Blade. I'd been aware of some of those programs (like JENOVA), but now I know where they all come from.

blade can you send me the files "menu_us.lgp char.lgp and pworld_us.lgp" please?

What's the problem? Did you install the Jenova Patch without making a backup?