6 ms·

A look inside the Final Fantasy 7 Game Engine [pdf]

139 points by jfaucett 14y ago

ramses0 14y ago
Interesting but seems more like "stuff that should be comments in the codebase" than any real talk about the engine. There were a few parts that were interesting towards the beginning, but nothing like the reviews / recaps from gamasutra. I imagine this was mostly repurposed documentation from pushing technical details over to different porting teams.
- duskwuff 14y ago
  Looks more to me like notes from reverse engineering.
danso 14y ago
Interesting to read how the kernel from FF7 shares a similar philosophy to that of the original FF, but was FF's system that different from its contemporaries? > The kernel is a throwback to the very first Final Fantasy game for the Nintendo's original 8 bit system. The NES could only natively read 32 kilobytes of program ROM. To get around this incredible limitation, Nintendo developed "memory mappers" that allowed parts of the program to be switched out, or "banked" and replaced with other parts stored on the game cartridge.
- Mahn 14y ago
  Probably not that different, but that's no excuse to keep using bank switching on its core; it was usually painful, expensive, and limiting for the developers.
  - ANTSANTS 14y ago
    I'd imagine bank-switching a large ROM into 32 KiB of address space imposes constraints similar to those imposed by loading data from a slow-as-molasses 2X CD-ROM drive into 2 MiB of RAM.
iuguy 14y ago
A very good and detailed piece on reversing a game.
zapt02 14y ago
Interesting read, some sections seem incomplete (contain Lorem Ipsum text)
- a_bonobo 14y ago
  I concur, looks like it's not finished - some tables are empty, and there's even that fun "Introduction [Write last]" at the beginning
kimmel 14y ago
Anyone got a download link that does not require me to sign for another service?
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
AshleysBrain 14y ago
It's down due to bandwidth exceeded, anyone got a mirror?
- ANTSANTS 14y ago
  http://wayback.archive.org/web/20120912025847/http://q-gears.sourceforge.net/gears.pdf http://wayback.archive.org/web/20120912025847/http://q-gears...
asurma 14y ago
Does anyone have a tl;dr/highlights?
Mahn 14y ago
Just in case someone misses the point, this is a work of reverse engineering, not something coming from the actual developers of the game. Still pretty impressive and worth the read though!
edmundhuber 14y ago
"Barrett's love points" is one of the items in the save state. The love points determine who you'll end up dating in the Golden Saucer.
- ayuvar 14y ago
  As the save file indicates, you can indeed go on a 'date' with him in the Golden Saucer but it's fairly involved: http://www.cavesofnarshe.com/ff7/dating.php http://www.cavesofnarshe.com/ff7/dating.php
lnanek2 14y ago
Interesting in general. There are some sections that are just filled with "Lorem ipsum..." filler text, though.
blackhole 14y ago
Sometimes I'm amazed games work at all.
afhof 14y ago
How video game porting companies stay in business I do not know. Every story about video game programming seems to involve cutting corners to meet deadlines. With that in mind, porting companies must be handed the most vile and platform specific code, along with the expectation to get it working as fast as the original company did. I feel kinda bad for Eidos, who I feel did a pretty good job with the port/ (I have played the PC version extensively.)
- contextfree 14y ago
  The PC port was developed in Square's offices in LA and only published by Eidos.
- pjmlp 14y ago
  Because in the game industry studios seldom write portable software. The business model is that you focus on a specific platform with other companies taking the burden to port it to other platforms. One thing that helped this mentality was that most studios didn't want to use anything that wasn't developed in-house and the goal is to produce a game, not to be platform friendly. Only in the last years has the mentality towards middleware use opened up.
- bane 14y ago
  and oldie, but this is a great interview with a guy who did ports in the 90s, the Lion King segment is the most interesting http://www.codetapper.com/amiga/interviews/dave-semmens/ http://www.codetapper.com/amiga/interviews/dave-semmens/
Cthulhu_ 14y ago
The "qhimm team", from the qhimm website, are rather famous in the FFVII fanworld, it's probably the biggest modding community out there. The mods, mostly for the PC version of FFVII, have dragged the game over the various versions of Windows, improved the models, etcetera. In fact, if I'm not mistaken, one of the qhimm developers that made the game compatible for modern Windows versions and added graphical updates was hired by Square to work on FFVII's PC re-release a few months ago - at least, parts of the new code correspond to an existing mod.

139 points by jfaucett 14y ago

Interesting but seems more like "stuff that should be comments in the codebase" than any real talk about the engine. There were a few parts that were interesting towards the beginning, but nothing like the reviews / recaps from gamasutra. I imagine this was mostly repurposed documentation from pushing technical details over to different porting teams.

duskwuff 14y ago
Looks more to me like notes from reverse engineering.

danso 14y ago

Interesting to read how the kernel from FF7 shares a similar philosophy to that of the original FF, but was FF's system that different from its contemporaries? > The kernel is a throwback to the very first Final Fantasy game for the Nintendo's original 8 bit system. The NES could only natively read 32 kilobytes of program ROM. To get around this incredible limitation, Nintendo developed "memory mappers" that allowed parts of the program to be switched out, or "banked" and replaced with other parts stored on the game cartridge.

Mahn 14y ago
Probably not that different, but that's no excuse to keep using bank switching on its core; it was usually painful, expensive, and limiting for the developers.
- ANTSANTS 14y ago
  I'd imagine bank-switching a large ROM into 32 KiB of address space imposes constraints similar to those imposed by loading data from a slow-as-molasses 2X CD-ROM drive into 2 MiB of RAM.

iuguy 14y ago

A very good and detailed piece on reversing a game.

zapt02 14y ago

Interesting read, some sections seem incomplete (contain Lorem Ipsum text)

a_bonobo 14y ago
I concur, looks like it's not finished - some tables are empty, and there's even that fun "Introduction [Write last]" at the beginning

kimmel 14y ago

Anyone got a download link that does not require me to sign for another service?

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

AshleysBrain 14y ago

It's down due to bandwidth exceeded, anyone got a mirror?

ANTSANTS 14y ago
http://wayback.archive.org/web/20120912025847/http://q-gears.sourceforge.net/gears.pdf http://wayback.archive.org/web/20120912025847/http://q-gears...

asurma 14y ago

Does anyone have a tl;dr/highlights?

Mahn 14y ago

Just in case someone misses the point, this is a work of reverse engineering, not something coming from the actual developers of the game. Still pretty impressive and worth the read though!

edmundhuber 14y ago

"Barrett's love points" is one of the items in the save state. The love points determine who you'll end up dating in the Golden Saucer.

ayuvar 14y ago
As the save file indicates, you can indeed go on a 'date' with him in the Golden Saucer but it's fairly involved: http://www.cavesofnarshe.com/ff7/dating.php http://www.cavesofnarshe.com/ff7/dating.php

lnanek2 14y ago

Interesting in general. There are some sections that are just filled with "Lorem ipsum..." filler text, though.

blackhole 14y ago

Sometimes I'm amazed games work at all.

afhof 14y ago

How video game porting companies stay in business I do not know. Every story about video game programming seems to involve cutting corners to meet deadlines. With that in mind, porting companies must be handed the most vile and platform specific code, along with the expectation to get it working as fast as the original company did. I feel kinda bad for Eidos, who I feel did a pretty good job with the port/ (I have played the PC version extensively.)

contextfree 14y ago
The PC port was developed in Square's offices in LA and only published by Eidos.
pjmlp 14y ago
Because in the game industry studios seldom write portable software. The business model is that you focus on a specific platform with other companies taking the burden to port it to other platforms. One thing that helped this mentality was that most studios didn't want to use anything that wasn't developed in-house and the goal is to produce a game, not to be platform friendly. Only in the last years has the mentality towards middleware use opened up.
bane 14y ago
and oldie, but this is a great interview with a guy who did ports in the 90s, the Lion King segment is the most interesting http://www.codetapper.com/amiga/interviews/dave-semmens/ http://www.codetapper.com/amiga/interviews/dave-semmens/

Cthulhu_ 14y ago

The "qhimm team", from the qhimm website, are rather famous in the FFVII fanworld, it's probably the biggest modding community out there. The mods, mostly for the PC version of FFVII, have dragged the game over the various versions of Windows, improved the models, etcetera. In fact, if I'm not mistaken, one of the qhimm developers that made the game compatible for modern Windows versions and added graphical updates was hired by Square to work on FFVII's PC re-release a few months ago - at least, parts of the new code correspond to an existing mod.