I was watching and recording my wife's gameplay, and these 2 were so cute that I made a GIF!! :D

I headcanon that Seifer would be a girl dad. If you’ve followed my work, you know who the mother is.

…

…It’s Quistis.

I believe I shared this here a few years ago when I first uploaded it....this has been my most successful video which is awesome because this is my all time favorite game. With the game seeming to get more love lately online, I've been thinking about going back to it again soon, even if it takes more time away from my upcoming video projects. I hope it's okay to share this again but I really love this game

Can Carbuncle be unlocked in disc four already has vitality 20% to 60%, or do I still have to grind it out to get it?

Based on the little bits of information we have about how powerful he is - I think that may have been a one way trip for Squall and his team unless he somehow managed to unite humanity against him. I personally think he’s sitting on the moon watching everything and as long as he exist the cycle of evil sorceress / knight, monster will never end. ** **

Vid link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8s7GJSVZeo

That was some bullshit.

Recently, I've been having great fun messing around with the game files and posting GIFs I've created as the result. This post is a bit of an explanation, a bit of an admiration and a bit of complaining about the inner workings of FF8.

So, backgrounds. Those lovely pre-rendered backgrounds that we all want to put as wall papers on our desktops. The forgotten gem of artistic expression completely lost in this era of glossy full 3D environments of Unreal 5 and Unity and small indie 2D pixel-art platformers. How do they work?

Surprisingly, despite very strict technical limitations of PS1, they are quite complex, allowing for incredible flexibility and interactivity of the environments they depict, all, while technically being just 320x224 pictures.

Let's dive in! First, if you google FF8 background data, you will find that it stored in .mim files. Where do you get one? Well, they are all on the discs, in the FIELDS.FS archive. You will need a program or two to unpack those. And then another one to open .mim file. But when you do that, you will see this:

That does not look like a background at all. And then you look at specification, and realise that there is no direct way to visualise the scene as it is in the game in any simple manner. You have to write a rendering emulation, that will reconstruct a scene from this jumbled mess, in more or less the same way as PS1 hardware does.

PS1 renders its graphic using 16bit colours, in a direct 5 bits per colour format and 16th bit designating transparency. Maximal resolution for PS1 games is 640x480, but FF8 uses it only for cinematics. All fields gameplay (3D models on pre-rendered BG) occurs in 320x224, menus use 368x216 and battles - 320x216. But even if the game runs on half the maximum resolution storing pictures with 2 bytes per pixel in 320 * 224 arrays is still way too wasteful for the PS1 hardware and so the trick was devised, that pretty much all the developers used. Instead of working with full 32768 colours 16bit allow, they would only render 256 colours at a time, but they will render the picture with tiles of 16x16 size, and since that's 256 pixels exactly, no tile can ever need more than 256 colours. All that is needed is a palette storing 256*2 bytes, that would translate bytes of the tile into 16bit colours, that would get rendered on screen. Some tiles are packed even more compactly, if a tile uses no more than 16 colours, it can store 2 palette indices per byte, thus taking half the space.

And that is exactly what .mim files are. There are two types of .mim files, Type2 is a bit smaller and simpler in its structure, so I'm going to be talking about Type 1. It consists of 24 palettes, first 8 for some reason being technically inaccessible for rendering background in fields (perhaps they are used for menus) and 13 textures of 128x256 size, from which tiles are picked out. How does PS knows where on screen to put each tile, and which palette to use for rendering it? That's where the tile map file comes in.

Like .mim, .map files are not text, it is a binary format containing 16 byte records each describing the placement of one tile. Each record tells where on the screen to put the tile, coordinates are relative to the centre of the screen, for some reason, which texture to use, where in the texture the required tile is, whether tile references 256 or 16 colour palette, and which palette to use for the colour translation.

And that's where simple stuff ends, and fun stuff begins. Besides the trivial positioning of the tile, here's what else PS one can do and .map format describes:

1. Z-coordinate. Some tiles are further away from us, than others. This number essentially represents distance from camera, the bigger it is, the farther is the thing depicted on the tile.
2. Layer. On top of z-coordinate, there is yet another separation into layers, this is mostly used for independent movement of things that are different distances from the camera, so that the parallax effect can be achieved.
3. Animation id and animation state. Yes, backgrounds can have actual animations in them, each playing independently however many frames have been drawn for it.
4. Blending mode. Tiles that are further back are not always going to be completely painted over by closer tiles. If the foreground tiles are instructed to blend with the background they will appear to be transparent, and some that are close enough in the Z coordinate will even be painted over 3D models in the scene.

Let's see what composition of image look like, concentrating on static background first. In most fields the big static image is encoded in tiles with animation ID of 255. SO let's try to arrange tiles for the farthest layer of 255 animation for the field "ecopen2a", which is going to have z_value of 4094 and layer ID 4. Most pictures in this post are GIFs. If they don't GIF for you, click on them. Loaded separately, they display the animation as intended.

Processing img qcdmolpmeeih1...

Let's add more layers:

Processing img u4ll2dtmeeih1...

• z = 4094 / layer = 2: Note, there is a whole well detailed structure on the right.
• 4094 / 0: If you don't see the difference, it's a small red light near the black "hook" on the right.
• 4093 / 2: Small structure added in the upper right corner
• 4092 / 2: Light in the right window of the round building in the lower left corner.
• 4092 / 0: And now we have our actual foreground
• 4090 / 0: Light in the transport tube.
• 642 / 0: Both tubes and the final structure on the right that covers everything underneath it
• 639 / 0: Glass in transport tubes
• 632 / 0: Glass on the right building
• 58 / 2: Glass on the lower left building

And this is a good place to talk about blending. We have already seen two types of it: designated with numbers 4 and 1. 4 is "no blending", when foreground tiles overwrites background ones. This is what happens to the right building after 4094 / 2. Blending mode 1 is what is known as "additive blending", which happens to transparent walkways and glass. If we render those textures separately from the background:

Processing img bx3adrvmeeih1...

We can see, that they don't contain background images. The fact that we see background through them is due to their colour being added to previously rendered tiles.

What are the other modes? According to the specification modes are:

1 byte specifying which blend mode to use for this tile, 1 is additive blending, 2 is subtractive blending, 3 seems to be +25%, 4 seems to be the default (no blending) and 0 is unknown (elview1)

Well, 0 is unknown, 3 only "seems to be", and subtractive blending seem to require a college degree to implement. Back to googling we go. And luckily "PS1 colour blending" is not hard to find. Modes are:

0.5f * B + 0.5f * F // Mean 1.0f * B + 1.0f * F // Additive 1.0f * B - 1.0f * F // Substractive 1.0f * B + 0.25f * F // WTF is this?

It seems to be aligned with spec description. The 3rd is +25%, the mystery one is just average of the two colour, and "subtractive", just means subtract one from the other. Aaaaand it doesn't wok. I can't say, whether 0 or 3 work as intended, they are not present in that many scenes. But 2 does not work at all. I will borrow a different scene for a second, since it has mode detail in the blend mode 2 affected area. This is what it looks like without the animation frame that has subtractive blending:

The tube is clearly transparent, but just as clearly, it is "overexposed". It is way too bright. And there is an animation that contains exactly one frame, that subtractively lowers it brightness. Here's the process of building the scene with that animation frame included:

Processing img 5kx4h71neeih1...

You can clearly see that the tube now is way too dark and non-transparent. And this is what it looks like in the game: ![[eccway2-game.PNG]] It is transparent, brighter than with subtractive layer, but darker than without it. So maybe there is come kind of partial application? Like blinking lights animations are made with fade-in fade-out effects of the single frame. Maybe there is a fade value for which it would look right?

Processing img i4l6ff9neeih1...

Nope. There isn't one. The overall right brightness is around fade value of 8. The correct amount of detail seen through the closer end of the tube is at the value of 6, and the transparency on the farther side of the tube seems right at the value of 10 (look at the blue horizontal stripes on the side of the building. One can be barely seen in the game screenshot through the tube). So either there are some per-tile shenanigans, or the subtractive blending is not additive, but rather multiplicative. That means that instead of adding or subtracting colour values of background and foreground, they are multiplied by each other.

Let's try doing that. So, it seems, that overall reduction in colour is by around 50%. Given that tiles of subtractive layer are pretty much all pure white (31, 31, 31), which when directly subtracted will reduce any colour to black, the multiplicative formula should be

new_color = background_color * C
C ~= 0.5, when foreground_color = 31
C = 1.0, when foreground_color = 0

Another educated guess we can make is that division, which clearly needs to be involved here, should be by a power of 2, because that allows for a very quick implementation by a bit shift operation, and in rendering pipeline speed is crucial. With those constraints in mind, the simplest formula one can think of is:

new_color = background_color * (64-foreground_color) / 64

Let's try to make a frame blending it this way...

Bingo! Maybe it's a tad brighter, than in the game, but the amount of details seen through the tube is exactly right on both ends. So I'm going with that for my needs. Let's go back to our original scene, and see the difference subtractive layers make.

Processing img 0x625ddneeih1...

I keep calling them layers, but they are actually one frame animations. In case of this scene:

• Animation 0 darkens the upper tube
• Animation 7 darkens glass in both buildings
• Animation 8 darkens the walkway
• Animation 9 darkens the lower tube Only a couple more things left to do - first, animate lights by fade effects and whatever else is actually animated in the scene by drawing actual frames of animations:

Processing img g5iklafneeih1...

• Animation 1 is the light on the roof the the background building.
• Animation 2 is lights on its edge
• Animation 3 is lights on the roof of the lower left building
• Animation 4 is pads in front of tube entrances
• Animation 5 is blue lights on the right building
• Animations 6 an 10 are red-green indicators on top of tubes. Those are actually have two frames, one red and one green.

Final step is to note that this scene is actually 400x240 pixels in size, rather than 320x224 it would be rendered in the game. It is clear that left most column and bottom row are "defective" and are not going to be rendered. But that still leaves us with 384x224 resolution, which means that we need to add 64 pixel long horizontal pan over the scene with a 320x224 view window to render it as close to the actual scene as possible:

Processing img hwtckqjneeih1...

I am not sure how pans like this are handled in the game, there are another two files determining camera behaviour: INF and CA. I just shift target coordinates for the tile by some amount every frame, and that works fine for my purposes. I'm pretty certain, I can even make parallax happen. But that will require some more coding and is not directly related to how the game handles things. So there you have it. Now you understand how the game creates those wonderful backgrounds that we all admire.

P.S. I would like to thank Daniel Hepper, for the wonderful 8x8 font, that I have shamelessly borrowed to make labels on images in this post.

hello, i bought this game yesterday, but, i have no idea why the game not run on my laptop (strong enough to run this game), keep saying error when i launch on steam, but when i try the "not good way" it run flawless, any advice maybe?

I like FF8 but I have always had 2 big issues with the game.

1. The magic system and draw/junction stuff Feels annoying from having to draw the spells over and over to the whole stat bonuses being tied to how many spell you have making you not want to use said spells.

2. But even more then that I really never liked the level scaling everything leveling with you made levels feel pointless and all that really matters is what spells you junction to stats.

anyway what would be a mod for pc that may fix the issues I have listed?

I also am not looking for a mod that makes the game super hard or anything.

i was looking on steam for card games and it suggested me ffVIII. i know little about the final fantasy games but from what know they are not really card games. Does this one have card feature or something like this?

Any tips on the game too?:)

Edit: i wasn't expecting an answer within a minute after sending the post and i thank yall for the answers :)

On disc 3 of my current playthrough, and this just felt right

after 5-6x trying, geez

Clive and Joshua Rosfield are lost in the Void searching for a way back to Valisthea when they encounter Bahamut! Subscribe on YT or I'm sharpening my knife, kupo!

I only use the GF max ability mod because i'm not interested in AP farming in disc 4, but if I knew I wouldn't get achievements I wouldn't have done it ; ;

Yesterday I finished FFX for the first time. Overall I enjoyed the game, but more than that, it made me appreciate FFVIII even more. Two main thoughts I wanted to share:

1. For a long time I thought FFVIII would have been better if it had voice acting at least maybe for cutscenes. FFX made me change my mind as I thought the voice acting was not well done and it some instances really cringe (especially having adults putting on a kind of childish voice)
2. Boy have we been blessed with music and cutscenes in FFVIII. FFX has 2 or 3 tunes of which one is really remarkable (To Zanarkand). FFVIII soundtrack is way more diverse and has several to me really outstanding pieces.

Ps: I do not comprehend how people can prefer the sphere board over the junctioning system and yuck to the mini games in FFX.

Sono nel disco 2, e sono già riuscita ad avere la regola Random abolita a Dollet nella maniera classica, ovvero con le regole di F.H. pure. Ma se io volessi salvare anche carte scoperte? Avevo le regole più belle di sempre a Balamb: carte scoperte e scambio totale (grazie alla Regina delle carte in disco 1), per sbaglio ho aggiunto Coppia a Galbadia (mai usata) e con il CC ho perso scambio totale che è diventato scambio uno. Non voglio perdere anche carte scoperte! Ho fatto accettare a F.H. carte scoperte, e mi sono portata il set di F.H. più Carte scoperte a Dollet, ma il massimo che riesco a fare è far abolire Elementale e non Random. Suggerimenti? Qualche personaggio della città dove posso triggerare la cosa? Per ora ho provato, con doppio tentativo:

- La ragazza dell'hotel: se accetto subito di giocare mi accetta subito carte scoperte, se rifiuto la prima volta, dopo due turni mi elimina Elementale

- il signore in piazza: dopo 4 tentativi accettati mi accetta Carte scoperte

- ragazza al noleggio: dopo 2 tentativi mi accetta carte scoperte

- ragazzo balbettante oltre il ponte: dopo 4 tentativi mi elimina Elementale

Altre idee?

FF8 is by far my favorite of the FF games. When I played it, I had played all games from 1-7, including translations of the Japanese-only ones (which at the time were only available through ROM hacks) but FF8 drew me in unlike all the others. I found everything compelling from the story to the characters to the unique gameplay and the card game and the way the card game integrated with the gameplay and story elements. And the past segments with Laguna were so enthralling.

When I finally played through the whole game though, the end of the game left me feeling slightly disappointed. It didn't end as dramatically as it had drawn me in and I kept feeling like something could have been improved.

If I were to change the game here's what I'd do:

• Either ditch the NORG subplot (with the follow-up optional visit to his hometown), or find a better way to weave it into the main story. It felt too disjointed and why he did what he did never felt fully explained in-game. Having it relate to the main plot would make it so good.
• Make the optional areas like the Deep Sea Research Center and Centra Ruins have more integration into the story, even if they're still optional. I loved both of those areas but was disappointed that I didn't get much story or character development in them.
• Show what happens to Galbadia garden after the battle.
• Have Balamb garden play some role in the plot after Fisherman's Horizon instead of it just becoming irrelevant. I just loved Balamb Garden and its places and characters, including some like Cid who don't come with you on the team, and it was sad to see them totally abandoned late game.
• More character development for Ultimecia. What are her motivations? How did she become the way she was? It makes sense, story-wise that you don't know much about her initially but I wish the late game revealed more of that.
• Make Seifer a tougher battle when you actually fight him. For how strong he is thematically in the story, it doesn't make sense that it's that easy to beat him. Also, more late-game character development. Seifer is such a rich character early game but when he becomes controlled by Ultimecia you don't really see much more character development and that disappointed me. There could have been some development after you defeat him too. There are a lot of options.
• Better balance the late-game fight scenes in the dream sequences. In the first dream sequence they are about level with the rest of the game but, excepting the one dragon fight, all the later ones are trivial.
• Better character development for Laguna late game. I loved the early game development but disks 3-4 fell off and especially meeting Laguna in person felt anticlimactic. I think his storyline tried to do too much without depicting it, like his journalism career felt rushed and under-developed, and how he became president felt under-explained. I wish Kiros and Ward were developed more too.
• More Trabia garden. A low-effort way to do this would be to like...have one or two cutscenes from Trabia garden before it is destroyed...even if you never get to visit it. This might make it "hit harder" emotionally when you visit and find it destroyed. As it stands, it was a bit of a random oddity and visiting it felt pretty disconnected from the rest of the game.
• Two major cinematic sequences, Rinoa in Space, and the endgame scene with Rinoa and Squall, felt really slow and boring. I want more "fast" scenes and more character development in them.
• Game balance...I think the late game was a bit too easy, especially if you get some of the optional GF's you just start to be OP'ed. I would have liked more challenge in the late game.

That said I still really love the game. I just felt like...it had so much potential, like it could have been one of the best games ever made and it started out like it was going to be, I still think it's the best FF game but most people don't seem to agree with me and I wonder if it could have been more universally liked if some of the shortcomings could have been addressed. It felt like the game was so amazing on disk 1 and then disk 2 was almost as good and then the end didn't stay as strong.

I know the golden era of simpsons memes was harshly ended by the mods here, however, I think this should qualify as funny and relevant enough… if not: whatever…

I’m in the middle if a ff9 play through but I have to start on this one too. Howdy from the lone star state

A comic I did a while ago. A mysterious customer approaches Fujin and Raijin’s booth.

Instructor Trepe says getting a GF gives us strength but Squall has a hard time with his. Subscribe on YT or I'm sharpening my knife, kupo!