Is ff8 running in 8 bit?

[Xamurai]

I played this game 6 or 7 times but the graphics look just terrible.

Back in the the day when the game came out the characters looked ok'ish and the orld/rooms/ environment Looked amazing.

But now the main characters looks better than the environment. Everything els looks like a 8-bit version of the game i used to play.

Are there certain settings that's recommended for this game?

[Gough Whitlam]

you could play with original graphics mode? The models are being rendered at a higher resolution but the textures haven't changed so they look worse by comparison.

[Scytirix]

I personally, can't comment, since I'm stuck with trying to get the game to run in a widescreen resolution, let alone trying to get rid of jaggies.

I've set my resolution to 3840x2160, yet I still end up wuth what amounts to 640x480, with black bars on either side.

[Bricc Mesen]

Yeah basically the models and textures were created with an old style NTSC/PAL TV in mind (and their much lower resolution), so in that sense character models will look worse as the lack of detail will look more obvious on a higher resolution screen.

There are two ways you can fix it; use one of the sweetfx presets that simulates the scanlines on an old style tv. This will effectively lower the resolution to one the textures have been "optimised" for.

Or you can install the Tonberry mod and the high resolution character models. I ended up doing this. The best way I can describe it is it doesn't exactly look eye-popping amazing, rather it now looks more or less as I thought I remembered it looking.

The most obvious point the higher resolutions highlights the shortcuts they took is when you see characters that aren't actually rendered in 3-D but are part of the pre-rendered background. This is clearly visible with some of the bus attendants in Galbadia, as they will look pixellated compared to the player characters. In this sense, a higher resolution will make the game look "worse" as we're seeing detail (or lack of it) that wasn't there before.

[Moridin]

Personally I only have a issue with the world map, the road, forests and some of the building skins are horrible or in the wrong place. oh and the music, the music is horrible. Combined with missing some of the camera functionality from the ps1 version, you'd have a better result from buying the ps1 version and either finding a console that can play it or emulating it.

[Moridin]

There are no right analogue stick camera rotation on the world map, i think that was a function on the ps1 copy.

[ToppeLoppen]

Originally posted by Moridin:

There are no right analogue stick camera rotation on the world map, i think that was a function on the ps1 copy.

The PS1/PSX had no analogue sticks.
I am quite sure you used the L1 R1 or the L2 R2 buttons.

[Moridin]

never actually played it on the ps1/psx. didnt have one. had a ps2 thou and im 90% sure i could use the analogue sticks. one for movement and one to rotatite the camera on the world map. ill have a look at more sensable hour to check.

[Moridin]

Yeah just tried it, i was wrong. probably just assumed that i could do it in one of the games i could with all. probably 9 i could do it with.

still didnt stop the game assigning r3 and l3 as as r2 and l2 on steam.

[Bricc Mesen]

The lack of analog control was a little bit annoying on PC. On the whole I was impressed (once I modded it lol). The most recent "news" story in Steam on how they ported the game is fascinating, it was like 4 guys at a time when there weren't any common APIs or even consistent sound/graphics cards for PCs and they only had the porting work from FF7 to go on. Before that they had to recode stuff from scratch.

[masternoxx1]

The bigger your display, the worse it will look, due to low-res pre-rendered backgrounds. also you're using a LCD screen now, crt is much more forgiving with scanlines, less brightness, lower detail and resolution, easier on the eyes even. Another thing is this was made for Playstation first and playstation has it's limitations as far as number of colors and number of colors onscreen. Not to mention the 320x240 resolution which is why the backgrounds are so blocky and pixelated. I'm using a 27" monitor and it's not bad, tried it on a 17" laptop and it looked way better, of course it's a tradeoff you lose a lot of the impact of the game playing on smaller screen.
What bothers me the most is the 15fps battles when the psx version runs in 60fps. I think it even makes the timing on critical hits or limit breaks miss more often.
I'm not too upset about the analog control thing, clearly from Zell's limit break the game not really designed for analog in the first place. At the time of release many ppl did not have the dualshock controllers, but it's nice that they did somewhat accomidate people on playstation that did have it. At the time this game was made I'm not even sure there were analog controllers for PC. Although I remember clearly on the psx the same camera controls with the shoulder buttons.
Honestly the 3d looks way better now than on psx although you could achieve the same effect with a psx emulator.

[masternoxx1]

Yeah at first I thought the new epilepsy warning was annoying until I played on a bright 27" monitor, and experienced all the flashing on the GF summons. Then I was like, okay, thats pretty hard on the eyes makes me want to play on crt again almost