Another post in my ongoing series of How-To segments on how to get old games to work on Windows 7. Starcraft 1

Thanks to the guys at Blizzard this tutorial doesn’t involve that many steps. Basically all we have to do is download the latest version of Starcraft and do a simple registry hack to fix the color mode. All the hard work with permisions and such are done for us by the new Blizzard installer.

First off this is for the first Starcraft game, and the goal for this tutorial is to have this game 100% playable without having to run this game as admin, or by using any weird compatibility settings (well except one small reg key). Second, this method does not require any of the original discs so if you lost it or if you have annoying cousins that like to break or scratch your discs, you can still install Starcraft. Third, in order to use this method you absolutely NEED a VALID Starcraft 1 CD-Key!! This will not work with pirated or generated CD-Keys. None of my tutorials are designed to work with pirated games. If you want to pirate this game go ask somewhere else!!

Step 1. Install Starcraft from Battle.net

While there may not be many steps, they sure are time intensive. If you already know how to install this game from battle.net or you don’t like the battle.net way and want to do it by yourself, then you can just skip on ahead to step 2 which fixes the color issue.

• Ok in order to download anything from Battle.net you need an account there. If you don’t already have one, go there now to set one up, they are free.
• Now that that’s done and you confirmed your E-mail address and all that nonsense, you gotta find your Starcraft CD-Key.
  • Ohh you did find it? Great now go here to enter it in so you can download Starcraft: Anthology. Anthology is just what they named Starcraft: Broodwar. Which is nice cause I didn’t buy BroodWar I only bought Starcraft, but here I am getting the expansion for free, thanks Blizzard!! Ok hopefully it took your CD-Key and now there should be an option to download it for Windows. Be sure to copy your NEW CD-Key as this is the only one that works on the Battle.net version of Starcraft.
  • Can’t find your CD-Key? Well thats too bad, but all is not lost you can still buy one from the same site. Here’s a link. Be sure to choose Starcraft: Anthology.
  • If you just bought the game it basically does the same thing and gives you a link to download the installer. Be sure to copy the cd-key so you can use it with the installer.
• When you click on the link for the game it downloads the installer that downloads the game’s installer, I know it sounds dumb but that’s how this stuff usually works. Choose a place where you want to download the installer and click next, this process is pretty much the same as any MMORPG downloader so you just have to sit and wait for it to download.
• The actual installer is fairly simple, basicly just click next and enter in the new CD-Key when it asks. Then when every EULA is accepted and all the Nexts pressed, you wait for it to install, once it’s done there should only be a few Nexts left. Then BAM a link shows up on your desktop and Starcraft is now ready to go…

BUT WAIT!! Now the graphics are all weird, WTF?? Ohh wait, it plays fine in the playable part of the game, only the menus are messed up. That should be good enough right?? NO!! Only lazy people stop here! If you’re like me and demand FULL compatibility, go to the next step.

Step 2: Compatibility hack.

Ok before I start this I am going to explain what these files do and why they are needed. If you have windows XP you do not need this hack and the game should already work fine for you. I don’t think Vista needs this either so try the game first before you do this.

Ok all these files do is activate a hidden compatibility mode that is only needed for a few games. It tells Windows that this game requires a custom pallet for it’s 256 color mode. Windows is supposed to detect this automatically, but for some reason it doesn’t work well with a few games, this is a very intermittent problem so there are many different things that might set it off and just as many things that might fix it. This is the one trick that seems to always fix it.

• There are two reg files, one for 32bit versions of windows, and one for 64bit versions. Only open the reg file for the version of windows that you have. If it’s Windows 7 you probably have 64bit. But if you only have 3gigs or lower for ram it’s probably 32bit. If you choose the wrong one it shouldn’t do anything bad, I just don’t want to add unnecessary clutter to your registry. Right click and save link as to download…

32bit Windows 7 Registry key

64bit Windows 7 Registry Key

• Just open the file and allow the changes to be merged into your Registry.

And there you go, the game should now work fine. Sometimes you have to restart in order to see any difference. This same trick should also work with Diablo II, but I have yet to test that and you also need different reg files. So that’s probably what I’m going to work on for my next tutorial.

This tutorial is to explain how to install Final Fantasy VII by SquareSoft on modern PCs and modern operating systems like Windows 7, Vista and XP (an Ubuntu tutorial is coming soon).One of my hobbies is to make really old games work on modern computers. I don’t have any modern programming knowledge, so these hacks are usually made by someone else so don’t start saying that I fixed ff7, I didn’t. I just know a few guys who did. I figured I should write these down so I don’t forget. I’m also thinking of setting up a wiki for other games, but that’s far down the road.

ANYWAYS… How to install the PC version FF7, on modern computers.

First off, I’ve seen a number of sites telling people to turn off UAC, DO NOT DO THIS!! UAC is VERY important security wise and turning it off will open a HUGE amount of security flaws!! I will NEVER advise people to do this and the internet would be a better place if everyone else did the same. All of my tutorials assume UAC is active and you should never have to turn it off to get your games running.

Second, this particular tutorial assumes that Compatibility Mode is off, it wont work right if it’s on. If you don’t know what compatibility mode is then don’t worry, the default settings are fine.

This tutorial is largely focused on Windows 7 as that is what I use, but these instructions should also work on Vista and XP. This method is designed to work with the original game, many pirated copies of this game will NOT work with this tutorial. I haven’t been able to get this to work with a no-cd cracks so don’t try that either. If you already know how to install FF7 and it’s updates just skip on ahead to step 3.

Step ONE: Install FF7

• Using the INSTALL DISK right click on the program called “ff7inst.exe” and choose “run as administrator”. If you’re using xp just double click on it.
• Ok click next on the “Welcome” screen with Areith on it. This should bring you to the “select components” screen with Cloud on it, here you should deselect all three options. We don’t want any of these outdated files on our systems.
• On the “Setup Type” screen with Tifa on it, be sure to choose “Maximum install” (very important).
• The “Choose Destination Location” screen with Barret on it isn’t too important I like to choose “c:\Program Files (x86)\Final Fantasy VII” but I’m weird that way. Just click next here.
• Click next on the “Select Program Folder” Screen with Yuffie on it. (anyone else think her smile is creepy in that pic?)
• After this Vincent should start up right away and install the files over. Once that’s done the FF7 cd will brag about how awesome it’s 3d technology is and bug you about the also equally awesome 3d drivers on the cd. Ignore this message as they obviously don’t know what there talking about. This game was glitchy as hell from day one and even in it’s day the graphics were average at best. DO NOT USE THE DRIVERS ON THE DISK!!
• When the read-me pops up make sure you read the part about the controls, as they are pretty f’d up and it’ll probably mess you up later if you don’t remember what these are (You can change them later in the game don’t worry).

STEP TWO: The official 1.02 patch

• In a attempt to fix there f-up Edios released a patch for ff7 to try and fix some of it’s graphics problems, this worked for windows 98, but there’s still allot left to be desired from this update. Still though, it does still fix a few things so make sure you install this. Download the patch from one of these links.

Download Link <– Includes alternate languages.

• Inside that zip file are the “fixed” .exe files for FF7. Overwrite the files in your ff7 folder (Probably c:\program files\square soft, inc\final fantasy vii), with the files from the zip.

STEP THREE: the FF7_OpenGL mod.

This mod is a brilliant piece of programming by Aali from the Qhimm Forums. It translates the graphics instructions from FF7 into OpenGL instructions that most modern graphics cards can understand. He’s also added a number of other changes including some patches that fix glitches that destroyed a few parts of the game (mostly the mini-games). Here is where you can download this.

Download Link <– Check the LAST post. (he used to have a link on the first post but it keeps getting removed for some reason.) Check the LAST post on that topic (probably on page 2)

• Ok applying this mod is fairly simple, same as the 1.02 patch, just copy the entire contents of the zip file into your FF7 folder.

Now this is the part where some people were saying to turn off UAC, you don’t need to. There are two options, the easy way is to change the compatibility mode for ff7 and ff7config to always run as administrator, it works fine but I don’t like it because it gives the game admin rights, there is another way to make it so the game will run without compromising security.

STEP FOUR: Changing FF7 Security Settings.

If you are using XP you can ignore this step because XP doesn’t have UAC.

• browse to where your FF7 folder is stored, since mine is saved in “c:\program files (x86)\final fantasy vii” I would browse to “c:\program files (x86)\” If your ff7 is in “c:\program files\square soft, inc\final fantasy vii” then browse to “c:\program files\square soft, inc\”
• Next right click on the “Final Fantasy VII” folder and click on “Properties”, then choose the “Security” tab near the top of the window. After that click on the “Advanced” button.
• This windows shows you the security settings for the FF7 folder, what we need to do is give the user group “Users” full access to this folder. This will allow ff7 to write to it’s own folder without giving it admin access. This will also make modifying the files in this folder easier because UAC won’t bug you every time you want to change something.
• We do this by clicking on the “Change Permissions…” button, next double-click on the entry that say’s something like “Users(Name of your computer/Users) Read & Execute”.
• Next check the “Full Control” check box, then click ok. Near the bottom of the “Advanced Security Settings for Final Fantasy VII” window, there is a checkbox that says “Replace all child object permissions with inheritable permissions from this object”, make sure that box is checked. Then click ok, then next. You can close out of all the other windows now.

This should make it so you can now change the display settings without any problems.

STEP FIVE: Changing the display settings.

• Run FF7Config.exe, Click on the “Graphics” tab and set the “Renderer” drop down option to “Custom” it should give you a message about passing a test, just click ok on that, then click ok to exit the program.

Technically your done. You can play the game to your hearts content, the game works 100% the way it was intended. But what if you don’t want to play it a it was intended. In addition to the graphics fixes that the ff7_OpenGL provides it also provides a small set of other tweaks that you can turn on if you wish.

The only thing I’m gonna cover here is setting a custom resolution, there are a number of cool hacks in the same file but I’m not gonna spoil the surprise by telling you what they are….

• Open the ff7_opengl.cfg file in notepad or some other basic text editing tool.
• Scroll down to the area that says “window_size_x = 0″, the settings in this section lets you change the resolution to whatever you want, I’m going to change them like this….

# set the window size (and fullscreen resolution) of FF7
# 0 means use original resolution (whatever ff7.exe provides)
# preserve_aspect adds black borders as needed to preserve a 4:3 aspect ratio
window_size_x = 1024
window_size_y = 768
preserve_aspect = yes
fullscreen = yes

OPTIONAL STEP SIX: Changing the music.

The built in music sucks as it’s midi, but don’t worry there’s a way to fix that!

The folks over at the Qhimm forums have been working on this one for a while, but basically what it does is it mutes the midi music and plays a remastered version of the original PSX version of the music in the background. It checks what part of the game you’re in and what song is supposed to be playing, then it plays the appropriate remastered version. This gives a closer representation of the original PSX music. The best part of this is that you can change it to play whatever you want.

There is an easy installer file available here…

Download Link <– Check the first post

• Ok install the program with the default settings, then browse to the root of the c drive (C:/)
• Ok if you’re running Windows XP you’re done, you don’t have to do the next few steps.
• Here I want you to do the same thing as we did with the Final Fantasy VII folder. Give the users group full access, this way ff7music can write to it’s own folder without having to be run as admin.
• right click on the ff7music folder and choose “Properties”, then switch over to the “Security” tab, next click the “Advanced” button.
• Click on the “Change Permissions…” button, next double-click on the entry that say’s something like “Users(Name of your computer/Users) Read & Execute”.
• Next check the “Full Control” check box, then click ok. Near the bottom of the “Advanced Security Settings for FF7Music” window, there is a checkbox that says “Replace all child object permissions with inheritable permissions from this object”, make sure that box is checked. Then click ok, then next. You can close out of all the other windows now.

And you’re done. In order to use the ff7music mod you have to first open ff7music, then run the game. The installer also includes a icon that does this for you, it should be on the desktop named “Final Fantasy VII”.

Other mods:

As you’ve probably noticed everything here is from the Qhimm forums, there are a ton of other mods on that site and I highly recommend going there and checking it out for yourself. Also if anybody has any questions or problems feel free to check the Qhimm forums for answers or just ask below in the comments.

http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?board=19.0