cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/39728303

Installing 7th Heaven Mods via Winlator for FF7 OG

A number of years ago, I was the first documented person to install New Threat 1.5 to the iOS version of Final Fantasy 7 using a jailbroken iPhone 8 (as far as I know) and posted my findings to Reddit.

When I moved back to Android, I was unable to recreate my little trick due to how permissions had recently changed.

I wanted to attempt loading New Threat 2.0 via winlator, so I got to work, and wanted to share with my fellow Lemmings.

Since New Threat 2.0 is available via standalone installer AND 7th Heaven, I wanted to use the iro file from 7th Heaven. The installer would be as simple as installing the mod on your PC copy, then moving the changed file structure to overwrite files in your FF7 install on Winlator. Too simple. Too easy.

This is merely a POC for installing 7th Heaven mods to FF7 through Winlator as 7th Heaven is an absolute monster to get running on Winlator.

This tutorial goes on the assumption you have a completely clean install of FF7 from Steam on a PC as the work will be done there to set up the folder structure, as well as a fresh RUNNING install of FF7 via Winlator. Strap in, it's a long one.

---

Starting the install

1. Download your chosen mod. We'll of course be using New Threat 2.0 in this example. Download the iro and find the path it downloaded to. The default path is ..\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\FINAL FANTASY VII\mods\7th Heaven

2. Inside 7th Heaven, go to Tools tab > IRO Tools > Unpack IRO tab Unpack your IRO to a new folder called NT somewhere on your machine.

This should spit out the following file structure:

-ConditionalMidgalBat/
-ConditionalVolcano/
-hext/
-New Threat - Sega Chief/
-OptionDifficultyModifier/
mod.xml
no_change.png
nt_preview.png
Readme.txt

We won't need any of the loose files, just the folders.

1. Make a new folder here called direct.

2. Take the contents of the New Threat - Sega Chief folder and move them into this direct folder

You should now have the following inside of ..\NT\direct\

-battle\
-battle.lgp\
-char.lgp\
-flevel.lgp\
-kernel\
-menu\
-music\
-music_ogg\
-world_us.lgp\

You can ignore step 5 if you wish as NT has a default scene.bin to set the difficulty

1. Open the OptionDifficultyModifier folder, and choose which difficulty you'd like to use, either Struggle or Relax. Inside of either folder you choose, there is another battle folder. Copy this and paste it into your direct folder. It will ask you to overwrite - choose yes.

2. Back to the root of our NT folder, if you'd like to have materia slots with 3 links, open the OptionMultiLinkedSlots folder > open the Enabled folder. Copy this kernel folder and paste into your direct folder. It will ask to overwrite, choose yes.

3. Copy the contents of the ConditionalVolcano and ConditionalMidgalBat folders, paste them into your direct folder as well.

4. Now go download FFNx from here: https://github.com/julianxhokaxhiu/FFNx/releases

I chose the stable FFNx-Steam-v1.23.0.0.zip release instead of the Pre-Release 1.23.0.26 version. - keep this zip after unzipping it.

1. Unzip this archive directly into your Final Fantasy VII folder and overwrite when asked.

2. Open 7th Heaven and start FF7 with New Threat enabled. Just get to the New Game prompt and quit. This should change out your ff7_en.exe for a different one - a backup is automatically created in the FINAL FANTASY VII folder under 7H2.0-BACKUP.

Go back into 7th Heaven and Disable New threat.

1. Now, copy your direct folder AND the hext folder, then paste into your Final Fantasy VII folder so that direct, hext, and ff7_en.exe are visible in the same location. It may ask to overwrite or merge, say yes.

Now, here's the kicker. 7th Heaven automatically deals with the file paths properly unlike FFNx does alone, so we need to change some folder structures. While vanilla FFVII DOES have a ..\data\battle folder, it does NOT have the files inside in the same place, so FFNx will not know to redirect the vanilla files to our New Threat files. We need to fix that.

1. Inside of your direct folder, find the battle folder. NOT battle.lgp, JUST battle. Create a new folder called lang-en inside of the direct folder and copy your battle folder inside of it.

You should now have ..\Final Fantasy VII\direct\lang-en\battle

1. Go back to your direct folder, and find the kernel folder. Copy this kernel folder into lang-en the same way you did the battle folder from the previous step.

---

Testing the install

1. Now, with our mods in the correct position, double-check in 7th Heaven that New Threat is disabled, and launch FF7 VIA STEAM just to confirm the mods are being loaded directly by the game.

2. If you get the prompt to choose Scenario A or B after choosing New Game, that's an excellent sign! Choose Scenario B and Standard difficulty, then start the game.

3. Take note on if you see Tifa come off the train. If so, open your menu and check Cloud's magic. If he has fire, ice, AND bolt, move forward until the scripted battle with the two MP enemies.

If you actually start a battle with two MP enemies, you should be in the clear! The hard part is over with!

If not, something is screwed up!

If all of the above worked, New Threat is working in FF7 without 7th Heaven doing the injecting, so now it's time to move it over to your Winlator install!

---

OPTIONAL

I chose to name the folder containing the mods direct due to FFNx already being set to look for this folder by default. You can change this folder name by opening the FFNx.toml file and change line 499 from "direct" to whatever you want.

If you want to set up multiple mod folders, you can rename your direct folder NewThreat and change "direct" to "NewThreat" or whatever you'd like, then change this line again later to match the new mod folder name later to run it instead, just follow this guide loosely for other mods and give it a different name in the root of your FINAL FANTASY VII folder.

Keep in mind, these folder names are case sensitive so be very specific in your naming if you change it.

Not as easy as 7th Heaven on a true Windows box, but it's as good as you're gonna get through Winlator.

---

Moving the install to Winlator

1. Zip your direct folder (you can exclude the 7th Heaven folder if you wish), your hext folder, and your ff7_en.exe files together and copy them over to your device in a directory that Winlator can access.

If you did the optional step and renamed your direct folder to something else, add the FFNx.toml file to this zip as well.

We zip these files together because there are a TON of tiny loose files in these folders and we all know how Windows Explorer loves to take its sweet time with thousands of small files.

1. Copy over the FFNx-Steam-v1.23.0.0.zip you downloaded earlier as well to the same location.

2. Find your ff7_en.exe and rename it. I renamed mine to ff7.exe.bak personally.

3. In this order, move the unzipped files into your FF7 install on Winlator:

- ff7_en.exe
- FFNx zip contents, overwrite when prompted
- direct folder
- If you changed the direct folder name, now copy over the FFNx.toml, overwrite when prompted

This should be enough to get it going.

---

Conclusion

And that's it! Load up FF7 via Winlator and give it a shot.

This took way longer than I'd have liked but hey, it works. If you have issues with this or another mod install, post here and I can try to help you out.

A number of years ago, I was the first documented person to install New Threat 1.5 to the iOS version of Final Fantasy 7 using a jailbroken iPhone 8 (as far as I know) and posted my findings to Reddit.

When I moved back to Android, I was unable to recreate my little trick due to how permissions had recently changed.

I wanted to attempt loading New Threat 2.0 via winlator, so I got to work, and wanted to share with my fellow Lemmings.

Since New Threat 2.0 is available via standalone installer AND 7th Heaven, I wanted to use the iro file from 7th Heaven. The installer would be as simple as installing the mod on your PC copy, then moving the changed file structure to overwrite files in your FF7 install on Winlator. Too simple. Too easy.

This is merely a POC for installing 7th Heaven mods to FF7 through Winlator as 7th Heaven is an absolute monster to get running on Winlator.

This tutorial goes on the assumption you have a completely clean install of FF7 from Steam on a PC as the work will be done there to set up the folder structure, as well as a fresh RUNNING install of FF7 via Winlator. Strap in, it's a long one.

---

Starting the install

1. Download your chosen mod. We'll of course be using New Threat 2.0 in this example. Download the iro and find the path it downloaded to. The default path is ..\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\FINAL FANTASY VII\mods\7th Heaven

2. Inside 7th Heaven, go to Tools tab > IRO Tools > Unpack IRO tab Unpack your IRO to a new folder called NT somewhere on your machine.

This should spit out the following file structure:

-ConditionalMidgalBat/
-ConditionalVolcano/
-hext/
-New Threat - Sega Chief/
-OptionDifficultyModifier/
mod.xml
no_change.png
nt_preview.png
Readme.txt

We won't need any of the loose files, just the folders.

1. Make a new folder here called direct.

2. Take the contents of the New Threat - Sega Chief folder and move them into this direct folder

You should now have the following inside of ..\NT\direct\

-battle\
-battle.lgp\
-char.lgp\
-flevel.lgp\
-kernel\
-menu\
-music\
-music_ogg\
-world_us.lgp\

You can ignore step 5 if you wish as NT has a default scene.bin to set the difficulty

1. Open the OptionDifficultyModifier folder, and choose which difficulty you'd like to use, either Struggle or Relax. Inside of either folder you choose, there is another battle folder. Copy this and paste it into your direct folder. It will ask you to overwrite - choose yes.

2. Back to the root of our NT folder, if you'd like to have materia slots with 3 links, open the OptionMultiLinkedSlots folder > open the Enabled folder. Copy this kernel folder and paste into your direct folder. It will ask to overwrite, choose yes.

3. Copy the contents of the ConditionalVolcano and ConditionalMidgalBat folders, paste them into your direct folder as well.

4. Now go download FFNx from here: https://github.com/julianxhokaxhiu/FFNx/releases

I chose the stable FFNx-Steam-v1.23.0.0.zip release instead of the Pre-Release 1.23.0.26 version. - keep this zip after unzipping it.

1. Unzip this archive directly into your Final Fantasy VII folder and overwrite when asked.

2. Open 7th Heaven and start FF7 with New Threat enabled. Just get to the New Game prompt and quit. This should change out your ff7_en.exe for a different one - a backup is automatically created in the FINAL FANTASY VII folder under 7H2.0-BACKUP.

Go back into 7th Heaven and Disable New threat.

1. Now, copy your direct folder AND the hext folder, then paste into your Final Fantasy VII folder so that direct, hext, and ff7_en.exe are visible in the same location. It may ask to overwrite or merge, say yes.

Now, here's the kicker. 7th Heaven automatically deals with the file paths properly unlike FFNx does alone, so we need to change some folder structures. While vanilla FFVII DOES have a ..\data\battle folder, it does NOT have the files inside in the same place, so FFNx will not know to redirect the vanilla files to our New Threat files. We need to fix that.

1. Inside of your direct folder, find the battle folder. NOT battle.lgp, JUST battle. Create a new folder called lang-en inside of the direct folder and copy your battle folder inside of it.

You should now have ..\Final Fantasy VII\direct\lang-en\battle

1. Go back to your direct folder, and find the kernel folder. Copy this kernel folder into lang-en the same way you did the battle folder from the previous step.

---

Testing the install

1. Now, with our mods in the correct position, double-check in 7th Heaven that New Threat is disabled, and launch FF7 VIA STEAM just to confirm the mods are being loaded directly by the game.

2. If you get the prompt to choose Scenario A or B after choosing New Game, that's an excellent sign! Choose Scenario B and Standard difficulty, then start the game.

3. Take note on if you see Tifa come off the train. If so, open your menu and check Cloud's magic. If he has fire, ice, AND bolt, move forward until the scripted battle with the two MP enemies.

If you actually start a battle with two MP enemies, you should be in the clear! The hard part is over with!

If not, something is screwed up!

If all of the above worked, New Threat is working in FF7 without 7th Heaven doing the injecting, so now it's time to move it over to your Winlator install!

---

OPTIONAL

I chose to name the folder containing the mods direct due to FFNx already being set to look for this folder by default. You can change this folder name by opening the FFNx.toml file and change line 499 from "direct" to whatever you want.

If you want to set up multiple mod folders, you can rename your direct folder NewThreat and change "direct" to "NewThreat" or whatever you'd like, then change this line again later to match the new mod folder name later to run it instead, just follow this guide loosely for other mods and give it a different name in the root of your FINAL FANTASY VII folder.

Keep in mind, these folder names are case sensitive so be very specific in your naming if you change it.

Not as easy as 7th Heaven on a true Windows box, but it's as good as you're gonna get through Winlator.

---

Moving the install to Winlator

1. Zip your direct folder (you can exclude the 7th Heaven folder if you wish), your hext folder, and your ff7_en.exe files together and copy them over to your device in a directory that Winlator can access.

If you did the optional step and renamed your direct folder to something else, add the FFNx.toml file to this zip as well.

We zip these files together because there are a TON of tiny loose files in these folders and we all know how Windows Explorer loves to take its sweet time with thousands of small files.

1. Copy over the FFNx-Steam-v1.23.0.0.zip you downloaded earlier as well to the same location.

2. Find your ff7_en.exe and rename it. I renamed mine to ff7.exe.bak personally.

3. In this order, move the unzipped files into your FF7 install on Winlator:

- ff7_en.exe
- FFNx zip contents, overwrite when prompted
- direct folder
- If you changed the direct folder name, now copy over the FFNx.toml, overwrite when prompted

This should be enough to get it going.

---

Conclusion

And that's it! Load up FF7 via Winlator and give it a shot.

This took way longer than I'd have liked but hey, it works. If you have issues with this or another mod install, post here and I can try to help you out.

A while ago I made this post:

Ubiquiti Dream Router Throughput Issue

I figured it out. My toddler had evidently messed with the router and damaged the RJ45s from router to wired devices.. There was no actual drop in service so didn't even consider the cables themselves.

Changed out the ends and voila - throughput fixed.

Gonna go put on my dunce cap now and sit in the corner.

Edit:

No idea what was causing the wireless devices to have issues as well since the router itself was pulling correct speeds, but hey. It works now. Even upgraded to 750/750.

I made a post on here a while ago saying how uncanny the posts were to describing me near perfectly. I struggled with this disorder for 30 years. Nerfing myself for 30 years. Not being the best husband to my wife for 6 years. Not the best father to my son for nearly 2 years. All without knowing it.

I have now been on 20mg XR Adderall for a little over 3 months - it has been absolutely life changing.

I'm more attentive. Things are much more easily committed to memory. Menial tasks no longer feel like a huge burden anymore. I can actually read a page in a book I'm interested in without completely forgetting what I've read by the end of the page. I've had a small, but annoying headache for years every single day - chalked it up to genetics as my mom has a disorder than can cause the same thing. The headaches are gone. I can only assume they were brought on by the stress.

Gang, if you're at all considering you might have some form of ADD/ADHD, please go see your doctor. I had a thousand reasons why I didn't want to/need to go beforehand, but I'm so very glad I finally did.

I've been a proud owner of a Ubiquiti Dream Router for a good while now - live in a rural area so the Dream Machine would've been overkill for my needs.

Currently getting 300/300 from the ISP. Not bad.

Couple months ago, noticed I was getting some pretty awful speeds to my end devices, around 30/30 across the board. Wired/wireless made no difference.

Checked the periodic speed tests the UDR does, nothing; no change in bandwidth.

I hadn't changed a setting in my router in quite a while as I've been happy with my setup, so I was convinced it was a fluke. Rebooted, back to semi-normal speeds (though still short).

After dealing with this for a while, tonight I finally decided to bite the bullet and factory reset the UDR. Throughput right back to normal immediately. Restored backup - throughput still where it should be.

Am I missing something obvious??

Edit - to clarify, when I checked the speeds from router to isp, I'd been getting expected bandwidth the whole time; it was only the end devices suffering.

Hello all,

My 19 month old has had 3 separate events that sort of resemble night terrors, and I'm looking for some insight.

The wife and I decided sleep training was the way around a year old, and generally he sleeps through the night fully now - but three times in the last few weeks, this event set will happen:

He will wake up standing in his crib screaming as if he's being hurt, when we go to check on him he's inconsolable so after checking him for bodily harm, I bring him to bed with us with a bottle screaming the whole way. After a few minutes of thrashing about, he sits up and looks around, seemingly confused about his surroundings and he's fine; he gets his bottle and back off to sleep within a minute or two.

The confusing part for me is he is very aware my wife and I are in the room during these fits, when during a night terror they're supposedly in almost a trance-like state. The "waking up" motions he does is also baffling to me.

Thoughts?

Hello everyone,

I have a collection uploaded and I'm getting some feedback from a user that the download to an external mod on Mediafire takes them through some other Ad after clicking download on Mediafire.

I didn't list it as direct and instead to browse to the site and click, but after choosing download they're getting this:

Then afterwards an ad for Smokey the Bear..

How do I properly point them to the Mediafire link in the collection? I have to be missing something.

Hello everyone!

I've had a homelab up for quite a while and would like to expand on that. I'm a major media person and I'm really wanting to put up a website that I can post movie reviews on.

It'll be public, but really it's only for my family/friends connected to my plex server. I'm constantly getting asked for recommendations and would like a centralized place they can look, and I can look back on upon a rewatch.

I'd really like to stay away from WordPress if at all possible - every time I've ever used WP, it always seems extremely slow after plug-ins are added and that's really the only "template" I've seen.

Also, can you pull watch history from plex and display on a site? I've looked quite a bit for the movie Review page but haven't really looked at the plex api. Really looking to pull watch history based on library/genre.

Currently set up with nginx proxy manager.

Thanks folks

So I've been defending democracy quite a bit - currently level 22.

In the past week or so, I've noticed a spawn rate bug that seems to happen randomly - enemies just spawn forever.

I've seen this happen for the bots and bugs, on both challenging and hard. Just randomly out on the map you'll encounter a patrol, then suddenly you're entirely surrounded.

Using stratagems constantly, getting 30+ kills each one you throw, and still the enemies never stop coming.

No, this is not a bot drop/breach, it's constant patrols spawning right on top of your group. On some areas the bots do hop off a ship, but as soon as the first ship leaves another comes to take its place. Talking 4 or 5 hulks/chargers at a time spawning within a minute. Destroying the ship just makes the next one come faster.

Once it happened midway through a mission and one of my squadmates got kicked - the spawns instantly slowed and the remaining 3 of us were able to stop them from spawning not 60 seconds later. Squadmates joined back and we were back to normal. I know this is a one-off as the missions prior to/after this one were no problem.

Anyone else have something similar happen?