Kill the PS2 limitations end of the Dark Ages Era

[Feynman]

I should have been more clear. I did get it working just fine. My point was that SE support saying essentially "we have no idea how to make it work, go ask other players" is absurd.

Sorry if I made no sense. I had surgery this morning and am still on some nice drugs!

[cidbahamut]

Not supporting 64-bit operating systems in this day and age is absolutely absurd. Everything is moving towards 64-bit systems, not supporting them is simply inexcusable.

[Alhanelem]

Not supporting 64-bit operating systems in this day and age is absolutely absurd. Everything is moving towards 64-bit systems, not supporting them is simply inexcusable.

So someone who wrote a windows 98 program 10 years ago should be supporting it now? Because that's what you're asking.

The game doesn't NEED to support 64-bit. It runs just fine on 64-bit windows without being a 64-bit program itself. You won't see the WoW64 layer going away anytime in the next several years, because even windows itself comes with software that isn't 64-bit (And still comes in a 32-bit version)

Only when 32-bit support is in danger of being dropped (and it won't be anytime soon, again) will 64-bit support be important.

As for FFXI itself, 64-bit support would do nothing for the game. It does not need to perform any complex mathematics or any of the other potential benefits. There's no point in recoding any feature of the game to use it as long as the 32-bit version remains supported.

Feynman, the problem you are most likely having is you did not download the updated installer that is compatible with windows Vista/7, which is happily provided by SE on their website. Their support staff told you it's not supported because it isn't. It's not because it won't work- it will. It just means "We don't want to deal with this because we didn't design the game for it. It might work or it might not, but we don't know and we can't help you if you try." However, the reason you are having problems is nothing to do with this- they just couldn't tell you that simply because of your OS. Download the updated playonline viewer from the official site, and you should be able to install it just fine. (Even later collections of the game do not seem to include the updated viewer installer)

[cidbahamut]

I just think it's stupid for customer service to tell customers "no, we won't help you if you have a 64-bit processor". That's all.

You're really reading too much into this.

[FrankReynolds]

they don't make the download real obvious on the ffxi website, but its there and it works on all 7 of the windows 7 boxes I have set up. Turning off UAC seems to be a big help in getting any program to install right too. Stupid as it may seem.

[oliveira]

Okay fellows, there's a lot of interesting information on this thread.
Some are facts, other "artifacts" of misleading information.

One of the people (in my opinion, if that matters at all) who has a good grasp of the problem is RAIST.

A lot of misinformation on the PS2 HDD here though.
What's binding Square-Enix with the partition size for FFXI (currently it's 1024MB for POL Viewer, 128MB for Tetra Master and 10240MB for Final Fantasy XI) is a contract with SONY for the partition size which they can't arbitrarily enlarge without prior authorization from SCEI (Sony Computer Entertainment Incorporated) due to the DNAS (Dynamic Network Authentication System) Digital Right Management/Protection system.

Additionally due to the "wrapper" characteristics of the game engine (already explained by RAIST) the XBOX360 and PC versions of FFXI while on "average" look better than what you get out of a PlayStation 2 console, cosmetically (about minor details like weather effects, lighting on objects and texturing) and on audio what you get out from a PS2 is more accurate to the original design of the game.

Best example is the moghouse window in Jeuno. The PC and XBOX360 one is completely glitched:

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-W...3013382000.jpg <-PS2 version

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-M...3382000_PC.jpg <- PC version of same wall, Geforce GTX-280, 2048x2048 back buffer, 640x480 resolution on window

So I have a very decent pc which runs FFXI smooth yet I prefer playing in my PS2 for the very reasons outlined a few posts ago:

-Perfect weather effects
-No graphical glitches
-Perfect audio (Audio on the PS3 back compatibility to PS2 sucks so don't bother playing with that if you're a audio fanatic like me :P)
-Better response on UI and controls (keep out of crowded zones, easy to achieve)
-PC is 100% free for other tasks or even another game if you're bored waiting for stuff to happen

So distillation of vitriol against PS2 players help no one as it just causes nerdrage and PS2 players will keep playing on their low res boxes until no option is available OR their hardware fail on them.

I am sorry to inform that I have three working PS2 consoles, two being Japanese and one U.S. and I also have two spare harddrives in their respective boxes brand new.

[Leonlionheart]

Okay fellows, there's a lot of interesting information on this thread.
Some are facts, other "artifacts" of misleading information.

One of the people (in my opinion, if that matters at all) who has a good grasp of the problem is RAIST.

A lot of misinformation on the PS2 HDD here though.
What's binding Square-Enix with the partition size for FFXI (currently it's 1024MB for POL Viewer, 128MB for Tetra Master and 10240MB for Final Fantasy XI) is a contract with SONY for the partition size which they can't arbitrarily enlarge without prior authorization from SCEI (Sony Computer Entertainment Incorporated) due to the DNAS (Dynamic Network Authentication System) Digital Right Management/Protection system.

Additionally due to the "wrapper" characteristics of the game engine (already explained by RAIST) the XBOX360 and PC versions of FFXI while on "average" look better than what you get out of a PlayStation 2 console, cosmetically (about minor details like weather effects, lighting on objects and texturing) and on audio what you get out from a PS2 is more accurate to the original design of the game.

Best example is the moghouse window in Jeuno. The PC and XBOX360 one is completely glitched:

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-W...3013382000.jpg <-PS2 version

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-M...3382000_PC.jpg <- PC version of same wall, Geforce GTX-280, 2048x2048 back buffer, 640x480 resolution on window

So I have a very decent pc which runs FFXI smooth yet I prefer playing in my PS2 for the very reasons outlined a few posts ago:

-Perfect weather effects
-No graphical glitches
-Perfect audio (Audio on the PS3 back compatibility to PS2 sucks so don't bother playing with that if you're a audio fanatic like me :P)
-Better response on UI and controls (keep out of crowded zones, easy to achieve)
-PC is 100% free for other tasks or even another game if you're bored waiting for stuff to happen

So distillation of vitriol against PS2 players help no one as it just causes nerdrage and PS2 players will keep playing on their low res boxes until no option is available OR their hardware fail on them.

I am sorry to inform that I have three working PS2 consoles, two being Japanese and one U.S. and I also have two spare harddrives in their respective boxes brand new.

So, there's still no real advantages of playing on a PS2, other than audio. K drop it

[Modoru]

-PC is 100% free for other tasks or even another game if you're bored waiting for stuff to happen

Oh, but even then, that's not necessary. I mean, I run TF2, PSO and FFXI altogether. And then I run a media player [music], chrome [browser], skype + msn [messenger, of course] at the same time.

So that's not really a big deal.

[Alhanelem]

As above, and the graphical glitches in the PC version are trivial. The audio argument also doesn't hold much water. It's only more accurate if you're playing it out of the speakers on your TV. Even with the change to Sony's proprietary audio codec, once it's decrypted and output, it's the same audio data playing the same sound waves, unless there's some sort of serious flaw with the PC version of the codec.

The difference in input response time is imperceptible to humans (e.g. a matter of milliseconds). If you have high-end gaming input devices, those can negate that difference.

The stuff about the HDD is accurate, though I'm pretty sure that if they did enlarge the space allocated, you'd have to reinstall, and not everyone on the PS2 might be able to do that.

[oliveira]

The stuff about the HDD is accurate, though I'm pretty sure that if they did enlarge the space allocated, you'd have to reinstall, and not everyone on the PS2 might be able to do that.

As I stated on my post it's a matter of choice. Now about enlarging the partition the only limits are:

Partition is composed of chunks whose size is based on multiples of 128. Which means minimal size is 128MB and maximum size is the the size of the free space (sans SONY reserved areas) of the HDD .

Also they don't need to reinstall anything to enlarge a partition as it's just a matter of adding new "chunks". The FFXI partition in particular is composed of 1024MB chunks for the simple reason of granularity. It could be chunks of 4096MB if they wanted.

Also that partition system is called APA (Aligned Partition Allocation) due to it's characteristic of using "chunks". On top of that they use something called "PlayStation File System" or PFS for short. Linux-esque similar to ReiserFS.

It's easier to hate things you know nothing about, right ?