About a month ago (but i have read it just today), VanishedOne has write an interesting article about hidden data in the Final Fantasy 7 disc. It starts like this: “There are various 2KB DAT files in the Final Fantasy VII (PSX) FIELD directory that have no obvious function (2.00KB being uniformly small) and don’t feature in the 7mimic map list. (I’m not even sure they use the expected headers or LZS compression.) It’s possible that they represent the remnants of maps that were never to be.
Filenames permitting reasonable guesses based on similarities to known maps’ names:
– BLACKBGA, BLACKBGF, BLACKBGG | BLACKBG maps are used for other things besides debug rooms, so these could be for text-on-a-black-background that was later moved elsewhere.
– BLIN69_2 | Presumably an alternative version of Shinra Building floor 69; maybe Square were going to use bloodless/bloodied map files, then decided one file with a blood toggle would do. (Cf. COLOIN1, the normal Gold Saucer arena lobby, and COLOIN2, the version that appears following Dyne’s rampage-and those don’t even have bloodstains to differentiate them.)
[…]
There’s another 2KB DAT, FALLP.DAT, which does show up in 7mimic (right), with no dialogue; I assumed it had something to do with the FMV clip FALLPL.MOV, which is the destruction of the Sector 7 pillar, but in fact it’s a still from the parachuting clip… on Disc 2. This gets a raised eyebrow, not least because FALLP.DAT consists almost entirely of 00s; maybe FALLP.MIM was meant to be some kind of static backdrop without a walkmap, etc.”
I’m not sure to understand what this all means, but it sounds uber-beta-cool. Props to him! You can read it all in VanishiedOne‘s blog: Face Of The Moon – Hinted Land
What do you think about this unseen game? Give your vote!
Would you like to add more info, screens or videos to this page? Add a comment below!
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All it really says is ‘these look odd; they’re not field map files, but the filenames make it look as though they should be; maybe they were planned but not included as working maps’. I’d ask about them at the Qhimm forums if I thought I had a better question than ‘aren’t these curious?’
The game uses .DAT files to store general information about the field maps: dialogue, what characters appear, what tiles go where, etc. .MIM files are tile data.
Cheers for the link, anyway. You’ll probably also be interested in GlitterBerri’s translations of unused FFVII (J) field text; you can find those on my blog under the ‘Hot Blooded Detective Joe’ tag, and she recently added them to her new blog as well. She’s working on the final set at the moment.
Thanks for the explanation Robert! (VanishedOne?) :) I though it was something about it, but it’s nice to have more info from you.. those GlitterBerri’s translations are really interesting, i should take my time to read through it all. I love when people work to find these type of things in the game’s memory..