TUTORIAL: How to fix the Final Fantasy VII battle glitch

[lordpaco]

Alot of people are asking about this on other forums, and the solution is scattered in bits and pieces all over, so I figured i'd make a step-by-step guide to get FF7 running on 3.40oe-a, withOUT the battle glitch, without downgrading, AND without losing your saved games.

The problem is people have been starting FF7 on 3.40oe-a and not encountering trouble until 10 or 20 hours into the game, when status effects like sleepel/petrify/death start becoming un-avoidable. The glitch occurs when an enemy (or one of your characters) tries to cast any of these in battle- and the screen becomes garbled with greenlines and a bunch of garbage. if you make it to disc2 like this, you essentially get completely stuck.

What this tutorial describes is how to install DAX's popsloader in addition to CWcheat, so you can run FF7 on your 3.40oe-a PSP while using the 3.10 or 3.11 popsloader, and ALSO use cwcheat to import your saved games which would've otherwise been lost.

This tutorial presumes you're running 3.40oe-a, so upgrade to that first and foremost.

1. FIRST, we install dark_alex's popsloader. this can be found here, at dax's official thread for it on maxconsole:

http://forums.maxconsole.net/showthread.php?t=48695

now the way DAX has it set up, for his own protection, is that you need to acquire the pops firmware versions on your own- but if you scroll over a few pages on that forum, someone posted a .rar containing dax's install package with all the firmwares prepackaged with it- i highly suggest you use that, as it will save you a whole lot of time/headaches, but linking directly to it isn't legal or mod-friendly.

2. the NEXT thing you need to do, is install THIS version of cwcheat, since i've heard revision D won't work for what we need it for.

http://cwcheat.consoleworld.org/CWCHEAT_0_1_7_REVC.RAR

the directions are a little vague, but all you really need to do is download that .rar, and browse to the seplugins folder in it and copy the contents to the seplugins folder on the root of your memory stick. If there's no seplugins folder on the root of your memory stick, you screwed up installing popsloader somewhere along the line.

3. Since both plugins use a file called pops.txt, we need to add a line to it in order to ensure they can both work simultaneously. browse to the seplugins folder of your memory stick and open pops.txt, and it should look like this:

ms0:/seplugins/cwcheatpops.prx
ms0:/seplugins/popsloader.prx

you will need to add the second line, if you followed the directions in this order. as long as both are there, and both plugins were installed correctly, they should be able to run simultaneously.


4. now shut down your psp by holding power for atleast 3 seconds, and do a cold boot while holding R to get to the recovery menu. scroll down to plugins, and enable popsloader.prx and cwcheatpops.prx

exit recovery.

5. now load up FF7, and you should see a screen asking which pops to use- select "original flash". this will run your game with the 3.40oe-a pops, and if you tried to play it, you should get the battle glitch. the reason we're going in like this now is so we can get our saved games that we worked so hard for. the saved game data isn't compatible with older versions of pops, so we need to use CWCheat to make them universal.

when you arrive at the New Game/Continue screen, hold select for 3 seconds til you get the CWCheat menu. cursor down to "manage memory cards" and select "save memory card 1 to memory stick".

it should say last operation ok.

5. click return to game and hit home > quit game to get back to the xmb. now run FF7, but this time hold R while it's booting. this brings back the POPS selection menu. select either 3.10 or 3.11. in these versions, the only flaw in gameplay is the "battle swirl" is missing- but it doesn't affect the game play in anyway, just a minor aesthetic mis-hap. other people have reported other flaws, such as in the sound, but i definitely haven't seen any other degredation of gameplay in anyway, sound and visuals look perfect to me. and, most importantly, the game is 100% playable again, status effects and all.

6. the timing here is important, you need to hold select IMMEDIATELY after the "playstation logo" at the familiar load screen. if CWCheat menu doesn't appear, you're doing it too early. if your game isn't loading, you're doing it too late. but at any rate, load up cwcheat menu and navigate back down to "manage memory cards" - this time, you guessed it, loading the memory card in slot1 from the memory stick.

now exit cwcheat and return to the game.

if you did everything correctly, you should now be running FF7 without the battle glitch, without downgrading, and without losing your saved game.

=]

[CongoJoe]

Ive registered just to say thankyou.
That worked perfectly and has saved me a lot of frustration.
Absolute star! *

[BRaVO503]

nice:mrgreenthumbsup:

[spike7]

so I havent start the game yet, I should entirely skip cwcheatpops and go straight to poploader.

Hold R when booting up game and select FW 3.11.

I only have to do this once right?

[swift_scorpion]

That was really startin to piss me off too.
Cheers mate, you just made my day.

[Aether]

Wow... I haven't done this yet, but man, I can't thank you enough.

After logging in 15 hours of gameplay (who knows how much actual time spent, with how many times I've had to redo stuff because of the crashing), I was worried the game was becoming unplayable.

In a related matter, is there any reason I would want 3.10 and not 3.11? You just kept saying 'or' like the older version might be better for some reason...

[CUST0M]

Yes, this is VERY VERY helpfull. To think that I was going to go down to firmware 3.30 OE-A just to play this. Even if I did, I heard it still glitches. Thanks to this guide, you have just saved me loads of time.

[lordpaco]

to my knowledge, there is no difference between the 3.10 and 3.11 versions. the 3.30/3/40 versions are the ones that encounter the battle glitch.

and yes you only have to do it once. holding R isn't necessary if you're running a game with popsloader for the first time. the menu should pop-up the first time you run the game and it will remember your setting after that. hold R while starting the game in the future if you want to for whatever reason change the pops you want to use.

[savioursix]

hi there,

When i select 3.10 or 3.11, the game won't load and my psp is shut off. any idea why? thanks

[uberskill]

Thank You! Ur Amazing