FF8 + 8-bit paletted textures

[fester]

I've noticed that my G400 does not seem to be supporting the 8-bit textures in FF8 PC. According to Square, this is why the menu screens look crappy and washed out. Does the G400 support this feature? Can it be added to a driver release to fix it? As it stands now, I am forced to use my V2 just to have the menus look right

[Scytale]

You don't have to use palettized textures in order for FF8 to work (well). In fact, on the G400 it runs much better with PT disabled.

Apparently you have used the PD5 RegHacks to enable PT in the registry. Just disable this setting again and FF8 will work fine.

[fester]

Actually, I havent used the PD5 RegHacks before. (I'm curious about it tho.) I admit, the game runs fine as it is, but the menus do look washed out. When I use the FF8 config utility, 8-bit textures don't pass, and Square says without that the menus will look crummy. Will the RegHack enable 8-bit paletted textures? Thanks!

[Scytale]

If you didn't use the RegHacks to force PT then don't bother. One of the hacks allows palettized textures to be enabled in the driver, and FF8 will recognize it, but it is very buggy, resulting in *surprise* unreadable menus and it's a lot slower than with PT disabled(!). And I didn't mention the texture problems yet.

If you want my opinion, stick with the washed out menus. It's ugly, but it's just a minor esthetic thingy, and it sorta suits the crappy console interface of FF8.
If you want to wait for Matrox to fix PT so that it will work better with FF8 than non palettized mode, you will probably find yourself waiting for Y3K... and beyond.