Bought T2 on Steam, what patches to do?

Darkness_Falls on 5/3/2016 at 23:35

Hey there, I bought Thief 2: The Metal Age on Steam for a friend today (since it's on sale for less than $2), and would like to know the best course of action to get them properly squared away for maximum enjoyment. Direct links would be appreciated!

I'm thinking the priorities should be to get them to the best NewDark version with good settings already configured, get their widescreen supported, get higher resolution than 1024 x 768 gameplay, and make sure cutscenes work. (I can't remember if the Steam version automatically does that... but don't think it did when I got it a couple years ago.) So, what is the best tool the community has built to help make that happen for the Steam version? Or if there is no user-friendly tool, what should I do? Note: I don't want to get them the big HD overhaul texture pack because I don't think their computer could handle it.

Second priority will probably be to get them better looking skies/stars/clouds, and better looking water. What's best for that? Things I saw for that require DDFIX, but I don't know if DDFIX would be part of the above solution?

I've tried looking through the Technical area of TTLG to see what the best course of action is, but I'm afraid the area has become a little tough to read from everything that's been added over the years. I didn't really see much about Steam, and Tafferpatcher seems to say it needs the CD-based version.

Hoping someone has the patience to read through and provide guidance on what to do. Sorry, I seem to do this once every couple or few years, but I don't keep up on what to use, when, and where, and figure there is a Thief expert out there who already knows what to do.

Thanks for your help!

TheDuriel on 6/3/2016 at 00:38

ddfix is obsolete. just run tafferpatcher and youre good. and make sure that steam doesent change any of the files afterwards.

DiMarzio on 6/3/2016 at 17:43

Tafferpatcher
(http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=131106)
is pretty much mandatory. It has bug fixes bugs and other important stuff you don't want to skip. It also has everything you asked for and I'm sure it works with Steam version, but not sure how. You have to ask people there.

Thief I + II Sound effects enhancement pack:
(http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=119405)
This is really a must have for me and I think for anybody. I have no idea, why not many people tend to recommend it or even use it.

Carry Body Mod:
(http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=145616&highlight=carrybody)

EAX through Open AL:
(https://www.openal.org/downloads/)
Enables reverb. I don't remember, if it's included in Tafferpatcher, but essential to have nonetheless. Download windows installer and install OpenAL. Then enable OpenAL and EAX in Thief in-game options.

There are also quite a few tweaks you can do in cam_ext.cfg. You can google for more, but the most important are:

Don't crop movies:

Code:

; crop movies to fill out widescreen displays better (does NOT work in combination with "scale_movie_to_ui")
; the original shock cutscenes are letterboxed so this works well there, for thief it's a judgement call to
; lose some of the bottom and top parts of the image in favor of covering more of the monitor (the default
; crop rect, when not supplying a custom one, is optimized for SS2 and is 0 70 640 340)
;crop_movies

16-bit floating point render buffer. I don't know if the change is significant, but it's at least a beautiful thought to have it, if your card can handle it.

Code:

; enable 16-bit floating point render buffer (for improved rendering and postprocessing quality, at the
; expense of video memory and performance, note that it doesn't enable actual HDR rendering)
d3d_disp_enable_hdr

I don't quite remember what this does, but it certainly improves graphics (gamma and color)

Code:

; enable software (ie. shader) based gamma and color processing (improves quality at the expense of performance,
; and also enables in-game gamma to be applied in windowed mode)
d3d_disp_sw_cc

Bloom:

Code:

; enable postprocessing (bloom)
postprocess 1

And the lines below that set the behavior of bloom. Some people like it heavy, some like it subtle, some don't want it at all, so you really have to set it to according to your video card and tastes. But I think Gecko's NewDark Graphics Settings Tool (see below) has some nice presets. I used one of them as a base to set mine.

Tweaks for EAX:

Code:

; if EAX is enabled and sounds sound too direct when under water (the same or almost the same as above)
; then try enabling one of these (or experiment with custom values)
submerged_sound_occlusion 0.1 0.5 0.88
;submerged_sound_occlusion 0.3 0.1

; force the use of UnderWater reverb/EAX environment when the player is under water
force_underwater_reverb
sfx_source_reverb_mix 0.5

The last line reduces the effect of reverb, because it's too much out of the box at least for my ears.

Gee, someone should really make a guide of cam_ext.cfg. There are a lot of other tweaks you can do there, but many changes are either negligible or the setting is already at its optimal value. The settings I wrote above obviously also aren't perfect for everybody, but I like them. Google for more tweaks if you want.

You can make the changes manually to the file or you can use something like Gecko's NewDark Graphics Settings Tool:
(http://www.moddb.com/mods/thief-2-hd-texture-mod/downloads)

PS: You said you didn't want HD mods, but in case you end up wanting them, just to put you on the map, these are all worth using:
(http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=141621)
(http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=135188)
(http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=144303)
(http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=144705)
(http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=144312)
(http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=142995)