mikjames on 7/9/2024 at 12:04
In an effort to make playing the game with default textures less annoying, I've been playing around with shaders and denoisers.
I found a bump mapping shader that works quite well, really adds to the perception of detail. Of course it is performance intensive and applies to every surface though... not ideal.
I remember previous discussions mentioning normal maps, but that would require a lot of extra work. In theory, shouldn't bump mapping just be like a switch that can be flicked, requiring no extra effort from mission authors?
Real time denoising is more complicated with significantly worse results. Has anyone played around with a.i denoisers/upscalers? If we could find a good solution maybe we could get a central database of a.i upscales going for missions. Maybe even a side effort to increase compatibility with HDMod for people who prefer it.
mikjames on 13/1/2025 at 16:32
I can see how little interest there is in moving forward on the tech side around here. Some stuck in the past, others seemingly fascinated by the bad graphics they weren't even around to experience back in the day. Where are the folks who appreciated the original Thief cutscene art style, and were excited for technology to catch up to that?
Sorry to all the so called "purists", but the original graphics will always be disgustingly limited by the time, not something to look back on fondly, and certainly not how the original devs desired the game to look. They were limited by the tech available at the time, and we should strive to bring their desired vision to life as seen in the original cutscenes, not the severely limited representation that 2000 era real time graphics were capable of.
Azaran on 13/1/2025 at 19:53
Can you show us an example of that shader?
mikjames on 15/1/2025 at 01:11
I switched to steam deck and haven't got reshade setup yet. I believe the bumpmapper is part of the legacy reshade pack. CAS is part of the standard effects pack.
downwinder on 15/1/2025 at 03:43
i love the old school graphics of thief 1/g/2
but if they ever can get better graphics to run like om's t1/g/2 on a normal pc, that would be cool, but seems the better the graphics the better the comp to run it well
reminds me of when super Nintendo got to the end of its cycle the games movement/etc were perfect then they drop the next gen play station and we get pig slop for some years until they get that system right, then they repeat the cycle again with next gen of system = more junk movement, junk optimization
so what we learn each new system = better graphics but tons of junk games in movement for years until they next system comes out/ repeat over and over
in turn so much more junk games then games people even play was it worth it? when in the end it only came down to getting better systems to run better graphic and junk controls on 90% of all games on every system
by the time we can get a comp that can run real life graphics and have amazing controls will be long after we all meet the master builder
let thief 3 be a lesson "garretts hips" are so crippled the first thief games 1/g/2 are better, excluding graphics = not what i want in a game
PinkDot on 10/2/2025 at 18:16
Quote Posted by "mikjames"
In theory, shouldn't bump mapping just be like a switch that can be flicked, requiring no extra effort from mission authors?
I guess, you're talking about this kind of effect?
(
https://reshade.me/forum/general-discussion/2681-bumpmap-custom-shader)
Well, this is just a post-processing effect, that works on the rendered image. It has no clue, what the scene represents, what the lighting is like, what surfaces are like etc. etc. It may add initially a certain appeal, as it increases local contrast of pixels, making it optically more appealing, but otherwise it's a cheap post processing effect, that looks weird and odd, frankly. Just look at the character there - the legs, or the weird outlines around the silhouette of the body.
There's no shortcuts there - bump mapping, achieved in games via normal maps, is a shading effect, where bumps are calculated based on the lights in the scene. You can't fake this having only the final render pass.
There are ways that automate creation of normal maps from diffuse maps and they may give better or worse results, but the light calculations need to be done by the rendering engine itself. And New Dark does not support per-pixel shading effects like bump mapping. For the time being, just accept that this is not possible, unless you really don't mind this crude looking post-processing effect.
Having said that, I do use re-shade to increase the contrast and saturation of colors, but I have it as a very subtle effect, just to reduce this grayish, low contrast appearance of Thief. That's about as far as I would go with it. I don't like the sharpening artefacts too much.
