soopytwist on 15/9/2010 at 20:30
Thief 1 ran fine after the ddfix and I had 1920x1200 res and everything was good. Thief 2 on the other hand is proving a real bitch to get going. I've followed all the steps to get it to run on Windows 7 but I'm having no luck.
Firstly I tried running vanilla without any patches or fixes, a fresh install basically. The game starts but is black and remains so. Various compatibility settings don't help.
Secondly I then tried ddfix 1.4.5, choosing the default res of 1280x1024 and applying the patch, this worked. When I try the game, I've got stuttering videos, black flickering horizontal lines across the main menu and in the game all the colours are psychedelic and if I move the game crashes.
Then I tried running the DarkWidescreen v6r3 patch, setting it to 1280x1024 again. Doesn't work as thief2.exe size is smaller then expected (is 2658304 bytes instead of 2662445).
I read that the resolution needs to be the same in ddfix.ini and cam.cfg, there is no resolution setting in cam.cfg only the following:
; $Header: r:/t2repos/thief2/src/cam.cfg,v 1.24 2000/03/08 11:43:50 adurant Exp $
; hey, which game is this
game dark
; general configs
include_user_cfg user.cfg
editor_include_dromed_cfg dromed.cfg
; game specific paths/configs
dark_include_install_cfg darkinst.cfg
shock_include_install_cfg install.cfg
; set trait cache to include concretes
trait_cache_flags 2
no_network
sfx_vol_music -474
fogging 0
enhanced_sky 1
render_weather 1
movie_volume_factor 0.7
I just want the game to run and in 1920x1200 widescreen, is that too much to ask?
Dresden on 15/9/2010 at 21:53
After you set the resolution with the widescreen patch, you need to write a line in cam.cfg to tell it which resolution it should be running. I don't see that line in yours so try writing "game_screen_size 1920 1200" or whatever other resolution you entered with the patch, without quotations at the bottom. Then go into ddfix.ini and set your resolution in there too. I'm not sure if Win7 is the same as Vista but I also find running the game as an admin helps too.
soopytwist on 16/9/2010 at 11:03
Thanks, that sort of worked. I only seem to be able to go as high as 1600x1200, this at least get's me into the game and it looks great, except it's not widescreen. At least the game has now filled the rest of the cam.cfg file with the other missing settings.
If I set 1920x1200 in the cam.cfg and ddfix.ini, Thief says, when the first mission starts, the resolution is unspported and all the colours are messed up and then it crashes.
The DarkWidescreen patch still doesn't work either as my .exe is smaller than the patch expects so it doesn't patch it.
So yeah, it runs now in 1600x1200 non-widescreen, how do I get it to work with 1920x1200 widescreen?
EDIT
I should point out my version of Thief 2 is the Premier Collection budget release, maybe that's why the .exe is smaller than the DarkWidescreen patch expects?
soopytwist on 16/9/2010 at 14:57
Since my executable is smaller than the DarkWidescreen patch expects I had the idea to add another 4096 bytes in HEX after the last line of code (adding blank values). This didn't quite work because it actually made the file size of the .exe much larger so I deleted a few hundred bytes of the blank values I added to bring it's size down to 2662400 bytes as the patch would expect.
This would seem to have been a success, however the DarkWidescreen batch file reports an error for the value 38656 at 2589052, it expected a value of 320. One would assume adding the blank values to make the file size larger has worked but whatever instruction is at 2589052 is the wrong one.
I think I'm right in my assumption that the Premier Collection version of Thief 2 is not compatible with DarkWidescreen.
EDIT
Changed title of thread.
Dresden on 16/9/2010 at 18:42
I'm not familiar with Premier Pack, so the only thing I can think of is that maybe your game isn't patched to 1.18. There's a Premier specific patch (
http://www.thief-thecircle.com/media/patches/) here if it isn't.
soopytwist on 16/9/2010 at 21:48
:D Thanks Dresden, that did the trick! I thought ddfix actually patched the exe with version 1.18, that doesn't appear to be the case. After installing the patch from the link you gave me the game was running but just black again so I couldn't see anything. Ran ddfix again, which only goes up to 1600x1200 for some reason, manually changed it back to 1920x1200 in the cam.cfg and ddfix.ini and hey presto game runs fine in glorious hi-res widescreen!
Only problem now are the black horizontal lines scudding across the main menu screen but as it's just on the menu screen I can live with it. I had the same problem with System Shock 2 but Thief 1 was fine.
Shame we have to jump through hoops to get older software to function on modern PC's. I can see me doing this all over again with Windows 10.
