vfig on 12/12/2021 at 19:58
Quote Posted by Kubrick
dim grey shadows that work as if they were pitch black really always had strained my experience.
you should be using gamma adjustment first to get the black levels to roughly where you want them. but bear in mind that the majority of thief levels (originals and fms) have large areas of "pitch black" (only dim ambient lighting) where you are expected to be able to see where you are going and what you are doing (garrett eats his carrots*). so your visually preferred brightness/contrast adjustments might actually hurt your ability to play the game.
(*yes, carrots giving night vision is a myth, but its a good rhyme)
Kubrick on 13/12/2021 at 17:18
After a lot of testing this last few days, I disagree. I don't agree starting with gamma, but using it to adjust the last few levels.
Gamma too low makes the game look horrid, the lights are barely dim when the blacks are the way they should. Gamma too high to make the highlights look nice, and the games looks like filtered through ash, plus the blacks now look like 8 bit caleydoscope. Answer: the problem lies in a contrast too low as default, no matter how much fiddling you do with gamma. Setting contrast to 1.4 or similar and then using the gamma + and - to see if that's not too much or too little contrast (for example, if the blacks are a little too dark but the highlights are fine, upping up one or two points of contrast with the keybinds usually leaves it perfect). Another great way you can use to tell how well you're doing is looking at the compass item. It's yellow and red will look nicer the more contrast you give it, because increasing contrast to an image usually adds more color saturation too.
You have to do it mission to mission. Life of the party, for example, never looks pitch black unless you utterly destroy the image by using so much contrast that it looks horrible. Random_Taffer's missions are already pretty contrasted and modern-looking so just a little adjustment usually works wonders. Other missions simply don't look good adding too much contrast, liike Hilbert's Highrise Hotel.
vfig on 13/12/2021 at 21:07
yeah, tweaking it for each mission sounds like a good idea. there aren't commands for increasing/decreasing constrast settings to make adjusting it easier in game, but you could bind different preset contrast levels to like ctrl+numbers, or to numpad keys by editing user.bnd, e.g. bind 1+ctrl "set_contrast 1.0" or bind keypad_end "set_contrast 1.0".
if you wanted to have presets that set gamma/brightness/contrast all at once with one hotkey, you could do that by creating a text file in your thief directory, e.g. called high_contrast with one command on each line; and then the bind would be bind keypad_end "run high_contrast".
Kubrick on 14/12/2021 at 15:21
That's amazing too, vfig. Again, I'm so happy this exists, it's been an issue for me since I first played thief gold about six years ago. I never found anything to solve it, only an unanswered question in a thread in this same section of the forum. How do people play usually? Do they like their game without contrast??? I mean it's not like I play pitch dark or whatever, but I like highlights to be the whitest they can and the darkest tones almost impossible to see... Do people not play like this or was it me that never found the way to increase contrast?
ZylonBane on 14/12/2021 at 16:34
Quote Posted by Kubrick
How do people play usually? Do they like their game without contrast???
Most people don't have your OCD obsession with contrast. To normal players, there's a perfectly satisfactory level of contrast by default.
vfig on 14/12/2021 at 21:20
personally i prioritise being able to comfortably see what i am doing over any concept of how the image looks from a non-gameplay perspective.
(an added complication is that i record all my fm playing and upload it to youtube, and that adds additional constraints on how dark i can let dark areas be so they will both survive the video encoding and not just look like a flat black screen when viewed online in the inevitable not-full-screen-and-not-in-a-dark-room conditions)
but these days i am playing on an lcd monitor, and so the dark areas are inevitably washed out from light bleed, and the bright lights dont really look particularly bright. and those are faults of the monitor tech; a post-process adjustment cannot increase the dynamic range, only reduce it, even if it pushes the apparent contrast up.
thief just isnt a great match for lcds. for most uses i vastly prefer lcds, but thief really benefited from the visual qualities of crts.
ZylonBane on 14/12/2021 at 22:12
TN panels may suck for Thief, but I switched from CRT to a Dell IPS display a few years ago, and I had no complaints with how Thief looked on it. Great dynamic range, good brightness, no crushed blacks.
Kubrick on 15/12/2021 at 00:43
Quote Posted by ZylonBane
Most people don't have your OCD obsession with contrast. To normal players, there's a perfectly satisfactory level of contrast by default.
lol
Quote Posted by vfig
personally i prioritise being able to comfortably see what i am doing over any concept of how the image looks from a non-gameplay perspective.
(an added complication is that i record all my fm playing and upload it to youtube, and that adds additional constraints on how dark i can let dark areas be so they will both survive the video encoding and not just look like a flat black screen when viewed online in the inevitable not-full-screen-and-not-in-a-dark-room conditions)
but these days i am playing on an lcd monitor, and so the dark areas are inevitably washed out from light bleed, and the bright lights dont really look particularly bright. and those are faults of the monitor tech; a post-process adjustment cannot increase the dynamic range, only reduce it, even if it pushes the apparent contrast up.
thief just isnt a great match for lcds. for most uses i vastly prefer lcds, but thief
really benefited from the visual qualities of crts.
Right, hadn't thought about the game not being designed for LCDs in mind! Unfortunately I was too young to play thief when CRTs were still around. Would be an interesting retrogaming experience to set up. Anyway, happy to have this extra option for people that want it!
ZylonBane on 15/12/2021 at 02:24
Quote Posted by Kubrick
lol
I wasn't joking.
Kubrick on 15/12/2021 at 18:00
Quote Posted by ZylonBane
I wasn't joking.
I wasn't laughing with you.
Anyway, I've edited the original post with the info vfig provided. Thanks everyone!
