Moogie on 18/4/2012 at 00:50

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I'm sure a lot of similar posts pop up here, much to the chagrin of you good folk. :) So I will keep it short.

OS: Windows 7 64-bit

Thief Gold (fresh install)

DDFix applied

Indeo installation methods attempted:
-From disc
-From FAQ ((http://downloads.ttlg.com/download.aspx?id=2461))
-"Alternate drivers" ((http://downloads.ttlg.com/download.aspx?id=2362))

I copied ir50_32.dll from SysWOW64 into system32.

My personal 'RunGame.bat' is as follows:
C:\Windows\SysWOW64\regsvr32.exe ir50_32.dll
C:\Windows\SysWOW64\regsvr32.exe LGVID.AX
start /affinity 1 Thief.exe

(Both .dll registrations report success. Without the SysWOW64 path, ir50_32.dll will complain about regsvr32 not being 64-bit and thus unable to register the dll. LGVID.AX, however, doesn't seem to mind either way.)

Thief.exe is not currently set to use any compatibility mode.

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What happens:

The game loads, but does not play the intro. Clicking Intro in the menu flashes black momentarily, but does not play the movie. Starting a new game skips all movies and heads straight into the game, which seems to otherwise perform just fine.

I'm hoping there is something obvious, or perhaps even something incredibly obscure I may have missed, because I have been eager to introduce a friend to the Thief games, and a big part of their charm (for me, at least) are the beautifully rendered cutscenes!

Many thanks for your attention. :)


Edit: Additional since this post:
-Tried restarting
-Tried the Thief1Gold_MovieReplace (re-encoded movies) pack from (http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=122477&highlight=movies) here
-Extracted iac25_32.ax and ir41_32.ax from Indeo setup files and manually registered them
-Tried the advice from (http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=128117&highlight=movies) here

Further edit:
Looks like I'm in the same boat as (http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=135945&highlight=k-lite) this guy, AKA we have both tried absolutely everything, including polluting our systems with the K-Lite codec pack, to no avail. I have no idea if K-Lite is even doing anything - I ran the tweaker tool, changed Indeo 5 to 'libavcodec' and added ThiefG.exe to the whitelist, but it made absolutely no difference.

The only vague clue I have now is Filmerit telling me there is a problem with "LG Video Renderer", but I have no idea how to fix that. Deleting it and re-registering LGVID.AX just produces the same result each time: "#Error S02 - No InprocServer32".


Is there nothing left? Nothing, short of dual-booting a dedicated Windows 95 partition?

Al_B on 19/4/2012 at 11:10

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You shouldn't need to do this - it should be fine living in SysWOW64.

There should be no need to register the codec and LGVID.AX files every time you start the game - and if you've got ddfix installed with a patched exe then AFAIK you shouldn't need to set the affinity every time (others are more knowledgeable on that than I am, however).

Rightly or wrongly, I have problems with videos if I don't run thief (or system shock 2 for that matter) in administrator mode. If you tick the "Run this program as an administrator" option on the compatibility tab for the thief.exe properties then it should automatically run in administrator mode each time you launch the game.

Al_B on 19/4/2012 at 11:58

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Ah, you've unlocked "Thief Extreme Pro Mode" - best to avoid it for a first run :).

I can understand your frustration, but I think you're overcomplicating things by trying to get it working in a virtual machine. Thief Gold definitely works in 64 bit Windows 7 bit natively and it might be best to take a step back:

* Install a fresh copy of Thief Gold into a new directory (personally, I like to keep the path simple - e.g. c:\games\thiefg)
* Delete the ir50_32.dll from your c:\windows\system32 directory - it shouldn't be there as it's not a 64 bit DLL
* Grab (http://www.gog.com/en/forum/thief_series/tgfix_widescreen_resolutions_fixedimproved_graphics_etc/page1) the TGfix pack that voodoo47 put together and extract its contents into your Thief directory (use (http://www.7-zip.org/) 7-Zip if you haven't already got it)
* Run the movecrf.bat batch file and edit the cam.cfg for your screen resolution
* Run a command prompt in administrator mode and run "regsvr32 c:\windows\SysWOW4\ir50_32.dll" followed by "regsvr32 c:\games\thiefg\lgvid.ax" (adapt the path to the game as necessary).
* Right click on the thief executable and run in administrator mode

If that works, you can tick the "run as administrator" option in the compatibility settings so you don't have to do the last step every time.

Moogie on 20/4/2012 at 03:05

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I've gone back to the VM solution, as I don't expect any further leads in getting it to work natively on Win7.


So my final setup is this:

-VMWare Player, running Windows XP
-Thief Gold installed with the 'tgfix' package
-NOT using DDFix (black screen menus otherwise)

Resolution locked at 640x480 to prevent res switching during cutscenes

A program called Desktop Lighter, because the gamma slider doesn't work and the game is too dark otherwise (still is, but I can live with this)

Another program called Virtual Magnifying Glass, because 640x480 is a very tiny window indeed. :)


Using all this, I have the game running with sound, with hardware mode, perfect speed, and with movies.


It'll do.

Moogie on 20/4/2012 at 09:33

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To be honest, I couldn't help but investigate further, too. x)

We're thinking along the same lines. I discovered that lgvid.ax was getting unregistered whenever Thief triggered a movie to play.

I tested the following scenario:

1. Register the file and check with Filmerit that there are no errors in LG Video Renderer. (OK)
2. Load the game.
3. Alt-tab and check Filmerit again. No errors yet.
4. Alt-tab back to Thief, and click the 'Intro' button. (Video does not play, as expected)
5. Alt-tab back to Filmerit and check for errors... LG Video Renderer now has an error ("No InprocServer32", AKA it has been unregistered)
6. Register the file again
7. Repeat 4. and 5.

So I narrowed the issue down to this: LGVID.AX gets unregistered whenever Thief tries to play a movie.

But why? I have no idea. I dug further into the problem using GSpot Codec Detector. When I loaded one of Thief's movies (Intro.avi) and ran the 'Proposed codec solutions and tests', This is what it had to say:

Partial Render Failure: Following is the error reported by DirectShow:
0x00040242 (unknown)
More specifically, the audio could be rendered, but the video could not:
(Src)-->[Default DirectSound Device ]

If I test the video seperately (button 2, "internally connect the series of filters"), these are the errors reported:

(Src)-->>--(A)-->[AVI Splitter ]>--(B)-->[Indeo video 5.10 Decompression Filter ]>--(C)-->[Video Renderer ]
Failed to connect Output pin 0x05dff364 ("Src Media") on INTRO.AVI to input pin 0x05afee2c ("input pin") on filter 0x03e3e2f4 ("AVI Splitter").ConnectDirect() failed. Error: 0x8004022a: [unknown]
(Src)-->>--(A)-->[AVI Splitter ]>--(B)-->[VFW:Indeo video 5.10 ]>--(C)-->[Video Renderer ]
Failed to connect Output pin 0x05df944c ("Src Media") on INTRO.AVI to input pin 0x05afeed4 ("input pin") on filter 0x03e3e2f4 ("AVI Splitter").ConnectDirect() failed. Error: 0x8004022a: [unknown]

That's as far as I've gotten. No idea how to solve those errors, as Google has very little info about them.


I should note that I did briefly try having K-Lite installed, but I wasn't sure what to do with it. I have no idea if it was working (it didn't fix the videos), or if I'd picked the correct options during installation/setup. So it's possible this still might be a solution, if I could figure it out.