redrain85 on 3/6/2008 at 21:26

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Running Vista Ultimate x64 SP1, ATI Catalyst 8.4 Drivers, and a Radeon 3870. I've patched the game to use DDFix 1.3.10 and Widescreen v5r2, and am using both the Thief Enhancement Pack and NTEX hi-res texture pack v1.3.


The game runs almost perfectly, except for the two problems I mentioned in the message title.

1) On levels using the grass texture: beyond a certain distance, the texture is no longer applied to the ground and I can see untextured polygons. You can see it most clearly on the right. The ground there is beige instead of green.

(http://img155.imageshack.us/my.php?image=nograsshq7.jpg) http://img155.imageshack.us/img155/8271/nograsshq7.th.jpg


2) On levels with fog: if I load a saved game from one of these levels, I can see fog. But as soon as I enter one of the game's menus and then return to playing the game, the fog disappears.

What I see when I first load a saved game for Life of the Party:
(http://img155.imageshack.us/my.php?image=foguy0.jpg) http://img155.imageshack.us/img155/7430/foguy0.th.jpg

What I see after returning from a menu:
(http://img155.imageshack.us/my.php?image=nofogfy1.jpg) http://img155.imageshack.us/img155/2694/nofogfy1.th.jpg


Anyone have any ideas what may be causing these issues, and how to remedy them? For the grass texture problem, I already tried turning off the Catalyst AI feature but it didn't make a difference.

I'm not sure if these are a driver problem, registry settings needing tweaking, or perhaps an issue with DDFix. Or could it be the texture pack? I haven't tried disabling things like DDFix or the texture pack yet. I guess I should try those and see what happens. But I thought I'd ask if anyone else has experienced similar issues.


Oh, and one more problem while I'm at it. For some reason: while I have Alchemy enabled, I don't hear any sound in the cutscenes. If I disable Alchemy, then I can hear sound in the cutscenes again. I know I could just turn off hardware acceleration for the sound (which fixes this issue) and be done with it, but I'd like to keep hardware sound enabled, if possible.


EDIT: At the time I posted this, the search feature wasn't behaving so I went ahead with my post anyway. Now it's working again, and I've found posts explaining that DDFix breaks fog. Yet, when I first load a level, fog actually works. So . . . crap, sorry about mentioning a known issue. But it is intriguing that fog DOES work at first, as long as I don't leave the game and go to a menu or read a scroll/book.

poroshin on 4/6/2008 at 12:26

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I know this wasn't addressed to me, but I also have a widescreen monitor, and I'd simply recommend a Dell - you can get a 22-inch model for very cheaply these days: (http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/category.aspx?c=us&category_id=6198&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs) If you want a bigger size, they have a sale on the 24- and 27-inch models right now.

Excellent monitors. Thief looks razor sharp on them.

poroshin on 4/6/2008 at 15:13

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I thought fog was solved with DDFix.

redrain85 on 4/6/2008 at 21:35

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Thanks for bringing me up to speed on the current state of DDFix, Hiatus.

Yes, I noticed the grass texture disappearing on the Eavesdropping and Trail of Blood levels. But I also noticed something else.

(http://img114.imageshack.us/my.php?image=rocktexturemissingre7.jpg) http://img114.imageshack.us/img114/3597/rocktexturemissingre7.th.jpg

On the Precious Cargo level: the rock textures weren't being applied near the gate, as you should be able to see in the screenshot. The walls near the gate are untextured and appear white/grey.


As for fog, I can confirm now that it's the ATI Vista drivers. I disabled DDFix and the enhancements, and the same problem still occurred. Fog disappears every time I access a menu or read a scroll/book. I haven't upgraded to the latest Catalyst 8.5 drivers yet, but I doubt this problem would be fixed by upgrading. I'll probably have to submit a Catalyst Crew report. By the way, I forgot to mention that I'm using Thief 2 v1.18.

Regarding slowdowns on the 3870: I went to those areas mentioned in the other thread, with DDFix and the enhancements enabled again at 1680x1050, and took a FPS reading using FRAPS. Since my monitor has a refresh rate of 60Hz, the framerate is capped at 60.

Pirate ship on Shipping and Receiving: 40 FPS avg
Entrance to the station on Framed: 45 FPS avg

I don't know if I'd call those framerate drops "massive" like in the other thread, but it does dip in those areas. Other than those specific areas, I've never noticed any significant slowdown. I went to other areas in those levels, and the framerate stayed pretty much constant at 60 FPS. I did notice that the game had one of the CPU cores at 100% load at all times, though. Just to give you a picture of what the rest of my hardware looks like: Athlon X2 6400+, 2GB DDR2-800 memory, AMD 790FX chipset mobo.


About choosing an LCD monitor. At the time I bought mine, it was considered the best "bang for the buck". It's an Acer AL2216WBD. It's not top of the line, but I find it works fairly well for Thief. You can probably get something much better today, for the same money or not much more. I know the Dell monitors get brought up a lot.

There's a long thread on the Anandtech forum, where someone put together a list of what are considered the "best" LCDs depending on what you intend to use them for. Office work, gaming, etc.

(http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid=31&threadid=2049206&enterthread=y)

fibanocci on 5/6/2008 at 08:36

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Have you tried r-tool to fix the fog problem (ATI only)?