Hiatus on 5/6/2008 at 19:31

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redrain85:

when you got these slowdowns with ddfix, do you have AA turned on (and which mode, if yes)?

I already wrote about my experience with slowdowns with DX6-based version of ddfix in this huge thread: (http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=117616) (towards the end, no exact post url), namely, I've got X1950 Pro and max AA mode for my card is 6x and I got 19'' CRT monitor and I play all Dark Engine based games in 1600x1200, and I get substantial slowdowns in this mode *only* (with ddfix, vanilla T2 is fine, AF is always 16x (max possible on my card)):

1600x1200 AA:6x

dropping AA to 4x solves it (no more slowdowns and lag). So I use AA:4x now, because 6x is not worth it with these slowdowns and tiny (if any) visual difference. (DX9 based versions of ddfix, like 1.1.1 are much faster than DX6 based ones (1.2+) @1600x1200 AA:6x for me, but still slower than vanilla T2). My guess is that ATI DX6 driver portion is less efficient/less optimized than DX9 one and ddfix somehow exposes it, being more demanding than vanilla version (might be wrong, though). In lesser modes (lower res etc) DX6-based versions of ddfix are normally faster than DX9-bases ones (with overlay enabled), almost as fast as vanilla T2 - this mode is an exception. (Characteristic thing I don't think I had mentioned before is that @1600x1200 AA:6x fps frequently drops to ~38fps (1/2 of refresh rate which is 75 Hz - incident or not?) but still gameplay is much worse than it might seem (38fps is not bad in Thief, after all) because there are additional frequent short pauses which ruin smooth movement etc :/).

So try dropping AA a bit and see if it helps.

ps (to answer you) vanila T2 is DX6 app, ddfix 1.0/1.1 uses DX9, and ddfix 1.2+ reverted to DX6 again (for compatibility reasons).

pps 1 more thing: in ddfix.ini, set 2 last options to this:

UseSysMemOverlay=0
OverlayColourKey=0x0000

and see if it helps...

redrain85 on 7/6/2008 at 22:31

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Just wanted to add: while in Thief 2 slowdown occurred rarely, I started playing T2X recently and I find that slowdown occurs frequently in it.

I know that this is a known issue (slowdowns in FMs with custom objects). It's just interesting that, since I edited the ddfix.ini file: slowdowns in the original Thief 2 have almost disapppeared. I wonder what it is about FMs that's different, that would cause slowdowns. Pushing poly counts, or object limits?

redrain85 on 11/6/2008 at 20:29

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Sorry for the late reply. And I don't have any nVidia hardware to test this on, sorry. :sweat:

The slowdowns are most pronounced in the third level of T2X (When the City Sleeps), that I've noticed so far. I haven't finished the FM yet, though. I'm currently on the eighth level.

Both with and without DDFix, the same symptom occurs on the third level. However, with DDFix it's more pronounced. Playing vanilla T2X, it's smooth about 95% of the time and only hitches slightly. With DDFix, it's smooth about 70% of the time and hitches fairly often.

What happens is that when I transition from one area to another, or turn a corner: sometimes the framerate will dip by about 3-4 FPS and then quickly recover. As I said earlier, with vanilla T2X this happens less often and you hardly notice it. But with DDFix it's a fairly frequent occurence, and gives the game something of a laggy/stuttery feel to it.

This hitching also occurs for me on the sixth (A Question of Knowledge) and eighth (The Art of Deception) levels, but not nearly as much. On all the other levels, it seemed to be smooth sailing at a solid 60 FPS.

If I had to guess, I would say the more pronounced hitching with DDFix probably has something to do with the fact that I'm using the 32-bit texture enhancement package. I edited my darkinst.cfg in the T2X directory to include the NTEX DDS textures. If those textures are being applied to all the buildings in the third level, that could account for the increased hitching. I know that T2X wasn't designed to be used with the NTEX textures, so I'm doing something here that wasn't intended. Oh, and the ddfix.ini file with the edited overlay options, was copied from the T2 to the T2X directory.

In the end, I'd say that as long as people edit the ddfix.ini file to change the two overlay options: both Thief 1 and 2 are very playable on ATI 2xxx/3xxx hardware using DDFix. Slowdowns and hitching in the original games hardly ever occured for me, and editing ddfix.ini almost completely eliminated the slowdowns that did occur on my 3870. Also, the improved visual quality is more than worth it. It's only in T2X that I'm getting this slight, but consistent, stuttering/lag on one of the levels.

Dranyth on 17/6/2008 at 19:50

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I finally got DDFix working for Thief 2, however I am having the infamous fog problem even with 1.3.11

I downloaded RivaTuner which was able to confirm that Fog Table Emulation was already on. But I went ahead and disabled it, rebooted as required, tried Thief 2, no fog. Then re-enabled it, rebooted as required, tried Thief 2, still no fog. I tested both Life of the Party and Masks and I did correctly get the weather/rain in Masks.

I'm beginning to wonder if anyone using nVidia cards on Vista have successfully gotten fog to work using the more recent drivers, most of the posts I'd seen mentioning it seem to be on XP.

I'm running Vista 64-bit, a GeForce 8800GTS on the Forceware 175.16 drivers currently. As far as RivaTuner can tell me, Fog Table Emulation is on, the Fogging setting in Thief 2 is On (not greyed out at all, which I've heard is a problem for some), so can anyone give me some insight for getting fog to work?

It comes to mind that my previous cards were ATi, a 9700 Pro and an X800XTPE, so I don't think I've ever had the proper sky and certainly have never played the missions with proper fog. Some of the screenshots I've seen people post with correct fog look quite nice.

242 on 19/6/2008 at 14:47

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ATI cards always showed proper sky.