Thief 1/2 & SShock 2: DDFix and Enhanced Resolution Patch - discussion - by bikerdude
bikerdude on 16/3/2008 at 23:03
This is F...ing amazing, not only does young Timeslip get thief working as it should but managed the unbelievable feet of getting it to look better than it did on cards of the era when thief 1st hit the streets...
Timeslip I am stunned...
:wot:
sNeaksieGarrett on 16/3/2008 at 23:14
Well, I've been following along, and I see timeslip has updated ddfix. Awesome. Hey thanks for the work Timeslip. Remember, even older cards have use for ddfix. I'm using a 6800XT, and I get no sky without me using ddfix. I also get the pixelated texture doors WITH ddfix(ddfix 1.1.1), but if I understand correctly, this newest version (1.2.4) should fix this? I also see you decided to add ddfix to the side menu on your site.;) I'm going to test ddfix 1.2.4 right now and see what it does. DDFix 1.1.1 had a lot of problems but worked ok.
Also, this may be a stupid question, and I don't mean this to be an ass or anything, but thief 2 actually uses directx 7 so why did you use directx 6 for this new ddfix?
[edit]
Houston, we have a problem :( I get this really weird problem with thief 2 now with 1.2.4 First of all, it DOES fix the pixelated doors (yay) and it DOES remove the stuttering of the movies. BUT, as you can see in this picture below, there is some sort of corruption in the game with the text specifically. I also noticed that thief 2 did this strange windowing mode thing where I could see my desktop for a second or two(when loading Running Interferance), and then went into full screen when going ingame. Maybe it has something to do with the scaling? I have thief 2 ingame set to 1024x768, and I also checked my cam.cfg as well. It is also set to 1024x768. And yes, I changed ddfix to be 1024x768. I tried fiddling with zbuffer setting (no effect) and sysoverlay or whatever. Sysoverlay made it where I could not see thief, yet I could interact with the menu. :weird: Like, I booted thief 2 up from the shortcut on my desktop, and I could not see anything. I could hear thief running, and even mess with the menu, but like I said I could not see anything at all.
(
http://img516.imageshack.us/my.php?image=thief220080316182921qh2.png)
Inline Image:
http://img516.imageshack.us/img516/931/thief220080316182921qh2.th.pngYou may also notice that I did not alter the photo what so ever. Sorry, if its too dark, increase gamma. As you can see in the picture, everything seems to be in working order (or so it seems; sky is there) save for the weird text stretching and corruption.
Nameless Voice on 17/3/2008 at 00:06
Quote Posted by Bikerdude
not only does young Timeslip get thief working as it should but managed the unbelievable feet of getting it to look better than it did on cards of the era when thief 1st hit the streets...
That's hardly news, I said that when I first tested it on Thief 1 - proper 32-bit rendering instead of 16-bit or 16-bit dithered.
I have noticed that the shading that was normally obscured by the ugly dithering is now very sharp, leading to a new problem of sharp, ugly blotchiness, which is clearly visible in Hiatus' second shot.
I suppose that's mainly being caused by low-resolution, pixellated textures being scaled far too much. A pity a terrain texture EP wouldn't be possible.
smithpd on 17/3/2008 at 00:54
I restarted and ran Running Interference in normal skill to get the text mentioned by sNeaksieGarrett. Using DDFIX 1.2.4, I do not have that text bug with my 7950 GT.
I compared my text with sNeaksieGarrett's. I have red text centered on the top of the screen. sNeaksieGarrett shows two identical strings of green text positioned on the left and right parts of the screen. Each character of sNeaksieGarrett's text is missing pixels. Each character in sNeaksieGarrett's text is the same height as mine (5 blocks) but half the width (6 vs. 13 blocks for the M). The blocks are a rectangular arrangement of pixels, taller than wide. Our blocks are the same size.
EDIT: Below is a comparison of the text images. Staring at this a little more I realize that in the bad version every other column of blocks is stripped out.
Inline Image:
http://home.comcast.net/~smithpd1/thief/Text.jpgI get exactly the same text using original or DDFIX'ed versions -- red text that looks right.
Calibrator on 17/3/2008 at 04:45
Quote Posted by sNeaksieGarrett
I'm using a 6800XT, and I get no sky without me using ddfix.
Houston, we have a problem :( I get this really weird problem with thief 2 now with 1.2.4 First of all, it DOES fix the pixelated doors (yay) and it DOES remove the stuttering of the movies. BUT, as you can see in this picture below, there is some sort of corruption in the game with the text specifically. I also noticed that thief 2 did this strange windowing mode thing where I could see my desktop for a second or two(when loading Running Interferance), and then went into full screen when going ingame. Maybe it has something to do with the scaling?
(
http://img516.imageshack.us/my.php?image=thief220080316182921qh2.png)
Inline Image:
http://img516.imageshack.us/img516/931/thief220080316182921qh2.th.pngAs you can see in the picture, everything seems to be in working order (or so it seems; sky is there) save for the weird text stretching and corruption.
Which video card driver version do you use?
Do you use DirectX v9.0c?
bye
Calibrator
Timeslip on 17/3/2008 at 07:14
Quote Posted by sNeaksieGarrett
Also, this may be a stupid question, and I don't mean this to be an ass or anything, but thief 2 actually uses directx 7 so why did you use directx 6 for this new ddfix?
I don't know if thief 2 uses any other parts of dx 7, but it only uses version 6 of ddraw and d3d. It might use dx 7 for input or sound, but I don't interfere with them.
Quote Posted by sNeaksieGarrett
Houston, we have a problem :( I get this really weird problem with thief 2 now with 1.2.4 First of all, it DOES fix the pixelated doors (yay) and it DOES remove the stuttering of the movies. BUT, as you can see in this picture below, there is some sort of corruption in the game with the text specifically. I also noticed that thief 2 did this strange windowing mode thing where I could see my desktop for a second or two(when loading Running Interferance), and then went into full screen when going ingame. Maybe it has something to do with the scaling? I have thief 2 ingame set to 1024x768, and I also checked my cam.cfg as well. It is also set to 1024x768. And yes, I changed ddfix to be 1024x768. I tried fiddling with zbuffer setting (no effect) and sysoverlay or whatever. Sysoverlay made it where I could not see thief, yet I could interact with the menu. :weird: Like, I booted thief 2 up from the shortcut on my desktop, and I could not see anything. I could hear thief running, and even mess with the menu, but like I said I could not see anything at all.
(
http://img516.imageshack.us/my.php?image=thief220080316182921qh2.png)
Inline Image:
http://img516.imageshack.us/img516/931/thief220080316182921qh2.th.pngYou may also notice that I did not alter the photo what so ever. Sorry, if its too dark, increase gamma. As you can see in the picture, everything seems to be in working order (or so it seems; sky is there) save for the weird text stretching and corruption.
That weird text looks similar what you get if thief tries rendering directly to a 32 bit surface. (I give it an extra 16 bit surface to draw text too.) The text is in the wrong place though, and it shouldn't be duplicated like that, so it isn't a problem with the extra surface magically turning 32 bit. :confused:
It looks more like your graphics card is having a problem blitting from a 16 bit surface to the 32 bit one, and is treating the text as if it's 32 bit. That would be a driver issue, presumably.
Edit: Given that the menu is drawn in exactly the same way as the text, I'm surprised your menus are working. The only difference is that the menus require a rescale and don't use a colour key, and are blitted to the front buffer instead of the back.
The seeing your desktop thing is because thief keeps resizing its window on loading screens. (It thinks it's displaying at 640x480, after all.) It was handled by the WindowFix option in older ddfix versions, but again that was something that required a specific version of thief2.exe, and it didn't seem to work correctly when I switched to dx6, so I dropped it. ddfix just automatically resizes the window back now, but there's still a split second delay where the window is the wrong size that allows you to see through to the desktop.
Simplex on 17/3/2008 at 09:13
Timeslip made (and is making) a brilliant, wonderful job with Thief Fix! If he had a "Donate" button on his page I would surely throw in a few bucks - he definitely earned it.
I almost regret that I very recently replayed SS2 without any kind of fix (although with SHTUP and rebirth) and Thief & Thief 2 with old version of DDFix (pixellated textures, choppy videos, etc) - ah well, I can always replay it again with new DDFix :)
My only postulate for Timeslip is to put a link to the newest version of DDFix on the leftside menu on his website, I hope there's nothing wrong with that :)
Timeslip on 17/3/2008 at 09:44
1.2.5 is up. Taking screenshots via printscreen should now be a similar speed to thief's normal screenshot function.
Quote Posted by Hiatus
I've notice a strange (?) thing when looking at some textures up close. DDfixed versions looks like color transitions/banding are more visible. Is it normal when running in 32-bit with some textures which probably weren't designed to look good in 32-bit color but in 16-bit one? I'd appreciate if someone could explain it. To me, 16-bit version looks better "blended" and thus more natural in this case.
I think that's normal. Even if the render target is 32 bit, the textures being drawn to it are still 16 bit, and when you're that close to a texture the individual texels are bigger than the pixels on your screen. That means you're going to end up with batches of pixels all the same colour, which looks more or less like your screenshots.
