Thief 1/2 & SShock 2: DDFix and Enhanced Resolution Patch - discussion

Calibrator on 17/3/2008 at 18:36

Quote Posted by Hiatus

ps anyone still remember 3dfx vs nVidia debacle re Quake 3 (around release date of T2) image quality (16-bit color vs 32-bit color) where dithering was involved AFAIR? 3dfx claimed that their 16-bit mode was equivalent (in quality) of 22-bit color so they didn't miss anything by not supporting 32-bit color back then (thanks to their high quality dithering?). nVidia of course claimed the opposite (but switching to 32-bit from 16-bit had a big performance hit back then on their chipsets).

The so called "22-bit-quality" of the 3dfx-cards was generated by a special post-processing filtering of the whole screen. The dithered pixels were the basis for the post-processing to do its function generating real colors (it was still analog RGB output back then) like a card would with (approximately) 22-bits in the frame buffer. This usually looked very well but had disadvantes when several dithered textures were overlayed on each other - but this always the problem with dithered 16 bit rendering.

At the time of the Voodoo3 (16/"22"-bit-rendering) the early 32-bit-capable cards (very popular: Nvidia Riva TNT) produced visually better looking graphics if the software was capable of 32 bit rendering. However, there were some major disadvantages:
a) They were too slow - frame rated were usually half as high
b) Most games didn't have 32 bit textures
IMHO they were mostly used to water the potential customers mouth ;-)

On the other hand the Voodoo cards had (nearly) no frame drops while increasing the color depth greatly from 16 to a perceived 22 bit.

The result was that 32 bit rendering only took off when faster cards came into the market (Riva TNT2 was much better, then came the groundbreaking first Geforce) and the downfall of 3dfx really began.

Calibrator

bikerdude on 17/3/2008 at 22:03

Quote Posted by Simplex

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.

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 :)

I have suggested this also, TS if you put a donate button on your website I for one will click on it.

And he has, if you go the bottom right of his page there is anow a DDFix section..

biker

Huckeye on 18/3/2008 at 00:48

I have tried everything I can possibly comprehend to get Thief 1 working and it will not. My current config is:

Asus 8800GTX
169.21 drivers
DDfix 1.2.5
Resolution in INI matches in game

I have also tried DDfix 1.1.1, another .exe, someone elses .exe and every possible combination of these and the following Nvidia drivers:

163.75
162.18
158.27
171.16
169.38

Thief worked before on my current hardware and one of the above drivers. I do not remember which, but now it crashes everytime at mission load. I have formatted and reinstalled with no luck. Any help would be desperately appreciated.

smithpd on 18/3/2008 at 02:06

Quote Posted by Hiatus

16-bit:

32-bit:

Which one do you prefer, folks (I'm curious)?

I much prefer the 32 bit DDFIX to the original. Your examples do not show why. My examples posted above, where I showed both distance and close-up shots of the vines in Running Interference, do show why. The dithering in 16 bit can be seen both close up and at a distance. Close up it is ugly. At a distance it is still a fine-grained, ragged-looking distraction. With 32 bit, the extra smoothness you see when close up, where you might think it is blurred, looks sharper and good quality at a distance. Those too-sharp door textures are another example of a similar thing. Close up they look a little blurred, but at least they are not pixellated. Far away, the smoother texture looks vastly superior to me.

I have been playing with the 32 bit DDFIX for a couple of days, and I think it is great.

EvaUnit02 on 18/3/2008 at 02:39

Quote Posted by Huckeye

I have tried everything I can possibly comprehend to get Thief 1 working and it will not. My current config is:

Turn off any forced options in the Nvidia CP:- AA, AF, etc. Try the defaults + app-controlled + single-display performance whenever possible.

Vasmarok on 18/3/2008 at 03:33

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 can confirm sNeaksie's finding with two different NVIDIA cards. These are the settings for the 2 systems.

NVIDIA 6600
driver: 6.6.3.1
DirectX version: 4.09.00.0904

NVIDIA 7200 GS
driver: 6.14.10.9424
DirectX version: 4.09.00.0900

In both cases, the text is duplicated and "scrambled". This happens both on the top of the screen and at the bottom (weapons, inventory items, loots etc.)

satanfripp on 18/3/2008 at 07:09

Big thanx out to timeslip for the ddfix:thumb: Thief 2 looks great and at last ss2 looks great.I was almost gonna set my old pc up just to play ss2.There is just one thing ,apart from the see through menus in ss2,thats strange.If you start a new game or load a game at first there is no music.I pressed escape to check my settings then went back into the game and the music was there!!It seems that pressing escape toggles the sound on and off.Am not too bothered because am just happy to play ss2 again.I just press escape to get the music working.Anyway thanx ,great work.:thumb:

bikerdude on 18/3/2008 at 14:40

Quote Posted by Huckeye

Asus 8800GTX

Thief worked before on my current hardware and one of the above drivers. I do not remember which, but now it crashes everytime at mission load. I have formatted and reinstalled with no luck. Any help would be desperately appreciated.

Hi Huckeye

169.21 breaks (un-ddfix'd) thief2, and its possible that it breaks Thief1 also.

I tested unmodded/virgin Thief1.exe(v1.33 TDP patched for TG FM's) this evening on my 8800ultra with the 169.44 driver under WinXp Sp2 and it looks and runs as it should.

I also patched it using DDfix and it only made it look a little better, but when quiting the game, the ddfix version gave a memory error, so Im sticking with the original thief.exe

biker

Hiatus on 18/3/2008 at 23:05

Quote:

I tested unmodded Thief1 this evening on my 8800ultra with the 169.44 driver and it looks and runs as it should.

you mean on XP and with virgin executable (not using any "direct3d memory manager not reporting bla bla..." modded exe's for older nVidia drivers)?

ps by Thief1 you mean TDP (which ver? patched to v1.33?) or Thief Gold (v1.37)?

Hiatus on 18/3/2008 at 23:40

Another interesting vanilla T2 vs ddfixed T2 screenshot comparison (no close-up textures any more)

vanilla T2 (16-bit):

(http://img521.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dump000pb5.png)

ddfixed T2 (32-bit):

(http://img120.imageshack.us/my.php?image=screenshot1th9.png)

Comments/opinions? Which one do you think looks superior? (I got my favourite but won't disclose it for now - should be pretty obvious anyway).

====

Quote:

, but when quiting the game, the ddfix version gave a memory error, so Im sticking with the original thief.exe

@Timeslip: could you look into this, please? Looks like some people got this issue also with ddfixed T2 (at least 2 people reported this issue with T2 earlier in the thread AFAIR). Something about 0x000000c5 error or sth similar.

@Bikerdude: could you quote the exact error msg you get?

I'll test with TG (v1.37) - don't have TDP installed ATM - and report back if I get this error on exit on ATI as well (maybe it's Nvidia specific?)