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

sNeaksieGarrett on 21/3/2008 at 18:13

Actually, i don't get a crash on exit....:cheeky:

Timeslip on 21/3/2008 at 18:24

Quote Posted by Hiatus

@Timeslip:

what about unlocking 1280x960 res in DE games (sth I asked about in earlier post).Could you look into this - would it be possible to incorporate it in your patch? I'm still on 19'' CRT so I miss this particular res (engine supports 1024x768 and then 1280x1024 - nothing in between). (1152x864 would be nice to have as well, for that matter :)). Both are standard 4:3 so I wonder why the engine doesn't allow them :(..

I don't think I'm going to be able to. I should have removed the unsupported resolutions from the gui really. (It just displays all 4:3 and 5:4 resolutions up to your monitors maximum atm.)

Quote Posted by sNeaksieGarrett

Actually, i don't get a crash on exit....:cheeky:

Neither do I, or I'd have a few more clues on what the problem was. I think someone said it affected thief 1, so maybe I'll dig my old copy out sometime.

Actually, that reminds me...

Quote Posted by Bikerdude

Drop me a PM if you want my a copy of Thief1 as I dont have much use for it these days...

Thanks for the offer, but I already have one. Somewhere - It's buried under all my backup CD's, and I'm really not looking forward to going digging under them all to find it. :(

MH.TheFreak on 21/3/2008 at 18:35

A few words to the crash problem: I have a dual boot system (xp/vista) and with ddfix thief crashes only on vista (xp is fine). I think, the new OS is the reason...

Nameless Voice on 21/3/2008 at 19:16

Quote Posted by Timeslip

Now for a slightly different question. What limits does thief 2 have on texture depth and resolution? What happens if you try replacing a texture with a 24 bit pcx or something that's 1024x1024 in size?

Textures can be in one of the following formats: .gif, .pcx, .bmp, .tga
Maximum texture resolution is 256x256, and each dimension must be a power of 2.
Maximum colour depth is 256 (Exception: TGA textures can be up to 32-bit, but have some issues. See (http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1288241#post1288241) this thread for more detail).

Any textures that do not meet these requirements are generally not loaded or displayed incorrectly.

World textures are rendered from their top-left corner, so scaling them up means that the texture will take up more world space, rather than becoming more detailed. Texture scales can be adjusted in the editor, but replacing them would involve changing every single mission in the game.
Object textures are not subject to this issue, and increasing their resolution will not affect their mapping. That's why my (http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=118999) Enhancement Pack works.

Quote Posted by Nameless Voice

Look at it like this, the Dark Engine references world textures from their top-right corner, and with a scale factor.

If you have a window texture that is 64x128, and you upgrade it to 128x256, then the window will 'grow', anchored from the top-left corner, so that the upper-left 64x128 of the new image will occupy the same space as the entire 64x128 texture did, and the remainder of the texture will 'spill over' into the surrounding space. So, if the original texture took up 2x4 units, the new texture would take up 4x8 units at the same scale factor. Its scale factor would need to be reduced to make it occupy the same space as the lower resolution texture.

Timeslip on 21/3/2008 at 19:55

That's interesting. tga's especially seem to be a bit weird. I already knew that thief used A4R4G4B4 format surfaces to display anything with transparancy, but it also checks for support for A8R8G8B8 textures, and even creates a few of them if they are supported, so why it insists on downgrading 32 bit tga's after loading them I have no idea. :confused:

Anyway, I think I can get thief to load 32 bit tga's of any resolution while thinking that they're still in their original format. That would actually be rather more useful than I thought it would if it lets you create higher detailed world textures. I'll give it a go next week sometime.

jolynsbass on 22/3/2008 at 16:03

Quote Posted by Timeslip

Anyway, I think I can get thief to load 32 bit tga's of any resolution while thinking that they're still in their original format. That would actually be rather more useful than I thought it would if it lets you create higher detailed world textures. I'll give it a go next week sometime.

Wow, that would really open the doors for amazing improvements in the game. Imagine a Textures Enhancement Pack! That would be so cool! Well, even if it doesn't work, Timeslip, you have really rocked on providing DDfix and thanks so much for returning to the project to fix those bugs that were left after the 1.1.x version.

For the record: I'm running DDFIX in WinXP SP2, w/ ATI9600XT, P4 2.6Ghz w/ hyperthreading, on both TG and T2, and it's working great. :thumb:

Dusk-Sailor on 23/3/2008 at 02:44

Quote Posted by Timeslip

Neither do I, or I'd have a few more clues on what the problem was. I think someone said it affected thief 1, so maybe I'll dig my old copy out sometime.

Thanks a lot for your outstanding continuing efforts to improve the darkengine games Timeslip. :thumb:

My Thief Gold exit fine.
However Thief 2 crashs on exit with following popup message:

"unknown software exception (*some adress*) ... at ... *some other adress*"
Sometimes with read, sometimes with write memory error, sometime no extra info.
however yesterday I had a Blue Screen of Death on exit pointing to:
nvmcp.sys (I can supply adress & base if of any help)

don't know if that's only my hardware or something about the DDFix. Anyway I haven't any crash on exit with Thief 2 using DDFix 1.1
[my sys: Win XP, 8800GT with 169.28, DDFIX 1.2.6, nocd thief.exe with cpu set to core 1]

well... don't know if that is on any help at all for you Timeslip :idea:

bikerdude on 23/3/2008 at 11:17

Quote Posted by Dusk-Sailor

had a Blue Screen of Death on exit pointing to:
nvmcp.sys (I can supply adress & base if of any help)

don't know if that's only my hardware or something about the DDFix. Anyway I haven't any crash on exit with Thief 2 using DDFix 1.1
[my sys: Win XP, 8800GT with 169.28, DDFIX 1.2.6, nocd thief.exe with cpu set to core 1]

Hi Sailor

That is most definitively a driver issue, your running beta drivers for your 8800GT, uninstall the current driver and download the (http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_169.21_whql.html) 169.21 driver
Or you could try a later beta, such as the 174.xx series...

biker

hobo on 25/3/2008 at 05:39

Previous to my upgrade to an 8800gtx i was running thief2 (1.07) with no problems. with my new setup i get weird menu glitches (it looks like static over all the menu buttons) new missions won't start nor can i load saved games.

i patched to v1.18 so i could use DDFix but i get the following error when i try to execute it:

could not locate code section to overwrite....if your version uses safedisk copy protection, you will need to download a fixed exe before you can use this patch.

how do i determine whether my version uses safedisk and if it does where can i get a 'fixed' exe?

thanks for any help

bikerdude on 25/3/2008 at 18:26

Quote Posted by hobo

thanks for any help

Hi Hobo drop me a pm

biker