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

Hiatus on 3/4/2008 at 15:24

242

check out the last paragraph of my previous post I just added (with link to ATI support).

Quote:

hehe, just because Thief is slow on newer hardware with latest Catalysts?

numerous other games from DX3-DX6 (or even DX7) era also don't play well/at all on ATI DX10 hardware with current drivers (unlike on their DX9 hardware like X1950) from what I know - so Thief is not the only problematic game on ATI (but most important to me). (But Nvidia esp. DX10 isn't any better in this regard). Generally, DX10 hardware/drivers from both ATI/NV are very cruel to older DX games (in Nvidia case this process actually began earlier, with DX8/9 hardware/drivers - ATI was better here up to and including DX9) :(.

242 on 3/4/2008 at 15:45

Quote Posted by Hiatus

what is rest of your config besides ATI 3870 (CPU, RAM, mainboard chipset, OS etc)?

Quite standard - C2D 2.4, 2Gb RAM, Intel P35, WinXP Pro SP2. I wish anyone else with 2x00/3x00 tried vanilla Thief2 or T2+ddfix 1.2 and up just to be sure. It's very good manifested at the start of Framed level for instance, it's 3rd level in T2.

BTW, I tried Gothic2, which I believe is DX7 game, run fine, but also was somewhat slow, it seemed slower that G2 was on my old R9800Pro, but not nearly as slow as T2. Yep, newest hardware/OSes don't like older games, I guess I should be very grateful to Timeslip for accidental fixing the Thief slowness on newer ATI hardware in the DX9 ddfixes, as they say killed two birds with one stone, I even wasn't aware about slowness problem until I tried T2 without his fix :)

Hiatus on 3/4/2008 at 15:59

@Timeslip:

could you re-up 1.1.1 (both normal and GUI with source) for a while, please (I've lost it and would like to test it again and just have it for historical value ;))? TIA!

Quote Posted by 242

It's very good manifested at the start of Framed level for instance, it's 3rd level in T2.

how many fps exactly do you have at that place (start of Framed) - check out with Fraps for example. I mean with both vanilla T2 (and with ddfix 1.2+) and with (faster for you) ddfix 1.1.1. I got almost 70 fps there @1024x768 (w/o any o/c - with o/c it easily surpasses monitor refresh rate - 85Hz on my CRT) on similar config (but X1950 Pro / Cat 8.3) on both vanilla T2 and with ddfix (all versions - 1.0/1.1 are a bit slower - up to 20%). This place is normally CPU bound (linear fps increase with CPU freq. up).

Nameless Voice on 3/4/2008 at 16:26

Quote Posted by Timeslip

Edit: I think the only big issue left now is that you can't replace existing .tgas, and hence can't retexture anything that uses an alpha channel. Anyone spotted any other problems?

More importantly, I thought you said you can't replace .gifs?
All of the object and creature textures are .gifs, whereas the original game uses practically no TGAs.
Object textures are not quite as important as terrain textures, since we can already replace those with 256x256 versions without problems, but it would be nice to be able to use 512x512 or 1024x1024 textures for some objects. AI meshes could certainly use the resolution boost.

Timeslip on 3/4/2008 at 16:54

Quote Posted by Hiatus

could you re-up 1.1.1 (both normal and GUI with source) for a while, please (I've lost it and would like to test it again and just have it for historical value ;))? TIA!

(http://timeslip.chorrol.com/temp/Thief2FixOld.7z) Here's 1.1.1 with source. I don't have the old GUI any more, sorry. I'm not a great record keeper; if it hadn't been for Bikerdude looking for 1.1.0 after I'd already deleted it, I probably wouldn't have kept the rest of 1.1.1 either. :p

Now that I have the professional version of VS, I really should start using source control... :erg:

Quote Posted by Nameless Voice

gif and bmp's can already theoretically be replaced (once the file has been decompressed, thief 2 uses the same loading code for everything apart from tgas, so ddfix will still pick them up,) but the GUI doesn't support them yet so you'd have to modify the files by hand. bmp will be easy, but I've never looked at the gif file format before...

Edit: Woah... I just looked at the gif format, and it's not good. :eww:

According to the (http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1288241) tga link you posted, SS2 will look for pcx's before any other file format. Does that hold for thief 2? You could include a modified pcx file with the extension .pcx.override, and it would end up overriding the gif.

Nameless Voice on 3/4/2008 at 17:33

Aw, the .gif file format is fun! (Though admittedly I only ever looked into extracting the palette table from them, nothing further than that.)

I think that PCX load order is probably only for terrain textures, since object models have the file extension embedded in them. It will hardly look for MScroll.pcx when the model file clearly says MScroll.gif, for example. (I'm not 100% sure, but it seems highly unlikely that it would work.)

I didn't know Dark supported .CEL files...

EDIT: Now I remember what my other point was. Any chance of getting this to work in DromEd? It won't do new FM authors much good if they can't see the new textures they're using in the editor...

242 on 3/4/2008 at 17:54

Quote Posted by Hiatus

how many fps exactly do you have at that place (start of Framed) - check out with Fraps for example.

I'll try measure it with fraps but I think it's about 3-6 fps at some places at the start of Framed with ddfix 1.2+/without the fix (Catalyst 8.3). Framed isn't an exception, it's just a good example, there is plenty of other problematic places/missions.

Quote:

This place is normally CPU bound (linear fps increase with CPU freq. up).

This isn't the case, I have avarage 40+ fps and min 18 fps on max details in Crysis (1024x768 noAA) and no slowness in every modern game I've tried so far :) + the same Thief levels run just fine with ddfix 1.1.

Quote:

I got almost 70 fps there @1024x768 (w/o any o/c - with o/c it easily surpasses monitor refresh rate - 85Hz on my CRT) on similar config (but X1950 Pro / Cat 8.3)

Yes, the problem concerns only newer 2x00, 3x00 series (at least 3x00), AFAIK your card doesn't need the fix at all.

Hiatus on 3/4/2008 at 18:49

@Timeslip: thanks for re-upping 1.1.1 - already got it in case you want to take it down

@242 (and others): do you happen to have original 1.1.1 installer (.exe) version? If yes, please up it temporarily somewhere for me OR just post here and I'll PM you with valid email address to send to. TIA!

Quote Posted by 242

I'll try measure it with fraps but I think it's about 3-6 fps at some places at the start of Framed

oops, I remember I had ~7 fps at the start of Framed on a Celeron 366 and Nvidia Riva TNT (w/o any o/c on either) back in 2000.

Quote Posted by 242

This isn't the case, I have avarage 40+ fps and min 18 fps on max details in Crysis (1024x768 noAA) and no slowness in every modern game I've tried so far + the same Thief levels run just fine with ddfix 1.1.

I said normally - in your case GPU side slows down the whole thing to a crawl. Your CPU is probably able to pump 100+ fps there (as long as GPU cooperates).

But I'd wait for someone else with HD2xxx/HD3xxx to check it out as it could be the issue isolated to your system for some reason. I don't remember anyone complaining about godawful slow frame rate in T2 on HD2xxx/HD3xxx (only godawful rendering quality in T2). Check it out in T1/TG/SS2 if you got them (if it's unnormally slow there as well).

ZylonBane on 3/4/2008 at 19:17

Woah, just now catching up on this thread.

Could someone please recap exactly what the current mechanism is for informing ddfix that a terrain texture has been replaced with a high-res equivalent?

Prvt_Peanut on 3/4/2008 at 21:50

Quote Posted by EvaUnit02

Have you tried different compatibility modes, ie Windows XP, Windows 98, etc?

when i run in windows 98 compatability mode i get the direct x error i mentioned, and when i run in xp compatability mode or without any compatability mode set, the game runs for like 2 seconds after loading the level, but all the colours are trippy, then it crashes to desktop...

:erg: