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

Slynt on 23/10/2007 at 14:47

Quote Posted by smithpd

It would help if you described what video card / resolution was used . It would also help to see a full resolution screen shot for context, not just a blow up, which by itself is a little misleading.

I'm on an 8800GTX in XP with AA/AF/Vsync enabled through the Nvidia control panel. Both shots were taken at 1600x1200 res. No resizing was done to the screenshots, just cropping. DDFix's high res textures are NOT enabled in those images.

smithpd on 24/10/2007 at 02:58

Quote Posted by Slynt

Part 2 of my comment, which you did not respond to, is that as far as I can tell (until I see evidence to the contrary), DDFIX in itself does not cause sharpening. It disables the AA/AF filtering applied in the driver control panel. You can and should apply AA/AF separately in DDFIX.INI to make a fair before-after comparison. This applies to all comments above about DDFIX images being sharper.

Slynt on 24/10/2007 at 04:05

Ok, I set AA/AF/Vsync to application controlled in the Nvidia control panel, then enabled them all in DDFix, then disabled them all in DDFix. Both times it still looked the same as my second picture, so they aren't to blame.

Asaki on 24/10/2007 at 05:54

Quote Posted by Bikerdude

The DDfix version seems to sharpen the textures - which resembles the way they look under the software version

I already reported this in (http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1659313&posted=1#post1659313) the other thread. It is rendering it with hardware, but it scales the textures to a higher resolution first, so that they appear blockier. It isn't only affecting doors, it affects any low res textures. Look at the rugs in the first level.

Quote Posted by Nameless Voice

First of all, I get visible 'tearing' while moving; I can actually see where the frame is being drawn. This isn't something I can take a screenshot of, since if seems to finish rendering the frame before it takes a screenshot.

That has to do with the refresh rate, the only way you could get a picture of it is by taking a photo of your monitor with a camera.

As to trying to contact nVidia, I sent email back and forth with them a few months ago. Dunno if it's helpful to anyone, but here's the exchange:

Quote:

Thief 2 will not work with the current drivers. After searching the Internet, it seems that older drivers will run it almost fine, but that said drivers will not work with the 7950. I'm convinced that this is a software problem, and not a hardware problem, as I've seen support for the game change from driver to driver while running it on my old GeForce 4. Right now, I'm running dual cards, with an old Voodoo 3 plugged into regular PCI, but it would be really nice if there were a solution for this problem, instead of a cumbersome workaround.

Quote:

Hello Asaki,

Thank you for contacting NVIDIA Customer Care.

I understand from your email, that you are not able to play Thief2 with the 94.24 driver version.

In order to assist you better,I would require to know the following information. Could you please let me know---

1. The driver version/s that you have ever installed for the Voodoo 3 card.

2. The driver versions/s that appear to work for the GeForce 7950 graphics card.

3. What were the driver version/s that appeared to work for the GeForce 4? Did you have the Voodoo card plugged in at that time too?

4. Have you updated the latest patches for the game?

I look forward to your mail in order to assist you better.

Regards,
NVIDIA Customer Care.

Quote:

1. I have a custom driver called Amigamerlin 2.5 XP installed, because I couldn't find the official Voodoo drivers anywhere on the Internet.

2. Researching further, it looks like they've found a driver version 160.03 beta that will run it. I found 162.18 beta, I'll have to see if it works.

3. Couldn't tell you what version it was, but I didn't have any other graphic cards installed.

4. Yes.

Quote:

Hello Asaki,

Please let us know whether the 162.18 driver makes a difference to the situation.

I look forward to hearing more from you.

Regards,
NVIDIA Customer Care

Quote:

Yes, it runs in 162.18 drivers. The sky looks really bad, but at least it runs.

Quote:

Hello Asaki,

I suggest that you continue using the 162.18 display driver to troubleshoot your issue.

If NVIDIA is able to reproduce your bug, we will work towards providing a fix through our next driver update release.

To be alerted by email when the next display driver is released, please sign up for the NVIDIA Newsletter from the following URL:
(http://lyris01.nvidia.com/NvRegister/frmLoginRegister.asp)

Please feel free to contact us, if you have any further questions.

Regards,
NVIDIA Customer Care.

That's all. I recently updated to 163.71 and it looks like Thief 2 went right back to looking like crap...unless 162.18 also looked like crap, and I didn't notice because Voodoo 3 looked exactly the same (except for the sky).

smithpd on 24/10/2007 at 06:07

Hmm.... Interesting about the AA and AF. Thanks for checking, Slynt. :)

I stand corrected. I don't think the AA and AF settings work, at least for some textures, or else I am doing something wrong. If so, please correct me.

For my test I used a Geforce 7950 GT, which displays some but not all dark textures badly using the original T2 executable. I found an old rusty metal door that does not have bad textures, so you would not expect to see much difference when DDFIX was applied. The door has large texture pixels that cover many screen pixels. Each texture pixel occupies an 8 x 8 array of screen pixels at 1024 x 768 screen resolution. Then I zoomed up on a corner of the door in some screen shots to see what DDFIX, AA, and AF did to the pixelated texture.

With DDFIX applied, I see sharper texture pixels no matter what I do with AA and AF. The images look the same with AF and AA turned off everywhere, with AF and AA on in the INI file but off in the video card, and with AF and AA on in both the INI file and the video card. I saw no observable difference with various AA and AF settings even when I blow up the JPG to 400 % to look at screen pixels. This could be because AA and AF are not applied to this type of pixelated texture, no matter what you do.

Unfortunately I cannot make a decent screen shot of the 400% blown up image because Hypersnap cannot take a picture of itself. When I transfer the image to Microsoft Photo Editor and do the 400 % blow up there, artifacts are introduced, that is, it does not display properly. But I'll tell you what I see in the zoomed image of Hypersnap. With DDFIX applied, I see a gradual change of color over each texture pixel, in which rows or columns of screen pixels show a gradual color variation. The texture pixel boundaries are sharp.

I did the test again using the EXE before DDFIX was applied. Again, with this door texture, setting AA and AF in the video card driver had no effect on its appearance. The image of the door corner this time was clearly dithered, and it shows a more gradual color variation when zoomed out and viewed from the distance. The boundaries of the texture pixels seem blurred from a distance. The increased blur you see with the original Thief is not AA or AF, it is the behind-the-scenes dithering of the pixelated texture.

There is no dithering of this texture when DDFIX is enabled. I am guessing that the lack of blur (lack of dithering) you see with DDFIX is the result of calling a 32 bit function (which does not have to dither) instead of a 16 bit function, which does. Again, this is for a highlighted (light) texture that is not bad, for which DDFIX should have no significant effect on the rendering.

Overall, I like the original blurred image of this door better than the sharp image because the texture pixels are so large that some blurring is helpful to smooth it out. For all other aspects, I like the rendering of DDFIX much better than the original EXE.

Again, sorry I can't show this in a screen shot. Maybe I'll figure out how later.

I am curious what Timeslip will have to say about this.

DJ Riff on 24/10/2007 at 06:30

Quote:

When I transfer the image to Microsoft Photo Editor and do the 400 % blow up there, artifacts are introduced, that is, it does not display properly

If yon open a picture in MSPaint and resize it to 200%/400%/800% any pixel of the image becomes a 2x2/4x4/8x8 array without any dithering filter (e.g. the same color as original). The same result will appear if you choose "Pixel Resize" method in Photoshop / Paintshop Pro resize options. I don't know if MS Photo editor supports changing resize method.

And I think you shouldn't use JPG compression if you're taffing with pixels. Use lossless format (BMP, PNG, TIF) instead.

Stefan_Key on 24/10/2007 at 12:44

A little feedback :

I've tested the patch on a laptop (Acer 5520G) :

AMD Turion 64x2 TL-58 Mobile Tech (1.9Ghz)
2 GB DDR2
Nvidia GeForce 8400M G (128 MB)
Drivers : 163.44
((http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/drivers/vista) to get decent drivers)
OS : Vista Home Premium 32 bit

It looks really better and it's playable :) but I have the same problems than people above : slow movies/cutscenes, pixelised doors and such. I have to play on a low res (640x480) ; on higher resolution, the game is too laggy (ok, the 8400 isn't a top GC).

So Thief 2 (1.18, French version) and T2X (V1.1) are running with it. :thumb:

Asaki on 25/10/2007 at 04:48

Quote Posted by smithpd

With DDFIX applied, I see sharper texture pixels no matter what I do with AA and AF. The images look the same with AF and AA turned off everywhere, with AF and AA on in the INI file but off in the video card, and with AF and AA on in both the INI file and the video card.

It has nothing to do with AF or AA, it has to do with the low resolution textures being upscaled before bilinear filtering is applied. Here's a quick example I made in Quake:

The crate on the left has the texture at normal 64x64 scale. The crate on the right has the same exact texture, resized to 256x256. I'm not sure if the low res Thief 2 textures are scaled by 2x or 4x, but 4x seems to demonstrate this just fine. Convar gl_texturemode is at the default gl_linear_mipmap_linear:

(http://redwax.circa1984.com/random/example1.png)

Here's the same thing, different angle:

(http://redwax.circa1984.com/random/example2.png)

This third shot is the same as example2, with gl_texturemode set to gl_nearest, which looks very similar to software rendering:

(http://redwax.circa1984.com/random/example3.png)

Here is a side-by-side comparison, the 4x scaled texture on the left (which looks the same as what ddfix is doing), and the gl_nearest rendered texture on the right:

(http://redwax.circa1984.com/random/example4.png)

bikerdude on 29/10/2007 at 20:39

Hi TimeSlip

Just a bug update, version 1.1.1 is very choppy, I have tried various settings and none seem to fix it. I was running 1.1.0 before - which was fine.

biker

sNeaksieGarrett on 30/10/2007 at 23:50

Sweet Patch!;)

Okay, so here is my results/review with DDFix:
- Movies are slower than in normal thief2 (probably already known, but just posting just in case) -5

- Patch restores Stars and clouds. :cheeky: +10

- Doors look terrible. (yes, I'm aware that everyone knows this... just telling my observation) -5

- Pressing scroll lock turns off the text (like "compass" under the compass on the HUD)

- Pressing scroll lock causes the game to run like it does with vsync off.:o :weird: Note: Just an observation... but i do know that it does not happen if i turn off ddfix patch. Although, I had vsync off to begin with, but with the ddfix patch by itself, all of a sudden vsync seems to be applied.:o That's part of the patch though right?

-Pressing "pause/break" makes the game minimize to my desktop.:weird:
Note: this last one actually isn't ddfix's fault: In fact this doesn't even matter. Just thought I'd share it... I tried removing the patch and playing the game and it still does it. Just one new thing I never knew about Thief2.

my so called rating system (I just made it up): -5 means ddfix looses points on this aspect, but its not major. +10 means total likeness of what happens due to ddfix patch.
Let me explain the first "-5" about the movies: No big deal really, not that I watch the movies anyway, but i let it run for a moment, and noticed they ran slower.
Second "-5": Meh, the doors look terrible.: Oh well who cares, we move on. No big deal. That's why I only put a -5 and not a -10.

Edit:
Oh, and I should also mention my system specs:
1.6 Ghz processor speed
AMD Sempron 2800+ processor
Nvidia GeForce 6800 XT graphics card
So yes, this fix will work on older cards too. I think maybe the title shouldn't be for just geforce8/radeon2k because it applies to older cards too. Or maybe people are just assuming that already. In which case, my apologies.