Istvan Varga on 13/3/2008 at 11:02
Quote Posted by BeefTheDarkProject
The first problem was that the mouse cursor would not go away. While the game would run fine, it was annoying have a cursor floating in the middle of the screen the whole time. There's a solution to it (new X session and custom cursor), but it's a little involved so we'll save that for last.
I have a simple (
http://www.sharemation.com/IstvanV/rungame2.c) utility that hides the mouse cursor, sets the CPU affinity (could not test that in practice, though, as I have a single core CPU), and should fix some other minor annoyances as well, like keyboard focus problems. It can be compiled with a command line like this:
Code:
gcc -Wall -O2 rungame2.c -o rungame2 -L/usr/X11R6/lib -lXxf86vm -lX11 -lpthread
The usage is simple: run it from a text mode console (X is started automatically with no window manager) in the Thief directory with the command line arguments "-depth 16 ./EXENAME" where EXENAME is thief.exe or thief2.exe.
For sound, I got acceptable results (with occasional repeating of buffers in TDP) using the ALSA output in WINE, and this ~/.asoundrc file:
Code:
pcm.dmix48k {
type dmix
ipc_key 1024
slave {
pcm "hw:0,0"
rate 48000
period_time 0
period_size 256
buffer_size 1024
}
}
pcm.!default {
type plug
slave {
pcm "dmix48k"
}
}
ctl.!default {
type hw
card 1
}
I do not know how well it would work on other machines, though.
By the way, I could not get movies or fog to work so far either. And, of course, all the nvidia video problems - with the apparent exception of the texture memory error - like no dithering with new cards/drivers also occur when running under WINE.
Istvan Varga on 13/3/2008 at 11:47
For improving the screenshots in the GIMP, I recommend the 'Layer/Colors/Curves...' tool, which is better suited for making the image brighter but not washed out than just increasing the brightness. (
http://www.sharemation.com/IstvanV/thief2.jpg) This image was processed by mapping the value 64 to 128. Note that the artifacts on the blackjack are the result of JPEG compression, but I do have problems with ugly sky, non-dithered objects, and no fog with my current nVidia video card and driver.
snobel on 14/3/2008 at 09:08
Great thread here...
The newest Wine (0.9.57) seems to fix the mouse pointer issue? The sound is better too, at least on my hardware, it used to be quite tinny.
I get visible Gnome panels in T2 unless I either disable desktop effects (Compiz) or disallow WM management of Wine windows.
I have an NVidia 6200LE which runs at an acceptable speed at 1024x768. But I have noticed that things do not look good when you turn up the gamma - it is like there is just no detail in the shadows, so it all becomes blotchy. Anybody notice this? (But who cheats on the gamma anyway ;) )
Last but not least: Does anybody know if anything ever came of (
http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=103343) this? And if not, if there is some abandoned code or maybe just a Glade-file out there somewhere...
Istvan Varga on 14/3/2008 at 11:31
Quote Posted by snobel
The newest Wine (0.9.57) seems to fix the mouse pointer issue?
Yes, this long standing problem seems to be finally fixed.
Quote:
I get visible Gnome panels in T2 unless I either disable desktop effects (Compiz) or disallow WM management of Wine windows.
That is one of the reasons why I prefer running the game without any window manager, using the utility posted above. This way, any window management related problems are avoided. Also, the color depth must be 16 bits for running Thief/Thief 2, while the desktop is usually in 24 bit mode.
Quote:
I have an NVidia 6200LE which runs at an acceptable speed at 1024x768. But I have noticed that things do not look good when you turn up the gamma - it is like there is just no detail in the shadows, so it all becomes blotchy. Anybody notice this? (But who cheats on the gamma anyway ;) )
That sounds like no dithering. I assume it looks like the shadows in TDP/Gold ? With my old nVidia 6500 card, I have dithering on terrain brushes, but not on objects or on the sky (see also the screenshot in the previous post); on newer cards, it may become even worse, with the dithering no longer working on terrain brushes either.
It is important to note, however, that the game must be run in 16 bit mode for correct video display ((
http://www.sharemation.com/IstvanV/t2m01_16.jpg) screenshot). If your GNOME desktop is in 24 bit mode (very likely), then the result is no dithering at all, as shown on (
http://www.sharemation.com/IstvanV/t2m01_24.jpg) this screenshot.
Istvan Varga on 14/3/2008 at 11:43
Well, dithering on objects actually works now. It did not some time ago, and I think I only updated WINE since then, so it was probably a WINE bug, and not a video driver issue.
DromEd still seems to have the very laggy (by several seconds) interface issue, though.
jono456 on 27/3/2008 at 02:22
I just went through the install process and hit one snag - handling more than one CD. I found I couldn't get the CD out when it asked to swap CDs, and then when I did I couldn't get my machine to recognise the new CD and mount it properly. Solution is here:
(
http://www.winehq.org/pipermail/wine-users/2004-June/014142.html)
You may have to use sudo umount -l /m... when unmounting.
(figured I might as well share the advice for the next person who comes along and get sstuck while installing :) ).
snobel on 28/3/2008 at 09:13
Yes, I think that is it. I will try your utility, thanks for posting it.
Edit: Now that is _much_ better! All the details are back, and the frame rate got bumped up a notch. For the record, the affinity-setting seems to work fine (dual-core amd cpu).
snobel on 26/1/2010 at 15:42
Why the doubt? :p What version of ddfix did you use? And is the 3dmark patch necessary?
I have just tried ddfix 1.4.4, but it won't work for me at all :confused:
snobel on 14/2/2010 at 08:16
Just open winecfg and set Windows Version to win98 on the Applications tab, before running the installer. You can set it back to XP after doing the install.
For me, the best Wine version for TG is 1.0.1, versions later than 1.1.7 will not work with ddfix on my machine.
snobel on 15/2/2010 at 08:52
I agree, there ought to be PlayOnLinux scripts for the thief games, it's a question of honour!
Some time ago I actually had a look at the script for System Shock 2 to see if it could be adapted. It seemed fairly simple, but I never got further than that. If you want to have a stab at it, I'll sign up as a beta tester...
While we're talking about making Thief-on-Linux easy, there was (
http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=103343) this very interesting project, but I don't think it was ever released?
