nickie on 29/8/2018 at 19:11

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While we're on the subject and for the purpose of adding to my education, if you have a Steam version of Thief, do you have to move it out of Program Files to properly run Tafferpatcher and play FMs or is that just an option/fix if you run into problems?

Tobey on 29/8/2018 at 21:13

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I used the website. How would that damage Thief 2?
I don't know what you're talking about with the FM loader, but I can play both the Tafferpatched version and the un-Tafferpatched version. I hope that makes sense- it was the latest version of the Tafferpatcher. I think.
So, don't do anything until I hear from you. Got it.

baeuchlein on 30/8/2018 at 13:29

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Just looking at the website does not damage Thief 2, of course.

However, I dimly remember that the original method of installing T2X was to download an installer from the website, and then start the installer. It would then copy some of Thief 2's files to another folder, or maybe change some of Thief 2's game files. Depending on what the installer does, and depending on the folder where the player chooses to install T2X into, this could lead to an installation that would only play T2X, but not Thief 2 any more. I do not remember the exact details anymore, since it's about twelve years since I used that installation method for T2X.

On the other hand, you wrote that you can play both the version of Thief 2 which was not touched by Tafferpatcher, as well as the one which was changed with Tafferpatcher. That sounds good, and I think it will be comparatively easy to continue now. I would recommend beginning with step 3e ("In the Thief 2 folder, open the file cam_mod.ini [...]") in my long list in the posting above. That should lead to success. If anything does not work then (or if you already tried that and something did not work), please post again.



If you are referring to my writings about Darkloader, NewDarkloader and FMSel - that was rather directed at others here in the thread. They were discussing whether it is better to use the old Darkloader to play fan missions, or rather the newer FM-Selector ("FMSel") which comes with NewDark.



It does make sense now. But if you want to deal with the Cragscleft zombies, I think you would be better off not heeding my former advice - if they start to rip pieces out of Garrett, don't wait for my replies until you do something!:ebil:



And now for something completely different.:p



Steam itself is not the problem in this case. As skacky already mentioned, it is generally preferrable to install games in other folders than Windows' "Program Files" or "Program Files (x86)" folders. This is because newer versions of Windows tend to restrict access to files stored in Windows' folders. Windows may not even give install programs or installed games full access to their own sub-folders in "Program Files".

So if a game wants to save changes to its configuration into a file, Windows may prevent it from doing so. Older games are more likely to fall for that trap, since older Windows versions did not restrict access that much, and old games (and other programs) therefore do not even "know" that a newer version of Windows may not let them do what they want to do in their own folder. They may not even give the user a useful error message, since they were not programmed to handle cases where the operating system does not allow them to write to their own files. The user may then see just a "Write Error!" message, and fear that his hard disc is defective, when in fact it's really an "Access denied!" case.

One may, however, create a "Program files" folder on an other drive than where Windows is installed, and use that for installing games. In that case, Windows usually says to itself, "well, that's not a folder I created, so I don't care what other programs do in there." It works for me - my Windows 7 is on the C: drive and sometimes gives trouble when something is installed in "C:\Program Files", but it doesn't care much about anything in "D:\Program Files", which I created myself on the D: drive.

Steam, however, may also interfere with changes in a game folder if that game was installed via Steam. I do not have Steam myself, but I read about serious trouble some players ran into when they attempted to apply a "mod" to an old role-playing game. Some were able to get around Steam's firm grip on the game's folder, others were not, and therefore had to play an un-modded version of that game.

Tobey on 30/8/2018 at 15:36

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Ah! Help, technical stuff! I'll try that later today.

voodoo47 on 31/8/2018 at 21:02

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yes, restart the level.