Thief 3 lockpicking bug: Any fixes?

rms on 8/9/2009 at 15:32

Hello! Just reinstalled Thief 3 with the 1.1 patch (hoping to finally finish it this time :) ) and am having problems with lockpicking certain doors (in particular the room doors along the hall in Garrett's apartment building), and also climbing ladders (the ladder in the very first post-training mission, for instance).

On 'using' the door to begin lockpicking, onscreen it appears the game is attempting to adjust the player's viewpoint and enter lockpicking mode, but stutters slowly, pauses, then 'gives up' and releases back into normal view mode. Same thing with attempts at ladder climbing. Most locks are pickable, though often with significant pauses before lockpicking mode is entered.

This is on a WinXPsp3 2GB dualcore opteron system & radeon 4870. I've tried using a 'cpu affinity' program (Launch-n-set) to force the game onto one core, thinking that was the problem, with no joy.

Any help is much appreciated!! BTW, any reports of Thief games not working under Windows7? I'm worried about this for the future.

rms

rms on 8/9/2009 at 16:00

Woops! should have googled first, sorry! Turning on vsync fixed it, yay. However now there's an annoying lack of animation smoothness if I turn sharply. My CRT monitor is set to 85hz refresh rate, is there a game setting to improve this, thanks !

rms

mudi on 8/9/2009 at 16:06

Maybe try turning the refresh rate down for Thief. It's dark enough it shouldn't be very noticable even as low as 60hz, but see what the lowest comfortable refresh rate is. At least see if that makes a difference in smoothness....

Marmbo on 20/1/2014 at 17:01

If you are running 120 hz monitor you can also go into the Nvidia control panel for the game and set the VSYNC to be adaptive (Half Refresh Rate) so the game will run at 60hz even though the monitor is still doing 120. With that vsync turned on at half-refresh rate you can play Thief 3 just fine without having to change the refresh rate of the monitor to 60 each time you want to play.

Frozenwolf150 on 4/3/2014 at 18:19

Hi all,

I have unfortunately run into the same problem, the infamous Thief 3 lockpicking bug. The view attempts to shift into place, and both inventory scrolls display "nothing" but Garrett's hands never appear. After a second or two, the game gives up and returns to normal view mode, much as the OP described. Because of this, I can't even get past the game's tutorial. I Googled possible solutions and came across this thread in particular. I have already tried every suggestion posted, including enabling Vsynch, both in the game and from my graphics card's settings for t3.exe and t3main.exe, and fiddling with my monitor's refresh rate. Nothing seems to work.

Here are my system specs:

GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 550 Ti.
CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-4670K CPU @ 3.40 GHz.
Memory: 8.00 GB RAM (7.94 GB usable)
Resolution: 1344 x 840, 59 Hz (The only way I could run the game was in windowed mode.)
Driver version: 334.89
OS: Microsoft Windows 8 Pro

Please let me know what I'm doing wrong, as I would really like to get back into this game. Thanks.

snobel on 4/3/2014 at 21:42

The latest version of my (http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=138607&p=2239245&viewfull=1#post2239245) Thief 3 patch has frame rate limiting, in order to fix this issue.

This version is rather new, so if you try it out I'd appreciate some feedback. :)

Frozenwolf150 on 5/3/2014 at 03:26

Quote Posted by snobel

Thank you! The frame limiter did the trick. Garrett has hands now, and I can pick locks! I didn't even have to mess with my graphics card's file associations or my monitor's refresh rate. You've saved me an endless amount of frustration. I would highly recommend your patch to anyone who his having similar problems. I only wish there were some way to inform the moderators to have it linked from the Thief series troubleshooting guide in this section. Again, thanks. :thumb:

nickie on 5/3/2014 at 07:24

snobel's Sneaky Upgrade is linked in the Tech FAQ but not for this specific problem. I'd agree the FAQ could do with a bit more info on the patch, or a bit more prominence, so I'll add it to the very long 'FAQ/info threads updating' to-do list.

snobel on 5/3/2014 at 08:10

Quote Posted by Frozenwolf150

Thank you! The frame limiter did the trick.

Good to hear, thanks for the feedback. Btw. which version of the game do you have? And if it's the GOG version, do you know if the installer exe you downloaded had the version number 2.0.0.6?

Quote:

I would highly recommend your patch to anyone who his having similar problems.

If you spend time on other forums (GOG, Steam etc), I'd really appreciate it if you'd reply to people posting about similar issues. I don't have much time for 'advertising', unfortunately...