Thief II is WAY too dark. - by lpowell
lpowell on 6/9/2016 at 18:12
I've been having trouble with a lot of fan missions with dark night-time or underground areas, mostly because in deep shadows it is way too dark to see anything. I know the Thief games are supposed to be dark but this is bad-first-person-horror-game-on-Steam levels of darkness. Raising gamma or my computer's brightness doesn't help at all. I suspected something was up so I looked up a Youtube video of the FM I'm playing (Ominous Bequest Gold) and sure enough: the visibility was way improved.
I have the game Tafferpatched and all, I'm just wondering if there's something else I need to get it working 100%. I had the same issue with Unreal Tournament single-player map packs, and it turned out I had to install an extra bit to update the graphics renderer (or whatever) past OpenGL to something more modern.
Thanks.
lpowell on 6/9/2016 at 19:05
Found some tips by searching.
1. Remove the semicolon in front of d3d_disp_no_rgb10_buf in cam_ext.cfg. Gamma slider still doesn't work.
2. Edit gamma line in cam.cfg. Tried a bunch of different values but it's still unplayably dark in certain areas.
I'd post screenshots but Fraps renders them nearly fullbright even when it doesn't appear that way in-game.
And before anyone asks, no, I don't have integrated graphics. NVIDIA card.
lpowell on 18/9/2016 at 02:55
Alright, I did find a solution to my problem, but it's pretty sub-optimal. Basically, I've found that gamma settings work ONLY when I have the game set to the same resolution as my screen. This is mainly an issue because it results in poor framerates at times. I'm playing The Black Frog now, and there are regular (though tolerable) dips. I can't imagine what it would be like playing a really huge, open map like Breaking the Stone or something.
Anyone else have the issue of gamma functionality being tied to screen resolution?
AluminumHaste on 18/9/2016 at 19:47
Also try uncommenting
;d3d_disp_sw_cc
in cam_ext.cfg.
lpowell on 20/9/2016 at 04:39
So that's odd--I tried that before but it didn't seem to have any effect, so I re-commented it. I tried again just now and lowered the resolution and... gamma's fine. How weird.
Computers are the worst. :P
Thanks!
