ddfix and Thief 2 frame rate

cavador_8 on 7/10/2010 at 13:36

Am I the only person who has ever experienced this problem? Using the ddfix (1.4.5) in Thief 2, everytime I get close to burning torches, sometimes burning fires in fireplaces, and sometimes a series of wall lights like in Rose Cottage I get a bad choppy frame rate. If I take water arrows and shoot out the burning torches then the frame rate immediately goes back to normal. I haven't seen anyone else who has experienced this issue besides me.

It' not my computer because I just bought a new computer with a GTX460 card, 4 GB ram, and an Intel i5 quad core processor and it still does the same thing in fan missions when I approach burning torches. Is there a way to fix this issue?

jermi on 7/10/2010 at 16:45

Only FMs or also OMs? Do the fires look normal?

Try (http://jermi.dyndns.org/~jermi/stuff/Thief/ddfix_latest.zip) the latest version of ddfix. (Probably doesn't help, but you never know.)

cavador_8 on 7/10/2010 at 18:05

Pretty much the only thing I play is FMs. I haven't played the original levels in a while. But I'm sure it will happen with those too. Yeah, the fires look normal. It's just that when I get close to lit torches the frame rate is affected. I shoot them out and the frame rate returns to normal. I tried the 1.5.5 version of ddfix and I couldn't get that one to even load up Thief 2. I am using XP-32. Do you have the FM called Rose Cottage? Try going up to the second level of that house then going into the second hallway after opening one of the doors. It's a hallway with several nice looking lamp lights on the wall. My framerate takes a nose dive there. And, I can't shoot those out with water arrows to get the frame rate back to normal there either.

Hiatus on 30/10/2010 at 08:00

AFAIR I remember it's a known issue with DX10 and up graphics chips from both ATI and Nvidia, especially on WinXP (on Win7 it's supposedly better) - fps goes way down when rendering effects like fire, smoke, dripping water etc (in general, particle and particle-like effects) - reason: broken drivers and/or missing some hardware caps in hardware for these effects in old DX versions (they are probably using some kind of emulation - hence fps goes down to (near) unplayable levels like <10-15 fps etc).

Solution: not use WinXP with new DX10+ chips - drivers for XP are broken most likely (don't support needed feature(s) to render these effects quickly in hardware).

cavador_8 on 12/1/2011 at 20:05

I would like to know if anyone running Thief 2 on Vista or Windows 7 has any frame rate issues at all when you approach some torches, candles that put off a lot of light, or even fire places in the fan missions.