Game Too Dark - TTLG Forums

Kindo on 28/2/2006 at 11:44

Quote Posted by Domarius

Well if your monitor itself is too dark, no changing of any software or video card settings is going to give you rich colours or avoid the washed out colour banding you'd be seeing by boosting the brightness this way.

However, being an ex-pc technician, I have a few tricks up my sleeve.

As monitors get old, they get fuzzy, and sometimes dark.

If you unscrew the casing of the monitor, somewhere you should find 2 dials that can be adjusted with a phillips head screwdriver.

One is for focus, the other is for brightness. Adjust to suit. They can usually be found near either of the back lower corners of the monitor.

WARNING: Please pay attention to the fucking voltage warnings on the inside of the monitor casing, for christ's sake. They aren't joking. You want to NEVER touch the metal wirey stuff surrounding the actual glass of the monitor just behind the casing at the front of the monitor. The voltage stored inside those is much higher than what goes in since it stores it slowly over time, and there is plenty of electricity stored up in it to kill you, many times over. It's even dangerous after you've pulled the plug because of the slow discharge.

Stay the hell away from the wirey stuff and you should be fine. :thumb:

Hrm... yes. It's not like I'd want to risk my life just to fix this problem. I'm sure there are security precaution I can take, but it's still not something I'd like to dive into. Thanks for the illustrative warning. Heh...

Quote Posted by jtbalogh

You said it was a crummy monitor and you are running it at such a high 1280x1024 ? Time to get a new montor ... Meanwhile, reduce the resolution so the monitor does not have to work so hard to increase brightness. If your menus at 640x480 are way too bright then run the game at 640x480 too to test it.

Well, it's crummy because it's been around for many years. I'm sure it was a quality piece of equipment back in the days, and no problem at all displaying a resolution like the one I use, but yeah, I see your point; obviously it's not making matters any better when the monitor's on its last legs, and I still use the resolution I'm using.

Tried running the game at 640x480, but it makes no difference. That's why I find this weird. Sure, it's most likely the monitor causing problems, but it's just so odd that I can adjust brightness and contrast *everywhere* but not in-game. Desktop, game menus and everything is affected, but not when you load the actual game. Isn't that strange?

Well, anyway... thanks for all the replies. No point in messing around with this any further, I'll look into ways of getting a new monitor instead. About time. Heh.

Thanks again.

jtbalogh on 28/2/2006 at 16:09

That is strange. Is the same problem with Thief 1, 2 and 3 ? For now, I will assume you would like to use TG (since you mentioned thief.exe).

Have you seen this link, (http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=103461)

Quote Posted by 242, On 26th Jan 2006

Edit "gamma 0.xxxxxxxx" line in the cam.cfg file manually. The brightness slider in the game options allows to set it to 0.5 as the brightest value. But manually you can set it even brighter, try 0.4, 0.3, etc. The lesser, the brighter.

or, (http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=77665)

Kindo on 1/3/2006 at 00:40

Quote Posted by jtbalogh

Thanks, but nothing seems to work. If I change the gamma in the cam.cfg file, it just becomes even more washed out. Bah... oh well... (goes to find a new monitor).

KingAl on 1/3/2006 at 06:47

Quote Posted by Domarius

The voltage stored inside those is much higher than what goes in since it stores it slowly over time, and there is plenty of electricity stored up in it to kill you, many times over. It's even dangerous after you've pulled the plug because of the slow discharge.

Stay the hell away from the wirey stuff and you should be fine. :thumb:

Hooray for capacitors!

Domarius on 1/3/2006 at 13:16

Quote Posted by Kindo

Desktop, game menus and everything is affected, but not when you load the actual game. Isn't that strange?

Oh. I missed that before if you mentioned it. That's a horse of a different colour.

If you can physically see the monitor acheiving the brightness it should, then its reasonable to conclude there's nothing physically wrong with the monitor, just the way the game is using it.

Wait, did you say ALL games are too dark? I remember a fix for something ... I think when I updated my drivers, dont know wether it was nVidia drivers or DirectX drivers... but some gamma setting got changed and it was a known issue that I found on the net, and the solution was to go to some obscure menu and adjust the gamma. This error only affected movie playback. Maybe you've got a similar problem? :/

Quote Posted by KingAl

Hooray for capacitors!

Yes, they're even more fun when you reverse-charge them :D

Kindo on 1/3/2006 at 18:42

Quote Posted by Domarius

Wait, did you say ALL games are too dark? I remember a fix for something ... I think when I updated my drivers, dont know wether it was nVidia drivers or DirectX drivers... but some gamma setting got changed and it was a known issue that I found on the net, and the solution was to go to some obscure menu and adjust the gamma. This error only affected movie playback. Maybe you've got a similar problem? :/

Indeed. This is some kind of all-encompassing problem I have, whether it is when I'm playing games, or watching a video clip. So yes, all games are darker than they should be. Luckily, some games (such as World of Warcraft) aren't as light-sensitive as Thief is, and it's no problem adjusting the gamma from the in-game options, without washing the colours out too much.

The main annoyance lay in games like Thief, and viewing video files of certain types (such as .avi) which cannot have their brightness changed from within Windows Media Player (or any other such program, for that matter). It's just too dark, and nothing, no matter what program I use to change the settings, affect the things I actually need the adjustment for. I change the levels, and I immediately notice the difference on the desktop and what not, but once the actual game/video is playing, it's like nothing at all has changed. It's just weird that it doesn't seem to respond whatsoever. :erg:

I haven't seen or heard anything about this being a known issue, anywhere, and I am quite certain I've been inside every thinkable setting file/program that will let me adjust brightness. (ATI Radeon user, by the way.)

Domarius on 2/3/2006 at 04:04

Well have you tried looking for some Direct3D gamma settings? You probably have.

I'm fairly certain this is some sort of software thing, based on what you told me.

Hm I can't find info on where to set Direct3D gamma settings.

I did find this, it says you can set the gamma seperately for Desktop or Full Screen 3D
(http://www.tweakguides.com/ATICAT_8.html)
You have to search for "gamma" on that page. This one you may have already tried, it's an ATi tweaker.

Kindo on 2/3/2006 at 19:13

Quote Posted by Domarius

Ah, yes, I've actually tried that exact tweaker. I had a sense of "a-ha!" when I found it, thinking it would solve all my ketchup problems, but alas, no change. Even weirder, huh - that it doesn't seem to "notice" a Full-screen 3D application is running, so it can adjust the settings accordingly?