Lighting Newdark vs. Old dark - by howeird
howeird on 15/2/2020 at 15:04
Ever since I've installed the newdark patches I've had to adjust the gamma in the game to the highest level in order to see where i am going. Old dark i could leave gamma at or near default setting. Sometimes when there is a frob item that is placed under a light source i cannot see the item because the light source is the same frob brightness as the item to be picked up. Is there any way to adjust newdark to have the same lighting characteristics as old dark ? I've already tried every setting on my computer and monitor to fix the problem but nothing I've tried works.
Edit: Some areas lighting is too harsh, some areas are still too dark to see with gamma turned all the way up.
voodoo47 on 15/2/2020 at 16:38
if we are talking about gamma, I'm very sure that there has been no change, meaning a vanilla level running under oldDark vs the same level running under NewDark with the same amount of gamma will look identical (assuming same hw, and no broken functionality in the gpu driver/gamma slider).
if you are talking about lighting, yes, relighting an oldDark level into NewDark's 32bit lighting and keeping the overall brightness/darkness about the same is not trivial, but this only affects people who build/update missions.
howeird on 15/2/2020 at 17:12
All i know is there is a dramatic lighting difference between old dark patch 1.18 and the newdark patches on both my computers. I'm talking in game play. For some reason the lighting has drastically improved under 5.0 series kernels in Linux which is what i use to play Thief. My other computer is Windows 10 and the lighting is far worse than the Linux computer. My understanding is the lighting characteristics are set by the kernel in the OS. I have a dozen or so other games and none of those games have lighting issues - not on Windows 10 or Linux.
I see it at as lighting characteristics issue not necessarily a gamma issue.
voodoo47 on 15/2/2020 at 18:06
well, I can imagine getting oldDark to look properly under linux is probably not going to be easy. NewDark however, should be fine under normal circumstances.
I'll rephrase the question - does your lighting look improper/broken when running ND under linux? screenshots may be helpful, btw.
howeird on 15/2/2020 at 19:11
If i take in game screenshots in Linux they come out too dark too see just like i never turned the gamma up in the game. I never tried screenshots in Windows 10. The screenshots come out like the Youtube fan mission videos people post - way too dark to view.
voodoo47 on 15/2/2020 at 19:44
it should still be quite clear whether the lighting is rendered properly or not.
NewDark has its own screenshot functionality, hitting printscreen should drop a png into the /screenshots folder. works fine under windows, and I see no reason why it shouldn't under linux (from this point, I'll assume you don't really care about oldDark anymore).
howeird on 15/2/2020 at 20:41
The only thing i know is the lighting is perfect with the 1.18 patch but way too dark with 1.27 patch
voodoo47 on 15/2/2020 at 21:19
well, if it's just too dark, then adjusting the gamma should be all that's required, but reading the first post, I was under the impression something else was going on? are you sure it's not oldDark that has broken lighting? that would make much more sense.
one way or another, if the difference is as dramatic, it really should be noticeable on screenshots as well - try to provide those.
howeird on 15/2/2020 at 21:42
I looked on-line for the answer and found some old steam answers to the same question. Everyone said install the tafferpatch but it didn't work for some people. One guy said it monitor issue for.
But here is the interesting response a woman gamer had (i think from TTLG) 2013. She said if the patch doesn't work force the game into window mode by removing the semicolon in the cam_ext.cfg file in the game folder. She said, do that and to let her know after he forced it to window mode. Unfortunately the tafferpatch worked for him so she did give anymore information. Do you know why where she was going with this advise ? I put it into window mode going to see if its better. Not sure right now but i have turned down the gamma some. I have to play some missions to see if the lighting is better
Edit: I don't know who she is but she's got an impressive profile on Steam. (
https://steamcommunity.com/app/211740/discussions/0/864969481737465911/)
voodoo47 on 15/2/2020 at 22:05
forcing the game into windowed mode will disable gamma completely, as DX9 apps can only do gamma in fullscreen mode. so I doubt this will improve things, but hey, it's not like you have something to lose by trying - there is always a chance that whatever translation wine is doing is screwing up gamma completely, doing something like inverting the values, if that's the case, disabling it by forcing windowed actually could help.