[NEW UPDATE] Thief Buddy (v2.0) Quicksave Utility [upd. 17 Feb 2023] - by VoiceActor
Twist on 2/2/2023 at 22:15
One small suggestion: How difficult would it be to implement a dark mode, similar to what Fen implemented for AngelLoader?
AngelLoader's dark theme nicely avoids the disruption of quitting or alt-tabbing out of Thief's darkness to a bright or clashing screen.
Thief Buddy's current colors and their brightness isn't especially bad or harsh, so it's not absolutely necessary.
But since it alt-tabbing between Thief Buddy and Thief is a significant part of Thief Buddy's function, having a color theme and brightness that more smoothly blends with Thief could improve immersion.
Just a suggestion. :)
VoiceActor on 2/2/2023 at 22:22
Quote Posted by Twist
One small suggestion: How difficult would it be to implement a dark mode, similar to what Fen implemented for AngelLoader?
AngelLoader's dark theme nicely avoids the disruption of quitting or alt-tabbing out of Thief's darkness to a bright or clashing screen.
Thief Buddy's current colors and their brightness isn't especially bad or harsh, so it's not absolutely necessary.
But since it alt-tabbing between Thief Buddy and Thief is a significant part of Thief Buddy's function, having a color theme and brightness that more smoothly blends with Thief could improve immersion.
Just a suggestion. :)
Yeah I like that :) - for V1.3 though ;)
Thanks
VA
Hit Deity on 2/2/2023 at 23:35
I like the 10 saves idea, so I can set it to auto-save every 30 seconds, and that would give me approximately 5 mins of backups... I vote for 10!
Dahenjo on 3/2/2023 at 01:42
Quote Posted by VoiceActor
The next features (for v1.3) will be started around April - due to other stuff I'm doing at the moment.
I'll be working on the following areas - the first of which is your suggestion:
Thanks for the coming features list & I figured my request was a common one. They'll all be nice when you can get to it but the AL integration was the main benefit for me.
For now I'm just manually deleting all but the first 3 or 4 every so often. I normally QS a lot but it was always the same file overwritten, so they do pile up to the half GB range pretty quickly. I might QS a couple times within a minute or two that I might need to go further back to bypass, so I'm thinking around 4 would be a safe amount but others may want more.
I've also switched between FMs, both TG & T2 with no problems, TB just changes the FM path accordingly with no input from me & I just use AL as I always have.
This is a wonderful addition to our Thief playing and I'll be looking forward to future versions.
Plibb on 3/2/2023 at 11:05
This has already saved me a couple times from my tendency to somehow get stuck between furniture pieces or quicksave at literally the worst time imaginable, thanks for this! +1 on the limited save idea, saving each and every one of my quicksaves seems a tad unnecessary but having a rolling list of my 5 most recent quicksaves would be perfect.
Twist on 3/2/2023 at 22:57
I seem to have come across a minor bug. Sometimes the screenshots work, but sometimes TB just records black/blank screens. I'm having a hard time replicating the issue; I haven't found a pattern as to why they sometimes work and other times don't work. Is there a log I can check somewhere?
The saves work fine; if I click on the thumbnail or screenshot and hit restore or I enlarge the blank thumbnail and double-click the black/blank image, it still restores the quick save just fine. It just seems something, somewhere is blocking the screenshot capability... but only sometimes.
I'll have a little more time tomorrow to troubleshoot and try some things. For example, I typically use Nvidia's Shadowplay for recording clips or screenshots. Sometimes that conflicts with things. Let me know if you have any other ideas.
Edit: I should add that this is happening in both Thief Gold and Thief II.
takeiteasy on 4/2/2023 at 08:58
I thought Thief Buddy was a multiplayer feature for some reason and thought it would cause issues like (
https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=144417&p=2435521&viewfull=1#post2435521) this, but this sounds amazing. One of the best things about TDM is the extra quicksave slots.
Quote Posted by Twist
I seem to have come across a minor bug. Sometimes the screenshots work, but sometimes TB just records black/blank screens. I'm having a hard time replicating the issue; I haven't found a pattern as to why they sometimes work and other times don't work. Is there a log I can check somewhere?
The saves work fine; if I click on the thumbnail or screenshot and hit restore or I enlarge the blank thumbnail and double-click the black/blank image, it still restores the quick save just fine. It just seems something, somewhere is blocking the screenshot capability... but only
sometimes.
I'll have a little more time tomorrow to troubleshoot and try some things. For example, I typically use Nvidia's Shadowplay for recording clips or screenshots. Sometimes that conflicts with things. Let me know if you have any other ideas.
Edit: I should add that this is happening in both Thief Gold and Thief II.
I've actually never managed to get the ingame screenshot thing to recognize any keystroke mapped to it in config files. Some screen recorders block the dx overlay which can either hook the game properly or have a blank screen. Do you use Steam, and if so, do those screenshots work? What about the built-in Windows 10+ game DVR (windows key+G)?
VoiceActor on 4/2/2023 at 11:34
Quote Posted by Twist
I seem to have come across a minor bug. Sometimes the screenshots work, but sometimes TB just records black/blank screens. I'm having a hard time replicating the issue; I haven't found a pattern as to why they sometimes work and other times don't work. Is there a log I can check somewhere?
The saves work fine; if I click on the thumbnail or screenshot and hit restore or I enlarge the blank thumbnail and double-click the black/blank image, it still restores the quick save just fine. It just seems something, somewhere is blocking the screenshot capability... but only
sometimes.
I'll have a little more time tomorrow to troubleshoot and try some things. For example, I typically use Nvidia's Shadowplay for recording clips or screenshots. Sometimes that conflicts with things. Let me know if you have any other ideas.
Edit: I should add that this is happening in both Thief Gold and Thief II.
Hi Twist,
Not sure why you're getting blank screenshots?? The screengrabber function is very standard, non complex code and used in many apps, so this may well be to do with certain settings you're using - if only we knew what of course! Logswise, you may want to check your own gfx driver logs or eventvwr because screengrabs are not logged in TB, sorry. Do you still get the timestamp across the top of one of these blank grabs?
Will play with it in debug and see if I can replicate it. It's been perfect across so many machine tests so (at the moment at least) it feels local to your settings somehwere.
Best regs
VA
Hit Deity on 4/2/2023 at 16:46
Quote Posted by takeiteasy
I've actually never managed to get the ingame screenshot thing to recognize any keystroke mapped to it in config files. Some screen recorders block the dx overlay which can either hook the game properly or have a blank screen. Do you use Steam, and if so, do those screenshots work? What about the built-in Windows 10+ game DVR (windows key+G)?
When I ran the game through Steam, the usual Steam hotkey (I use F12) works fine. But, since I play with an install separate from Steam, so it doesn't muck up any of my settings, I use the PrintScrn key instead. It's a keybinding in the game's options, and that's what is set by default I'm thinking.. but you can customize it.
Hit Deity on 4/2/2023 at 19:10
Just something to be aware of while using Thief Buddy. If you're like me, you like to Alt-Tab out of the game sometime to post something on the internet. Well, with Thief Buddy running in the background, it's going to send that QuickSave command to whatever you happen to be working in as well. For me, it was making the History tab of Firefox open up every 3 minutes on queue.. and it was driving me crazy. It soon dawned on me that it was Thief Buddy sending my QuickSave keybinding for Thief Gold (Alt-S) and that's the quick key combo to open Firefox's History tab.
Oh, and another observation: any keypress during a reading session (when you have a book or map or any other text open in the game) closes that readable. So, if it's a particularly long one, and you're using a short QuickSave cycle, your book is going to close every time ThiefBuddy sends a signal to save (plus, your Save doesn't get saved.. which is okay, really, because you don't need saves during that time.. but it's something to be aware of it just did one and then you're expecting it to save and doesn't.. well, minor issue).
Just so you know! :)
