Loonie on 3/2/2012 at 02:53
Quote Posted by edudrekib
Well it seems it is, because it looks like they have been using data that was created for free for use by this community - see the post above.
We make stuff for the community and then some company has the bloody cheek to take freeware, include in thier 'product" and charge for it, not only is it cheeky but its illegal.
I must disagree. All fine and well if that concern had been verified at the time, but it hadn't been. You just told them their price sucked and threatened them over a hypothetical. Especially as your hypothetical didn't really turn out to be the case, to wit, the use of "opensource/freeware community patches". Also you now seem to be berating them for
not including the aforementioned patches.
COK's soundtrack remix is another issue, and he most certainly should be credited accordingly. I'm glad GOG have brought a speedy resolution to this issue.
bikerdude on 3/2/2012 at 08:37
Quote Posted by Loonie
I must disagree, COK's soundtrack remix is another issue,
Your a bit behind here, Thiev came over from GoG to apologies for the issue surrounding CoK's work and I stand by my stance over the price.
New Horizon on 3/2/2012 at 14:32
Quote Posted by edudrekib
Your a bit behind here, Thiev came over from GoG to apologies for the issue surrounding CoK's work and I stand by my stance over the price.
I too agree that the price is far too much...especially considering that price was set by Square Enix / Eidos. They're asking GOG to charge 10 dollars for the game, which can be bought in physical form for the same price with the other two games in the series.
To add insult to injury, Square Enix / Eidos have the source code in their possession, source code members of the Thief community found for them, and yet they release the game unpatched, with no fixes for modern hardware. It's absolutely ridiculous. If they're not going to compile a fixed exe, then they should be charging no more than 3 to 5 dollars for this release.
Al_B on 3/2/2012 at 15:20
Quote Posted by New Horizon
...they release the game unpatched, with no fixes for modern hardware.
My understanding is that although they haven't included widescreen support that they have patched and released the game with fixes that greatly improve matters on modern hardware. I've not tried it myself, however, but that's going on posts made both on the GOG forums and by people here. They've also updated the installer since release to try to fix problems that people had with the videos.
I'm not arguing that the price isn't a little on the high side but I'm sure that some people would happily pay a few dollars extra to have a version that is easier to get up and running.
Loonie on 3/2/2012 at 16:01
Quote Posted by edudrekib
Your a bit behind here, Thiev came over from GoG to apologies for the issue surrounding CoK's work and I stand by my stance over the price.
...Hence the ending of my post; "I'm glad GOG have brought a speedy resolution to this issue". :p
Edit: Not that I think your issue with the price is necessarily without merit, but there are nicer ways to say it that might be more likely to prompt some reflection on their part. It'll be part of some occasional special deal at some point. Personally, I'm just glad it has a new lease of life and a chance to reach a new audience. For me, the Thief series is the pinnacle of PC gaming, and GOG have a system of online game distribution that I find most agreeable.
New Horizon on 3/2/2012 at 17:01
Quote Posted by Al_B
My understanding is that although they haven't included widescreen support that they have patched and released the game with fixes that greatly improve matters on modern hardware. I've not tried it myself, however, but that's going on posts made both on the GOG forums and by people here. They've also updated the installer since release to try to fix problems that people had with the videos.
The fixes they included are all freely available 'community fixes'. They exe has not been recompiled with proper fixes.
Quote:
I'm not arguing that the price isn't a little on the high side but I'm sure that some people would happily pay a few dollars extra to have a version that is easier to get up and running.
All they've done is automated some of the community discovered fixes. There are already several community tools that automate this.
I'm glad they've included those fixes, but the lack of initiative on Eidos part to even patch the game properly is pretty lazy considering the footwork this community did to find the source code. They can't even be bothered to do something productive with it.
Al_B on 3/2/2012 at 20:24
Quote Posted by New Horizon
The fixes they included are all freely available 'community fixes'. They exe has not been recompiled with proper fixes.
Has that been confirmed? Without wanting to press the point, you said that they haven't included any fixes. Now you're saying they've included fixes but they're ones that the community have provided previously. Do we know for sure that they're using those and haven't included fixes in a recompiled executable?
I'm not saying that they haven't used fixes available elsewhere but I've not seen evidence that they haven't applied their own fixes that might achieve the same purpose.
voodoo47 on 3/2/2012 at 20:47
they added the gog installer, this (obviously) fixes installer issues, they made sure the exe is launched on one core (that took care of the freezeing issues), and they (hex?)edited the exe to work around the Direct3d device driver does not accurately report texture memory usage error. plus they included a batch file that will re-register the codec.
that's all.
Al_B on 3/2/2012 at 21:19
Thanks for the clarification, voodoo - also good to see your work putting together the additional patches together has been stickied on their forums.
I'm in two minds about whether they should have done more. It sounds like they've removed the main barriers to playing the game as it was originally released without adding extra features. It would be nice if they'd added widescreen support but as your thread shows that's available already if people want to use it.
Brian The Dog on 3/2/2012 at 22:32
I had a look inside the thief.exe to how they'd got round the ddraw.dll issues. The calls to ddraw are still present, but there is a strange "goggame.dll" in the folder which has no viewable call in the exe.
The have definitely fixed both the multi-core cpu issue and the ddraw issue though.
Edit - GOG don't like bundling "extras" to the games that are non-official, other than those needed to just play it. The best example is Duke Nukem 3D, which was released in the original form (playable through Dosbox). I think most people used the high-resolution pack, and GOG did provide a stickied link to that in their forums, but they still only want to include "official" stuff where possible. I can understand if people wanted more features adding, but GOG don't do it for any of their games, not just Thief.
Edit2 - the "goggame.dll" seems to be not there in their latest release (the one that fixed the movies not registering), maybe it was superfluous and was removed from the installation.
