Yandros on 6/3/2018 at 20:18
Quote Posted by Luthien
the only resolution that does not take x seconds to switch between the map and back to the game is 640x480
Quote Posted by Luthien
if I wanted to play a different game, I'd play a different game: I'm not interested in game mechanics changing mods like NewDark;
These two statements make it obvious to most everyone else here that you don't understand what NewDark is or what its benefits are. It's one thing to want to play Thief with purely vanilla assets, but quite another to play in OldDark with DDFix because you don't understand NewDark. And then come here to ask for help with an issue you're having, but then to lash out at everyone trying to help you with pompous derision is, to most of us, inexcusably ridiculous.
Quote Posted by Luthien
Please spare me further advice a la "the original games are crap, if you don't use xyz-mod you're an idiot". At what point in time did ttlg become such a hostile and un-helpful place? (Rethorical question, no nswer required.)
No one said the original games are crap or that you're an idiot, only that if you refuse to take advantage of the updated engine then you're more or less rolling the dice and not many people will be able to help you here. Most everyone here who took the time to post was trying to help you. The only hostile and unhelpful person in this thread is you.
baeuchlein on 6/3/2018 at 22:33
The screenshot shows something that doesn't look like a simple gamma correction issue. There are gaps in the health bar, but they should not be there. I would suspect that ddfix and either the graphics card or its drivers do not work well together in this case, but I don't know why.
Furthermore, I do not know about any version of ddfix which would allow the player to select a 640x480 resolution successfully. If I trick the ddfix version I just tried into 640x480, it's giving me all weird colors and then crashes after just a few seconds. The ddfix version in ddfix.ini in my case is 1.3.11b. I am using the Intel HD Graphics 3000 embedded into my laptop CPU to display graphics. This does work in my case, as long as I'm not trying to force it into 640x480 or lower resolutions. However, I do not use ddfix under normal circumstances because I can either play Thief 2 v1.1.8 even without ddfix, or with NewDark. Therefore, I'm not very experienced when it comes to ddfix.
Luthien, do you know what version of ddfix you're using? Do you know whether there's a hint in ddfix.ini saying that you should select 800x600 resolution or higher? (If so, then please try it at least once, and tell us wheter it helped or not.) Do you know what graphics card you use? And which version of Windows? I can't promise that anyone can help you even if you can tell us all this, but the chances would rise. At the moment, I have no idea what's going wrong or why exactly. Or why it only seems to affect "The Cure".
On a side note, you are right in saying that switching from game mode to the map (or readables like scrolls, for example) can take a lot of time if one uses the old Thief 2 engine at a different resolution than 640x480. This is because the resolution of the map and readable displays are fixed at 640x480 in the old engine, leading to video mode changes wheneve one switches from gane mode to maps or readables and back again. However, NewDark would change that; it usually keeps the resolution fixed. Additionally, there usually is not much of a change between "Old Dark" (the engine of the original games) and NewDark (the game engine updated for modern computers and modern graphincs cards and such). So maybe you would not have these two problems if you were using NewDark in the future.
However, in case of T2X, there seems to be a change in NewDark that was significant, for three versions of T2X for NewDark have been made. One of them, made by Ricebug, contains only changes to make the T2X missions run in NewDark as well. Thus, switching to NewDark in this case would mean that you better search for such a version of T2X as well, and then you would have to do a bit of trickery to get to "The Cure" without re-playing the whole campaign up to that point. I can understand that you do not wish to go that way, but would still recommend giving NewDark a try if things go wrong. I am using two installations of Thief 2 on my machine; an "Old Dark" installation for a few old missions I started in the old days before NewDark, and which I would like to finish with "Old Dark" then, and also a NewDark installation (made with TafferPatcher, by the way) for anything new.
I have been very skeptical with NewDark when it came out, and took a year or more until I tried it for the first time, but I can see its benefits on newer computers clearly. At least if everything else fails, you should try NewDark.
And no, I'm not getting paid for recommending NewDark. But I wouldn't mind if anyone would give me money, so anybody reading this may feel free to donate.:cheeky: (Just joking, of course.)
