IgnatzKolisch on 30/6/2009 at 17:00
Several years ago, I played Thief: Deadly Shadows on this very machine, so I know the hardware can handle it. I liked the game, though didn't think it was nearly as good as Thief 2: The Metal Age (one of the greatest games of all time IMO), so I decided to trot it out again.
I've done the same as usual: patched to 1.1, disable the second processor given by the dual-core AMD I have. The game opens, I can go into the training mission... but I can't save, or quicksave. It doesn't actually crash, meaning there are no logs or errors to check. It just freezes, and will play about 1 second of the music looping endlessly. The exact same thing happens when I try to leave the training mission at the end. I can run around inside the training mission all I want, but I can't leave it, or save. Occasionally, when trying to save, it will generate a save file, but if I try to Load one, it will always do the freeze/1-second-audio loop thing again.
The only way out of this frozen issue is to ALT-CTRL-DEL (the task manager won't ever be visible over the frozen game, but I can blindly do a "ALT-U, R, ENTER" to reboot the machine).
I've searched carefully on this and other web locations without result. I did find one post on this board that mentioned a frequent saving-freeze issue that was apparently common knowledge, but no matter what I try, I can't find this infamous issue discussed anywhere else.
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4800+
Radeon X1900 Series (Omega 3.8.252)
Microsoft Windows XP w/ Service Pack 3 (SP3 is only new thing!)
I use these slightly older video drivers because this was the very one that got Thief3 to work before. Using a newer one, it wouldn't work at all really.
Stath MIA on 30/6/2009 at 18:03
I remember having a similar issue, have you tried waiting it out? Sometimes it just took a ridiculously long time to load and seemed like it had frozen even though it was just lagging.
IgnatzKolisch on 30/6/2009 at 18:13
That's actually a good suggestion, and there was some other game where this did, indeed, work. I think it was The Temple of Elemental Evil on another computer where this would do the trick, after about 90 seconds or so. I was dead sure it was frozen, but it would eventually start working after all.
In any case, a full 15+ minutes wait won't pull it out for Thief3! I went and took a shower and came back and it was still frozen and repeating 1 second of sound.
mudi on 30/6/2009 at 18:18
My Thief 3 copy was doing this when I used the Resolution=-1 (or -2, or -3) hack to the options file that was supposed to make it use the monitor's native resolution, so I reverted that and am putting up with slightly-not widescreen thief :p If you did the options file edit, just revert it to a positive number or set the resolution in the game settings, fixed it for me, on area transition saving and loading.
Stath MIA on 30/6/2009 at 18:25
Ouch! That sucks. Anyway, other possibilities: it could be that your security is interfering, mine had automatically decided that all three games were Trojans and therefore blocked them. The best way to test this is to shut the internet and your security down and try to play through. If that doesn't work then try reinstalling it.
