Lockpicker on 17/4/2013 at 16:48
Hi All. I have Thief 2 installed (via Steam) and today I installed Tafferpatcher 2.10 beta.
My question is, how do I really max out the visual settings in Thief 2 and FM's. I've read through many threads on these fine forums, but it seems like my files don't match up.
I really want to see Thief 2 with Bloom, and enhanced textures, etc. Can someone point me in the right direction on how / what to edit.
Thank you taffers!
retractingblinds on 17/4/2013 at 17:32
In your Thief 2 install directory, find the file cam_ext.cfg. Assuming you used the latest taffer patcher, that should exist in there. Open it with notepad or your text editor of choice and ctrl+F to search for the word "bloom" (without quotes). set it so it reads as follows:
; enable postprocessing (bloom)
postprocess 1
from there, you should see a number of bloom settings following postprocess 1. You need to remove the semi-colon before each one to make it so the engine reads it and renders the effects, otherwise it ignores them because they are written as a comment when a semicolon is written before the command. There's a number of settings to mess around with to tweak bloom so it doesn't look like Syndicate, and looks more tasteful. Just play with whatever looks nice to you until you get it just right. The settings are bloomscale, bloom_range, bloom_saturation, and bloom_threshold. They all modify different factors of bloom.
After you've played with bloom, try enabling distortion effects! These look really neat. Right below the section dedicated to bloom, you should find a line that is written as:
d3d_disp_enable_distortionfx
All the settings in cam_ext have descriptions written, look them over and see what sounds cool to you. Don't forget to tweak it to get it ideal for your preferences, and of course, save after editing changes.
Wish I could help with textures, but I still haven't got my head wrapped around how to use them just yet. I'm awfully new to the dark engine. Still, look around here, there's plenty of cool texture projects. I quite like Bob's quasi-canon texture pack. Last time I installed it, I broke a number of textures in game. Oh, and I'm not sure if this will work with the steam version, but you're going to want to move the games install to a directory with a really short path name. Something that's like, less than 72 characters I think? I have mine in my DOS games folder, D:/GAMES/THIEF(and THIEF2). Something about the dark engine hating long path names or whatever. Either way, do that, save yourself the trouble from technicalities that brings about.
Domarius on 28/4/2013 at 10:06
Just to update this - I tried your instructions, and thought it wasn't working - it's because the default settings are so subtle as to not even make a difference. At least on my hardware. On a hunch I upped some values, et voila.
Once I read about the various bloom variables and understood them, I was able to construct something that looks nice - a bit "Days of our Lives" soft focus, but it covers up the harsh low-poly corners of the old geometry in my opinion :) Low intensity, large "pixel inclusion" (which is a low value). bloomscale 2, bloom_threshold 0.1
Mihai85 on 2/7/2013 at 12:12
I'm playing with the bloom settings in cam_ext.cfg to find the ones that I like. About the bloom intensity factor (bloom scale) and bloom range, their values are from 0 to 255 ?
The default value for bloom scale is 5; and 2 for bloom range. This is why I'm a little confused. I thought that a default value should be somewhere at middle.
Thank you !
bassoferrol on 2/7/2013 at 17:38
I'm using
; bloom intensity factor, default is 5
bloomscale 0.1
and I like it, yes I do.
