Papy on 31/12/2007 at 08:02
I hope this question is not asked too often, but is there an option to play Thief 2 in window mode instead of fullscreen?
I'm asking because I just replaced my dying 21" CRT with a 22" LCD (226BW), and that shitty monitor (LCD are great for working, but they suck for gaming and movies) always stretch the 4:3 display to fit the whole screen. There is no option in the monitor menu to keep the aspect ratio and the catalyst option to center the display just doesn't work. Well, it works but only with 512x384, which is kind of... small. It also works for 1360x1024 and 1400x1050 but the game can't use those mode (I get a message saying "the requested screen mode cannot be set"). So my last hope is to play Thief in window mode...
Papy on 31/12/2007 at 12:39
Thanks!
Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to work for me. I do see the game in a window, except that I see only the left part of the game screen, which is stretched to fit the whole window. For example, in the main menu, I see up to the letter "N" in "New Game". The height is correct though. I tried to change the window size, but it just stretch the game screen more. It does the same thing both with the menu and the 3D view in the game. I also tried the "DDraw Emulate" option, but I then have a message that my video card is not compatible.
Oh, well... If I can't make it work (I'm not giving up yet), I guess I'll try with Wine.
The Brain on 31/12/2007 at 14:42
Strange. System Shock 2 does work in windowed mode. Thief and Thief 2 should work, too.
Windows version of Wine could work, but its binaries seems to be bit out of date.
Did you try my hook.ini settings in your hook.ini-file? What kind of video card do you have? What version your video card drivers are?
EDIT: Nope, Windows version of Wine doesn't work at all. It just launches game directly and won't do any DirectX emulation at all.
sNeaksieGarrett on 1/1/2008 at 00:58
Play around with the settings is all I can say. You downloaded NV's right?
Currently im having trouble with thief 1 working properly. Earlier I had it where windowed mode worked, but Hardware is forced to OFF. Don't know why. Now I can't get it to work well. I wish there was an easy explanation to what each of the settings do for that program.
[edit] The program isn't even allowing me to view the options screen. The game acts like it goes to the screen, and I can move the mouse around and hear text being highlighted, but I can't SEE the options screen.
Papy on 1/1/2008 at 10:45
The Brain : Yes, I did try your "hook.ini", but it did the same thing. I have an X800XL with Catalyst 7.11. I read the change log for 7.12 and as there was nothing interesting, I didn't install them. As for Wine, I have Ubuntu on an external drive (which, of course, I forgot at one of my client's place and won't be able to have until next monday) so it won't be too much of a problem to use, although I will admit I only had partial success at best with Wine before. I guess I could also try it with VMWare.
sNeaksieGarrett : It does the same thing for me with some screen (for example, the mission objectives screen). I tried about every options with Windower and none solved the problem (nor the partial stretched screen problem).
EvaUnit02 : I have an ATI card. The drivers have a "Use centered timing" option that should somewhat do the trick, but it doesn't work for all resolution. My best guess for the cause is that when the monitor reports it can support some resolution (like 1024x768 or 1280x1024), the ATI drivers wrongly interpret that info as if it was a native resolution and so do not try center the screen. Unfortunately, ATI denies it is a bug with their drivers, and say it's a problem with the monitor. Several people wrote to them and the answer was to change their monitors (yeah, right). To be honest, although for the past 10 years I had more problems with NVidia buggy drivers than with ATI (not counting linux drivers of course), this kind of bullshit really makes me think of buying an 8800GT. I can accept a missing feature or even a bug, but not this kind of attitude (sorry for the rant).
Edit : After some research, I think I'm probably wrong. The problem with "Use centered timing" seems to be simply that it means : "Let the panel do rescaling, if it can". ATI drivers can't rescale while keeping aspect ratio themselves. I think I will buy an NVidia card.
