negativeliberty on 31/8/2007 at 15:45

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I'm about to play Thief again after a looooooong time. In the meantime I've switched to a 22" widescreen TFT. I expected some trouble with older games, but since my all-time favourite Deus Ex wasn't affected I wasn't bothered. Now that I want to play Thief again I am :(

Anyway, I looked through some old forum topics here where I found this thread which gave me reason to be optimistic;
(http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=99202)
Where a Yamatha and Luthien apparently figure out how to get widescreen working in Thief 2 (and T1Gold?), with correct aspect ratio through the use of the set_3d_zoom command. But what I can't figure out is what resolution they were using in CAM.CFG, nor if they got it working in Thief 1 Gold (and if they played 'through' DromED, however that works). Here's how far I've come with a DIY guide (taken from that topic of course);

Since the latter applies to me (16:10 1680x1050 LCD), I've added that in the user.cfg file (though where do I put the "set_3d_zoom 0.83" bit? What does he mean by "Afterwards"?) but since most widescreen resolutions (upwards and below 1600x1200) make the game revert to 640x480@256 colours and report "The requested screen mode could not be set." I don't know what resolution to put in the CAM.CFG file (btw 1600x1200 is also not accepted)

So how Yametha did it eludes me..


Perhaps some Thief editing/coding experts or enthusiast could shed some light on it and finally unravel the mystery of the widescreen Thief :D

Oh and.. while I'm posting this anyway, I can't seem to get Daemonite's Thief Model Patch working either (I did install DarkLoader 4.3 and pointed it to Thief Gold, but there was never any 'optimising' done I think, unless that goes automatically with installing DL), when I put the three patch folders in my Thief folder it just removed all objects&models from the game (I did add ObjTextures16 to dark.cfg).

And.. :erm: any chance of forcing AA&AF through the ATI drivers (Radeon 1900XTX) for Thief Gold? Or is AA&AF out of the question? edit: nvm. that got AA&AF working

Any help greatly appreciated!

PS if it turns out it's impossible for Thief Gold but possible for Thief 2 then please don't hesitate to answer if you know something :)

PS² Running Windows XP SP2, ATI Catalyst 7.8.

negativeliberty on 31/8/2007 at 19:04

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You mean the "set_3d_zoom 0.83" bit is meant to be set through the console? (Btw I already read the bit about enabling the ingame console that's not a problem, but when entering that into the ingame console nothing happens).

My thoughts exactly ;) It's not quite as straight-forward it seems. I've even resorted to hexediting Thief.exe (and Thief2.exe for T2) and editing in a widescreen resolution in the place of fullscreen resolutions, along with the custom set resolution in cam.cfg - still doesn't work, still says "the requested screen mode could not be set" and reverts to 640x480.

I would've totally given up on getting widescreen to work if it hadn't been for that cryptic thread :P It's not horror to play at 1280x1024, but I'm not going to give up now (even though Yamatha and Luthien might be the only two people who know the solution) :cheeky:

Btw thanks for the fast reply!

negativeliberty on 1/9/2007 at 04:43

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Ah I see, well I'm going to try to tinker with that then (can you play the entire game through DromED?), though that still leaves the question of what resolution to set in cam.cfg since it doesn't accept any widescreen resolutions (low or high).

Thanks! I sent her a PM asking to elaborate on the solution in that old topic (can't e-mail her via TTLG as she's set not to receive them), so perhaps she might read and reply to it soon, with any luck there'll be a widescreen (hori+) solution (suppose so since the topic mentions correcting the FOV).

Yametha on 1/9/2007 at 12:55

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Hi guys!

It's interesting how these little things from the past keep cropping up. Maybe the Alarus extension will be next lol!

I'm sorry to say, I have bad news. Luthien and I tried, and we came so close, but ultimately, we failed. It MAY work on some monitors, but it didn't work on either of ours. Let me explain what we tried: -

inv_status_margin 0.083
This controls the position of the inventory items, the weapons, and the light gem. The higher the number, the further up the screen it is.

text_message_margins 16.5 12.5
This controls where the text messages (such as those given out by plaques) appear. Like the previous one, it's a vertical position.

What we were thinking is that if we cannot make Thief alter the aspect ratio (which we concluded cannot be done), we could move the interface elements towards the centre of the screen, and then crop the image. What those two commands just did was move the inventory elements so that if the screen was cropped to 16:10, the inventory elements would be in the correct place relative to the edge of the screen.

The final command (set_3d_zoom 0.83) was only there so that the view angle was increased, so that after cropping, the vertical view angle would be the same as the original view angle, and the horizontal view angle would show more (which is one of the much touted features of widescreen). That way, you actually would be getting more, rather than less, you'd be adding to the sides rather than taking away from the top and bottom. It's not really necessary, just an aesthetic touch.

What we couldn't do was crop the final image. If it was a CRT monitor, it would be no problem, you can simply adjust the vertical overscan (which is in essence, cropping), but that feature was on neither of our LCD monitors. If you can adjust the size of the picture so part of it is missing from your screen, you can do it. If you can't, you're in the same mess as we were.

We tried software methods of cropping the image. A program called Powerstrip looked promising, but ultimately, we couldn't make it work.

We failed. I'm sorry if I got your hopes up.

~Yametha

Jeshibu on 1/9/2007 at 13:23

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But were you able to get it in higher 4:3 resolutions?