did I miss something??? thief 1.19???

[nightshifter]

browsing through ttlg to find a way to make thief gold not crashing on win 7 all the time, I came upon this thread
http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=140085

DrK found this on a french forum

haven't tried it yet, bit scared to ruin my thief install....

I'm a bit sceptical, seems too good to be true, if I browse through that list of improvements
anybody here knows about it/ tested it???

[redleaf]

Man, oh, man, I don't understand all of it, but it sounds like an amazing bump-up for T2 DromEdeers! Some posters say they found no virus, and Brethren put up a mirror, so you know me - I'm all about jumping off cliffs without looking to see what's on the other side until I land. How many times have I had to re-install Thief???
Gonna check it out. I like what I read about textures and graphics improvements. I'll see if I can open up one of my morgued fms and play around with it.

Don't be such a chicken, Ger! "Join us ... join us now ..." lol

[SlyFoxx]

I'm gonna wait until the smart people here say it's a go. But holy poly and brush limits Batman! If this works it's the biggest game changer in the history of Thief.

[RocketMan]

It's a good thing I paid attention to the latest thread titles when scanning the forum cuz I never come to the thief ones... can we get a discussion going in the ss2 forum as well? I'd start something myself but I'm thoroughly shocked (no pun intended) by this and don't know how to initiate a proper thread for it. I wasn't expecting a WTF moment today but this is certainly the good kind... even though I don't know what the hell we have here. I'm at work too so I can't even do anything with it Poor me.

[R Soul]

That updates list looks more like a wishlist. Look at the list of Dromed changes.

[Independent Thief]

Don't get around here too often, but has anybody tested that patch with dromed-do the graphics upgrades actually work (max polys/framerates?)

[DrK]

I know, that surprised me as well. Too good to be true, especially as it comes out of nowhere from a new member.

That's why I posted it here, to let the technical beasts wandering around here do the testings. I have no idea if it's legit and I don't really have the time to test it myself. I don't even know who did it, trying to get some infos from corbeau.

It's either the Holy Grail or a huge scam for thief.

[R Soul]

has anybody tested that patch with dromed-do the graphics upgrades actually work (max polys/framerates?)

After years of sticking to (and circumventing) the original limits, I don't think I know how to get 20480 polys on screen, let alone whether it works.

[LarryG]

After years of sticking to (and circumventing) the original limits, I don't think I know how to get 20480 polys on screen, let alone whether it works.

I'd like to try! I wonder if I can put back into Finals all of the stuff I had to cut due to poly and object counts? That would be awesome.

[redleaf]

I'm gonna wait until the smart people here say it's a go.

Well, looks like you'll still be waiting a while on that.

Meanwhile ...

Right off the bat there's a lot to figure out here.

Installation was easy. Setting up a new Dromed folder was easy. Understanding everything the new version can do is going to take some time, I think. Some new stuff is obvious. Other stuff seems to have disappeared. Like the texture menu? I tried swapping out the provided menu.cfg with my old one, and it didn't seem to affect my ability to do things in the mission, but I don't know yet if I might be giving up some important functions by doing that. There is a scary warning in the new menu.cfg about how making changes could mess it up? I need to try a few things I guess. The look of the new text editor is way cool.

My old fms opened up in V1.19 DromEd no problem. It even opened a couple of old fm's I had to give up on because they wouldn't open in DromEd anymore. Wow.

But ... I made some changes to one of the old mis files in DromEd 1.19, saved it. then tried to open it in the old V1.18 DromEd folder to compare. It wouldn't open at all in V1.18. I brought it back to the V1.19 folder and it opened again. So once you open it and/or save it in V1.19, I guess you can't go back to V1.18 to work on it any more? Or maybe I'm doing something wrong.

If that is the case, it might not make any sense to use this for making missions yet. No one will be able to play your mission unless they are using V1.19. I haven't tried any of the OM missions with it yet, so don't know how it works with them.

I was hoping for a tutorial-type manual. There is a file called "Modders Notes" that almost works like one. Not sure if I should be posting this stuff here or over at the other forum? (General Discussion?)

Anyway, that's all I've figured out so far.

[The Watcher]

Don't get around here too often, but has anybody tested that patch with dromed-do the graphics upgrades actually work (max polys/framerates?)

I just pulled up my last Shadowed Mayfield cow in it and went to an area that used to get close to the limit, built it without optimising and managed to hit 1875 polys without any issues. It looks like the poly limit is higher than anything I can find to throw at it right now. Xavier's has gone from having barely-acceptable framerate across large chunks of the level, to maxing out the framerate across most of it (and coronas get occluded by objects! Finally!). I could just drop .dds files direct in-place instead of the ddfix overrides I was doing, too.

[Yandros]

OH MY LORD, that is awesome! I must play with this tonight and see for myself.... might just have to start by opening this mission.

[R Soul]

You can get 26 sides in a cylinder, so you could at least reduce your brush count. Not that you need to if the limit is now 16384

[bikerdude]

If this works it's the biggest game changer in the history of Thief.

Well all we would also need is a better version of Dromed thats more akin to radiant like we use on the darkmod.

[Vae]

I haven't tried any of the OM missions with it yet, so don't know how it works with them.

I have...I've just playtested Interference and Shipping...and Receiving, and I haven't found any bugs...everything looks, sounds and runs great. Also, the crouch button option for getting off ladders without having to jump, works well...

So far, this is looking to be what we're all hoping for.

[The Watcher]

So, now I've had some time to mess around a bit, a comparison. This one is more or less a straight relight (although the shots are from opposite sides of the room, because).

Old:


New:


note the lack of banding in the lights and nicer shadows. I also had a mess around with the new bitmap disc particles and alpha blend mode:

[Vae]

Wow!...That's nice...

There's an overall improvement of definition, as well.

Edit: Just realized the resolution difference...

[bikerdude]

So, now I've had some time to mess around a bit, a comparison. This one is more or less a straight relight (although the shots are from opposite sides of the room, because).note the lack of banding in the lights and nicer shadows. I also had a mess around with the new bitmap disc particles and alpha blend mode:

Very impressive :-)

[darthsLair]

Very impressive TheWatcher. Beta testing should prove the integrity of the patch. The general thief population will have to patch their game as well in order to play the 1.19 versions. At that time it will be necessary to remove all old save.games from the old 1.18 version.

Just reading the remake of the limits is very impressive.

[Yandros]

Wow Chris, just seeing the lightmap resolution around the wall lights makes me want to dance! I got to start playing with this thing!

[nightshifter]

welcome to the hermitage

been playing around with high res textures.

here is my testroom: 64x32 walls , 1 texture per side

[LarryG]

JawDroppingDog.jpg

[nightshifter]

Don't be such a chicken, Ger! "Join us ... join us now ..." lol

I'm in \0/ this is so great..and guess what, I can open the main section from the spear without crashing due to poly's
so no need for you to build it full with blocking walls
will upload a screenie

[skacky]

2137 polys without crashing the game and without display errors. I'm ready to believe in a god now. Praise the Builder!

[Yandros]

OH MY LORD, that is awesome! I must play with this tonight and see for myself.... might just have to start by opening this mission.

HOLY SWEET JESUS (click for larger image)