Dark Engine Fix (DEF) for Dual-Core/Hyperthreading

[clearing]

Thief (1, 2, 3) & System Shock 2 Patch FOR DUAL-CORE / HYPERTHREADING SYSTEMS.

Symptoms:
– Thief (1, 2), System Shock 2 The system hangs after several seconds of playing.
– Thief 3 Intro movie cycles, no menu shown.

Dark Engine Games (Thief: The Dark Project, Thief Gold, Thief 2: The Metal Age, System Shock 2), and their level editors - DromEd & ShockEd - doesn't work correctly on dual-core system (or imitated by Intel Hyperthreading function).

This patch is also suitable for Thief Demo, Thief 2 Demo & Silent Hill 2.

INSTALLATION

Install into the game installation directory. The patch installs and executes
MS Windows NT Image Configuration Utility, which modifies game executables' header to start on one core only.

Original executables are copied into BACKUP_DEF folder
(in the game installation dir). The utility is deleted after use.

UNINSTALL

Start Uninstall DEF. bat in BACKUP_DEF folder. Modified executables will be returned to their original state.

Choose the game installation dir:




Download DEF (Dark Engine Fix) ver.1.7

Built by S.Siamsky, DJ Riff (Dark Fate Team), used information from ttlg.com & darkfate.ru

[voodoo47]

exactly what I have been looking for.and the timing is perfect-just decided to upgrade (the second machine that is used to play all thief games) to dualcore.

thanks

[bikerdude]

Nice one Clearing

Dual core fixing is part of DDfix now also..

biker

[Cerebus]

It's. Still. Not. Working.

I have no idea what to do now.
Can it be my VCL-player that messes up things? In the log I still find faults with "lgvid.ax". That has something to do with the movies in Thief, I read in the FAQ thread, but I keep installing the codecs with iv5play.exe, and can still not play the movies from the disc.
Have been without Thief games since February. Help or suggestions appreciated.

EDIT: Deleting the lgvid.ax file from the /thief directory worked. Still can't play the movies no matter what I do, but at least the game is working, and that's really something to cheer about.
Tried removing the VCL player. Still no luck getting iv5play.exe to install the right codecs. It just starts looking for Netscape files, and nothing happens.

[voodoo47]

finally upgraded to dualcore,fixes works freat for me..just make sure the executables are not read-only before patching (t3.exe was read-only for some weird reasons,spent 10mins b*tching before I figured it out).

btw,this should be in the (thief3,at least) FAQ.nice and painless..

[clearing]

this should be in the (thief3,at least) FAQ.nice and painless..

I agree.

[voodoo47]

watch out,catalyst 8.6 breaks compatibility with this fix (black screen+lockup upon running fixed thief3).downgraded to 8.5,everything is ok..

edit: X2 4400/x1950pro/xpsp2

[clearing]

Thanks, I will check.

[uk_john]

The file is in a foreign language and I cannot read it because it is all ?????????'s! Also, my XP won't launch BAT files as it won't keep an association in file types, so I will have to check that on the web too!

[potterr]

GarrettLoader 1.42 has an ad-hoc Dual Core fix built in so it will correct the affinity of Thief 1,Gold,2 and System Shock 2 as they start via GL.
This won't be out till late August though but works well on the dozen or so PCs I have tried it on.

[uk_john]

Cheers, will keep an eye out for it..!

[deathshadow]

Gave this a test drive just to see if it worked - I don't know if it's because I'm in XP x64, but this doesn't seem to have any effect or make changes on executables here...

Which is ok though, since I already have imagecfg in my path and created a batch file called 'makesingle.bat' containing:

imagecfg -a 0x2 %1

Which pretty much does the same thing.