Necro Age 2.3 and T2X: Shadows of the Necro Age OUT NOW!

[voodoo47]

no problem, as long as it's just one crf file that I can include into the modpath.

[Necrobob]

As an early heads up, if it helps, I'm gonna keep the archive name as "NecroAge.crf"

Similarily to how it is for Enhancement Pack 2, for Thief 1/Gold the mod path will be "NecroAge/Thief1+NecroAge" to get the slightly different T1 texture variations and models to show up.

[gamophyte]

Installers for extremely simple operations are a bit of a pet peeve of mine.

That's unfortunate, there are waves of people coming back to play these old games and I would hate for them to be turned away and not see your brilliant work because installation requires editing files they have no idea how to or what the files are. I mean, I am building a fan mission and even I don't feel like mixing and tracking .crf archives just from one mod. That being said, that's just my opinion and I don't nay say the project. You are a awesome person for completing and continually improving this project free of charge.

[voodoo47]

that's why the modpath will be included in TFix - the installation is just a matter of dropping the archive to the root then. and as notepad unfriendly people will end up patching up with TFix anyway, the problem should be mostly solved - at least on the T1/TG part.

[Necrobob]

Happy taffing new year!

The Necro Age 2.1 is here! Same archive is now used for both games!
Google Drive

But wait, there's more!

T2X: Shadows of the Necro Age out now!
Google Drive

Just run it through FMSEL as any fan mission! Darkloader ought to work too, but constantly installing and reinstalling +1 GB of content whenever you want to switch between missions is gonna get old fast.
Thanks to Ricebug for the FM-conversion of the expansion.

[gnartsch]

Thanks for the update, Necrobob!

Just a question on T2X:
since Ricebugs version of T2X is now a stripped down to match a genuine FM, is there a reason why one could not install T2X like a regular mission and the Necro Age to be apllied as usual via the mod path?
Or in other words: is this some kind of 'tweaked' Necro Age version?

[Necrobob]

Since T2X includes a LOT of its own new resources, this is a new separate version where the T2X-exclusive visuals have been given the same treatment as the main texture pack. It is installed under a different name than vanilla T2X.

[cattamer]

For this to work properly in T!/TG you need to add as "NecroAge\Thief1+NecroAge", not just "NecroAge" to the file "cam_mod.ini".

[Necrobob]

Oh yeah, forgot to add that bit in the new readme. Thanks for the heads up. Readme updated, pack itself remains the same so no need for anyone to redownload.

Also, some screenies from T2X:

[PsymH]

Simply outstanding! These screens look like from a next-gen game. Very well done!

[gamophyte]

This may not be a place to review but I'm halfway through, and I'm really enjoying the AI skins.

[User 205]

The screenies look fantastic By the way, are there any Thief: the necro project online, because I can´t find any.

[Lex]

Since T2X includes a LOT of its own new resources, this is a new separate version where the T2X-exclusive visuals have been given the same treatment as the main texture pack. It is installed under a different name than vanilla T2X.

So it means to experience full mod I have to install Necro Age + T2X for Thief2 and only Necro Age for Thief1, right?

P.S. I simply added "mod_path NecroAge" after HDmod's line to cam_mod.ini without "/Thief1+NecroAge" part and it seemed to work, though I'm not sure if correctly, but everything seems fine. I have HDmod as well.

[klatremus]

Lex: If you mix HDmod with NecroAge, one of them will always take priority, the one listed first in cam_mod.ini. In your case if you listed NecroAge last, then most of the HD textures you see will be from HDmod. I'm not sure of the amount of texture overlapping between the two mods since many T2X textures are unique, but the general advice given is not to mix the two mods. I have two Thief 2 folders; one for all the standard .crf mods (necroage, ep2, etc.) and one for the HDmod only, since it alters some of the file structure in the Thief 2 folder. It just makes it easier. I run all my FMs through FMsel in the first folder, as I don't use HDmod with fan missions.

Necrobob: I found a slight difference between 2.0 and the old versions. If using Necroage 2.0 on T2 fan missions that use imported stock textures from Thief 1, some of those textures don't show up in HD or at all. They sometimes go completely blue or black. A good example is Ruins of Originia. In the first level it happened several places. I had to use the old necpro.crf in the uber_mod_path in cam_mod.ini to fix it. Of course, then the torches got flipped cause it is a thief 1 mod so I had to delete the torch files from the .crf.

Not complaining, I'm just letting you know in case you are doing further updates. I know this doesn't apply to many missions.

Amazing work man! Keep it up

PS: The NecroT2X is making me drool...

[Lex]

Lex: If you mix HDmod with NecroAge, one of them will always take priority, the one listed first in cam_mod.ini. In your case if you listed NecroAge last, then most of the HD textures you see will be from HDmod. I'm not sure of the amount of texture overlapping between the two mods since many T2X textures are unique, but the general advice given is not to mix the two mods.

Thanks for the answer, but it worked fine because as I listed it last, it loaded after HDmod and overrided its textures with NecroAge's. It's not like prioritizing, it's more like you writing load order. And, well, I see visual changes.
The mod's awesome. Gonna play Thief2 soon with it!

[klatremus]

Well the load order indicates how you want the mods to be prioritized. If a texture is included in both mods, you won't see the NecroAge version, only the HDmod one. Anyways, I'm happy it works for you and yes, both of these mods are stunning.

[Necrobob]

@Lex
1. Necro Project has been merged with Necro Age, so you should be good to go for both games with the latest version.
2. I generally don't recommend mixing Necro Age and HD mod(s), but if you've managed to make them play nice enough together for your liking, more power to ya.
I can't however vouch for my taffing about with special effects potentially looking weird when applied to HD mod textures.

@Klatremus
Not much I can do about textures supplied with fan missions, them taking priority over identically named non-FM resources is just the game doing what it's supposed to, after all.
However, an unfortunate side effect is that the scale and tiling settings in the Necro Age material files are also applied to textures with a matching name if they don't have an overriding material file of their own, if you get my technobabble. I'd like to prevent this kind of conflict, but I don't know if it's possible.

The non-appearing textures are another matter entirely. See, I've reined in the file size of the Necro Age by reusing single texture files with the help of material files in the cases where textures would just be identical copies anyway (such as when stock textures are just different resolution versions of the same image, for instance). The problem here is a simple file name screw up. I've caught one instance and fixed it (coal debris in the "Mine" family), and I'm gonna go through and check if there's more, then release an update.

EDIT: Actually, could you perhaps supply some screenshots? It would be especially helpful if you could post two versions of each instance, one in Necro Age where there's a missing texture and another in stock mode so I know what texture to search for.

[Platinumoxicity]

I need to give an honest opinion of mine. I don't like any of the Thief 1&2 high-res texture mods. To me it all looks like a really fancy golden paint job on a car that was put through the crusher. It just brings more attention to how low the polycount of the games is. I prefer the old textures that are just as low quality as the geometry is. In fact, I would like to find out how to disable the bilinear texture filtering in the games, to see how Thief 2 would have looked like with the original software rendering of Thief 1.

[Necrobob]

1. Don't we already have the "Anti-NewDark Thread" for that? Besides, one of the main selling points of the Necro Age is to significantly raise polycounts, and it is more crusher than gold paint in any case.

2. Open up cam_ext.cfg and set tex_filter_mode to 0. This will however also turn off filtering on lightmaps, so take it for what it's worth.

In other news, I've pretty much hammered out most issues with the missing textures, but unfortunately it looks like fan missions that add Thief 1 resources to Thief 2 without renaming them won't work optimally.

EDIT: 2.1 out now! Google Drive

[klatremus]

Not much I can do about textures supplied with fan missions, them taking priority over identically named non-FM resources is just the game doing what it's supposed to, after all. However, an unfortunate side effect is that the scale and tiling settings in the Necro Age material files are also applied to textures with a matching name if they don't have an overriding material file of their own, if you get my technobabble. I'd like to prevent this kind of conflict, but I don't know if it's possible.

I understand. I've been watching Dale's dromed tutorials enough to get what you said. I never meant for you to be able to fixed identically named FM textures btw. Naturally they will and should take priority.

The non-appearing textures are another matter entirely. See, I've reined in the file size of the Necro Age by reusing single texture files with the help of material files in the cases where textures would just be identical copies anyway (such as when stock textures are just different resolution versions of the same image, for instance). The problem here is a simple file name screw up. I've caught one instance and fixed it (coal debris in the "Mine" family), and I'm gonna go through and check if there's more, then release an update.

Going through the missing textures again I realized there seems to be only one faulty one. Probably the coal debris you were talking about. See the images below. It was simply used so much I assumed there were several wrong ones.

HD NecroAge version
SD stock version

Could you tell me what texture file this is and perhaps in the meantime I can transfer the one used in NecPro to NecroAge to fix the issue? Or I can just continue using NecPro, it doesn't really matter that much.

Thanks

[Florian]

In other news, I've pretty much hammered out most issues with the missing textures, but unfortunately it looks like fan missions that add Thief 1 resources to Thief 2 without renaming them won't work optimally.

Don´t know if this is too much asked of you, but before you release another update can you also check and/or delete all double textures that are in the pack like the same-named texures in either .dds or in .gif-format in case this might matter in the final output in the game? Perhaps this is also not necessary as the textures follow a given order but I am not sure here.

Thank you!

[Necrobob]

@Klatremus
Mdebri01, -02 & -03, or something to that effect. Don't forget to also transfer their old NecPro mtl files.

Update should be coming out tomorrow. I've fixed a pretty major bug that caused large parts of the world to go partially transparent in certain angles in the last mission of Origina, so I hope you can hold off finishing 'til then.

@Florian
If I've understood you correctly, doing that is beyond my skills, at least as far as I know. As you say, the game loads resources in a given order when it's working correctly.
Perhaps I might as well re-release a T2-only compatibility version for cases like this.

[Florian]

@Florian
If I've understood you correctly, doing that is beyond my skills, at least as far as I know. As you say, the game loads resources in a given order when it's working correctly.
Perhaps I might as well re-release a T2-only compatibility version for cases like this.

Sorry, what I meant was, that in your pack there are several files with the same name in the same directory (e.g. obj/txt16) only with a different file-attribute to it. If you sort the files in the zip-directory by name you easily know what I mean I just thought that might cause problems in-game. But if this is just a redundant fact and would only save a little bit of file-space, it doesn´t matter for sure.

[Soul Tear]

Thank you, Bob! Until that moment I could not play in T2X. Now I'll do it.

[Necrobob]

@Florian
Oh, that. It doesn't cause problems, but sure, I might as well clean up some redundant files.

@Soul Tear
Well, getting T2X working properly on NewDark is thanks to Ricebug.
But we seem to have a similar taste in textures, so I think you'll enjoy NecroT2X a little extra.