Thief: Deadly Shadows on Windows 98(XP users please help)

[Zephriel]

Greets!

My poor sad little computer, faithful as it is and as beautifully as it runs T1 and T2, is no match for T3.

I'm still using Win98 with an Asus 466MHz motherboard/CPU, and not much made last year or this year will run on it.

(I don't speak computer insides very fluently. :P )

I'll have to save up for a whole new machine to run T3... and LoK: Defiance... and... :: wanders off muttering something about sound software::

Shadows protect,
Zephriel

[Stauff]

While I have some free time I can disassemble some T3 code and see what's wrong with 98 on it.

For this I need:

Thief 3 executable or BETTER Thief 3 cracked executable (because T3 exec is obviously encoded in retail version and I do not want to waste my time decoding it).

I do not need any other game content. Please be sure that this exec runs on your PC/XP.

[Cary L. Brown]

Someone seems a bit undereducated in the ways of the XP and 98se.

I, on the other hand, know a fair amount about both. And, given a choice, I'd use an OS with the improvements of XP but without the hassles that go with it.

You are right that there are a lot of security problems with XP and its a resource hog. BUT did you know that 98se has many more security problems? XP fixed some of 98se security problems, but make sure you get all the updates because the initial XP release was quite buggy.

Well... sort of. The problem is, most of the "security holes" in XP are not due to sloppy programming or to oversights, but due to CONSCIOUS DESIGN DECISIONS made by Microsoft. Best known case - the "pop-ups" from within the OS anytime that you were web-connected, whether you were on your browser or not. That's a minor, but well-known example...

And as far as a resource hog, there are programs you can find that turn a lot of this off. For example type "xpantispy" in Google and download the english version (too lazy to find you a link). That will take care of the spyware which will free up a lot of the resources.

True, that will remove some of the "bugs" which MS built into the OS themselves... but not all of them. And new ones get introduced every time a "security update" comes out... curious, that...

Now XP is much more stable than 98se. I think mine has only crashed 5-10 times in 2 years. Think 98se crashed on me 5-10 times in 5-10 minutes. Im exaggerating but you see my point.

Well, it's true that XP is, as a general rule, more stable than 9x is. However, it's worthwhile to note that 9x was perfectly stable until MS did the "hooking Internet Exploder into the kernel to kill Netscape" trick. And I've learned the tricks to use to make 98SE a perfectly stable OS. I haven't had a 98SE crash in over four years, in fact. I've had quite a few more crashes on my laptop, which runs XP. And the failure of MS to really "fix" the issues within 9x doesn't imply that the problems were not fixable... but rather that they saw it as being more financially lucrative to FORCE us all to "upgrade."

Basically XP is just an extremely stable version of 98se.

Untrue, for all practical purposes. It has a similar front-end. And it can run 32-bit instructions identically (which is why Thief3 SHOULD run on a Win98SE machine). But it IS a different kernel structure. And that kernel, while more "stable" when running perfectly-written software optimized specifically for that particular kernel's idiosyncracies, is every bit as susceptable to memory leaks and so on as Win98SE is... in fact, worse in many cases.

Oh and most games will still work for XP even if they are old. That isnt always true, but a lot times it is.

I have a stack of nearly 40 applications and games which will not run, or will not run properly, under Windows XP but which run PERFECTLY under Windows 98SE.

I dont really care what OS you use, but please understand both OSes before you go off shouting about how one is better than the other.

I find your statement to be insulting... not to me, directly, as it was directed towards someone else... but in general. You're assuming that, because this person disagrees with you, that this person ISN'T AS SMART, OR AS KNOWLEDGEABLE, AS YOU. From what I saw in his post, he had legitimate complaints... complaints which are not unique to him by any stretch of the imagination. I recognize that you, personally, are pretty happy with WinXP. And that's fine... I'm happy for you, and for anyone else who is. But there are a LOT of people who aren't... I'm one of them... who are not "dumb hicks" because of it. We have LEGITIMATE REASONS for being unhappy with Windows XP.

Oh and someone mentioned something about only being able to install on one computer. Well that is true in theory, but all you need to do is register over the phone and say you had to reformat your hard drive.

True... for the moment. But... why should ANYONE have to do that? What business is it of Microsoft what ... legal... use I make of my legally-purchased license? If I want to move it from one machine to another to another, but ONLY have it on one machine at a time... why shouldn't I? The argument in favor of "registration" is similar to an argument in favor of having to register your DVD collection so that it can only play on one specific, "registered," DVD player. It's illegal to make copies (except, arguably, for "personal backup purposes"), but it's perfectly legal to use that DVD anywhere you want (except for public exhibition,etc), on your machine or your parents machine or your girlfriend's machine or wherever. Why should software... which is ultimately what an Operating System is... be different?

Edit: Run on Linux? Id say no. Windows programming is much different than normal programming. Im not even sure DirectX works under Linux, anyone know?

Actually, I suspect that he's talking about running it under WINE, or one of the other WIndows-emulation tools available within the various 'Nixes. The answer is... it's probably more likely to do that than to do it within Win98... but the performance will suffer, since you'll basically be running it from within a "virtual PC" which is then running in Linux.

By the way... please don't take this personally... I'm just pissed off that I won't be able to run Thief3 until someone "cracks" the lock put on the EXE... and even then, unless there's some way I can use that fix legally, I won't be able to do it.

I will NOT "upgrade" to an OS that requires me to throw away things which are valuable to me. And even VDMSound, the best solution for MOST of these issues to date, is under direct attack from Microsoft...

[Smooth]

After doing some investigation I have found that Thief 3 does run on Windows 98 after installing a 3rd party program. Browse to the link below and follow the instructions TO THE LETTER!

Considering how easy it is to get it to work, I wonder if Microcrap gave the developers some extra cash to make it officially only work on XP. Nice way to make sure people upgrade to XP.

The link is from the Eidos web forums and Eidos does not support the 3rd party software which you'll need to install to get it to work.

Here is the link
http://forums.eidosgames.com/showthr...threadid=41762

In case the link doesn't work here are the exact instructions copied and pasted from their forums.

There is a fix now:
1 Download PE Explorer
2 Backup "T3Main.exe" and "Default.ini" for patching puposes
3 Apply any patches
4 Open PE Explorer
5 Go to File > Open File > "T3Main.exe"
6 Go to View > Resources
7 Select Icon Entry and delete it
8 Save and exit
9 Open "Default.ini"
10 Find the line "LoadFromResourceBlockFiles=False" and change it to "True"*
11 Save and exit
12 Enjoy game

* Only necessary if you get a white screen instead of a loading screen

ALL credit goes to TBIRDMANN and the others at the following post. I just organized the info
http://forums.eidosgames.com/showth...&threadid=41019

This is the website for PE Explorer.
http://www.heaventools.com/?r1=iNetShortcut&r2=pex195