Thief 3 Tweaks - Requests and Discussion

[Mentalepsy]

This is a companion thread for the Thief 3 Tweak Guide. This is the place to ask our elite squad of ninja tweak masters to try to tweak something for you, to submit a new tweak you've found, or for general discussion of tweaks and tweaking. Please confine discussion to this thread, so we don't clutter up the tweak guide.

If you find a tweak that is not listed here, post it! If you've tested it to see what it actually does and any side effects it might have, I'll add it to this guide. Untested / unverified tweaks are welcome, but I won't add them to the guide until someone tests them out.

Below is a list of current unfilled requests. If you want to put out a request for a tweak, just post it here, but before you do, please read the Tweak Guide first- what you want to do may have already been discovered. Also, if something is listed here, that means it hasn't been done yet and someone has already asked about it, so there's no need to request it again.

Current Requests
- Change the fonts and font colors for the briefing / objectives / item screen. Data for briefings and debriefings has been found.
- Figure out how to record a demo (default.ini).
- Import new fonts. The current fonts are in .dds/.cel format.
- Make the health bar toggle display with a keystroke.
- Adjust movement speed of Garrett and NPCs.
- Adjust arrow velocity.
- Adjust first-person field of vision angle.
- Find the font used for quantity display for weapons and inventory items.
- Swap run-backwards-left and run-backwards-right animations.
- Allow the 'Stats' option to be accessed from the objectives menu (ie, at all times), instead of just the end mission menu.
- The doors in St. Edgar's have the locks at their proper places - under the door handles. Switch this for the other levels as well.
- Change Garrett's first-person attack animation to be the same as third-person.
- Be able to crouch while carrying a body.
- Move save file names closer together.
- Deactivate respawning of guards in the City.
- Make the light gem display, but always stay dark.
- Make the Thief Menu Font usable in Thief 3.
- Make objects fully brighten when frobbed, the way Thief and Thief 2 did.
- Bind functions to gamepad.
- Replace loot glint with the gleam on important items.
- Change guard stamina / search time.
- Make flash bombs blind the player.
- Move HUD text.
- Rename save files.
- Knock out people who are sitting down.
- Thief 1/2 style blackjacking.

[deadman]

The lines

CreepMultiplier=0.33
WalkMultiplier=0.5

Oh, I dunno, probably modify the creep and walk speed. So, I'd increase that for faster Garrett. Didn't try this though, so it's uncomfirmed, but looks just like any other 'modern' ini in this regard. I should actually play around with it to see what happens.

Setting

BodyAwarenessMode=1

to 0 may remove the 3D models of Garrett's arms and legs. Again, haven't tried this, just looks interesting.

Furthermore, there's an interesting line of

AllowScreenShots=False

I've changed this to true, but still, is there an in-game screen capture key? Someone who talked to an Eidos mod said 'no'. For now, stick to Fraps or Snag-It. (Or PrintScreen, which is despicable).

Now this is interesting

;Set this to TRUE to have Garrett auto-resurrect when he dies instead of going to the
;appropriate screen
bAutoResurrect__t=FALSE

*evil cheating grin* I'd try this right now, but it's late and Thief 3 takes forever just to start or load a game on my system. D'oh!

And don't forget about player humping!! ^_~

;parameters for player humping (pushing an object for a long time will give it a bigger impulse)

Heh, sorry, mostly just silly stuff I haven't even tested yet.

deadman.

[Mentalepsy]

If you think the font size for your objectives and the "Tips" on the loading screens are grotesquely huge, you can change them. Open DEFAULT.INI and change this line under the [FontMappings] header:

'Papyrus14__tp=Papyrus_21,0.81,0.80' to
'Papyrus14__tp=Papyrus_21,0.61,0.80'

Changing 0.81 to 0.61 (or any other decimal value) will scale down the font size. This will affect load screen tips, your notes and objectives, the help screen you get from right-clicking on your equipment, and confirmation dialogue boxes ("Are you sure you want to quit?").

If, for some bizarre reason, you have subtitles turned on (thus eliminating the need to actually listen to what guards are saying when they're looking for you), you can adjust their size as well. Just modify this line the exact same way:

'Papyrus12__tp=Papyrus_21,0.61,0.80' to
'Papyrus12__tp=Papyrus_21,0.50,0.80', for example.


There are a number of other fonts listed, but I haven't messed with them. Post your discoveries here!

I'm currently looking for a way to disable the loading tips entirely. I can't just change the font scale to zero or near-zero, as that would also eliminate my objective list.

[Mentalepsy]

Under the [Difficulty] header in DEFAULT.INI, you can adjust the AI's awareness and combat strength for each of the four difficulty levels. Just ordinary multipliers; should be self-explanatory. Haven't messed with this, just thought I'd mention it.

[Mentalepsy]

HA! Gotcha, you annoying...

If you want to turn off those oh-so-helpful "tips" that show up on the loading screens, go to Thief 3 -> CONTENT -> T3 -> Books -> English -> HelpText.sch. Open this file in Notepad, and simply change all the English strings from "Tip: don't let guards see you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" to "", an empty string (two consecutive quote marks). Voila, no more loadscreen tips. It takes a while, since there's a hundred of them, but I'm glad I did it.

However, now you'll have load screens that alternate between flavor text and a blank line. You can leave this as-is, or you can repeat the process with Thief 3 -> CONTENT -> T3 -> Books -> English -> String_Tags -> Quotes.sch. However, you'll have to replace each quote with a " " (a space) instead of an empty string, or you'll get a message about having no messages to display.

Again, if anyone's found an easier way to do this, post it here. Come on, I know I'm not the only one here who's up at 5am playing with configuration files instead of the game...

[Redearth]

In default.ini

[Flesh]
MouseLagThreshold=75

change to:

MouseLagThreshold=0

If you want mouselook to respond a bit faster.

[Nupraptor]

HA! Gotcha, you annoying...

If you want to turn off those oh-so-helpful "tips" that show up on the loading screens, go to Thief 3 -> CONTENT -> T3 -> Books -> English -> HelpText.sch. Open this file in Notepad, and simply change all the English strings from "Tip: don't let guards see you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" to "", an empty string (two consecutive quote marks). Voila, no more loadscreen tips. It takes a while, since there's a hundred of them, but I'm glad I did it.

Two things concern me about this:

A) I've already noticed that little tidbits of story are given to you during the loading screens. For example:

spoiler:

The children's rhymes regarding the "Ash Lady" or "Cinder Lady" or whatever it is she's called.

I've only played two missions, but I've heard conversations and read notes that I wouldn't have understood if I didn't read that loading screen.

B) The tips definitely change depending on what level/mission you're loading, to give you relevant info. I'd be afraid of getting an accidental spoiler by going through all of them now.

[Mentalepsy]

Found another tweak related to the loadscreen tips.

For those who like the flavor text, you can set it so that the load screen displays ONLY flavor text, displays only one line of it, and displays it the entire time the load screen is up.

Go to DEFAULT.INI and scroll down to the very bottom where it says [HelpText]. Make the following changes:

'ScrollRate=0'
'QuoteScrollRate=900000'

Now whenever the load screen appears, you'll just see one of the quotes from Quotes.sch. Note that unless you clear the HelpText.sch file as mentioned above, you'll still see a tip pop up at the very beginning of the load screen- when the screen has appeared, but the load bar hasn't yet started moving. If you don't like the help text, I recommend clearing HelpText.sch manually.

I'm going to edit the opening post to showcase all the tweaks posted in this thread along with their contributors. Could this thread be made a sticky, please?

[Mentalepsy]

Nupraptor- the tweak I mentioned only disables the tips- i.e. "Put out torches with water arrows" or "Guards will hear you if you run across metal." The quotes from the Keeper chronicles, children's rhymes, etc. are in a seperate file (see my most recent post for some info on how to make the load screens display flavor text exclusively- this is what I'll be doing).

[Nupraptor]

Oh, I see. Well, that's very helpful then. I'm going through it now. Instead of simply emptying the tips files, I'm replacing the gameplay tips with various quotes from the previous two games; "He am the Honeymaker, and drinkers we them meads. He am the Jacksberry, and eaters we them leafs. He am the Trickster, and the Woodsie Lord he bes." etc.

[Mentalepsy]

Oh, I see. Well, that's very helpful then. I'm going through it now. Instead of simply emptying the tips files, I'm replacing the gameplay tips with various quotes from the previous two games; "He am the Honeymaker, and drinkers we them meads. He am the Jacksberry, and eaters we them leafs. He am the Trickster, and the Woodsie Lord he bes." etc.

Cool idea

[Mr. K.]

Oh, I see. Well, that's very helpful then. I'm going through it now. Instead of simply emptying the tips files, I'm replacing the gameplay tips with various quotes from the previous two games; "He am the Honeymaker, and drinkers we them meads. He am the Jacksberry, and eaters we them leafs. He am the Trickster, and the Woodsie Lord he bes." etc.

Could you email the edited file with the old quotes in to me, please? I don't have the game yet, and it'd be mighty cool to use the work you're going to do when i have it.

zanchito @ hotmail.com

[Nupraptor]

I've still got a lot of empty spaces. There's a ton of tips and not as many briefings/quotes I can think of to use. Once I'm done, however, I'll gladly post the finished product.

Do you know how to change where the text is centered? When I reduce its size, it's a bit too high up for my tastes.

[Mr. K.]

I know nothing about centering. If needed be, you can always repeat some quotes.

[Mentalepsy]

I've still got a lot of empty spaces. There's a ton of tips and not as many briefings/quotes I can think of to use. Once I'm done, however, I'll gladly post the finished product.

I was messing around just now, and I think you can actually delete entire tips with no ill effects, so you could try just deleting any that you can't figure out how to fill. If that doesn't work, of course, you could just make duplicate comments, as Mr. K said.

Do you know how to change where the text is centered? When I reduce its size, it's a bit too high up for my tastes.

I'll check it out.

[Lockpicker]

Under the [Difficulty] header in DEFAULT.INI, you can adjust the AI's awareness and combat strength for each of the four difficulty levels. Just ordinary multipliers; should be self-explanatory. Haven't messed with this, just thought I'd mention it.

Is this the same as in Deus Ex Invisible Wars?

In DX:IW you could go into a pseudo "god-mode" by increasing the ammount of damage you do to enemy AI, and decreasing the damage they do to you.

I'm wondering if a possible "god mode" is available here?

Of course, what's the point? It'll ruin the immersiveness of the game.
I can see myself playing around in the future with this though.

Thoughts?

[Mentalepsy]

Is this the same as in Deus Ex Invisible Wars?

In DX:IW you could go into a pseudo "god-mode" by increasing the ammount of damage you do to enemy AI, and decreasing the damage they do to you.

I'm wondering if a possible "god mode" is available here?

Of course, what's the point? It'll ruin the immersiveness of the game.
I can see myself playing around in the future with this though.

Thoughts?

I never messed with DX2 ini files, but I suppose that would be possible. I was thinking that it might be useful for people who wanted to make the AI hear better or see better on Expert mode.

[van HellSing]

Question about the fonts: anyone found them? Are they truetypes? Any way to edit them?

[Mentalepsy]

Question about the fonts: anyone found them? Are they truetypes? Any way to edit them?

They're in Content -> T3 -> PCTextures -> Fonts. They come in .dds and .cel files. I can open the .dds files in DirectX Texture Tool, a program I didn't even know I had, but beyond that I don't have a clue.

If you could create a new font in the same format, you could probably change some names in DEFAULT.INI to add it in.

[foldy]

Has anyone dared tweak that bodyawareness parameter? I'd be thrilled if we could somehow get rid of it.

[Mentalepsy]

Has anyone dared tweak that bodyawareness parameter? I'd be thrilled if we could somehow get rid of it.

I tried setting it to zero, but it didn't seem to do anything. I didn't play with it more than that, though.

[Jakeyboy]

I'm UK so I havent played it yet, but Body awareness seems very interesting to me, however I think its starting to break the border between reality and a game...as you can see your own shoulder as well when you jump in your seat...

JUst out of interest is anyone scared yet?

[Nupraptor]

I tried setting it to zero, but it didn't seem to do anything. I didn't play with it more than that, though.

Someone reported getting better framerates with it set to 0, despite the body still being there. I tried it. I haven't been scrutinizing my framerates complusively, but it does seem to help.

Also, I'm going to look around and see if I can figure out where the sounds are stored. I like the old "Ching!" sound of loot being acquired better than the new one.

[Mentalepsy]

Just to confirm, it appears to be possible to blank out the entire HelpText.sch file with no problem.

I couldn't figure out text centering, by the way. There's a config section for the load screen, but nothing about the text position. I tried several different ways of inserting blank lines into the strings, but that didn't work either. Supposedly you can change the spacing of the lines in the Virtual Fonts area (it's the number next to the size multiplier), but that wouldn't affect the first line.

[Nanol]

Should be trivial to knock up an advanced setup program in VB to hack the ini file, I'd have a go myself but am not able to get the game for a month or so. Any volunteers?