Thief 3 Can run on Windows 98

[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.

I will try it on my wife's Win98 box and see if it does indeed work and will post my results here.

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

[NXMT]

Do we still need pixel shading cards?

[Ezzetabi]

I love this game, but I hate this policy... make a legacy free game only for a icon... Shit!

[David]

Previous thread. Easy to miss as I can't understand why theBlackman felt the Spoilers forum was a good place for the thread seeing as people with Win98 couldn't play the game and therefore wouldn't visit the spoilers forum.

And CoK, you do still require a pixel shader-capable card.


The icon was not the only reason it wouldn't run. Thief 3 ran on Windows 98 during testing, however it was rather unstable so rather than deal with many support requests, they said it wasn't supported and added an icon with a high resource ID to prevent it from running.

Dunno why they didn't use an OS check though...

[Smooth]

I am pleased to say it does work on Windows 98. I have not tried it however with any of the official patches. I tried it on the 1.0 version. (out of the box)

Pay special attention to step 10 in the instructions from the first message in this thread. Although I didn't get a white screen while loading it did drop me to desktop after viewing the opening intros. After following step 10, I was able to play without issue, concern, or problem.

Good luck Win98 users!!

The specs on the Win98 machine I was running it on are
AMD AthlonXP 2000+ (1.7GHz)
256MB DDR RAM
500MB Swap File
SoundBlaster Audigy LS
Nvidia GeForce 5700 w 256MB DDR driver 56.64
Direct X9.0b
Win98SE
Thief: Deadly Shadows ver 1.0


Hopefully someone will make a multiplayer mod.

[Nedan]

Previous thread. Easy to miss as I can't understand why theBlackman felt the Spoilers forum was a good place for the thread seeing as people with Win98 couldn't play the game and therefore wouldn't visit the spoilers forum.

Obviously this one was even easier to miss as it was posted in this very forum: thief on 98.

Also, I have tried this fix with the patched version of Thief 3 & I can confirm that it does work. I have had no problems running the game at all after these fixes.

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

It was actually necessary for me to use this even though I wasn't getting a white screen at all... it just kept on crashing back to the desktop.

[Ringer]

I've got it runing under ME but it is unstable. It will crash back to the desktop at times and now I can't finish the game. I've got the very last thing to do and it crashes when I go from Stonemarket proper to Stonemarket plaza.


Found a workaround and finished the game.

[Smooth]

Ringer,

Tell us Win98 and Me users what you did to work around your problem. It's quite possible many of us will have the same problem close to the end of the game.

Can you tell us without giving away any spoilers?

[Ringer]

A direct route for my destination was from Stonemarket Proper through the loading screen to Stonemarket plaza but it crashed when loading the next area. So I went to my destination via the Docks.

I have also had it crash from leaving a grate open and then walking back over the grate. I shut the grate and it didn't crash in that spot again.

Hope that helps someone

See Ya

[Fidcal]

I'm a 'would have' - I would have used this but had already installed XP on a spare partition just to play TDS while keeping Win98 as my main system.

It is possible some of the above dropouts might not be related to the fix as I have had one or two dropouts to the desktop even under XP and I think others have too.

Whoever originally conceived this ought to get a cut of Eidos's profits from the extra sales. If Eidos had any honour at all they'd send him/her a gift (or did they fix it themselves?). There are at least tens of millions of people using Windows 98 - probably hundreds of millions. It is only fairly recently that the MAJORITY of Windows users were Win98. This fix is really valuable.

[Fidcal]

Just occurred to me that someone might make a patch for this to save having to download and install the $129 PE Explorer. Probably need a different patch for different versions. Eidos should do this, make it available, and re-box and re-issue TDS.