Thief really does have some deadly shadows...

[qckbeam]

Well, I just picked it up about an hour ago and I must say I'm not happy at all. After four years of waiting I placed the CD in it's tray and began the install. 5 minutes later a lovely message box saying "Data on Thief3_2 corrupt" and giving me the option to Abort, Retry, or Ignore. I ignored it and the install continued. Two more errors popped up and I promoptly ignored those. The install finished after about 6-7 minutes and I plopped Disk 1 down on the tray to play. Of course, right after the Logos *CRASH*. So I reinstalled, this time off a different drive, and got through the installation without a hitch. Happy, I clicked Play with a smile on my face. Four years and it was here. Some bumps in the installation, but who cares, it works now. The logos popped up again, this time without crashing. I took notice of the Nvidia one (having an ATi card, I am wary of any game that has Nvidia built into the logo), and finally, I was at the title screen.
I booted up a new game and was given a slight jolt with the lack of any intro or briefing cutscenes. Just Garret talking about his mission in the background while you read the text to his script and browse through your items. Surprising, but no biggie. I thought the menus looked quite nice, and sounded great. Sure was good to hear Steven Russel as Garret once again. With that I clicked start and was thrown into the mission after some slightly tacky loading screens. This is when everything started to suck.
As you all know, in Thief: Deadly Shadows, everything casts a shadow in real-time. So imagine my surprise when I noticed that every single shadow looked totally screwed up. They are twisted and distorted, not cast at all in some places, flickery in others, and for some reason tend to jump sporadically from super bright, to super dark without warning. The game is a flashing, flickering mess! I played through the first mission a bit, hoping it was just the start area. But EVERY area looks like this. The shadows jump around and morph with your movement. Rooms that should be moody and dark, jump from totally lit, to totally dark a few times every second. It's HORRIBLE! Well, so much for a bug free release I guess. Perhaps IS just forgot to test the game on the Radeon chipset (I have a 9700 Pro). I am not the only one having these problems either. Many Radeon owners report the same troubles. I'm disgusted with it... :flame:

 

[hiln]

Sounds like an ATI problem with the engine.

edit: oops, guess you got to wait for a patch (or mess with the display settings on your ati option menu). Life is unfair like that.

 

[Neutrino]

I was just over at the eidos forums.

I swear, does that company just not even beta test their games? Or perhaps they beta test them on the exact same system specs everytime. Stupid.

 

[Axyon]

You have to have at least the 4.4 Cats installed for everything to work correctly with the game. Do you?

 

[Mr. Redundant]

sounds dissapointing, sorry bro.

however please use paragraphs, that way my eyes wont bleed as much.

 

[Dedalus]

hmph, sounds typical. i've got a 9700 pro too, so i guess i've got all that palarva to look forward to.

it's not out over here until 25th june, so i hope a patch will be out by then. i'm expecting it to be a heap of shit anyway, i just want to know what i'm making fun of.

www.thief3.org

^maybe i should stick that in my sig

 

[CrazyHarij]

Wow, is the game out? That was fast.. But I'll wait for a demo, I've never really been a huge fan of the Thief trilogy.

 

[Mr.Reak]

* Flickering/"buggy"/badly drawn shadows are fixed for ATI owners by rolling back to earlier Catalyst driver revisions than 4.5(in other words try 4.4 or 4.3). This at least seems to be the case for x800 and 9800 owners.
* Some install problems can be fixed by copying all files on the CDs to the hard drive first, then install from there. Not exactly ideal, but it fixed the install for someone at least.
* To remove opening movies: open Default.ini, go to PCStartup, and change ShowIntroMovies=True into ShowIntroMovies=False

 

[Deadline]

I think they should have taken the time to make Thief work on ATI cards to begin with.

 

[Mr. Redundant]

I think they should have taken the time to make Thief work on ATI cards to begin with.

and I dunno.... install correctly perhaps?
hehe

or maybe that was the plan...
install issues prevent the user from playing the game, therefore they need not worry about bugs!
brilliant! (jk)

 

[Letters]

**** that, I'm not getting another game like this. Idiots.

 

[qckbeam]

Alright, I finally got everything working well after four driver rollbacks and a bit of tweaking with the settings. Everything is running now, and it's running flawlessly. It took some work, but after quite a few hours of time with the game, I think the frustration was really worth it. The game is everything I could have hoped for (well, except for being a pain in the ass to get working right, that wasn't something I had hoped for). Thank you Mr.Reak with the tip on the opening logos. For everyone with this game and Radeon cards. The 4.3 drivers, and only the 4.3 drivers allow my system to run the game. Bloom is off since it causes this really weird error that allows you to see the individual vertices of the NPC's through the walls (honestly, it's not as bad as it sounds, but it can get very distracting). I set my resolution to 1024x768, and kept shadows at full detail. The framerate is smooth as silk, the graphics look pretty great most of the time, and everything is running well. Sorry for sounding so angry. It took a combination of things to get the game running, and I just kept missing a piece here or there. I got frustrated.

 

[Sui]

;( ;( ;( i have a radeon 9800 pro ;( ;( ;(

in still gonna get it tho
the game sounds pretty good, hopefully a patch will be out soon!

LOL, dedalus, you really do hate iron storm, dont you?

 

[Dedalus]

LOL, dedalus, you really do hate iron storm, dont you?

www.thief3.org

^not my website. got the link off someone else, and i happen to agree with the guy. he's only just added that "7.20PM..." thing so i assume he'll be posting more updates like qckbeam is doing.

but yes i do have an unhealthy dislike for IS. mainly due to the vitriol surrounding DX:IW. i'll wait till 25th june before i truly dennounce Thief III. what i'm more pissed off about is the potential for System Shock III becoming their latest victim.

...i'll get me coat...

 

[Neutrino]

www.thief3.org

^not my website. got the link off someone else, and i happen to agree with the guy. he's only just added that "7.20PM..." thing so i assume he'll be posting more updates like qckbeam is doing.

but yes i do have an unhealthy dislike for IS. mainly due to the vitriol surrounding DX:IW. i'll wait till 25th june before i truly dennounce Thief III. what i'm more pissed off about is the potential for System Shock III becoming their latest victim.

...i'll get me coat...

Well, I felt about the same as you do. I think DX:IW is a complete piece of crap. However, I'm pretty pleased with Thief. It's a lot of fun.

 

[Dedalus]

Well, I felt about the same as you do. I think DX:IW is a complete piece of crap. However, I'm pretty pleased with Thief. It's a lot of fun.

...fingers crossed here...

 

[Kyorisu]

lol I had the same problem on my 9600pro. Damn was I pissed when it happened. I spent 1/2 an hour switching drivers and tweaking settings. If only you could sue a company for Time Wasting

 

[Bad^Hat]

;( ;( ;( i have a radeon 9800 pro ;( ;( ;(

Pfft, I'll have it.

LOL, dedalus, you really do hate iron storm, dont you?

Ion. Iron Storm is a game Was supposed to be a "Half-Life killer" too, was pretty shocking actually.

 

[Kyorisu]

Pfft, I'll have it.
Ion. Iron Storm is a game Was supposed to be a "Half-Life killer" too, was pretty shocking actually.

Iron Storm was too quite and when it wasn't quite it was a Gibfest. Gibs would fly in all directions, sheesh they had dogs loaded with explosives

 

[Sulkdodds]

It was rubbish, too.

 

[Mr. Redundant]

Pfft, I'll have it.



Ion. Iron Storm is a game Was supposed to be a "Half-Life killer" too, was pretty shocking actually.

lol
people calling ION storm, Iron Storm, rofl

 

[Sui]

ok, just for all those UK thief gamers out there who are having the same problem, i found an offical download for 4.4 drivers...

http://www.ati.com/support/products/radeonwinxppreviousdrivers.html

im downloading now as the graphics are actually impossibly annoying for me... i really need to fix the graphics. the demo was fine, but the actual game is dodgy for some strange reason... maybe its because i installed a new ATI driver, but this driver wasnt out when this thread was started!

P.S. i have only played half of the demo level. i seriously cant play anymore until i have fixed this... its appauling...

i hope a patch comes out that actualy fixes these problems, as 1.1 just fixes difficulty settings.

for now ill just have to pray that 4.4 overrites 4.5, and that i wont have to uninstall 4.5 before installing 4.4... and im not going to do this as im worries it may destroy my entire graphics settings! i could get them back but still...

 

[Dedalus]

i've been running 4.4 for ages now. most reliable catalyst drivers are 3.3 or 3.6, i always end up falling back to them if the newer ones are dodgy.

thief has been fine and without graphical glitches so far. only thing is the odd crash to desktop sometimes when i press quicksave.

 

[SubKamran]

Ah well, I'm happy with mine...sure there's a few shadow problems but I love this game I just got it yesterday. A gift! :imu:

 

[mortiz]

Personally I think Ion Storm have been really sloppy with their past two games, Deus Ex 2 (for me, they couldn't really made it any more obvious that it was a console port) was a major dissapointment, and while Theif III is better, I still think it's weak compared to the previous two.

I think they probably got a bit complacent, or they've just lost that magic.

 

[SubKamran]

Personally I think Ion Storm have been really sloppy with their past two games, Deus Ex 2 (for me, they couldn't really made it any more obvious that it was a console port) was a major dissapointment, and while Theif III is better, I still think it's weak compared to the previous two.

I think they probably got a bit complacent, or they've just lost that magic.

There is stuff that's wrong...like people don't look very real, blood sucks, not very many weapons, animations aren't good, etc.

Still, I think it's a fun game.

 

[Sui]

theif 3 0wnz0rs. been playing it all night... i fixed all the graphics problems by downgrading to 4.4, it now looks better than ever. The game is great, so many things to steal, with large enviroments and a kewl story. im looking forward to playing it more tommorow

man, i havent had a good game in ages.

 

[Deadline]

whats with people resurecting there threads... geez lol

 

[dream431ca]

Radeon has very bad compatability for windows XP. Also alot of games don't work with those cards. That's why I stay away from the Radeon series cards because I won't just be playing Half-life 2.

 

[lans]

Radeon has very bad compatability for windows XP. Also alot of games don't work with those cards. That's why I stay away from the Radeon series cards because I won't just be playing Half-life 2.

But they give good FPS, so I'd choose that over a horribly laggy nvidia game anyday.

 

[StardogChampion]

Everyone sign this petition for an Editor for Thief 3, they released editors for the first two...

http://www.petitiononline.com/t3editor/petition.html

http://www.petitiononline.com/t3editor/petition.html

 

[Neutrino]

Already signed it some time ago. But I would definitely encourage everyone to sign. It's just ridiculous that they're considering not releasing the editing tools.

 

[BabyHeadCrab]

I was just over at the eidos forums.

I swear, does that company just not even beta test their games? Or perhaps they beta test them on the exact same system specs everytime. Stupid.

sometimes I think Eidos and Novalogic dont like to test there games...at all ;(

 

[Neo_Kuja]

* Imagines System Shock 3, with monsters with their eyes pasted wide open, like in DX:IW, minus any Psi-Ops abilitys because " We don't want the game to be too complex " excuse by Ion Storm*

Bugger, Ion Storm had so much potentional in the Old days (Deus Ex, System Shock 2), and now they've thrown it away because they are making crappy ports (DX:IW, Theif 3 ... to a point) due to Microsoft waving money under their faces to make all games primarily for XBox, which is basically a extremely retarded PC .....

 

[Zapp$ter]

* Imagines System Shock 3, with monsters with their eyes pasted wide open, like in DX:IW, minus any Psi-Ops abilitys because " We don't want the game to be too complex " excuse by Ion Storm*

Bugger, Ion Storm had so much potentional in the Old days (Deus Ex, System Shock 2), and now they've thrown it away because they are making crappy ports (DX:IW, Theif 3 ... to a point) due to Microsoft waving money under their faces to make all games primarily for XBox, which is basically a extremely retarded PC .....

Since when did Ion Storm make System Shock 2?

That was the work of Looking Glass Studios and Irrational Games, IIRC.

*sheds a tear for LGS* ;(

 

[Edcrab]

So, indulge a lazy, lazy person; what's the game actually like?

I preferred Thief 2 over the original (the first just annoyed me for some reason), and I've seen the odd online review but what's the consensus of (this) community? How does it play, how does it run, how does it differ from the first two?

As you can see I'm considering getting it...

 

[Alig]

Wow, is the game out? That was fast.. But I'll wait for a demo, I've never really been a huge fan of the Thief trilogy.

Thats no problem. I've never even heard of thief

I might get it on friday when im payed, it depends really on my priority's... number 1 being a next gen gfx card number 2 being Driv3r number 3 paying my ways (board ) then i'll see.

 

[Fat Tony!]

My experience with thief: Installed thief 2, played it for 2 minutes, got bored, uninstalled.

 

[Dedalus]

the engine is complete and utter shite. i hate it. wish they'd change it to something else.

so far it's been a humdrum affair. the cutscenes are similar to the original two which is good, glad they kept those the same instead of pseudo cg crap-o-thon xbox-esque cutscenes with swooping camera angles and big breasted female keepers batting eyelids at garret etc. although there's that one shop keeper in stonemarket who's a ****ING TYPICAL bimbo out of american pie or some shitty teen movie...god i want to beat the crap out of her...

anyway, i'm partway through shalebridge right now. scary? haha, not a chance. a little creepy but i wouldn't say it's scary. although it is well pulled off, the odd 'thing' flicking past a doorway out of the corner of your eye and stuff.

so far this game is scoring a very average 5/10. still waiting to be 'wowed' by something but i'm not expecting anything big. and the loading times are just ridiculous. the levels are about the size of half a football pitch...we all know who's to blame for that...

 

[Sui]

loading times? what loading times? seriously i have practically none.

so far i would rate this game 11/10, just to object to you

lo, but no seriously, i really like this game. in all seriousness i would give it 8/10 so far... because its all very good, i love the way you steal things, and there are hardly any bad things in the game which i can mention.

my only critisism is that the city areas are slightly less fun than i expected... there are guards everywhere... which may be good for the city watch, but it seriously pisses me off when im trying to escape or get somewhere. i run away rom one guard and come straight into another five. so mutch for perfects stats...

and more about the city, you cant get onto many rooftops or anything. it would be better if the floor was only one way to travel... and the roofs were a safe and quiet haven for a theif like garet. but alas, the only roofs you can get to are slightly "too sloped" to get up... :/

but apart from this, i love the general feel of the actual missions. theres loads to steal and so much replay value, i bet ill be playing this at least another time on extreme mode, if not more.

mind you im not very far in the game yet. ion storm may have slipped a bit on Deus ex 2 (well i personally dont think so but im just saying this to please dedalus ) but i feel that there is a great improvement on thief...

long live garet