- Info about the game
- Installing
- Patching / Running
- EAX (HD / 3D Audio)
- High refresh rates
- Mods
- Fan missions
1. Info about the game
Developer: Looking Glass Studios, Inc.
Resources:
2. Installing
2.1.a) Insert your original CD1 into the CD/DVD drive,
or:
2.1.b) Buy the game on GoG or Steam and only then download CD images from archive.org. Extract .bin & .cue files, mount the CD1 image in ImgDrive or similar software.
2.2) Autorun should launch panel.exe (run it manually if you disabled Autorun for CD/DVD drives):
2.3) Sadly, on newer OSes installer won’t install the game just yet:
2.4) Goto setup.exe‘s properties and set Compatibility mode to Win9x:
2.5) Do a full install of the game:
2.6) Installer should install the game fine (mount CD2 and CD1 when asked to):
3. Patching / Running
3.1) If you’re on old hardware & OS (Win98, WinXP), you can now run the game. There’s no CD protection, except simple CD check:
Game should work on old enough hardware & OS, but it doesn’t work on mine (see “Statement” for info about my setup) – game won’t launch at all.
3.2) If you’re on modern hardware & OS, you must upgrade the game further with an updated .exe (from NewDark update). The best way of applying NewDark to Thief Gold is by using Thief Fixer a.k.a. TFix by voodoo47. You can grab it at TTLG Forums. Download the TFix_1.27.exe and run it:
It contains optional improvements, mostly related to the fact, that NewDark uses modified Thief 2 engine. I recommend using all of them:
3.3) Game should launch now:
If it doesn’t, you’re probably missing required Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable (see above + get it from the same GD link as TFix).
3.4) You can now run the game in its “most up-to-date” form:
And apply “modern” settings by modifying cam_ext.cfg:
4. EAX (HD / 3D Audio)
4.1) Hardware accelerated sound should be available “out of the box” (at least when using NewDark):
But EAX isn’t available. Yet.
4.2.a) Get the OpenAL 1.1 Windows installer (oalinst.zip) from OpenAL site. Install OpenAL driver (oalinst.exe).
4.2.b) If you don’t want to or can’t (Linux) use the system-level solution (driver), and prefer the appliaction-level one (.dll), grab the OpenAL 1.1 Dll Pack (OpenAL 1.1.zip) from my mirror.
Extract proper OpenAL32.dll (depending on your OS, either 32-bit or 64-bit one) to game’s main directory.
4.3) Get the latest OpenAL Soft binaries from the OpenAL Soft site.
OpenAL Soft is an LGPL-licensed, cross-platform, software implementation of the OpenAL 3D audio API. OpenAL provides capabilities for playing audio in a virtual 3D environment. Distance attenuation, doppler shift, and directional sound emitters are among the features handled by the API. More advanced effects, including air absorption, occlusion, and environmental reverb, are available through the EFX extension.
Extract proper soft_oal.dll (depending on the game’s .exe, either 32-bit or 64-bit; in case of Thief Gold, the 32-bit of course) from \bin\ subdirectory to game’s main directory.
4.4) Get the OpenAL Soft configuration file (alsoft_ini.zip) from my miror. Extract alsoft.ini to game’s main directory and modify it if necessary.
- By default, it’s configured to use 2.0 speakers.:
channels=stereo
stereo-mode=speakers
- If you want to change the channel / speaker setup, modify the “channels” entry, for example into:
channels=surround51
- If you want to use headphones instead of speakers, modify the “stereo-mode” and “stereo-encoding” entries into:
stereo-mode=headphones
stereo-encoding=hrtf
Full list of alsoft.ini commands can be found here.
4.5) Run the game, change Hardware sound acceleration to “OpenAL”. EAX should now be available:
If it isn’t, or if you get no audio when using OpenAL, check the Thief.log. In most cases it’s either:
- Problem with the OpenAL driver (OpenAL32.dll missing, wrong version used: 32-bit instead of 64-bit):
: OpenAL Init...
: OpenAL not found on system or failed to load, install AL redist package or chose other sound driver
- Problem with the OpenAL Soft binaries (soft_oal.dll missing, wrong version used: 64-bit instead of 32-bit):
: Opening user defined OpenAL device "OpenAL Soft"...
: Skipping device "OpenAL Soft", failed to open
: failed to open device
If everything’s fine, you should get sth like this:
: OpenAL Init...
: OpenAL32.dll: 6.14.357.24
: Default device: OpenAL Soft
: Opening default OpenAL device "OpenAL Soft"...
: Device 0 (default)
: name : OpenAL Soft
: version : 1.1
: version str: 1.1 ALSOFT 1.23.1
: vendor : OpenAL Community
: renderer : OpenAL Soft
: 3D sources : 255
: 2D sources : 8
: EFX : 1
: EAX2 : 1
: EAX3 : 1
: EAX4 : 1
: EAX5 : 1
: occlusion : 1
: XRAM : 1
: Opened device 'OpenAL Soft'
: EAX reverb support enabled
: occlusion support enabled
5. High refresh rates
If you want to enable high refresh rate (144Hz, 240Hz) for this game, do the following:
5.1) Open cam_ext.cfg (NewDark configuration file).
5.2) Increase the “framerate_cap 100.0” value to the desired one, for example:
framerate_cap 144.0
5.3) Remove semicolon from the “;phys_freq 60” line:
phys_freq 60
This should prevent physics-related issues by locking physics updates to a fixed frequency.
6. Mods
There are some pretty interesting mods available for the game: hi-res textures, hi-res sounds, etc.
6.1) To use mods, you’ll need to put them in proper subfolder (\Mods\ most of the time) and modify cam_mod.ini (adding mod’s path to the “mod_path” section at the bottom).
6.2) Don’t use Dark Engine Mod Manager (a.k.a. DMM) unless you know what you’re doing. It’s not compatible with TFix (yet).
6.3) I can recommend one TG mod for sure: Thief Enhancement Pack by Nameless One.
This project is an effort to improve the quality of the graphics in Thief 2: The Metal Age, and also in Thief: The Dark Project and Thief Gold. The ultimate goal is to replace all the old, low-quality objects and textures from Thief 1 and 2 with versions that have higher polygon counts and texture resolutions, while keeping as close to the originals as possible.
6.4) Grab latest version from GitHub. Move ep2.zip to game’s main directory. You don’t have to modify cam_mod.ini this time – DFix already covers this, with dedicated entry:
...+EP2\Thief1+EP2+...
6.5) Launch the game. And voila:
7. Fan missions
Except mods, Thief Gold can also run fan-created missions. Good resource of these can be found at thiefguild.com. To run them:
7.1.a) Run the “!FMselect” link in game’s main folder (it was created by TFix).
or
7.1.b) Run Thief.exe with the “-fm” parameter:
Thief.exe -fm
7.2) Either way, you’ll get FMSel. Let it create the \FMs\ subfolder and (optionally) choose the subfolder with archived FMs (\archFMs\ for example).
7.3) Download fan missions, put them either into the \archFMs\ subfolder (if used as archives) or into the \FMs\ subfolder (if extracted). Play FM:
Running Old PC Games 