Second Patch for Thief, v1.2 build 4116.4

[Nixxes]

Hello everyone,

We have just made public a new version of the PC version of Thief, v1.2 build 4116.4 This patch will be applied by Steam automatically when you next start the game. If your game does not update, please restart the Steam client.
This patch will address the following issues.

- Fixed an issue where, for some users, controller right stick would not turn the camera and controller hints would not appear.
- Fixed an issue where, for some users, the keyboard mapping menu would immediately map a key and then hang.
- Fixed an issue with the fog when SSAA was enabled that was introduced in v1.1.
- Fixed a crash when the user had 99 saves and tried to access the save menu in game.
- Added an option to the launcher configuration dialog to run the 32-bit version on a 64-bit machine. The 32-bit version has several features disabled causing it to use less memory, providing a smoother experience for users with lower spec machines. The checkbox for this option can be found in the display tab of the launcher options dialogue.
- Update: Deploy additional DLLs with the game to avoid issues with corrupt DLLs on user machines, which could cause the game to not start at all.
- Update: Moved Lockpick and Frame Search helper to the HUD menu and will now also affect mouse/keyboard.
WARNING: Disabling Frame Search helper while playing with mouse/keyboard could make it very hard, if not impossible, to find the button.
- Various performance improvements.
- Various crash fixes.

While we expect this patch to be an improvement for everyone, if you do have trouble with this patch and prefer to stay on the old version we made a Beta available on Steam, v1.1 build 4110.1, that can be used to switch back to the previous version

Step 1: Go to your STEAM library and select Thief in your game list
Step 2: right-click on the game and go to properties
Step 3: go to the Betas tab in the properties menu
Step 4: select version 1.1 and press ok.

This will set you back to the original released version of the game.
We will keep monitoring for feedback and will release further patches as it seems required. We always welcome your feedback!

[eXodL]

When can we expect some end game city map improvements eidos? It's hard enough to traverse the city one district to another, so please make all missions/chapters that can be replayed displayed and trackable on the map, because as of right now you cannot replay a chapter without having to use a guide to get to it, it's unacceptable.

[Ashpolt]

Just got the patch, and the game's still running like a dog on my machine:

Radeon HD 5970 2Gb
i7 950
6Gb RAM (DDr3 / 1600Mhz)
Windows 7 64-bit (and yes, I've tried running Thief in both 64 and 32 bit modes, no change.)

I'm pretty sure this machine should be able to run the game decently - it's more powerful than other rigs which people claim are running the game at full settings! - but it's unplayable even on the lowest settings. Moment-to-moment gameplay sometimes runs OK (on low settings), but any time anything has to load - a cutscene, starting a new level, even just initiating a takedown attack - the performance drops to...well, often even less than 1fps.

Please get this sorted! The game is just flat out not playable for me in its current state.

Happy to provide dxdiags etc if this will help.

[Nixxes]

Sorry to hear that Ashpolt.

What do you have your texture quality level set to, and what other settings are you playing at? With 2GB of memory on your graphics hardware it is important to not set texture quality to very high. Let's start with it set to Normal, and set these settings in the launcher before starting the game.

[OdanUrr]

Just wanted to let you know we're compiling a list of bugs, missing items, suggestions, etc., for Thief on Steam:

http://steamcommunity.com/app/239160...9191487020989/

Hope you'll find it useful for patching.

[Ashpolt]

What do you have your texture quality level set to, and what other settings are you playing at? With 2GB of memory on your graphics hardware it is important to not set texture quality to very high. Let's start with it set to Normal, and set these settings in the launcher before starting the game.

It's set to normal already (annoying, as Texture Quality is the one setting I always like to have as high as possible in any game, as it makes such an impact on visual quality, but I'd make the sacrifice if it made the game playable.) SSAA is off, VSYNC is off. Shadow Quality and DOF Quality are currently set to High, but I've tried them lower with no difference. In fact, I've tried running the game at the lowest possible settings, and I still got severe hitches. I've also tried the various ini tweaks suggested on here but nothing helps.

I'm not sure how much you read the rest of the forums, but I'm far from the only person with this issue. I haven't noticed a single unifying theme among the people who are having such bad performance issues, but Crossfire setups such as mine do seem to be quite common among those having issues. (And no, I can't just disable Crossfire - the 5970 is two cards on one board, rather than two separate cards, and the Catalyst Control Center doesn't give the option to disable Crossfire in these instances.)

I really hope you can get this sorted, as the little I've managed to play has been enjoyable! ....well, between the severe framerate hitches.

[Teagle]

Hi Nixxes,

Just wondering if the sound effects dropping out issue was being looked at? It wasn't fixed at my end with 1.2.

Thanks for your time!

[Nixxes]

Hi Ashpolt,

The 2GB 5970, is that 2GB shared across both GPUs, only 1GB effective for each? That would put you pretty much at the low-end and textures even at normal may be a problem, and may have to go further down. It won't necessarily mean horrible textures.

It is indeed also possible the crossfire is a problem, are you testing this with the latest AMD beta drivers? Unfortunately I cannot be sure whether somewhat older hardware is still being actively supported by these drivers, so it may be a problem.

If AMD is no longer maintaining this hardware for Crossfire you may want to attempt to disable it, it seems like it is possible: http://www.hardwareheaven.com/amd-gr...sfire-off.html.

Teagle:

We are monitoring these forums daily and are on the lookout for all major issues. However, deployment of fixes is obviously dependent on the time needed to actually fix items, the ability for issues to be reproduced, testing requirements, and their overall severity and priority. Audio issues are not listed for patch 1.2 so I would not expect them to be resolved by it.

[Teagle]

Teagle:

We are monitoring these forums daily and are on the lookout for all major issues. However, deployment of fixes is obviously dependent on the time needed to actually fix items, the ability for issues to be reproduced, testing requirements, and their overall severity and priority. Audio issues are not listed for patch 1.2 so I would not expect them to be resolved by it.

Thank for the reply.

I guess I was hoping it'd be one of those quick fixed that'd sneak in with no patch notes. I have no doubt that you guys are all over it and will fix it as soon as you can, as it's one of those immersion game-breaking dealios for a lot of us. Thanks! And please let us know in this thread if there's any info you need from us!

[Zednaught]

This still has not fixed the problem of the game refusing to launch. After hours spent trying to fix it myself, I'm not surprised. I've tried reinstalling drivers, registry cleaners, even deleted older Visual C++ installations. Nothing.

I appreciate the continued efforts, but it's hard not to be frustrated.

All I can offer to help is that this issue also affects all recent Nixxes ports: Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Tomb Raider. These games used to work for me, so either the patches they received changed things, or somehow my computer got an update buried so deep that I haven't found it yet. I think I recall someone who had this problem said they reformatted their computer and it still wouldn't launch.

I'll keep hoping.

[Nixxes]

Hi Zednaught,

I'm not aware of all these games failing to launch being a common problem, it does seem like something pretty odd must have happened on your computer to cause this.

Providing the latest version of Thief.log as you try to run this current game may help find out what is causing it. Additional logging was added to help narrow down problems for those still suffering them.

[lordgorzul]

What about the game breaking bug that when caught by a guard in the jelwery shop and loading a save after that, all previous saves will have the guards on alert at you even when u saved in safe places? a couple of us posted that on these forums and elsewhere, we stopped playing as its gamebreaking. all saves are practically corrupted and bugged from that point on when this happens.

[lordgorzul]

Major bug initial post: http://forums.eidosgames.com/showthread.php?t=141985
Who knows how many instances of that there are? potentially making you restart the whole game.

And other people having that as well: http://steamcommunity.com/app/239160...9190972275797/

[lowenz]

"The 32-bit version has several features disabled".

Which ones?

[Verrenus]

"The 32-bit version has several features disabled".

Which ones?

Yeah, I'm really curious to know this as well?

[Iroquois]

... caught by a guard in the jelwery shop and loading a save after that, all previous saves will have the guards on alert at you even when u saved in safe places?

Completely irrelevant to anything, but I thought it funny: I face the exact same bug on Thief Gold. Yay for faithfulness to the original?

In other news, the patch still crashes my game, but I appreciate someone's working on these things, at least.

[LoboFH]

I can't start Thief 1.2 at all. I tried with all the executables in the folders Binaries and Binaries 2.



If I revert to 1.1 it launches.

[Nixxes]

Hi Lobo,

What happens for you when you manually start the Thief executable in the Binaries2\Win32 folder? Do you see the same error, a different one?

As a work-around for this issue, and only for this issue, you can also try copying the Binaries2\Win64 or Binaries2\Win32 folder, depending on whether you want to run the 64bit or 32bit version of the game, to the Binaries\Win32 folder.

[LoboFH]

Hi Lobo,

What happens for you when you manually start the Thief executable in the Binaries2\Win32 folder? Do you see the same error, a different one?

Exactly the same error, with the four executables (except with ...\Binaries\Win32, different path: \binaries\win32\..\..\Binaries2\Win32\Shipping-ThiefGame.exe).

In ...\Binaries\Win32 and ...\Binaries\Win64 there is only this archive, Shipping-ThiefGame.exe

In Binaries 2 there are more archives, Shipping-ThiefGame.exe and some .dll's

[taff]

It's set to normal already (annoying, as Texture Quality is the one setting I always like to have as high as possible in any game, as it makes such an impact on visual quality, but I'd make the sacrifice if it made the game playable.) SSAA is off, VSYNC is off. Shadow Quality and DOF Quality are currently set to High, but I've tried them lower with no difference. In fact, I've tried running the game at the lowest possible settings, and I still got severe hitches. I've also tried the various ini tweaks suggested on here but nothing helps.

I'm not sure how much you read the rest of the forums, but I'm far from the only person with this issue. I haven't noticed a single unifying theme among the people who are having such bad performance issues, but Crossfire setups such as mine do seem to be quite common among those having issues. (And no, I can't just disable Crossfire - the 5970 is two cards on one board, rather than two separate cards, and the Catalyst Control Center doesn't give the option to disable Crossfire in these instances.)

I really hope you can get this sorted, as the little I've managed to play has been enjoyable! ....well, between the severe framerate hitches.

Mine runs perfectly on an i7 930, 6gig ram and a 5870, with everything on 1920x1080.

I am running the 32bit version though. I think if you don't have 8gig RAM you should probably run the 32bit version.

[New Horizon]

Just got the patch, and the game's still running like a dog on my machine:

Radeon HD 5970 2Gb
i7 950
6Gb RAM (DDr3 / 1600Mhz)
Windows 7 64-bit (and yes, I've tried running Thief in both 64 and 32 bit modes, no change.)

That's crazy.
I'm only running on a laptop and while the performance isn't awesome, the game is completely playable. You should be running circles around me.

2.13GHz Intel Core i3-330M Processor
3MB L3 Cache
4GB DDR3 System Memory (2 DIMM)
NVIDIA GeForce G 105M
500GB (7200RPM)

[LoboFH]

As a work-around for this issue, and only for this issue, you can also try copying the Binaries2\Win64 or Binaries2\Win32 folder, depending on whether you want to run the 64bit or 32bit version of the game, to the Binaries\Win32 folder.

The work-around works.

[Nixxes]

Lobo: Glad to hear that! I will pass this problem along to development for them to look at addressing. Can we get in touch with you via PM in case we need more information?

Verrenus/Lowenz: I do not currently have full information on that, sorry.

[Zednaught]

Hi Zednaught,

I'm not aware of all these games failing to launch being a common problem, it does seem like something pretty odd must have happened on your computer to cause this.

Providing the latest version of Thief.log as you try to run this current game may help find out what is causing it. Additional logging was added to help narrow down problems for those still suffering them.

I didn't mean to imply that it was common. Still, a search of the Steam forums with keywords like 'black' or 'launch' will reveal at least a dozen threads of users having the exact same issue. Clearly an uncommon problem, but it's not just one or two of us.

I wish there was some sort of accompanying error message.

Here's my log file. I hope it helps.
http://rapidshare.com/share/AC157E18...69DB8A6EF166DE

Edit: Reading some of the threads, it seems some people reported a similar problem, only the screen stayed black, instead of crashing after about ten seconds. For some, simply waiting caused the game to load. I feel like these problems are closely related, only something may be causing the game to close prematurely.

If it helps, when I open the launcher, my Task Manager shows two instance of 'Shipping-ThiefGame.exe*32" being opened. One has the description 'Thief' and the other has the description that's the same as the image name. I assume that one's just the launcher, though, as it disappears when I click play.

I've noticed that the 64 bit uses up dramatically more memory and CPU power as it launches.

[LoboFH]

Lobo: Glad to hear that! I will pass this problem along to development for them to look at addressing. Can we get in touch with you via PM in case we need more information?

Yes, indeed.