Getting Thief: Dark Project to work in Windows XP

[ibex333]

So I decided to try this game again since I didn't give it any attention when it came out, but it wont install. Says "cant install because of NT limitations".

Does anyone know of a fix for this?

 

[ibex333]

Please close thread. Found solution here:

http://www.ttlg.com/forums/sho...ad.php?t=75031#install

 

[PingSpike]

TTLG forums will be your main trove of knowledge on this one.

Of note is that every video card since the x1x00 series cards from ATI (and equivilent nvidia series, although I think there's more driver shuffling on their side) does not display colors properly with this or in my experience, any game from the era using the same dithering technique. I think it has something to do with the 16-bit rendering used on older games. For Thief at least, some one created a fix but last I checked it introduced its own host of problems.

 

[ITPaladin]

darn. I upgraded my system since the last time I installed it.
I am now on a pci-e system. I still need to finish this game. I got frustrated near the end in the cave.

 

[ibex333]

So far so good... I couldn't get the game to run at anything higher than 640x480(other res crash the game) but I found a user made patch on some site that supposedly allows you to run at any res you want, and fixes the dual core issue. I cant tell if the patch worked, because after applying it the game's video resolution options become corrupted, and ONLY show the 640x480 option, but it does seem like I am not running at 1280x1024.

I wanted to DL the "upgraded" textures from the TTLG site, but most links there are long dead. Guess the forums is my last option.

 

[funboy6942]

Originally posted by: ibex333
Please close thread. Found solution here:

http://www.ttlg.com/forums/sho...ad.php?t=75031#install

Damn, all you needed to do, other then all that typing crap you found was explore in the drive the disc is in, find the setup.exe and right click on that and select properties, then compatibility, and make it seem as though it is running on a win98 rig. Done. Click set up and it will now install.

After it is done installing, when you click the desktop icon and get the same"will not run on a NT machine", just do the same thing as before and make it run as on a 98 rig, and it should run fine.

I do this for a ton of my older games, and most for my sons older educational games, and 99% of the time I can get them to install, and then run afterwards.

Hope this helps you, and anyone else trying to install not only this game, but some of their others they stored away because they got that message.

 

[ibex333]

Good point. I knew about this all along, but I guess I assumed right from the start that a simple solution like this would not work. That "NT error" message looked scary. 😉

I suppose in the end of things, it wasn't a waste of time because I learned something new in the process.... Now if only I could find a working link for that "texture pack" that supposedly improves Thief's gfx..

 

[Fox5]

Does Thief have a DOS mode? If so, it might work near perfectly in DOSBox.
I've also had luck with running old games under Wine with linux, since it reversed engineered older versions of Windows. And if you're fine with software rendering (and I don't think it made much difference in that game), you could virtualize windows 98 and run it that way.

 

[PingSpike]

Thief isn't quite old enough for dosbox I'm afraid! I think it came out in 97 maybe? Its a windows game...it was from that era where games had software renderers as an option, although I don't remember for sure if it had one or not. That said, there was a signifigant difference IMO between 256 color software rendering and 16 bit accelerated rendering that I personally would fight to maintain. While the difference between 32 and 16 bit was noticeable and nice, the difference between 8 bit and 16 bit is HUGE!

If you can't get it working properly on its own, your next best bet is to find the ddfix. Apparently it even allows widescreen resolutions now. (Again, it seemed to be buggy last time I checked it out)