Thief: TDP / Gold Fix Guide

Welcome.
This guide will help you to get Thief 1/Gold running on your computer.

Install The Game (Retail)
First of all, you'll need the Thief 1/Gold CD. Pirated Versions are NOT supported by this guide. If you really value the game, please go out and buy it!
Insert the Install CD 1 in the Drive but don't install quite yet. Go into D:\ or whatever letter your CD Drive is, Right click on Setup.exe > Properties and setup the Compatibility to Windows 95 or 98.

This avoids Thief from not installing due to a compatibility issue back in 1998 with NT systems. Go ahead and install Thief 1/Gold. This guide will assume that you are installing to "C:\Games\Thief" but you can install it wherever you like, just substitute the directory for your own directory. Do a FULL INSTALL of the game.

If the installer asks you to install DirectX 6.0, Select NO. You should have DirectX 9.0 already installed. If you don't or are unsure, feel free to grab the DirectX Web Installer. This will grab all the latest DirectX files you need from Microsoft directly.

When the Thief Gold launch window appears, click Close at the bottom of the window as the game is not in any sort of condition to be started yet.

Now, with Thief 1/Gold installed, you might want to install the editor for the game (called DromEd). If you want to skip this part then feel free to as this isn't a necessary step to getting Thief 1/Gold running on your machine.

Open CD1 again in Explorer. go into GOODIES\DROMED and find DROMED.ZIP

Extract the Contents of this Zip file into your Thief Gold installation overwriting any files it finds. All is going well, now Thief Gold should be installed successfully.

Install the Game (Steam)
Download and Install Steam, a Digital Distribution platform for games. Buy Thief Gold here and download it. Simple!

The game will be installed to "/Steam installation/steamapps/common/thief_gold" so it's best you go there now and follow any non-retail steps listed below.

CRF Files (Retail Version)
In the Thief 1/Gold directory are lots of .CRF files. These contain information that the game uses such as Textures, Music, Sounds, Voices etc.
To make the game more 'Mod Friendly', we shall move these files into their own directory.
Create a new folder in the Thief 1/Gold directory and call it "RES" . Find all of the files that have the file extension CRF and move them into that folder.

'New Dark' Method
Install the 'New Dark' Patch
An official patch has been released to the community, who have dubbed this patch the 'New Dark' patch.

Not only does this patch make the game fully playable on Windows 7 with minimal configuration, it also adds full DirectX 9 support, Widescreen that can be changed mid-game and expanded mod capabilities for all the Thief map makers out there!

This patch is mainly designed for Thief 2 but the patch is compatible with Thief Gold aswell with a little modification but, since I'm a nice guy, I've done it for you already!
Thief Gold - 'New Dark' 1.40 Patch

Open the Zip file using 7-Zip or your favourite Zip software and you will see 5 more Zip files and some text files inside. Extract the contents of contrib.zip and new_dark.zip into your Thief Gold installation

You will need to have Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 SP1 C++ runtime libraries installed on your computer to run this new version of Thief Gold. If you don't know if you have them already installed or not, you can find the libraries here at Microsoft's Website.

Also, it is a good idea to make sure your version of DirectX is up to date.

Now, I hate to break it to you but.. That's it! No more work needs to be done! Your copy of Thief Gold is up and running. Of course, you can dive into the cam_ext.cfg file with Notepad and you can alter anything you want like Post-processing effects like Bloom and 16x AA for some extra added visuals.

Everything is clearly labelled inside the cam_ext.cfg file so you really cannot go wrong with configuring the file.

Some of the commands works on a Boolean system, 0 is off, 1 is on. Turn features on or off by changing the numbers. Also remember to remove any semi-colons ; in front of the command you want to enable (to disable, just re-add the semi-colon again)

Be sure to make a backup of the file first before you go altering something you might wish you hadn't.

EAX through OpenAL
EAX will now work in Thief Gold through the OpenAL library. You can get the OpenAL files (oalinst.zip) from here:
OpenAL Downloads Page

Once you have installed them, Start Thief Gold and go to Options > Audio and click on Hardware Acceleration until it shows the Option 'OpenAL'

Now when you play the game, you will have all the echoey hallways you could possibly dream of

Old Method
Install the 1.33 Patch - Thief: TDP only (Retail Version)
If you are installing the original Thief - The Dark Project, please update the game to 1.33 now.
Thief - The Dark Project 1.33 Patch

Thief.exe and DromEd.exe files (Retail Version)
Next, we need to overwrite the Thief.exe and (If you have the editor installed) DromEd.exe files that are in the Thief 1/Gold installation. Grab the right version for your game.
Thief New EXE - Thief Gold New EXE - DromEd New EXE
Put these files into your Thief directory overwriting the old ones. These help correct errors on newer computers with ATI and nVidia cards.

Modifying INSTALL.CFG (Retail Version)
Open your Install.cfg file with Notepad located in the Thief Gold directory (Right Click on the file and click Open With... Select Notepad and click OK). It should look something like this:

cd_path E:\
install_path C:\Games\Thief
language english
resname_base C:\Games\Thief+E:\thief
load_path C:\Games\Thief+E:\thief
script_module_path C:\Games\Thief+E:\thief
movie_path C:\Games\Thief\movies+E:\thief\movies

Change it so that it looks like something a long the lines of the following:

install_path C:\Games\Thief
language english
resname_base C:\Games\Thief\ RES
load_path C:\Games\Thief
script_module_path C:\Games\Thief
movie_path C:\Games\Thief\movies

Be sure to add the RES folder directory to the "resname_base". This important for the next step. Save the file and close it.

Enabling EAX
This part requires that you have a sound card or some sound device that can handle EAX effects in games.
EAX DLL files
Put these two files inside your Thief 1/Gold directory. Later, in the main menu, you can enable EAX effects in the Thief 1/Gold Options menu! (If you are on Windows XP or lower)

For Windows Vista/Windows 7 users with Realtek Onboard Sound.
Software called Realtek SoundBack allows you to regain lost EAX functionality in Thief.
Realtek SoundBack Page
Install this and follow the instructions it gives you to get everything working.

For Windows Vista/Windows 7 users with a Creative Sound Card.
First, grab the files in the Enabling EAX section above and put them in the Thief 1/Gold directory. Windows Vista/Windows 7 handles sound differently. Old games will not have the ability to have EAX enabled because Microsoft removed DirectSound from Vista/7. DirectSound allowed EAX to work.
Fortunately, Creative have created software called Creative ALchemy. This software allows OpenGL sound to be translated back into DirectSound.
Creative ALchemy Homepage
Depending on what card you have, Download the relative software and add Thief.exe to the list. Once you have done that, the software will automatically pick up on when you start the game and will begin translating the audio!

DDFix
Now, things become a little more advanced from here on in.
You will need to download DDFix from one of the two links below.
TTLG Official Forum -- 1.5.11
My Website -- 1.5.11
Extract all files into your Thief 1/Gold installation. Open DDFIX.INI in Notepad and you'll be faced with a number of options. These options are very fragile: Altering ANYTHING you don't understand may mess up your entire game and may even, though not likely, cause some kind of system damage.

Nowadays, this file has been configured to be at its most effective on most computers so a lot of the settings in here don't actually need changing or altering. People have been digging deeper and have unearthed so many configurable options that the DDFix.ini is full of customizable settings.

Here is how you do it. Simply remove the ; from before the line below the setting in which you want to enable. For example.

;Prevent multicore related crash. Boolean.
;MultiCoreFix=1

becomes

;Prevent multicore related crash. Boolean.
MultiCoreFix=1

Note the missing ; before the line MultiCoreFix=1. This is how you enable them for use!

Booleans are simple On/Off settings like a lightswitch. 1 is On, 0 is Off.
Integers are whole numbers. You don't put anything like 98.3 or 62.6 in these.

In DDFix.ini, you NEED to enable the following settings in the following settings to get a smooth playing experience.

;Prevent multicore related crash. Boolean.
;MultiCoreFix=1

;Register lgvid.ax every time game is started. Boolean.
;VideoFix=1

I HIGHLY RECOMMEND you remove the ; from the beginning of these two commands. The Multi-Core fix will allow you to run Thief 1/Gold on any computer that contains a CPU that processes using more then 1 CPU thread (In other words, If you are running Thief on a Dual Core, Quad Core, i3, i5 or i7 machine).

The Video Fix will register a unique codec every time Thief is launched so the videos for the game will play properly instead of not being played at all.

Here are some settings you might want to change in the DDFix.ini (Open it with Notepad and Save once you are done. Be sure to remove the ; from the beginning of the command in order to enable it to be read by DDFix.DLL):

;Disable the Windows key. Boolean.
;DisableWindowsKey=1

This allows you to 'window key' out of the game to maybe answer an e-mail or annoy someone on MSN. Change it to 0 or 1 to toggle this setting (Remember, 1 is ON, 0 is OFF)

;Use vsync. Boolean.
;FlipVSync=1

If you find the game running too fast on your machine, then enable VSync. This restricts the number of frames per second the game runs at to your monitors refresh rate and Thief will no longer run fast.

;Bloom intensity. 0-255. (0 = disable all bloom processing.)
;Bloom=255

If you like that sort of thing, Thief has Bloom now. Remove the ; to enable. There are a lot of Bloom settings further down the page and they all do many different things.

Once you have changed all the settings you like, move on to the next step.

Modifying CAM.CFG
Open CAM.CFG with Notepad (Just like you did with INSTALL.CFG) and you will see something like this:

Add these two lines to the bottom of the document:

always_play_intro
skip_starting_checks

Now the document will look something like this:

Don't worry about all these extra lines that might not be in yours. They'll be added to the file by the game once it starts.

Other optional lines include:
ObjTextures16
MeshTextures16
If you install any mods that improve graphics, models, textures etc. then these two lines will enable them to appear in game. If they are not present, textures will simply not work and those items will appear all white!

Changing Resolution
One will you WILL see however, is game_screen_size 640 480 or some variation of that. Change the 640 480 to what resolution you want Thief 1/Gold to run at. I personally have mine set as 1920 1080 because that's my max screen resolution.

So now my game_screen_size line looks like the following:

game_screen_size 1920 1080

Feel free to add your resolution here. As long as it's a valid 4:3, 16:9 or 16:10 screen resolution, it will work just fine.

In Game Movies Not Playing
If the in-game videos and cutscenes aren't playing for you, you should download the K-Lite Mega Codec Pack from CodecGuide.com.
This is a pack of codecs that allow you to play movie files on your PC. This pack has something called ffdshow which handles the playback of Thief 1/Gold's AVI files which are encoded with Indeo codec technology (which is very old).

Other Issues: Mono Sound
If you find that, when testing the sound and speakers inside the Thief Audio menu, the Left/Right speaker test sounds to be coming from the front, you need to turn down the number of Audio Channels. Not in Thief, but on your audio/sound device.

Obviously, I cannot cover every single device out there so you will have to look at your audio software or contact your audio software/hardware manufacturer for more information.

If you can, set the number of Audio Channels on your sound device to 4. Any number higher then 4 will not work.

The number of Audio Channels in the Thief Audio menu can be set to whatever number you prefer. I prefer 12 as it sounds to produce the clearest sound of all the settings.

Other Issues: B04.AVI movie corruption (Gold only)
Thief Gold, for some bizzare reason, has a different version of B04.AVI from The Dark Project's. Even though both videos are exactly the same in content, from what I can see. Thief Gold's version suffers from corruption about 1/4 in and will crash Thief Gold when it gets to this point.

There are 2 fixes for this:

Fix 1
Thief - TDP's B04 AVI File
This version of the file is taken from Thief - The Dark Project. Simple overwrite the Thief Gold version (its in the MOVIES filder of your Thief Gold installation directory) with this one and this will stop the crashing.

Fix 2
Go into your Start Menu and launch a program called "ffdshow video decoder" (This is assuming you have installed the K-Lite Codec Pack).

Once it's launched, scroll down to "Indeo 5" and you will see that is currently "disabled" (so ffdshow codec is not rendering over the default Indeo codec). Simply change it from "disabled" to "libavcodec" in the decoder column and click OK.

Doing this method will make all of the Thief Gold videos look a little bit different from normal because a different program is rendering the videos but this will fix the problem of the video B04 crashing on playback.

That's it!
OK, you should now have a fully working copy of Thief 1/Gold. It should now be playable on Windows XP/Vista/7/8 in glorious widescreen!
Here are some pictures of the first mission in 1680x1050 I took after following my own guide.

Big props go to the guys and girls at Through The Looking Glass. They found a lot of this stuff, a huge guide just needed to be made to make sense of it all :)

This guide is Copyrighted © Saleck. Feel free to print/re-post this guide anywhere but please give credit where credit is due. That's all I ask :)