HomeThief Gold
Thief Gold DEMO
README file
September 10, 1998
Version 1.0
Welcome to Thief Gold DEMO!
The following information should help resolve any difficulties with running the game.
Note that this demo is intendend for those who have played Thief: The Dark Project, either
the full game or the demo. The mission in the Thief Gold Demo assumes understanding
of basic skills. If you have not played Thief before, we suggest downloading the
original Thief demo in order to familiarize yourself with gameplay.
In addition, this demo requires an understanding of how to use some items (lockpicks, for
instance). Information on more specialized items is provided in the Tips.htm file.
For quick strategy tips, open the accompanying Tips.htm file in your web browser.
The on-line manual for the complete game is Guide.htm, but please be aware that it contains some information
that does not pertain to the demo...
PART I - Things You Should Know - READ THIS!!!
Please read through the DirectX 6 section of this document. This section has information that is vital to successfully running Thief on your system.
DirectX 6
Thief Gold is one of the first games to use Microsoft's DirectX 6. In order for you to play the game, you must have DX6-compliant drivers for your video card and sound card. You will need to obtain the latest DX6 drivers from your card manufacturer. If Thief does not run properly on your video card, and there are no DX6 drivers available for your video card, you will have to run the game in software mode, by going into Options - Video and turning Hardware OFF.
In Part III of this document (technical stuff), you will find extensive documentation about DirectX, should you find it relevant.
The following is a list of 3D video cards that have been verified to work with Thief Gold under DX6 at the time of this writing:
? 3Dfx Voodoo, Voodoo Rush, Voodoo2, Banshee
? nVidia RIVA 128, RIVA ZX, RIVA TNT
? Matrox G200
? Intel/Real 3D i740
? S3 Savage 3D
? ATI Rage Pro
If you have a video card that uses the 3Dfx Voodoo2 chipset, and you are using older DX5 drivers, you may experience the occasional black screen or crash. Please visit your card manufacturer's web site to check if there are new DX6 drivers for your card.
Here is a list of 3D cards that are known not to have drivers that are compliant with DX6, as of Nov12th,1998, and as a result, will not run Thief Gold properly. You may want to contact your card manufacturer to see if up-to-date DX6 drivers have recently been made available.
Chipset
? #9 Ticket to Ride
? Cirrus Logic CL-5465
? Trident Image 975
? 3D Labs Permedia 2
? PowerVR PCX1
? PowerVR PCX2
? S3 Virge 325
? S3 Virge GX/DX/VX
? S3 Virge GX2
? Rendition V1000
? Chromatic Research Mpact
? Matrox Mystique
EIDOS Interactive maintains a web page with links to all major video and audio card manufacturers, which is a good first stop if you're looking to upgrade your drivers. You can reach this page at: http://www.eidosinteractive.com/techsupp/ts-links.html
If you continue to have problems, the EIDOS technical support page can be reached at:
http://www.eidosinteractive.com/techsupp/
Memory and Performance
While Thief Gold will run fine in 32 megs of RAM, your playing experience will be smoother if you have at least 64 megs. (Fortunately for you, the consumer, memory is extremely cheap right now.)
Regardless of how much memory you have, you can maximize your available memory and increase the overall performance of the game engine by doing the following:
- Closing any open windows
- Shutting down all other programs, including menu-bar programs like ICQ
- Defragmenting your hard drive
You can also change certain settings from the OPTIONS panel, to improve your frame rate:
SOUND: Set the audio channels to 4.
VIDEO: Set the character detail to Low.
Lower the screen resolution. Generally, the game runs best at 640x480.
Gamma Correction
Proper gamma correction (screen brightness) is vital for the most enjoyable Thief Gold experience. Given that different monitors and video cards exhibit a wide range of gamma values, it is important to understand the optimal setting for gameplay. The ideal gamma settings allow you to see the basic outline of terrain and objects even in deep shadow, but only barely. Darker settings than this won't allow you to see where you're going in dark areas (of which there are plenty in Thief Gold), and brighter settings tend to wash out shadows, making it hard to tell where you're safe from detection and where you're exposed. Also, dark shadows look a lot cooler. The easiest way to set your gamma is to start the training mission and go into the first large hall, where you are instructed to avoid the light. Adjust the gamma with the + and - keys on your keyboard until you can barely see the outline of the walls in deep shadow. It will probably be helpful to adjust your monitor brightness as well. You can also use the Gamma slider on the Options:Video panel to adjust your settings. Note: under DirectX6, it is possible to directly adjust the gamma settings of supported 3D hardware accelerator cards. If your card supports this feature, the Thief Gold gamma controls will address it. If your 3D accelerator card does not support this feature, you should be able to adjust your gamma settings by going to Settings/Control Panel/Display from your Windows taskbar.
? 3DFX Voodoo II-based cards don't currently support in-game gamma adjustment, but if you alt-tab away from Thief to adjust your gamma settings, you may hang the game when switching back to Thief. We don't recommend this.
Sound Acceleration and 3D Sound
Thief supports a lot of exciting features that are available with more advanced sound cards. If your sound card supports hardware acceleration and/or 3D sound (such as A3D compatible sound cards), you can turn on the Hardware Acceleration option in the Audio Options menu. Thief supports 3D sound - you won't believe your ears! However, if your card does not support hardware acceleration and/or 3D sound, you may not get any sound at all with Audio Hardware Acceleration turned on. If this happens, just go back to the Audio Options and turn Hardware Acceleration OFF.
Primary and Secondary 3D Graphic Cards
If you have more than one 3D graphic card in your system (for instance, a primary card and a 3Dfx card), you can choose between the two by going into Video Options, Advanced Options, then clicking on Drivers. This will list the 3D hardware you have installed in your system. Click on the card you wish to run Thief Gold on, then exit. If you have a 3Dfx card installed in your system, Thief will run on it by default.
Known Problems
? If you own a computer with an AMD K6-2 CPU and you do not have a 3D video card, you will need to go into the options menu, select video options and turn off hardware acceleration before you start playing Thief Gold. The 3DNow extensions built into the K6-2 can fool DirectX into thinking that your computer has full 3D capabilities and as a result your computer may crash if you do not turn off video hardware acceleration.
? 3DFX Voodoo 2 users: The Voodoo 2 does not support switching to Windows and adjusting display properties while running a Direct 3D program. Do not do this. Your system may lock when you switch back to Thief Gold.
? If you are having trouble using the number-pad keys and the shift button, make sure that NumLock is turned off.
? Looking Glass Studios and Eidos Interactive are committed to providing customer support for our games on a continuing basis. In that spirit, there may be a patch for Thief forthcoming; visit the Eidos or Looking Glass websites for more information:
http://www.eidosinteractive.com/
http://www.lglass.com/
PART II - Technical Stuff
Troubleshooting Issues
Installation/Setup
Crashes and Lock-Ups
DirectX-Related Questions
Contacting Technical Support
Installation/Setup
? What are the System Requirements?
? Preparing Your Hard Drive
? Installing Thief Gold
? Starting/Loading Thief Gold
System Requirements
What are the system requirements for Thief Gold?
The minimum system requirements are as follows:
COMPUTER:
IBM PC or 100% compatible
OPERATING SYSTEM:
Microsoft Windows 95/98
CPU:
Pentium 166 MHz with a Hardware Card and P200 without one.
RAM:
32 Mb
GRAPHICS:
1 Mb SVGA video card (100% DirectX 6.0-compatible)
SOUND:
Windows 95/98-compatible sound card (100% DirectX 6.0-compatible)
CD-ROM:
Quad-speed (4x) CD-ROM drive
HARD DRIVE:
60 Mb free disk space
INPUT DEVICES:
100% Windows 95/98 compatible mouse and keyboard
The recommended system specs are as follows:
CPU:
Pentium 266 MHz (or greater)
RAM:
64 Mb
GRAPHICS:
4Mb SVGA video card, as well as a 4Mb 3D Card (100% DirectX 6.0-compatible)
CD-ROM:
Eight-speed (8x) CD-ROM drive or faster
HARD DRIVE:
180 Mb free disk space
Preparing Your Hard Drive
To ensure that your installation is trouble free, you should check to see that your hard drive and file system are both tuned for optimum performance. Windows 95/98 comes with two utility programs that find and fix any errors and optimize your hard drive's performance. The first of these programs is called ScanDisk. ScanDisk will check your hard drive for problems and can fix any that it finds. You can run scandisk by clicking on the START button from the Windows 95/98 Taskbar, followed by Programs, then Accessories, then System Tools, and finally ScanDisk.
Once ScanDisk has finished running, you should next optimize your hard drive's performance by running a program called Disk Defragmenter. You can run Disk Defragmenter by clicking on the START button from the Windows 95/98 desktop, followed by Programs, then Accessories, then System Tools, and finally Disk Defragmenter.
Installing Thief Gold
Installing the Thief Gold demo is a snap. Just double-click on the downloaded demo and follow
the onscreen instructions. The Thief Gold Demo will get installed to your hard drive.
Starting/Loading Thief Gold
? Once the installation has finished, run the program from the Start Menu.
UnInstalling Thief
Go to the start menu and, under the Thief Gold Demo folder, select "Uninstallshield".
Crashes and Lock-Ups
When I start Thief Gold, my mouse cursor disappears and my computer locks-up.
Chances are your installed audio card drivers are not compatible with DirectX. The only solution is to get a DirectX 6.0-compatible driver from your audio card manufacturer.
NOTE: It is very important that you have DirectX 6.0 on your system. Thief Gold takes advantage of new 3d sound technology offered in DirectX 6.0, and cannot run without it.
When I start Thief Gold, I receive the following error message:
"The application thief.exe referenced memory at address xxxx:xxxx that can't be read from."
Chances are your installed video card drivers are not compatible with DirectX. The only solution is to get a DirectX 6.0-compatible driver from your video card manufacturer.
Thief Gold is crashing to the desktop with no error messages.
This problem can be caused by several different things. Here's a list of the most common culprits associated with these crashes:
1) Make sure DirectX 6.0 has been installed properly.
2) Make sure you have the latest Windows 95/98 drivers for your video card and that they are DirectX 6.0-compatible.
3) Make sure you have the latest Windows 95/98 drivers for your sound card and that they are DirectX 6.0-compatible.
4) Make sure Virtual Memory is enabled on your system.
5) Run ScanDisk.
6) Run Disk Defragmenter.
7) Clean out old temp (.TMP) files from the C:\WINDOWS\TEMP or C:\WIN95\TEMP directory on your hard drive (from Windows Explorer).
8) Make sure you do not have any Anti-Virus utilities (like Norton's AntiVirus) running resident prior to playing Thief Gold.
9) Make sure you do not have any 3rd party Windows 95/98 memory management utilities (like QuarterDeck's QEMM 8.0 for Windows 95) running resident prior to playing Thief Gold.
10) Make sure you do not have any 3rd party Windows 95/98 disk caching utilities running resident prior to playing Thief Gold.
11) Make sure you do not have Norton's Crash Protector running resident prior to playing Thief Gold.
12) Try exiting the game, rebooting your machine, and re-entering the game.
Note that if your system crashes to the desktop while playing Thief Gold, you should probably reboot your computer before starting a new play session. Otherwise, DirectSound may be in a locked state, and the game will be unable to use your sound or video hardware.
DirectX-Related Questions
? What is DirectX and do I need it to run Thief Gold?
? How do I install DirectX?
? How do I know which version of DirectX I have? Will it run with an older version? And if I do, indeed, have an older version of DirectX, where can I get the latest one?
? How do I manually install the DirectX drivers?
? Help! Thief Gold has hosed my system, and I suspect that DirectX is the culprit. How can I restore my original drivers?
? Ahh! I cannot use DirectX on my computer! Is there any other way to run Thief Gold?
What is DirectX?
What is DirectX and do I need it to run Thief Gold?
DirectX is a Microsoft product that allows software and hardware developers to utilize Windows 95/98 to its best potential. It is still a fairly new technology and as such has some compatibility issues. Video card and sound card manufacturers need to develop special drivers for their cards that work directly with it. Many already have and most are currently writing them. Unfortunately, this takes time.
Thief Gold, in part, uses DirectDraw and Direct3D, both components of DirectX. If you have older DirectDraw or Direct3D drivers installed on your system, or if you installed the DirectX 6.0 drivers that came with our program and they are incompatible with your video card, you should contact either the vendor of your system or the manufacturer of the video card for their most recent drivers. Video card manufacturers, in particular, generally update their drivers every 2-3 months or so. Depending on the card you have and who makes it, there is a good chance there will be new drivers available. If you do not already have Internet access, we highly recommend you get it, because most driver updates are easily accessible on the home pages of the various hardware manufacturers.
Thief Gold also uses DirectSound as well as many other new sound features made available in DirectX6.0. Once again, we recommend contacting the manufacturer of the card for the latest 100% Windows 95/98 DirectX 6.0-compatible drivers to ensure optimum performance.
Three different factions are involved in the usage of DirectX. Here is the explanation, in layman's terms.
First, there is Microsoft. They created the technology that is DirectX. It has become a part of Windows (as of '98) and belongs on your system. Microsoft's goal with DirectX was to allow Developers (that's us) to create high performance applications (mostly games) in Windows. This sounds great, and it is great as long as your hardware is compatible.
This brings us to the second faction that deals with DirectX: the hardware manufactures. They are the makers of your video and sound cards, as well as your joysticks and gamecards. When a new version of DirectX comes out, it is up to the makers of your hardware to update their drivers, so as to take advantage of the new functions DirectX offers. This does not always happen. Older sound and video cards are not always updated. You may end up with a game that stops in the middle of play, gives you error messages, or never loads at all.
Just because one DirectX game works on your system, this does not mean you have compatible sound/video cards. Here is an over-simplified example:
Let's say that DirectX#.# supports 100 sound functions and 200 video functions. (Functions are things like background noise, Doppler effects, and smooth 3D scrolling and dynamic lighting). The drivers for your "Earthquake 6000" sound card can only handle 98 of the DirectX sound functions, and your video card drivers for your video card, "The Videosmoker 3k" can only do 197 of the DirectX#.# video functions. Well, your game Blastem' Borg 50 may never call upon those 2 sound or 3 video card DirectX functions and will work fine. Then you get yourself the hottest new game, Blood-splatter Gore Fest 12. It uses the same version of DirectX that your Blastem' Borg does, but Blood-splatter Gore Fest 12 calls on the 3d Sound feature. That is one of the features that your sound card's drivers do not currently support.
Finally you have the developers (us). We write our code to DirectX specs, and test it. Unfortunately, we can't test every piece of hardware out there, so our game may not work on all systems. When a game does not work, there is a 90% chance that there is a driver problem with DirectX.
What do you do? Find out who makes the card, and go to their website. Download and install the newest drivers for your card. If you are unsure of exactly which card you have, what is the newest driver, or if the driver that is available is indeed DirectX compatible, send an e-mail to the company's technical support crew.
DirectX Installation
Microsoft's DirectX 6.0 is downloadable from the Microsoft web site.
http://www.microsoft.com/directx
Unhosing Your System
Help! Thief Gold has hosed my system, and I suspect that DirectX is the culprit. How can I restore my original drivers?
DirectX has become the new standard in Windows 95/98 application development. Nearly all high-performance software will be geared around this technology, so we do not normally recommend that customers attempt to alter its installation on their system. Unfortunately, there are those systems or hardware devices that just don't work with DirectX yet, and installing DirectX on these systems might cause driver-related problems. YOU CANNOT REMOVE DIRECTX FROM YOUR SYSTEM, but you can restore the original audio and video drivers which the installation of DirectX will have replaced.
If you currently have DirectX 6.0 either installed by our program or previously installed, you should be able to restore the original drivers by going to the ADD/REMOVE PROGRAMS section in the Windows 95 CONTROL PANEL (please refer to the section above entitled DirectX Version for instructions on how to get there).
If you enter the Windows 95 CONTROL PANEL and click on the ADD/REMOVE PROGRAMS icon, you should see a list of all of the programs that are registered with Windows 95 in the Add/Remove Programs Properties panel.
If you see a listing for "DirectX Drivers", double-click it to open the DirectX Setup panel. At the bottom of this panel, there should be a button labeled Restore Display Drivers. Clicking on this button should restore the original video drivers. After that, click on the other button labeled Restore Audio drivers. Though DirectX will remain on your system, the restoration of the older drivers may then allow you to run the program. If not, you may want to consider contacting your system vendor for 100% DirectX-compatible drivers for your video and/or sound cards OR visit the web site of the respective hardware manufacturer[s].
Run Without DirectX?
Ahh! I cannot use DirectX on my computer! Is there any other way to run Thief Gold?
No, we're afraid not. (Sorry!) Microsoft's DirectX is a requirement. If you have thoroughly digested the various suggestions offered by this README document and you are still experiencing problems running Thief Gold, please contact your system vendor to discover why your computer is having difficulty operating DirectX applications.
Technical Support:
PLEASE NOTE: This is a demo, which is a small fraction of the final game. We do not provide technical support for the demo.
Eidos Interactive Company Store
For the latest and greatest Eidos merchandise, you can now visit the Eidos Interactive Store. You can go to the web site at http://www.eidosstore.com
On behalf of all of us at Looking Glass and Eidos, we would like to thank you for your trial of this product and hope you have as much fun playing Thief Gold as we had in making it! Now get back to playing the game you taffer!
-The Thief Team
"I crumble!"
README file
September 10, 1998
Version 1.0
Welcome to Thief Gold DEMO!
The following information should help resolve any difficulties with running the game.
Note that this demo is intendend for those who have played Thief: The Dark Project, either
the full game or the demo. The mission in the Thief Gold Demo assumes understanding
of basic skills. If you have not played Thief before, we suggest downloading the
original Thief demo in order to familiarize yourself with gameplay.
In addition, this demo requires an understanding of how to use some items (lockpicks, for
instance). Information on more specialized items is provided in the Tips.htm file.
For quick strategy tips, open the accompanying Tips.htm file in your web browser.
The on-line manual for the complete game is Guide.htm, but please be aware that it contains some information
that does not pertain to the demo...
PART I - Things You Should Know - READ THIS!!!
Please read through the DirectX 6 section of this document. This section has information that is vital to successfully running Thief on your system.
DirectX 6
Thief Gold is one of the first games to use Microsoft's DirectX 6. In order for you to play the game, you must have DX6-compliant drivers for your video card and sound card. You will need to obtain the latest DX6 drivers from your card manufacturer. If Thief does not run properly on your video card, and there are no DX6 drivers available for your video card, you will have to run the game in software mode, by going into Options - Video and turning Hardware OFF.
In Part III of this document (technical stuff), you will find extensive documentation about DirectX, should you find it relevant.
The following is a list of 3D video cards that have been verified to work with Thief Gold under DX6 at the time of this writing:
? 3Dfx Voodoo, Voodoo Rush, Voodoo2, Banshee
? nVidia RIVA 128, RIVA ZX, RIVA TNT
? Matrox G200
? Intel/Real 3D i740
? S3 Savage 3D
? ATI Rage Pro
If you have a video card that uses the 3Dfx Voodoo2 chipset, and you are using older DX5 drivers, you may experience the occasional black screen or crash. Please visit your card manufacturer's web site to check if there are new DX6 drivers for your card.
Here is a list of 3D cards that are known not to have drivers that are compliant with DX6, as of Nov12th,1998, and as a result, will not run Thief Gold properly. You may want to contact your card manufacturer to see if up-to-date DX6 drivers have recently been made available.
Chipset
? #9 Ticket to Ride
? Cirrus Logic CL-5465
? Trident Image 975
? 3D Labs Permedia 2
? PowerVR PCX1
? PowerVR PCX2
? S3 Virge 325
? S3 Virge GX/DX/VX
? S3 Virge GX2
? Rendition V1000
? Chromatic Research Mpact
? Matrox Mystique
EIDOS Interactive maintains a web page with links to all major video and audio card manufacturers, which is a good first stop if you're looking to upgrade your drivers. You can reach this page at: http://www.eidosinteractive.com/techsupp/ts-links.html
If you continue to have problems, the EIDOS technical support page can be reached at:
http://www.eidosinteractive.com/techsupp/
Memory and Performance
While Thief Gold will run fine in 32 megs of RAM, your playing experience will be smoother if you have at least 64 megs. (Fortunately for you, the consumer, memory is extremely cheap right now.)
Regardless of how much memory you have, you can maximize your available memory and increase the overall performance of the game engine by doing the following:
- Closing any open windows
- Shutting down all other programs, including menu-bar programs like ICQ
- Defragmenting your hard drive
You can also change certain settings from the OPTIONS panel, to improve your frame rate:
SOUND: Set the audio channels to 4.
VIDEO: Set the character detail to Low.
Lower the screen resolution. Generally, the game runs best at 640x480.
Gamma Correction
Proper gamma correction (screen brightness) is vital for the most enjoyable Thief Gold experience. Given that different monitors and video cards exhibit a wide range of gamma values, it is important to understand the optimal setting for gameplay. The ideal gamma settings allow you to see the basic outline of terrain and objects even in deep shadow, but only barely. Darker settings than this won't allow you to see where you're going in dark areas (of which there are plenty in Thief Gold), and brighter settings tend to wash out shadows, making it hard to tell where you're safe from detection and where you're exposed. Also, dark shadows look a lot cooler. The easiest way to set your gamma is to start the training mission and go into the first large hall, where you are instructed to avoid the light. Adjust the gamma with the + and - keys on your keyboard until you can barely see the outline of the walls in deep shadow. It will probably be helpful to adjust your monitor brightness as well. You can also use the Gamma slider on the Options:Video panel to adjust your settings. Note: under DirectX6, it is possible to directly adjust the gamma settings of supported 3D hardware accelerator cards. If your card supports this feature, the Thief Gold gamma controls will address it. If your 3D accelerator card does not support this feature, you should be able to adjust your gamma settings by going to Settings/Control Panel/Display from your Windows taskbar.
? 3DFX Voodoo II-based cards don't currently support in-game gamma adjustment, but if you alt-tab away from Thief to adjust your gamma settings, you may hang the game when switching back to Thief. We don't recommend this.
Sound Acceleration and 3D Sound
Thief supports a lot of exciting features that are available with more advanced sound cards. If your sound card supports hardware acceleration and/or 3D sound (such as A3D compatible sound cards), you can turn on the Hardware Acceleration option in the Audio Options menu. Thief supports 3D sound - you won't believe your ears! However, if your card does not support hardware acceleration and/or 3D sound, you may not get any sound at all with Audio Hardware Acceleration turned on. If this happens, just go back to the Audio Options and turn Hardware Acceleration OFF.
Primary and Secondary 3D Graphic Cards
If you have more than one 3D graphic card in your system (for instance, a primary card and a 3Dfx card), you can choose between the two by going into Video Options, Advanced Options, then clicking on Drivers. This will list the 3D hardware you have installed in your system. Click on the card you wish to run Thief Gold on, then exit. If you have a 3Dfx card installed in your system, Thief will run on it by default.
Known Problems
? If you own a computer with an AMD K6-2 CPU and you do not have a 3D video card, you will need to go into the options menu, select video options and turn off hardware acceleration before you start playing Thief Gold. The 3DNow extensions built into the K6-2 can fool DirectX into thinking that your computer has full 3D capabilities and as a result your computer may crash if you do not turn off video hardware acceleration.
? 3DFX Voodoo 2 users: The Voodoo 2 does not support switching to Windows and adjusting display properties while running a Direct 3D program. Do not do this. Your system may lock when you switch back to Thief Gold.
? If you are having trouble using the number-pad keys and the shift button, make sure that NumLock is turned off.
? Looking Glass Studios and Eidos Interactive are committed to providing customer support for our games on a continuing basis. In that spirit, there may be a patch for Thief forthcoming; visit the Eidos or Looking Glass websites for more information:
http://www.eidosinteractive.com/
http://www.lglass.com/
PART II - Technical Stuff
Troubleshooting Issues
Installation/Setup
Crashes and Lock-Ups
DirectX-Related Questions
Contacting Technical Support
Installation/Setup
? What are the System Requirements?
? Preparing Your Hard Drive
? Installing Thief Gold
? Starting/Loading Thief Gold
System Requirements
What are the system requirements for Thief Gold?
The minimum system requirements are as follows:
COMPUTER:
IBM PC or 100% compatible
OPERATING SYSTEM:
Microsoft Windows 95/98
CPU:
Pentium 166 MHz with a Hardware Card and P200 without one.
RAM:
32 Mb
GRAPHICS:
1 Mb SVGA video card (100% DirectX 6.0-compatible)
SOUND:
Windows 95/98-compatible sound card (100% DirectX 6.0-compatible)
CD-ROM:
Quad-speed (4x) CD-ROM drive
HARD DRIVE:
60 Mb free disk space
INPUT DEVICES:
100% Windows 95/98 compatible mouse and keyboard
The recommended system specs are as follows:
CPU:
Pentium 266 MHz (or greater)
RAM:
64 Mb
GRAPHICS:
4Mb SVGA video card, as well as a 4Mb 3D Card (100% DirectX 6.0-compatible)
CD-ROM:
Eight-speed (8x) CD-ROM drive or faster
HARD DRIVE:
180 Mb free disk space
Preparing Your Hard Drive
To ensure that your installation is trouble free, you should check to see that your hard drive and file system are both tuned for optimum performance. Windows 95/98 comes with two utility programs that find and fix any errors and optimize your hard drive's performance. The first of these programs is called ScanDisk. ScanDisk will check your hard drive for problems and can fix any that it finds. You can run scandisk by clicking on the START button from the Windows 95/98 Taskbar, followed by Programs, then Accessories, then System Tools, and finally ScanDisk.
Once ScanDisk has finished running, you should next optimize your hard drive's performance by running a program called Disk Defragmenter. You can run Disk Defragmenter by clicking on the START button from the Windows 95/98 desktop, followed by Programs, then Accessories, then System Tools, and finally Disk Defragmenter.
Installing Thief Gold
Installing the Thief Gold demo is a snap. Just double-click on the downloaded demo and follow
the onscreen instructions. The Thief Gold Demo will get installed to your hard drive.
Starting/Loading Thief Gold
? Once the installation has finished, run the program from the Start Menu.
UnInstalling Thief
Go to the start menu and, under the Thief Gold Demo folder, select "Uninstallshield".
Crashes and Lock-Ups
When I start Thief Gold, my mouse cursor disappears and my computer locks-up.
Chances are your installed audio card drivers are not compatible with DirectX. The only solution is to get a DirectX 6.0-compatible driver from your audio card manufacturer.
NOTE: It is very important that you have DirectX 6.0 on your system. Thief Gold takes advantage of new 3d sound technology offered in DirectX 6.0, and cannot run without it.
When I start Thief Gold, I receive the following error message:
"The application thief.exe referenced memory at address xxxx:xxxx that can't be read from."
Chances are your installed video card drivers are not compatible with DirectX. The only solution is to get a DirectX 6.0-compatible driver from your video card manufacturer.
Thief Gold is crashing to the desktop with no error messages.
This problem can be caused by several different things. Here's a list of the most common culprits associated with these crashes:
1) Make sure DirectX 6.0 has been installed properly.
2) Make sure you have the latest Windows 95/98 drivers for your video card and that they are DirectX 6.0-compatible.
3) Make sure you have the latest Windows 95/98 drivers for your sound card and that they are DirectX 6.0-compatible.
4) Make sure Virtual Memory is enabled on your system.
5) Run ScanDisk.
6) Run Disk Defragmenter.
7) Clean out old temp (.TMP) files from the C:\WINDOWS\TEMP or C:\WIN95\TEMP directory on your hard drive (from Windows Explorer).
8) Make sure you do not have any Anti-Virus utilities (like Norton's AntiVirus) running resident prior to playing Thief Gold.
9) Make sure you do not have any 3rd party Windows 95/98 memory management utilities (like QuarterDeck's QEMM 8.0 for Windows 95) running resident prior to playing Thief Gold.
10) Make sure you do not have any 3rd party Windows 95/98 disk caching utilities running resident prior to playing Thief Gold.
11) Make sure you do not have Norton's Crash Protector running resident prior to playing Thief Gold.
12) Try exiting the game, rebooting your machine, and re-entering the game.
Note that if your system crashes to the desktop while playing Thief Gold, you should probably reboot your computer before starting a new play session. Otherwise, DirectSound may be in a locked state, and the game will be unable to use your sound or video hardware.
DirectX-Related Questions
? What is DirectX and do I need it to run Thief Gold?
? How do I install DirectX?
? How do I know which version of DirectX I have? Will it run with an older version? And if I do, indeed, have an older version of DirectX, where can I get the latest one?
? How do I manually install the DirectX drivers?
? Help! Thief Gold has hosed my system, and I suspect that DirectX is the culprit. How can I restore my original drivers?
? Ahh! I cannot use DirectX on my computer! Is there any other way to run Thief Gold?
What is DirectX?
What is DirectX and do I need it to run Thief Gold?
DirectX is a Microsoft product that allows software and hardware developers to utilize Windows 95/98 to its best potential. It is still a fairly new technology and as such has some compatibility issues. Video card and sound card manufacturers need to develop special drivers for their cards that work directly with it. Many already have and most are currently writing them. Unfortunately, this takes time.
Thief Gold, in part, uses DirectDraw and Direct3D, both components of DirectX. If you have older DirectDraw or Direct3D drivers installed on your system, or if you installed the DirectX 6.0 drivers that came with our program and they are incompatible with your video card, you should contact either the vendor of your system or the manufacturer of the video card for their most recent drivers. Video card manufacturers, in particular, generally update their drivers every 2-3 months or so. Depending on the card you have and who makes it, there is a good chance there will be new drivers available. If you do not already have Internet access, we highly recommend you get it, because most driver updates are easily accessible on the home pages of the various hardware manufacturers.
Thief Gold also uses DirectSound as well as many other new sound features made available in DirectX6.0. Once again, we recommend contacting the manufacturer of the card for the latest 100% Windows 95/98 DirectX 6.0-compatible drivers to ensure optimum performance.
Three different factions are involved in the usage of DirectX. Here is the explanation, in layman's terms.
First, there is Microsoft. They created the technology that is DirectX. It has become a part of Windows (as of '98) and belongs on your system. Microsoft's goal with DirectX was to allow Developers (that's us) to create high performance applications (mostly games) in Windows. This sounds great, and it is great as long as your hardware is compatible.
This brings us to the second faction that deals with DirectX: the hardware manufactures. They are the makers of your video and sound cards, as well as your joysticks and gamecards. When a new version of DirectX comes out, it is up to the makers of your hardware to update their drivers, so as to take advantage of the new functions DirectX offers. This does not always happen. Older sound and video cards are not always updated. You may end up with a game that stops in the middle of play, gives you error messages, or never loads at all.
Just because one DirectX game works on your system, this does not mean you have compatible sound/video cards. Here is an over-simplified example:
Let's say that DirectX#.# supports 100 sound functions and 200 video functions. (Functions are things like background noise, Doppler effects, and smooth 3D scrolling and dynamic lighting). The drivers for your "Earthquake 6000" sound card can only handle 98 of the DirectX sound functions, and your video card drivers for your video card, "The Videosmoker 3k" can only do 197 of the DirectX#.# video functions. Well, your game Blastem' Borg 50 may never call upon those 2 sound or 3 video card DirectX functions and will work fine. Then you get yourself the hottest new game, Blood-splatter Gore Fest 12. It uses the same version of DirectX that your Blastem' Borg does, but Blood-splatter Gore Fest 12 calls on the 3d Sound feature. That is one of the features that your sound card's drivers do not currently support.
Finally you have the developers (us). We write our code to DirectX specs, and test it. Unfortunately, we can't test every piece of hardware out there, so our game may not work on all systems. When a game does not work, there is a 90% chance that there is a driver problem with DirectX.
What do you do? Find out who makes the card, and go to their website. Download and install the newest drivers for your card. If you are unsure of exactly which card you have, what is the newest driver, or if the driver that is available is indeed DirectX compatible, send an e-mail to the company's technical support crew.
DirectX Installation
Microsoft's DirectX 6.0 is downloadable from the Microsoft web site.
http://www.microsoft.com/directx
Unhosing Your System
Help! Thief Gold has hosed my system, and I suspect that DirectX is the culprit. How can I restore my original drivers?
DirectX has become the new standard in Windows 95/98 application development. Nearly all high-performance software will be geared around this technology, so we do not normally recommend that customers attempt to alter its installation on their system. Unfortunately, there are those systems or hardware devices that just don't work with DirectX yet, and installing DirectX on these systems might cause driver-related problems. YOU CANNOT REMOVE DIRECTX FROM YOUR SYSTEM, but you can restore the original audio and video drivers which the installation of DirectX will have replaced.
If you currently have DirectX 6.0 either installed by our program or previously installed, you should be able to restore the original drivers by going to the ADD/REMOVE PROGRAMS section in the Windows 95 CONTROL PANEL (please refer to the section above entitled DirectX Version for instructions on how to get there).
If you enter the Windows 95 CONTROL PANEL and click on the ADD/REMOVE PROGRAMS icon, you should see a list of all of the programs that are registered with Windows 95 in the Add/Remove Programs Properties panel.
If you see a listing for "DirectX Drivers", double-click it to open the DirectX Setup panel. At the bottom of this panel, there should be a button labeled Restore Display Drivers. Clicking on this button should restore the original video drivers. After that, click on the other button labeled Restore Audio drivers. Though DirectX will remain on your system, the restoration of the older drivers may then allow you to run the program. If not, you may want to consider contacting your system vendor for 100% DirectX-compatible drivers for your video and/or sound cards OR visit the web site of the respective hardware manufacturer[s].
Run Without DirectX?
Ahh! I cannot use DirectX on my computer! Is there any other way to run Thief Gold?
No, we're afraid not. (Sorry!) Microsoft's DirectX is a requirement. If you have thoroughly digested the various suggestions offered by this README document and you are still experiencing problems running Thief Gold, please contact your system vendor to discover why your computer is having difficulty operating DirectX applications.
Technical Support:
PLEASE NOTE: This is a demo, which is a small fraction of the final game. We do not provide technical support for the demo.
Eidos Interactive Company Store
For the latest and greatest Eidos merchandise, you can now visit the Eidos Interactive Store. You can go to the web site at http://www.eidosstore.com
On behalf of all of us at Looking Glass and Eidos, we would like to thank you for your trial of this product and hope you have as much fun playing Thief Gold as we had in making it! Now get back to playing the game you taffer!
-The Thief Team
"I crumble!"
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