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Overview
The Thief series is one of the best ever created, at least in my humble opinion. Great characters, story, and gameplay flexible enough to let you concoct your own solutions to the levels. The third in the series was released for the original xbox as well as the PC (it runs on the xbox 360 too), so it has better graphics but the levels are smaller than the first two games.
Only recently has a game matched (even exeeded!) Thief: Dishonored. Go buy Dishonored and play it! If you like it, please consider buying and playing the Thief series as well. The gameplay is very similar.
Due to their age, there are some issues with the first two thief games:
- The engine used for Thief, called the Dark Engine, was not designed to support modern multi-core processors. This causes stability issues.
- The game was intended for Windows 95/98, there was no such thing as Windows XP. Let alone Vista, Windows 7, or 64-bit.
- Nvidia and ATI have shifted the focus of their driver development to 32-bit rendering, making older 8-bit and 16-bit games look awful. Even the menus can fail to work properly.
Fortunately, these problems can be fixed! See below for gory details.
Special Considerations
If you have a shiny new Vista/Windows 7 computer, you'll need to install DirectX 9 before you can play pretty much anything at all. So go and install it. It's included with lots of current games, but you can also find it in Microsoft's downloads section.
If you have an ATI graphics card, consider disabling Catalyst A.I. in your Catalyst Control Center. It's been known to cause problems with many games, particularly when using multi-core graphics cards or crossfire systems.
As is often the case, double-clicking may not run an installer with enough privileges to work properly. You may need to right-click and select Run as Administrator.
Thief 1 and 2 keep seperate keyboard setups. Once you have the games installed, you may wish to configure the controls in Thief 2, then copy the Thief 2 user.bnd file into Thief 1, replacing the existing one. This is an easy way to ensure both games have the same keyboard setup. (The patches described below include a range of control setups you can Load and customize within the game's menu)
Where to get Thief
All three Thief games are available for purchase and download at Good Old Games. Each game is only $9.99, and GOG have modified the game to ensure it installs properly. There's no need to insert a CD to make it work, no DRM licensing rubbish to get in the way.
Even if you already have the old Thief game CDs, the easiest way to get Thief installed on Windows Vista or 7 is to buy these excellent Good Old Games ready-fixed versions. Kudos to GOG for making these great titles available to people with modern computers!
Note that while the GOG installers will get the games installed, you need to apply patches to get the best stability and graphics. See the sections below for patching instructions.
Thief: The Dark Project
This is the original (non-Gold) 12-mission version of Thief The Dark project, available only on old CDs. If this is the version you have, I advise you to buy the more recent 15-mission version as explained in the article above. It's longer, and has fixes built-in. It even has a hidden blooper level.
Thief Gold: The Dark Project
Here's how to patch the GOG version available for purchase online, without patches it is unstable and has graphics issues. If you have a version of the game from a different source, these instructions might work if modified appropriately.
- Download and run TFix_1.22.exe (or newer) from this thread at TTLG.com.
- Accept the default list of TFix components. (It includes patches and improves lots of stuff!)
- The destination folder will default to C:\Games\Thief, which may not be where your game is. Change it to the folder Thief Gold is installed in. (Avoid using C:\Program Files, as that has permission restrictions)
- Run Thief Gold, open Options>Video>Resolution, and set a resolution that matches your monitor. The menu will have black bars on the sides on widescreen monitors, but the gameplay should fill the screen.
You may also want to try the following tweak for sound:
- Start Thief Gold, open Options>Audio, and click Hardware Acceleration to cycle through the available options. Some of them will turn EAX on, which makes environmental changes to sound. You may or may not like the effect, try and see.
- If EAX never comes on at all, download OALINST.ZIP from my mirror (Creative Labs doesn't provide the file any more). Open the zip, and run oalinst.exe to install OpenAL support on your computer, then try again.
All done! Experiment with Options>Mouse sensitivity and Options>Video>Gamma Adjust until the mouse feels comfortable and the gameplay brightness is acceptable.
Thief II: The Metal Age
Here's how to patch the GOG version available for purchase online, without patches it has graphics issues. If you have a version of the game from a different source, these instructions might work if modified appropriately.
- Download t2_v122.zip (or newer) from anodal.org.
- Open the zip, and extract the contents to a temporary folder. (It's a zip file that contains zip files)
- Open new_dark.zip and contrib.zip, and copy everything in them to your Thief 2 folder. This includes replacing thief2.exe with a new version form the zip.
- All done! Run Thief 2, open Options>Video>Resolution, and ensure a resolution is set that matches your monitor. The menu will have black bars on the sides on widescreen monitors, but the gameplay fills the screen when it is set correctly.
You may also want to try the following for sound:
- Start Thief 2, open Options>Audio, and click Hardware Acceleration to cycle through the available options. Some of them will turn EAX on, which makes environmental changes to sound. You may or may not like the effect, try and see.
- If EAX never comes on at all, download OALINST.ZIP from my mirror (Creative Labs doesn't provide the file any more). Open the zip, and run oalinst.exe to install OpenAL support on your computer, then try again.
After patching, experiment with Options>Mouse sensitivity and Options>Video>Gamma Adjust until the mouse feels comfortable and the gameplay brightness is acceptable.
Thief Improvements
The first two thief games are very old by current standards, and Thief 1 looked a little primitive even when it was released waaaay back in 1998.
Fortunately, the patches I've outlined above include a great many fan-made fixes released over the years, which sort out pretty much everything. That said, there are some additional options you may wish to consider:
- The sound in Thief 1 nd 2 was designed for old computers, and suffers a little for it. Fortunately, there is are high-quality sound patches for both games available from this TTLG thread.
- The textures in Thief 1 and 2 are also quite chunky, and can be improved by the Thief Gold texture Enhancement Pack and the Thief 2 texture Enhancement Pack.
- The best textures won't look too good if they still use the same low-polycount models. The similarly named Thief Enhancement Pack will add some 3D details to the characters and objects in the game world. Be warned: Installing this one requires editing some game config files, and the text you put in is different between Thief Gold and Thief 2.
- There are also some excellent fan-created missions you can download and play, some of which are real masterpieces. Using the downloaded missions is easiest with DarkLoader for Thief 1 and 2 fan missions, or GarrettLoader for Thief 3 fan missions. To get the actual missions, start with The Keep of Metal and Gold.
Thief Blooper Level
Finished Thief Gold, and interested in the Thief Blooper level?
The blooper level is an altered version of Bafford's mansion, with notes from the developers and examples of things that went wrong, or things they just thought were amusing. If you are familiar with editing configuration files, it's easy stuff.
In the Thief Gold folder is a file called USER.CFG. Open it with notepad, and add a line with these words:
starting_mission 16
Then save the file and start a new game. Easy! (Say hello to the baby burricks for me) When you are done and want to set it back to normal, edit the file again and remove the line you added earlier.