Posted August 08, 2016
1.1.7 is out.
Because the installer got an overhaul I thought it was a good time to take mensch's suggestion and change the naming: The Fat Edition is now the Full Edition and the former Standard Edition is the Update Edition - for use when appropriate. The following describes the changes relative to 1.1.6, so it's basically a rehash of the various beta posts:
The highlight of 1.1.7 is the inclusion of the "GarrAT" Garrett Animation Tweaks mod by ascottk - this has been on the to-do list for a long time. In the Sneaky Upgrade incarnation of the mod it'll work not only with the original game but also with T3 Gold and (in principle) all FMs. Assuming most players will want this it's enabled by default after installation.
The two small launcher executables are no longer patched originals but rewritten, simplified replacements - thanks to Abysmal and tolsen64 for testing. T3.exe will now launch the patched game for the benefit of Steam, GOG Galaxy and GarrettLoader users. This also means that the original desktop shortcut will now again launch the patched game. You can still run the unpatched game if needed, through a shortcut in the start menu.
Thief3Launcher.exe (the replacement Ion Launcher.exe), which keeps the desktop hidden while launching a new level, hopefully removes the need to disable themes on some versions of Windows. As a bonus it will cut a couple of seconds off loading times...
The installer has had a much-needed overhaul, using more installer pages instead of cramming everything into 'additional tasks'. Uninstalling a previous version has been moved to after clicking the Install button, so it's now possible to cancel at any point before and keep the current version.
A few new settings are available in the tweak tool:
In a multi-monitor setup, run the game on a display which is not the primary
Allow the game to run on multiple cores. When this works it will increase performance, at least in some cases
New tweak to scale down the size of the tip/flavour text on loading screens
The display selection and multicore features are somewhat experimental - feedback is welcome!
The loading screen size tweak provides 5 sizes from Normal to Smallest. Thief 3 Gold now uses a smaller size with improved formatting. Since it's a purely cosmetic change, T3G is still on version 1.2 and existing savegames will work:
Level loading is now fast enough that there's often not enough time to actually read the loading screen text - so loading can now be paused by holding down the Ctrl key.
A couple of small original issues with the loading screen text were fixed in the process. Most importantly the centered text, which would revert to left-justified after a couple of lines, is now left-justified to begin with.
The fix for the frozen mouse cursor when using large fonts is now on by default. The tweaker will now detect if it's already running, instead of launching a second instance. Various small fixes and improvements to descriptive text.
Behind the scenes everything has been moved to Visual Studio 2015 - which unfortunately means everything is now broken on Wine. Mac/Linux users should stick to the beta (1.1.6.500).
The highlight of 1.1.7 is the inclusion of the "GarrAT" Garrett Animation Tweaks mod by ascottk - this has been on the to-do list for a long time. In the Sneaky Upgrade incarnation of the mod it'll work not only with the original game but also with T3 Gold and (in principle) all FMs. Assuming most players will want this it's enabled by default after installation.
The two small launcher executables are no longer patched originals but rewritten, simplified replacements - thanks to Abysmal and tolsen64 for testing. T3.exe will now launch the patched game for the benefit of Steam, GOG Galaxy and GarrettLoader users. This also means that the original desktop shortcut will now again launch the patched game. You can still run the unpatched game if needed, through a shortcut in the start menu.
Thief3Launcher.exe (the replacement Ion Launcher.exe), which keeps the desktop hidden while launching a new level, hopefully removes the need to disable themes on some versions of Windows. As a bonus it will cut a couple of seconds off loading times...
The installer has had a much-needed overhaul, using more installer pages instead of cramming everything into 'additional tasks'. Uninstalling a previous version has been moved to after clicking the Install button, so it's now possible to cancel at any point before and keep the current version.
A few new settings are available in the tweak tool:
In a multi-monitor setup, run the game on a display which is not the primary
Allow the game to run on multiple cores. When this works it will increase performance, at least in some cases
New tweak to scale down the size of the tip/flavour text on loading screens
The display selection and multicore features are somewhat experimental - feedback is welcome!
The loading screen size tweak provides 5 sizes from Normal to Smallest. Thief 3 Gold now uses a smaller size with improved formatting. Since it's a purely cosmetic change, T3G is still on version 1.2 and existing savegames will work:
Level loading is now fast enough that there's often not enough time to actually read the loading screen text - so loading can now be paused by holding down the Ctrl key.
A couple of small original issues with the loading screen text were fixed in the process. Most importantly the centered text, which would revert to left-justified after a couple of lines, is now left-justified to begin with.
The fix for the frozen mouse cursor when using large fonts is now on by default. The tweaker will now detect if it's already running, instead of launching a second instance. Various small fixes and improvements to descriptive text.
Behind the scenes everything has been moved to Visual Studio 2015 - which unfortunately means everything is now broken on Wine. Mac/Linux users should stick to the beta (1.1.6.500).
