Thief: Deadly Shadows Readme

Copyright © 2003-2004 Ion Storm, L.P.; Eidos Inc.

25 May 2004 | Version 1.0

Part 1: Things You Should Know

Please read through the DirectX section of this document. This section has information
vital to successfully running Thief: Deadly Shadows on your computer.

1.1 DirectX Information

This game is optimized for Microsoft DirectX 9.0b (or higher). Your computer must
have the Microsoft DirectX 9.0b re-distributable installed. It is available on the Thief:
Deadly Shadows disc in the \DirectX directory or by clicking on the “Install DirectX”
button in the Autorun program. You must also ensure your computer has DirectX 9.0b
compatible drivers for your graphics and sound cards. You can obtain these drivers
from the manufacturers' web sites. A list of these web sites is at the end of this
document.

Please note: Neither Eidos Inc or Ion Storm provides hardware device
drivers. You will need to contact your hardware vendor for assistance with
updating your devices.

1.2 Memory and Performance

While the game will run fine in 256 MB of RAM, your playing experience will be
smoother if you have at least 512 MB of RAM.

Regardless of how much memory you have, you can maximize your available memory
and increase the overall performance of the game engine by closing any open
programs, including system tray programs (like ICQ), and by defragmenting your hard
drive. See part 2 of this document for more information.

Eidos recommends that you have no other programs running while playing Thief:
Deadly Shadows. Other programs, including virus checkers, system utilities, and
screen savers can cause system degradation when playing and may compete with the
game for system resources, potentially resulting in instability or crashes

For additional information on visual performance and sound settings, please refer to
section 2.5 of this document.

1.3 Known Issues

Thief: Deadly Shadows is not supported on Windows NT 4.0, Windows 98, Windows
Millennium Edition, and Windows Server 2003.

1. Virtual Memory Warnings in Windows 2000 and Windows XP

When playing Thief: Deadly Shadows with less than 600 megabytes (MB) of virtual
memory you may receive low virtual memory warnings. To avoid these warnings,
please make sure you set your virtual memory settings to at least 600 MB.
To adjust your virtual memory settings for Windows 2000, please do the following:

1. Open the Control Panel.

2. Open the System control panel.
3. Select the Advanced tab.
4. In the Performance section, click the Performance Options button.
5. Under Virtual memory section, click the Change button.
6. In the Paging file size for selected drive section, next to Initial Size (MB) ensure
the number is at least 400.
7. Click Set.
8. Click OK, click OK, click OK.

To adjust your virtual memory settings for Windows XP, please do the following:

1. Open the Control Panel.

2. Open the System control panel.
3. Select the Advanced tab.
4. In the Performance section, click the Settings button.
5. Select the Advanced tab.
6. Under the Virtual memory section, click the Change button.
7. In the Paging file size for selected drive section, next to Initial Size (MB) ensure
the number is at least 400.
8. Click Set.
9. Click OK, click OK, click OK.

2. Shift Key Interrupts Game.

If you press the <Shift> key five times consecutively in Windows 2000 and Windows
XP, you will activate Windows' “StickyKeys” feature. To prevent this from reoccurring
follow these instructions for Windows 2000 and Windows XP:

1. Open the Control Panel.

2. Open the Accessibility Options control panel.
3. In the StickyKeys section, click Settings.
4. In the Keyboard Shortcut section, remove the check next to Use Shortcut.
5. Click OK, click OK.

3. <Ctrl>-<Alt>-<Del> Freezes Computer on Windows 2000

If <Ctrl>-<Alt>-<Del> is pressed during game play, the screen will become corrupt
and sometimes the operating system may become unstable. If this happens, you may
press <Escape> to return to the game, however it may be unstable. We recommend
that you reboot your computer and restart Thief: Deadly Shadows. Refrain from trying
to access the Windows Task Manager while playing.

4. Administrative Rights Required to Install/Play/Uninstall the Game.

If you are running Windows 2000 or Windows XP, you must log in to an account with
Administrator rights to properly install, play, and uninstall the game.
Graphics Card Issues:

1. General
a. It is important to have the most current set of drivers for your
computer's graphics card. These drivers can be found on your graphics
card's manufacturer's website. See the end of this document for links to
major graphics card vendors.
b. Some graphics card and device driver combinations cause over-
saturation when light bloom is enabled. Light bloom can be disabled
through the A/V menu.
c. Light bloom is incompatible with multisampling. If you have light bloom
switched on, then multisampling will be set to 1. If you increase
multisampling above 1, then bloom will be switched off.
d. High resolution textures should only be enabled on graphics cards with
at least 128 MB of memory. If your computer's graphics card has less
than this amount, you may experience severe performance degradation
or graphical anomalies.

2. ATI specific
a. Thief: Deadly Shadows will not run properly on ATI graphics cards using
the drivers older than Catalyst 4.4. We specifically do not support these
drivers. We strongly recommend you use the latest drivers from the ATI
web site.
b. If you are using multiple monitors on your computer and you set the
second monitor as the “primary display” using the Display Properties
control panel, the game will run on the second monitor, but the gamma
setting will be incorrectly applied to the first monitor. The workaround is
to select the first monitor and check Use this device as the primary
monitor in its Display Properties.
c. When using an ATI Radeon 8500 or 9200 graphics card, the game's
movies and introduction screen may be slightly distorted. This does not
affect anything else in game.
d. If you are seeing graphical distortion during the intro screens on Radeon
9000 cards, one possible solution is to go into your Control
Panel/Advanced settings and press the default key under the 3rd tab. As
always, please make sure you are using the latest video drivers from the
ATI web site.

3. NVIDIA specific
a. If you are using the newest NVIDIA drivers (56.72 as of April, 2004), you
may experience graphical corruption if you are not also using DirectX
9.0b. These NVIDIA drivers require DirectX 9.0b or higher to function
properly. The link to the DirectX site is as the end of this document.
b. Cards based on the NVIDIA GeForce4 MX chips are not supported.
c. If you are seeing other graphics or visual distortion issues while playing
Thief: Deadly Shadows not covered in items a and b above, then we
recommend visiting NVIDIA’s web site and downloading the latest video
drivers for your video card.
Card Driver Performance Notes
GeForce FX 5900
56.72 No problems reported, game ran fine with details on high
Ultra
No problems reported, game ran fine with details on
GeForce FX 5950 56.72
high/medium
No problems reported, game ran fine with details on
GeForce FX 5800 56.72
high/medium
No problems reported, game ran fine with details on
GeForce FX 5700 56.72
medium
GeForce FX 5600 56.72 No problems reported, game ran fine with details on low
No problems reported, game ran fine with details on
GeForce FX 5200 56.72
medium
No problems reported, game ran fine with details on
GeForce 4 56.72
medium
GeForce 3 56.72 No problems reported, game ran fine with details on low

Problems reported in drivers older than 4.4. Runs ok in

Radeon 9800 XT 4.4
high detail
Problems reported in drivers older than 4.4. Runs ok in
Radeon 9800 4.4
high detail
Problems reported in drivers older than 4.4. Runs ok in
Radeon 9700 4.4
medium detail
Problems reported in drivers older than 4.4. Runs ok in
Radeon 9600 4.4
medium detail
Problems reported in drivers older than 4.4. Runs ok in
Radeon 9500 4.4
medium detail
Problems reported in drivers older than 4.4. Runs ok in low
Radeon 9200 4.4
detail
Problems reported in drivers older than 4.4. Runs ok in low
Radeon 9100 4.4
detail
Problems reported in drivers older than 4.4. Runs ok in low
Radeon 9000 4.4
detail
Problems reported in drivers older than 4.4. Runs ok in low
Radeon 8500 4.4
detail

Performance Issues:

1. If the game is performing poorly, try decreasing some graphics settings. On the
A/V options screen, try decreasing the display resolution, shadowing detail,
lighting cut-off, level of detail, and turning off light bloom or turning on
hardware sound mixing.

2. Other graphics options may be turned off to help performance

a. Light bloom - this is what gives the light a more radiant, glowing look.
Turning this off will improve frame rate slightly, and will make the game
look clearer.
NOTE: If you are experiencing excessive “lights flickering”, or repeated
on/off blinking of lights within the game, then you should disable Light
Bloom. Certain light sources in Thief: Deadly Shadows are meant to
flicker some, and this is normal. However excessive amounts of flickering
or blinking suggest disabling the Light Bloom option.
b. Vsync - Turning this off will increase frame rate slightly, but will cause
vertical textures to ‘tear’ when you rotate.
 c. Multisampling - This is an anti-aliasing option. Keeping this set to 1 will
give the fastest performance.

3. Using <Alt>-<Tab> functionality to minimize and return to the game may lead
to instability.

a. <Alt>-<Tab> may cause the mouse to be non-functional within menus.

Pressing <Alt>-<Tab> again sometimes corrects this behavior, but can
also leads to further instability.

b. If your computer's desktop resolution is the same as the game's

resolution, you will not be able to use <Alt>-<Tab> to switch between
the game and the desktop. If the resolutions are different, you will be
able to switch normally. Using <Alt>-<Tab> during the movie to switch
to the desktop, shut down programs and then return to the movie will
not necessarily help performance.

Please note: Using <Alt>-<Tab> combination is not supported.

4. The introduction and endgame movies may play at less than optimal speed if
there are programs running in the background during or just before the movies
begin. For best movie performance, we shut down all other programs before
entering the game.

Keyboards:

1. Some keyboards, both Universal Serial Bus (USB) and PS/2, can cause problems
when you attempt to move Garrett while he is crouching. This happens because
they are not properly sending keyboard events to the operating system. This
issue is not related to Thief: Deadly Shadows. If you have problems crouching
while moving diagonally in the game, you may have a keyboard with this
deficiency. To verify, open Notepad and hold down the 'W' and 'D' keys
simultaneously. While holding these keys down, press 'X'. If an 'X' does not
appear, your keyboard is not sending proper messages. This is a hardware
issue with the keyboard and cannot be corrected with software or device
drivers. We have observed this behavior primarily with Microsoft Natural and
Microsoft Internet keyboards, though it may happen with other brands and
models. To work around this problem replace the keyboard with one that meets
PC standards or remap your in-game keys to a set, which do not have this issue.

Game pads:

1. If you are using a gamepad on your PC, you may find that not all of your
gamepad's buttons are assigned in Thief: Deadly Shadows. This is because
there is no standard set of buttons on PC gamepads. To setup your gamepad's
buttons, start Thief: Deadly Shadows. From the main menu, select Options,
then select Inputs and assign buttons normally.

Sound related Issues:

 EAX is only supported on Creative® Audigy 1 and Audigy 2 sound cards.

If you have a motherboard audio controller, we recommend that you not enable
Hardware Mixing (or any EAX options) as doing so may result in audio
abnormalities. We only recommend Hardware Mixing and EAX for computers
with compatible add-in audio cards.

Miscellaneous Issues:

1. The game will begin playing the introductory movie if left idle on the start menu
screen for an extended period. You can exit this movie by pressing <Enter> or
<Esc>.

2. <Alt>-<F4> has been disabled in this game. In order to exit the game, press
<Esc> to open the pause menu. Click the bottom-right-most button, Title
Menu. From the title menu, click Exit to Desktop. A confirmation window
appears before the game exits.

3. If your computer has Microsoft ActiveSync installed and running, Thief: Deadly
Shadows will not load any map. The Main Menu will come up but once you
select, Start New Game or attempt to load a saved game, the game will crash.
ActiveSync has no means to close or disable the program, so you must change
ActiveSync’s settings so it does not interfere with the game. In ActiveSync, go
into the configuration options and disable all connection settings.

4. If you share your My Documents folder across a network, the game will say that
you do not have enough space to save game. The solution is to not share this
folder.

5. If you receive the following error;

“The C\PROGRAM FILES\THIEF – DEADLY SHADOWS\SYSTEM\T3MAIN.EXE

file appears to be corrupt.
Reinstall the file, and then try again.

You have installed the game onto a computer that has an unsupported
operating system. Thief – Deadly Shadows will only work on computer systems
that have Windows 2000 or Windows XP.
Patches:

Ion Storm and Eidos are committed to providing customer support for our games on a
continuing basis. In that spirit, there may be a patch for Thief: Deadly Shadows
forthcoming. Visit the Eidos web site (http://www.eidos.com/) for more information.
 Part 2: Technical Issues

2.1 Installation & Setup

System Requirements

The minimum system requirements are as follows:

COMPUTER: IBM PC or 100% compatible

OPERATING SYSTEM: Windows 2000 or Windows XP (95/98/ME/NT not
supported)
CPU: Intel Pentium IV 1.5 GHz (or AMD Athlon XP equivalent)
MEMORY: 256 MB system memory
GRAPHICS: 64 MB video memory, Direct3D 9.0, and Pixel Shader 1.1
SOUND: 100% DirectSound 9 compatible sound card
HARD DRIVE: 3,000 MB free hard disk space
CD-ROM: Quad-speed CD drive or DVD drive (DVD required for European
versions)
INPUT DEVICES: Keyboard and mouse

The recommended system requirements are as above with the following changes:

CPU: Intel Pentium IV 2.0 GHz (or AMD Athlon XP equivalent)

MEMORY: 512 MB system memory
GRAPHICS: 128 MB video memory, Direct3D 9.0, and Pixel Shader 1.1

If you are uncertain of your graphics card's compatibility with Thief: Deadly Shadows,
click the Check Graphics button in the Autorun window.

Thief: Deadly Shadows does not support play on notebook and laptop
computers.

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 includes
utility programs that find and fix errors and optimize your hard drive performance:
Scandisk and Disk Defragmenter. Scandisk checks your hard drive for problems and
can fix most that it finds. Once Scandisk is complete, you should optimize your hard
drive's performance by running Disk Defragmenter. This program rearranges the files
on your hard drive to reduce the time needed to load programs. Follow these
instructions to start these programs:

1. Open My Computer
2. Right-click the drive icon you want to scan (generally C:) and click Properties.
3. Select the Tools tab.
4. Click Check Now to start Scandisk; click Defragment Now to start Disk
Defragmenter.

Installing Thief: Deadly Shadows

Installing Thief: Deadly Shadows is easy. Insert the first disc into your CD or DVD drive,
and the Autorun program should begin automatically. See section 2.2 if it does not.
This program will guide you through the game installation process. If at any time you
are instructed to restart your computer, do so. Follow the prompts. You will be asked
to select the directory where the game is installed. The default is C:\Program
Files\Thief - Deadly Shadows\. You may change this if you wish.

Starting the Game

There are multiple ways to start the game. You may do any of the following:

1. If you asked the installer to create a desktop shortcut, you may double-click it.
Its name is Play Thief - Deadly Shadows.

(or)

1. Open the Start menu.

2. Open the Programs folder (All Programs on Windows XP).
3. Open the Eidos folder.
4. Open the Thief - Deadly Shadows folder.
5. Click Play Thief - Deadly Shadows.

(or)

1. Insert the first game disc into your computer's CD or DVD drive. After a
moment, the Thief: Deadly Shadows Autorun should appear on the screen. See
section 2.2 if Autorun does not appear.
2. Click the Play Game button.

Uninstalling Thief: Deadly Shadows

There are multiple ways to uninstall the game. You may do any of the following:

1. Insert the Thief: Deadly Shadows Installation and Game disc 1 into the CD or
DVD drive to activate the Autorun program. Click on the Uninstall button, and
then click on the Yes button to uninstall the program. See section 2.2 if
Autorun does not appear.

(or)

1. Open the Control Panel.

2. Open the Add/Remove Programs control panel.
3. Select Thief - Deadly Shadows from the currently installed program list.
4. Click the Change/Remove button

2.2 CD Problems
AutoPlay Issues

Why doesn't the AutoPlay feature appear when I insert the Thief: Deadly
Shadows disc?

This may be happening because AutoPlay is disabled in your operating system.

Enabling and disabling AutoPlay in Windows 2000 and Windows XP requires editing the
system registry, a topic beyond the scope of this document. As an alternative to
enabling AutoPlay, you can manually start autorun in two ways on any version of
Windows:

1. Open My Computer, double-click the Thief: Deadly Shadows CD or DVD icon,

and double-click the Autorun program.

2. Open the Start Menu, click Run. In the dialog box that appears, type
D:\autorun (where D: is the letter of the CD or DVD drive with the game disc)
and click OK.

2.3 Crashes and Lock-Ups

When I start Thief: Deadly Shadows, 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 9.0b compatible driver from your audio card
manufacturer.

When I start Thief: Deadly Shadows, I receive the following error message:

"The application T3.exe referenced memory at address xxxx:xxxx that can't be

read from."

Chances are your installed graphics card drivers are not compatible with
DirectX. If this is the case, the solution is to upgrade your graphics card drivers
to the latest version. Links to the web sites of major graphics card
manufacturers are available at the end of this document.

The Installer keeps stopping when a certain percentage is complete.

1. You may have run out of free space on your hard drive. Please remove
unwanted programs to free up additional space for the game, and then reinstall
Thief: Deadly Shadows.

2. Files are possibly being copied to a corrupted area of your hard drive. If this is
so, you'll need to run the Scandisk program and use the “Thorough” option
(see previous item). After Scandisk has finished running and has informed you
that your drive is free of errors, try to re-install.

3. There may be dirt or fingerprints on the disc itself. Examine the bottom of the
disc; if you see any fingerprints or dirt, carefully clean the disc using a clean,
soft, lint-free cloth by wiping from the centre of the disc (near the hole) towards
the outer edge in a straight line.

Thief: Deadly Shadows is crashing to the desktop with no error message.

Several different things can cause this problem. Here's a list of the most common
culprits:
 • Ensure the disc is clean and undamaged (check for scratches and smudges on
the reading surface).

• Ensure you have properly installed the game.

• Ensure you have properly installed DirectX 9.0b.

• Ensure you have the latest DirectX 9.0b compatible drivers for your graphics
and sound card.

• Run Scandisk (see section 2.1 for instructions).

• Run Disk Defragmenter (see section 2.1 for instructions).

• Delete unneeded temporary files in the C:\Windows\Temp or C:\WINNT\Temp

directory.

• Ensure you are not running anti-virus utilities (e.g. Norton AntiVirus) while
playing Thief: Deadly Shadows.

• Ensure you are not running any third-party Windows memory management
utilities (like Quarterdeck QEMM).

• Ensure you are not running any 3rd party Windows disk caching utilities prior
to playing.

• Ensure you are not running Norton Crash Protector while playing Thief: Deadly
Shadows.

• Try uninstalling and reinstalling the game.

• Try exiting the game, rebooting your computer, and re-starting the game.

NOTE: If your computer crashes to the desktop while playing Thief: Deadly Shadows,
you should probably reboot before starting a new play session. If you do not reboot,
DirectDraw or DirectSound may be in a locked state and the game will be unable to use
your sound or graphics hardware.

2.4 DirectX-Related Questions

Can I play without DirectX?

No. You must have DirectX installed to play Thief: Deadly Shadows.

I cannot use DirectX on my computer. Is there any other way to run Thief:
Deadly Shadows?

No. You must have DirectX installed to play Thief: Deadly Shadows.

I don't want to use DirectX 9.0b. Can I use an older version of DirectX?

Use of DirectX 9.0b is strongly recommended. Thief: Deadly Shadows can work on
versions of DirectX as old as 8.1. If you choose to play with a version of DirectX older
than 9.0b you may experience graphics or sound anomalies or be entirely unable to
play. Thief: Deadly Shadows will not work with versions of DirectX older than 8.1 under
any circumstance.
2.5 Manual Additions

The following information should be used in conjunction with your printed game
manual.

Low Quality Textures - Enabling low quality textures will result in a performance
gain, at the expense of visual quality. Video cards with 64MB of video memory or lower
should enable low quality textures.

EAX Sound Options –

• Audio Hardware Mixing: This option uses the sound hardware to mix the sounds
and to perform the 3D spatialization. The result is improved 3D sound quality
and full surround sound support (for users with more advanced speaker setups
like 5.1).

• EAX Advanced HD: This option (available on sound cards that support EAX 3.0 or
higher) enables reverb, which causes sounds to echo and reverberate more
realistically with the game environment.

• EAX Multiple Environments (Reverb): This advanced option (available on sound

cards that support EAX 4.0 or higher) enables multiple simultaneous reverb
environments, which offers even more realistic audio modeling over EAX
Advanced HD.

Light Cutoff – Turning this up slightly reduces lighting quality in exchange for
performance.

Multisampling – increasing this setting will result in smoother edges on game objects
and characters, at the expense of performance. This should only be increased if you
have a high-end video card.

Level of Detail – Turning this down reduces the detail on characters in exchange for
performance.
2.6 Technical Support
If you need further technical assistance after reading this document, please do not
hesitate to contact Eidos using the methods listed below.

When contacting Eidos, please be prepared to provide Eidos with as much information
about your computer as possible. Note the exact type of hardware in your computer,
including your graphics card, sound card, CD or DVD drive, amount of system RAM, and
the speed and manufacturer of your processor. Also, be sure to include the title and
version of the game, and a detailed description of the problem.

It will also help if you prepare by creating a DirectX Diagnostic Tool log file before you
call. To do this:

1. Open the Start Menu.

2. Click Run.
3. In the dialog that appears, type dxdiag and click OK.
4. Once the DirectX Diagnostic Tool has loaded, click the Save All Information
button. The computer may require a few moments to create the log file. Your
monitor may flicker or re-sync. Save the file to a place you will remember, like
your computer's Desktop or your My Documents folder.

When you call Eidos Technical Support, have this file open or have a printed copy
available. If you send an email query, please attach the file to the email.

Note: Hints and tips will not be given out over the Technical Support lines.

Technical Support Contact Details (United Kingdom)

Address Wimbledon Bridge House

1 Hartfield Road
Wimbledon
SW19 3RU
Web http://www.eidos.co.uk/support/
Phone 0870 9000222

Technical Support Contact Details (United States of America)

Address Eidos Customer Services

651 Brannan Street
San Francisco, CA 94107
Web http://www.eidos.com/support.html
Phone (415) 615-6220
Fax (415) 547-1201
Drivers and Software Updates

You may find help with hardware or device driver problems on one of the websites
maintained by the supplier, some of which are listed below:

3D Labs http://www.3dlabs.com/
ATI Technologies http://www.ati.com/
Creative Labs http://www.creative.com/worldwide.asp
Intel http://support.intel.com/
Matrox http://www.matrox.com/
Microsoft DirectX http://www.microsoft.com/directx/
NVIDIA http://www.nvidia.com/
Terratec http://www.terratec.net/

More information is available from Eidos' technical support web sites:

United Kingdom: http://www.eidos.co.uk/support/

United States
and North America: http://www.eidosinteractive.com/support/
France: http://www.eidos.fr/support/
Germany: http://www.eidoshelpline.de/

Further technical information and drivers for Windows computers can be found at
http://www.windrivers.com/.