Collective Thief: DS Texture Pack By John P.

Sections of this Readme:

01. About the pack.
02. Preparations.

1. Changes made to the game.
2. How to install / configure / uninstall the pack.
3. Editor compatibility.
4. Requirements.
5. Tips.
6. Troubleshooting.
7. Known issues.
8. Bug reports.
9. Acknowledgements.
10. User Agreement.
11. Version History.



01.
About the pack:

The word “Collective” in the name of this texture pack was chosen because it’s a collection of all the textures I made (for Thief: DS) that used to have separate installers.

All of those textures have now been ‘collected’ in this new installer – most of them in improved versions. In addition, I have also added a lot of new textures. I was going to call it my ‘Cumulative’ pack, but went with ‘Collective’ to avoid confusion with my texture pack for the game DX:IW.

This new installer is improved on several areas compared to the old, separate installers:

The introduction of ibt_patcher.exe (more information further down in this Readme) makes the install/uninstall process of this pack much, much faster than with the old texture packs. While it before could take as much as 20 minutes to install/uninstall the biggest texture pack, this new and in fact much larger pack should only take about 3 minutes to install (and 2 minutes to uninstall). In addition, the process is now more reliable and much better looking.

The install process has also been made more efficient in other ways, and is therefore less taxing on hardware than my previous, separate texture packs.

Even though I have remade a lot of textures for this release, there are still hundreds of textures left that I would have liked to alter. And I’m sure there are a few you would have liked me to alter, that I didn’t. But I had to put my foot down somewhere, as this whole process has been very time consuming (both the texture and installer making).

Another thing is that I think I’ve almost hit an “invisible boundary”; if I add many more textures now, I think the game would become unplayable for most people because of the increased system requirements. Loading times would also become unbearable – loading times are already quite long, and performance already gets quite a hit if you install this entire release.


This Install Readme can be considered a full ‘user manual’ to the Collective Texture Pack. The information here is quite extensive and elaborate, and you won’t necessarily need to know everything the Readme encompasses in order to use the pack.

In fact, the Collective Texture Pack install process should be quite self explanatory, easy and straight forward. But it’s in those few cases where things go wrong, or you don’t know what a certain action would do, that it’s a good idea to have read everything.

In addition, there’s a User Agreement at the end that I’d like you to read.

But initially, you can browse through most of this Readme and read the parts that you think will be of use to you.

Good luck - and I hope this pack will be a positive experience.



02.
Preparations:

To avoid problems with the game and the texture pack, here is what you should do:

· Uninstall any old texture packs (that I have made).

· Uninstall, then reinstall the game.

· Patch the game to 1.1 (some game versions are already patched).

· You may want to make a backup of all your .ibt files (found in the Maps folder) before installing this pack. In most cases this won't actually be necessary, as this installer will back up or otherwise preserve your original files and restore them on uninstall, but backing up the .ibt files is a precaution in case something goes wrong.

· If you want to have it installed, install a game Editor.

· Lastly, check that you have approximately 160MB of free hard drive space available in your game install directory (if not, free up some space), then install this Collective Texture Pack (the estimated 160MB is for a full install of this pack).

· After you’ve finished installing everything, you may want to defragment your hard drive.



1.
Changes made to the game:

The textures and files you have installed, have (depending on your choices during install):


ü Replaced the original Garrett face textures with high resolution versions, either with a large scar, medium scar, no scar, or masked.

ü Replace all the original Loading screens with versions based on what Garrett face textures you chose to install. In other words; if you chose the Masked Garrett face textures, the Loading screens will automatically reflect this choice. The exception is if you choose to install the Large Scar version, as the Loading screens would then be identical to the originals.

ü Replaced the original Garrett equipment textures with high resolution versions (bow, arrow, blackjack, lock picks).

ü Replace the original Garrett outfit textures with high resolution versions, either with bare arms (game’s default look), clothed arms, or a Thief TDP inspired version. Most of these textures are in uncompressed quality.

ü Replaced the original female NPC face textures with high resolution versions.

ü Replaced many of the original female NPC hair textures with high resolution versions.

ü Replaced many of the original male NPC face textures with high resolution versions.

ü Replaced many of the original male NPC hair textures with high resolution versions.

ü Replaced the original outfit textures for some of the various people in the City and its vicinity, with high resolution versions.

ü Replaced the original outfit textures for City guards with high resolution versions (their faces will be affected by the ‘male faces’ option).

ü Replaced the original outfit textures for Hammer guards with high resolution versions (their faces will be affected by the ‘male faces’ option).

ü Replaced the original outfit textures for Hammer workers with high resolution versions (their faces will be affected by the ‘male faces’ option).

ü Replaced the original outfit textures for some of the Keepers with high resolution versions.

ü Replaced the original textures for many of the statues with high resolution versions.

ü Replaced the original textures for the Tree beasts with high resolution versions.

ü Replaced the original textures for the Cradle ‘puppets’ with high resolution versions.

ü Replaced the original textures for the ‘Kurshok’ with high resolution versions.

ü Replaced the original textures for the Rat beasts with high resolution versions.

ü Replace many of the original animal textures (cat, deer skull, rat etc.) with higher resolution versions.

ü Replace the original Menu Background .bik file with a higher resolution, custom made version. There are three versions, and the version installed will automatically reflect your choice in Garrett Outfit textures. In other words; if you choose the Clothed Arms Garrett Outfit, the Menu Background will be one of a ‘clothed arms Garrett’. If no Garrett outfit is chosen, a ‘Bare Arms’ Menu Background will be installed (if you choose to install a Menu Background), since that is the game’s default look for Garrett.

ü Replace the original menu “Thief Deadly Shadows” header texture and its ‘glow’ texture with higher resolution versions, the metal texture used on the ‘THIEF’ 3D header and some other menu and HUD items.

ü Replace the original bright blue ’frob highlight’ with a new, more subtle and brownish version, which isn’t fluctuating like the original and my previous version, while still accentuating the normal map for the texture.

ü Replaced the original bright white ’loot glint’ texture with a more subtle, copper coloured and sharper version.

ü Replaced the original bright blue ’arrow trail’ texture with a more subtle, greyish version.

ü Replaced over 140 of the original walls, floors, ceilings, wood/metal trim, barrels/crates, and furniture textures with higher resolution versions.

ü Replaced many of the original door textures with higher resolution versions.

ü Replaced many of the original window textures with higher resolution versions.

ü Replaced all of the original paintings with higher resolution versions.

ü Replaced many of the original ‘puddle’ textures (water, holy water, oil, moss patch) with higher resolution versions.

ü Replaced many of the original book textures with higher resolution versions.

ü Replaced the original candle texture with a higher resolution version, and its glow texture with a slightly more subtle version.

ü Replaced the original textures for stars with higher resolution versions.



All in all, there are over 500 textures and files in this texture pack.


If you would like to see a comparison between some of these textures and the ones that came with the game originally, you will find it here:

http://www.john-p.com/textures/Thief-DS/




2.
How to install / configure / uninstall the pack:

As you go through the installer wizard, you will be prompted to make a few decisions. You should look closely at the text on the installer pages, and ensure you understand everything before you click a button that leads you to the next page.

Once you get to the Options page, you will see a window with checkboxes and text. This is where you make your install choices. All choices are optional by default (checkboxes are unchecked), so if you wish to install the entire Texture Pack you will have to check all the checkboxes manually. But you can also use a Group’s main checkbox to check all options within the Group (this does not apply to the Garrett Groups).

To choose among the options within a Group, you click the + sign to expand the Group and see the options within, and then check the appropriate checkboxes.

The uninstaller works pretty much the exact same way.


You will be able to re-open this installer to configure your install by adding texture options you didn’t install the first time (if any).

This is why I decided to place the installer in your Thief install folder, and make a shortcut to it in Start \ All Programs \ Eidos \ Thief – Deadly Shadows \ Collective Texture Pack \, so you can easily access it later.

Example:
If you decided not to install the ‘Walls & Floors’ option the first time, you may later re-open the installer, and it will allow you to add the ‘Walls & Floors’ option to your install.

To remove texture options from your install, or uninstall the pack entirely, you go to:
Start \ All Programs \ Eidos \ Thief – Deadly Shadows \ Collective Texture Pack \, and click the shortcut to the un-installer.

You can also open your computer’s Control Panel, go to Add or Remove Programs, and find the entry for Thief - Deadly Shadows Collective Texture Pack by John P., ver. 1.0 there, highlight the entry and click the Change/Remove button.

This will open the un-installer, which is reconfigurable in the same way as the installer.

The options you decide to uninstall will turn up in the reconfigurable installer afterwards, and vice versa:

The checkboxes and text for the options you have installed will be invisible the next time you open the installer; only the options you didn’t install will be visible in the Install Options window.

The same is the case in the uninstaller; the options you have uninstalled, will not be available in the uninstaller afterwards, but will then be available in the installer.

Therefore; if you have installed all the texture options, the Install Options window in the installer will be empty when you re-open it, since there are no more options to install.

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Since you can only use one face and one outfit for Garrett at a time, the options in the two Garrett Groups in the installer are mutually exclusive. In other words you can only choose one option from each of these two Groups at a time. The exception to that rule is that you can of course choose the ‘Equipment’ texture option alongside one of the outfit texture options.

In addition to the above precaution: the two Garrett Groups are initially ‘open’ by default so you can choose not to install any Garrett textures at all, but as soon as you select one item in either of these Groups, the Group the selected option belongs to will become permanently selected (and so you become forced to select one item in it).

If you checked one item in either of these two Groups and then change your mind and don’t want to install any of those Garrett textures after all, you will have to exit the installer and re-open it in order to clear the Groups’ main checkboxes.

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The Collective Texture Pack's uninstaller allows you to uninstall individual texture options.

So if you have installed all the textures, and then decide you don’t like the blood texture for instance, you can check only the ‘Puddles’ option and the uninstaller will then only remove the ‘puddle’ textures, restoring the game’s original versions.

However, this will also remove the high resolution ‘moss patches’ and ‘water puddles’ etc., which may not be what you wanted to do. If you only want to “get rid of” one, single texture, you can instead use ibt_patcher.exe:

ibt_patcher.exe makes its debut in this Collective Texture Pack.

The purpose of ibt_patcher.exe is to override the original game textures, making the use of high resolution textures possible.

The original, most often low resolution original textures inside the game’s .ibt files are bypassed by ibt_patcher.exe, which in turn makes the game load the textures from the DynamicallyLoaded folder instead, even if these textures are larger (higher resolution) than the originals. This is what enables us to add high resolution textures to the game.

ibt_patcher.exe (as well as ibd_patcher.exe for DX:IW) has been made by the community member and programmer Kevin Boye. He has done approximately 99,9% of the work by doing all the programming; I have then made the GUI bitmaps (based on the bitmaps in ibd_patcher.exe) and the ibt_patcher.exe icon.

ibt_patcher.exe is included with this texture pack install, and a shortcut to it is found in Start \ All Programs \ Eidos \ Thief – Deadly Shadows \ Collective Texture Pack \ .

You do not have to use ibt_patcher.exe in order to use this texture pack:

The texture pack installer/uninstaller will enable/disable the textures you choose to install automatically for you, so there’s nothing you have to do manually. The ibt_patcher.exe file is included only so that you can experiment with enabling/disabling texture options if you’d like to, without using the texture pack uninstaller.

How it works and is used:

Using ibt_patcher.exe does not add/remove the high resolution texture files from your game install, it only enables/disables them, and ibt_patcher.exe also lets you disable/enable single, individual textures.

Simply check/uncheck the checkbox next to the texture name in the ibt_patcher.exe main GUI window, and it will enable/disable that texture (in other words; if a texture name’s checkbox is empty in the ibt_patcher.exe interface, it means that the game’s original texture will show up in-game instead of the high resolution version).

You may also experiment with the Presets I have set up: Click the dropdown menu arrow to see the list of available presets, highlight one, and either enable or disable it by clicking either the + or – button. The presets will enable/disable a whole group of textures in one go, instead of individual textures.


-You can use this as an alternative to the texture pack’s installer/uninstaller while you have it installed, but again, using ibt_patcher.exe won’t remove the files, and it won’t remove the texture pack’s registry entries.

So I would recommend using the pack’s installer/uninstaller to configure your install, but using ibt_patcher.exe can be a quick and easy way to for instance disable a few textures in case your computer is struggling when all of them are enabled, or if there are just a couple of textures you wish to “get rid of”, and those few textures are part of a rather large installer option.

Feel free to experiment with ibt_patcher.exe – but when you are going to uninstall the pack completely, you should use the texture pack’s uninstaller.


ALWAYS UNINSTALL MY TEXTURE PACK BEFORE UN/RE-INSTALLING THE GAME! IF YOU UNINSTALL THE GAME AND FORGET ABOUT MY TEXTURE INSTALLER, YOU WILL RUN INTO PROBLEMS IF YOU'D LIKE TO INSTALL MY TEXTURES AGAIN AT A LATER TIME:

Installer not showing options, or installer ‘wrapper’ not letting you install the Texture Pack:

If you have already had this release installed once, and uninstalled Thief: Deadly Shadows without uninstalling this pack first, and then reinstalled the game, you will find that when you then open the texture pack installer again, it will show either no options available (empty Install Options window), or it will only show the few options you didn’t install last time.

Or – the installer ‘wrapper’ won’t let you install the texture pack, but will give you a message box saying that the texture pack is already installed.

The reason for both these problems is that the installer will still read from the registry, where the option choices are stored. Since you didn’t uninstall my texture pack last time, those registry entries are still there, and so the installer “thinks” it’s still installed.

-After a full, successful install, the Install Options window is supposed to be empty, because there won’t be any more options left to install. And the ‘wrapper’ isn’t supposed to let you install the pack on top of an already existing install - this is normal.

So the advice below only comes into play when you are experiencing problems and are unable to install this texture pack again because the Install Options window in the texture pack is already empty, or the ‘wrapper’ won’t let you install it when you first open it.

In such a scenario: if you can still find the Collective Texture Pack's uninstaller in its folder inside the Thief: DS root folder (it may not have been removed last time), you can run it, and when this release has been successfully uninstalled you can run the ‘wrapper again, and when it re-opens the installer, it will show all options again afterwards.

If, on the other hand, the folder where Thief: DS was installed has been removed, and this Texture Pack’s uninstaller with it, you can download a Cleaner file I have made that will remove the pack's old registry entries.

When that's done, you'll be able to install this texture pack again. This Cleaner file also works for my other packs (packs for Thief:DS and DX:IW), but is ONLY to be used if you are experiencing problems reinstalling a texture pack.

You can download this Cleaner file from here, but read the documentation before use:

http://www.john-p.com/textures/Cleaner.html


Faster install/uninstall process in this release:

It has always been very important to me that you should be able to uninstall my texture packs completely, and then still continue playing the game afterwards with the original textures intact, and without any remnants of the pack left on your system. In other words; after a full uninstall, I wanted it to be like you never had my pack installed in the first place.

But a full uninstall of an entire pack has taken as much as twenty minutes before, because I only had a rather crude hex-editing method of overriding the original textures, and this method required that the .ibt files be opened and closed for every single texture option you wished to install/uninstall.

But from the release of this Collective Texture Pack, I have not only been able to get hold of a much more intelligent way of enabling/disabling high resolution textures using ibt_pathcher.exe, but have also been able to make an installer and uninstaller that are more “intelligent” than the previous versions.

It “makes a note” of what options you choose to install/uninstall, and only opens ibt_patcher.exe once, no matter how many or how few options you chose to install/uninstall.

This means that a full install of this entire pack should take about three minutes, and a full uninstall should take about two minutes, compared to the previous twenty minutes for each (e.g. the Misc. Pack).

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When you have installed the Collective Texture Pack and you re-open the installer, it will skip the Welcome, Install Readme and Directory pages, and open directly on the Options page.

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The uninstaller and its registry keys will remain until you decide to check all checkboxes (remove all files) in the uninstaller. It will then remove the (remaining) textures, and all registry keys and files associated with this install (including the uninstall file itself).



3.
Editor compatibility:

If you are not going to use an Editor, you can skip this section.

As I was making this installer, I first spent a lot of time trying to make it compatible with an Editor install by making it extract the textures into an Editor install path of the user’s choice. This turned out to have been a waste of time.

The reason is simply that this installer should work as it is, even with an Editor installed:

-If you have installed an Editor and have chosen to go the route of having two install folders; one for playing the game and one for editing it, my textures will in any event be extracted to the ‘playing’ part of your install (at least as long as you installed the ‘playing’ part from the CDs/DVD, and then copied that install folder to make an ‘editing’ folder), and the textures will therefore show up in-game as with a normal, vanilla game install.

And if you have gone the route of a single folder install for both playing and editing the game and use batch files to switch between playing and editing, my textures will still be extracted into the correct folder for playing the game.

So when you play the original missions, my textures should show up regardless.

However – if you would also like to use my textures in your Editor environment, then you will have to copy them from the PCTextures\DynamicallyLoaded folder and into the PCTextures and possibly also the Textures folder. In that case, it is your own responsibility to back up the original files first.

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NOTE:
Do not use Thief3Launcher.exe by ‘dracflamloc’ to switch between playing the game and using the Editor if you also want to use my Texture Pack.

The reason is that Thief3Launcher.exe as it is now, adds an extra \ to the game’s registry path whenever you use it to launch the game.

As an example: If your game install path is F:\Thief3, and you use Thief3Launcher.exe to launch the game, it will add an extra \ to the registry path, so that in the registry it then reads F:\Thief3\ .

This causes ibt_patcher.exe to malfunction with the error message: Runtime error ‘76’: Path not found during installation of the Texture Pack, and the result is that my textures aren’t enabled, and so they won’t turn up in-game (see also ‘Known issues’ below).

So you should find some other method of alternating between playing the game and using the editor.

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When you do install the Texture Pack and have an Editor installed, take a close look at the game path reported by my installer, and see if it corresponds with your game playing install path before you install.

I will not provide support for the use of an Editor. If you get problems directly linked to the use of my textures in conjunction with an Editor however, I may be able to help you.



4.
Requirements:

Please do not use other processing or memory hungry applications while the install process is working. The best thing would be to leave the computer to finish the install ‘in peace’. This is just a precaution to prevent problems.

Please do not interfere in the install- or uninstall process in any way.

Be ware that the installer will access and write to the rather large .ibt files (some over 30MB) in quick succession, and this process may require healthy system RAM, processing power and hard drive(s).

So if your system already suffers from some known instability, it may be wise to fix the cause of that instability before attempting to install this release.

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WARNING:
Yes, a warning is appropriate here: This texture pack is meant to enhance the visual impact of the game by adding higher resolution textures than are originally included. It is geared toward those of you who think sharp and detailed graphics are a big part of the gaming experience, and who as such are also staying current and spend some money on the hardware side of things.

Adding these new textures will make the game more demanding on hardware than it already is. If you are one of the people playing the game at for instance 800x600 or less with minimal visual effects enabled because your computer has trouble rendering the game as it is otherwise, this texture pack is most likely not for you.

Granted, you may choose to install as many or as few textures as you’d like, and some of the textures here are small and game play specific, like the new ‘frob highlight’, ‘loot glint’ and ‘arrow trail’, but those kinds of game tweaks may also be found in separate ‘fixes’ made by other community members elsewhere on the web.

I would of course also like you to see all the changes I have made, so although you are able to choose what textures to install, I would like you to install the full texture pack.


As an example of performance, I myself have (as of writing this) a Pentium 4 3GHz HT CPU (previous generation), a GeForce 6800 Ultra 8xAGP 256MB graphics card, 2048MB of Dual Channel PC3200 DDR RAM, and I play the game at 1280x1024 (I have a 20” LCD monitor, which has a native resolution of 1600x1200) with 4x ‘Multisampling’.

With this computer, at this resolution and setting, I still sometimes get all the way down to 10 FPS in the City areas (although up to about 40 FPS in other areas) when using all my textures.

It should be noted however, that certain areas of this game will stutter even without adding any high resolution textures, so if you experience stutter, it’s not always due to my textures.


In addition to the lowered performance; if you choose to install all my textures, you must expect that loading times may change from about 15 seconds to more than twice that, because of the larger memory size of the textures (loading times will vary between maps, as some maps are more affected by this texture pack than others).



5.
Tips:

< In the Texture Pack’s interface, use the option Groups’ main checkboxes to select/deselect an entire Group of texture options simultaneously. That way you don’t have to manually check every single checkbox. This applies to both the installer and uninstaller, but does not apply to the Garrett Groups, as your selection options are limited in those particular Groups.


< If you would like to take a closer look at my textures out-of-game game without installing a whole image editing software package, you can do so by downloading Windows Texture Viewer from nvidia.
URL: http://developer.nvidia.com/object/windows_texture_viewer.html

Unzip the WTV folder to your Program Files folder. Then open a .dds file (my textures are in the DynamicallyLoaded folder), browse for the WTV folder and select WTV.exe, then check the checkbox for “Always use the selected program to open this kind of file”.

After that you can double click on any .dds file and it will open in a window. If you open a .dds file from a folder full of .dds files, you can use the scroll wheel on your mouse to flip back and forth between all the files (alphabetically), without having to click on each one.

If you would also like to have .dds thumbnail view in Windows (same as with .jpg for instance), you can download nvidia’s DDS Thumbnail Viewer.
URL: http://developer.nvidia.com/object/dds_thumbnail_viewer.html


< There are several useful tweaks that you can perform to the game’s system files in order to customize it to your tastes. Personally, there are a couple of tweaks I consider almost mandatory, and should be easy enough for anyone to perform:

You may want to make a backup of DEFAULT.ini first in case something goes wrong.

Open your game install folder. Open the System folder, and find DEFAULT.ini. Now search the file for [PCStartup].
Now change ShowIntroMovies=True to ShowIntroMovies=False.
This will disable the intro commercial movies.
Then search the DEFAULT.ini for [Flesh].
Change DynVPScale from 60 to 3000.
Change DynVPMinRotationRate from 30 to 3000.
Lastly, change the two instances of MouseLagThreshold from 75 to 0.
Save the file.
These tweaks will remove a “motion blur” effect in-game, in which everything becomes jagged and blurry when you quickly turn around, and it will also bring mouse movement back to what is default in most PC games.

There are a lot of other changes you can make as well, but the above are the ones I make every time I’ve reinstalled the game.

There is a whole forum thread full of tweaks over at the ttlg forums:
http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=83801

and there is also a tweaker file available (although it hasn’t been updated since June 2004 as of writing this):

http://www.gazchap.com/products/windows/t3tweak/download



6.
Troubleshooting:

If, when you have installed this release, you do not see the textures ingame, here are a couple of things to look out for (also see Known issues further down):

First of all – make sure you haven’t put your backup of the .ibt files into the My Documents\Thief - Deadly Shadows folder.

The reason for this is that if you put ‘clean’ .ibt files into that directory, the game will read from them instead of the altered versions in the game’s Maps directory.

Some other things to check:

· Did the installer find your Thief - Deadly Shadows root (first/main) folder automatically? Or did you have to browse? If you had to browse, that may mean you have installed the game into a custom directory that my installer can’t find (although this is doubtful, since it looks in the registry to find your install path).

Also, check the registry path to see if there are any \ too many, or something else visibly wrong with the path either in the registry or the folders.

· Have you checked the .ibt files in the Thief - Deadly Shadows\CONTENT\T3\Maps folder to see if they are Read Only (right click / Properties, checkbox at bottom)?
If so, uncheck the Read Only checkbox. They should already be writable by default – this is just to eliminate any possibility that they are not.

· Do you find any of the textures from this installer in the Thief – Deadly Shadows\CONTENT\T3\PCTextures\DynamicallyLoaded folder after install, for instance puddleblooda01.dds (blood puddles), or partlootglint.dds (loot glint), or swooshc01.dds (arrow trails)?

If not (and you actually chose to install any of those textures of course), this is again a sign that my installer didn’t find the correct install path. If so, perhaps you needed to browse to the root folder when you ran the installer.

· Do you have administrator privileges of your operating system when running the installers? You may have to, if you want to use these installers.

· Are you running a virus scanner or some kind of file protection program that may interfere? I run my virus software while installing my texture installers and it doesn’t cause them to malfunction, but perhaps some scanners are more unforgiving than others, and won’t allow the installer to alter the .ibt files.

· In addition, it’s a good idea to use .ibt files that are not already hex edited. My installer will work fine even if the .ibt files are already hex edited, but my uninstaller will not be able to revert your .ibt files back to their original state in that case.

Some of the above points are just ‘brainstorming’ and guesswork on my part; there are a couple of these potential problems I haven’t received any reports about, but I'm including them here in case it could be helpful to someone.

In a “worst case scenario”, where my installers would make your game crash on loading or other such errors occur, and uninstalling the texture pack doesn’t help, one thing that will always rectify any problem would be to either uninstall my texture pack and reinstall the game, or – if you have made a backup of all your .ibt files – to uninstall my texture pack, then copy the backup .ibt files to your Maps directory, overwriting the ones that are already there.

Making a backup of all your .ibt files beforehand is therefore highly recommended, because if it came to that, you then wouldn’t have to reinstall the game.



7.
Known issues:

· My installers will not work with the Direct2Drive downloadable version of the game.

The reason for this is that the resource files (.ibt files) in the D2D version are archives that the game dynamically extracts, while for the CD and DVD versions this is not the case. There, the .ibt files are ‘open’, can be accessed directly, and are therefore more easily manipulated.

· Possible error messages while installing/uninstalling:

Runtime error ‘76’: Path not found. This is caused by a problem with the registry string path to your game install in all the cases I have heard of. Usually, there will be a \ too many in the game path the registry is pointing to.

To fix it, you will have to open the Windows registry editor, find the string: HKLM "SOFTWARE\Ion Storm\Thief - Deadly Shadows" "ION_ROOT", and see if you can spot anything wrong in the path there. I will not be held responsible for problems that may occur from your registry editing – be careful.

Runtime error ‘53’: File not found. It’s very unlikely that you will get this error while using my installer, but if you do, it means that the Presets.ini file that ibt_patcher.exe uses is missing or misplaced.

· My installers will not work with the demo version of the game, only the full version. This is both because of the registry keys used, and also because my installer will search for .ibt files that are not present in the demo version, and so will give you error messages and not install properly.

· When any of my installers are installed, the reported file size in Add or Remove Programs will be incorrect, and reflects the size of your entire Thief – Deadly Shadows install rather than the content of my installer. This is not an error I have made, but a problem with the way Windows handles these things, and the way the source code of my installers work.

· During installation, the initial number reported for “Space required” will be wrong, and will typically be only a few KB. The reason is that all option choices are unchecked by default in my installer, so the installer has done the math based on an ‘empty’ install. The number will change to a more correct figure when you start checking the options you wish to install.

· During a full install, the installer may seem to ‘halt’ for a few seconds midway through. This is normal. The same behaviour may be seen during a partial install as well, because the installer is then going through the rather large script “between” the options you chose. Please do not abort the install for this reason, unless you see that Windows labels the process as “Not responding”.

· WARNING: The new installer GUI may flicker or ‘flash’ at times, most notably when you go from page to page, and when you check the checkboxes on the Options page. If you have a known problem with flickering images/light (epilepsy or similar), you should go through the pages of the installer slowly, and wait a second or two between clicks on the checkboxes. Also make use of the option Groups’ main checkboxes to select the entire Groups instead of checking every single option within them. The cause of the flickering is the installer skinning system I have used for this installer. The skinning system is itself in its beta stages, and so there are a few ‘kinks’ like this.

· From time to time, some virus scanners will pop up a warning about my installers, claiming that they contain a Trojan or other kind of virus. This is not a problem specific to my installers, but to the open source installer kit I’m using to create my installers; NSIS. These warnings are always false positives (at least for my installers), and in most cases are fixed after a while when the manufacturer of the virus scanning software releases a new virus definition file which does not include the NSIS installer system. To read more about this, you can do a simple Google search for NSIS trojan false.

· When you run the ‘wrapper’, it eventually opens the texture pack installer. If you then cancel the install of the Collective Texture Pack without installing it, you will not be able to re-open the ‘wrapper’ to install the pack afterwards. The reason is that a registry string is written when you have successfully installed the Collective Texture Pack. Unfortunately that registry string is also written if you cancel the installation of the pack from the texture pack’s GUI before it’s actually installed. The solution is that at this point, the actual Collective Texture Pack installer should be extracted already, so go to Start\All Programs\Eidos\Thief – Deadly Shadows\ and see if there’s a shortcut to the installer there. If there is, just run it, and you will then resume installation from there. If you can’t find the Collective Texture Pack at this point, you will have to download my Cleaner.exe in order to remove the registry string.

· This release has not been tested on other operating systems than Windows XP Pro SP2, but should in theory work as intended under other Windows operating systems as well (that are supported by the game). If you experience trouble using it on another Windows operating system, you should report this to me so I can look into it. But as of writing this, to my knowledge, it should work.



8.
Bug reports:

There are so many combinations of things you can choose to do, and so many things the installer/uninstaller has to keep track of, that bugs may still exist when for instance installing, then uninstalling, then reinstalling a feature, as I haven’t been able to fully test every single combination.

If you experience a bug, you should report it to me so I can look into it. Before you submit a bug to me however, you should read this Install Readme in its entirety, because some known bugs and peculiarities are mentioned here already.

If you wish to report something you consider a bug, you can do so by e-mailing me, at:

mailto:john-p@john-p.com



9.
Acknowledgements:

I would like to thank Ion Storm for making the game Thief: Deadly Shadows, and their texture artists for making the textures I have based the high resolution textures on.

Special thanks go to Kevin Boye, who on my request made a special version of his ibd_patcher.exe (made for overriding DX:IW textures), which we decided to simply call ibt_patcher.exe, and that works for Thief – Deadly Shadows. Without him, I would have had to rely on the rather hopeless and “un-sexy” hex editing routine I used to use, and which meant up to 20 minutes of install/uninstall time. With ibt_patcher.exe, the Collective Texture Pack install/uninstall process looks better, and is about ten times faster.

I would also like to thank the community member ’Kefren’ for his invaluable ’DXTool’, which was initially made for use with DX:IW, but was later made useable for Thief: Deadly Shadows. Without that tool, I wouldn’t have been able to make these textures in the first place, because I wouldn’t have been able to export the originals and use them as guides. Now that the Editor for the game is released, this may seem like a moot point, but I made high resolution textures a long, long time before the Editor was released, thanks to Kefren’s DXTool.

Also, thanks to the NSIS forum members and developers for helping me in creating my installers, and to the creator of the hex editor XVI32, Christian Maas. Although I no longer use his hex editor, it was of great use to me while I did.

Many thanks go to Dan Fuhry, who has made ExperienceUI for NSIS, which is a new installer skinning system which made the new look of this installer/uninstaller possible. I have made all the bitmap images used in this installer myself, but they would have been impossible to implement without his skinning plug-in.

Thanks to the community member ‘New Horizon’, for various help and general advice.

And thanks to the community members ’Solabusca’ and ’b1k3rdude’ for helping me figure out a couple of ‘bugs’ in my installers a long time ago, and to Martin Huttenloher for helping me figure out what made my installers incompatible with Windows 98 systems a while ago, so I could fix the problem.

And thanks to a lot of community members at the now defunct Ion Storm and the still living ttlg forums for various input and feedback, for instance the forum member ‘SirVincealot’ for making me aware of and helping me figure out the cause of the problem with the Direct2Drive version of the game.



10.
User agreement:


Author (‘I’): John P.

User (‘You’): Anyone who uses this installer and the textures and other features it contains.


You agree that:

You will not edit the textures in this release, or if you do will not distribute such a texture to anyone, but only use it for your own game install.

I have used the original Ion Storm textures as a base/guide, but I have put in a lot of time and effort making these versions. So much so, that there is often little left of the original textures in these high resolution versions. Some of them are also remade from scratch. And so I feel I have ownership of these versions.

I am aware that other community members also spend a lot of time making textures or other game related files, and then freely distribute them almost without a mention of their name, and without restrictions for changing the files - and kudos to them for that. My ‘restrictions’ may seem small-minded and petty in comparison, but I just can’t bring myself to totally give up ownership to my files since I have spent so much of my spare time making them. People are different.

Admittedly, a few of the textures have gone through only minor changes, because I have also tried to keep most of the original look/design, and there was no need to totally rework those few textures to gain more detail, which has been my goal.

If you feel you have something to offer to other gamers in making new textures from the original game textures yourself, I would encourage that, and you should find a Thief community forum online and post your textures there. One example:

http://www.ttlg.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=138


If you want to use the textures in this texture pack in a Fan-made Mission (FM), you must contact the Author of this pack, and agree to give proper credits for the texture work to him, in an easily noticed location in your FM files.

-----------------------------------------

This installer is provided ‘as-is’, without any express or implied warranty and with no promise of further support outside of this Readme file.

Under no circumstance will the Author be made responsible for any damage or negative effects this install may cause to your computer or connected equipment, hardware or software (including, but not limited to loss of data), or to the User – either if the installer/uninstaller work as they should or if they are interrupted by the User or otherwise hindered from functioning properly.

Likewise, the Author will not provide technical or other support for the third party files linked to in this Readme and/or at his website, and will not be held responsible for any form of damage or negative effects those software packages may cause.

The installer and uninstaller are tested on the Author’s computer to a great extent, both for functionality and to ensure that they are virus free, but this does not guarantee trouble-free operation on the User’s computer.

The software (Texture Pack) must be considered to be ‘beta’, as it has been tested on a very limited amount of systems and configurations.

You agree that you will not re-package or assemble the files this installer contains into a separate file or several files for re-distribution, for profit or not.

The only exception to this rule of redistribution is for ibt_patcher.exe and the accompanying Presets.ini, as these are included in this install courtesy of Kevin Boye. ibt_patcher.exe has its own limits of usage, and may not be reverse-engineered or altered or misrepresented. Neither Kevin Boye, nor John P. will be held responsible for any negative effects ibt_patcher.exe may cause for the User, or if it does not do what the User expected.

I can not, and do not, take credit for the original design of the textures in this texture pack, except in the cases where I have remade new texture versions from scratch.

This install is only meant to enhance the experience of playing Thief – Deadly Shadows by adding higher resolution textures based on the originals, and is not meant to take away from the great work done by the Ion Storm artists.

As such, this installer and the textures in it can not, and will not be shared for profit, neither by the Author or the User.

I do however accept PayPal donations at my website, but those contributions are for the continued effort to keep my website up and running, and enable me to continue to make content for it.

You agree that you will not misrepresent the content of this installer or its origin (you will not claim to have made any of the content, or the installer itself), and that if you add this installer to your web site or your magazine (on the web or on paper), you will give proper credit to the Author of this installer.

By clicking ‘Next’, you are agreeing to these terms of use.


John P. is not in any way affiliated with EIDOS, so any need of support pertaining to the use of this texture pack can not be directed to the company.



11.
Version History:

RELEASED May 2nd. 2006
Initial release.













This installer and the work herein Copyright © 2006 and onward John P.

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

Installer source Copyright © 1999-2006 Nullsoft, Inc.

Installer skinning system “ExperienceUI” © 2004-2006 Dan Fuhry