lost_soul

You said you tried to double-click the EXE files on the CDs, but it didn't launch wine. Perhaps your distribution did not configure the desktop to behave like this by default. You can right-click the exe, select properties/open with, and enter wine from there. Unfortunately, dark engine games are a bit of a pain in the behind, because you also need to use "schedtool -a 0x2 -e wine thief2.exe" to launch them if you have a multi-core CPU. This command only runs the game on one core, but you first need to install the schedtool package. I just made a thief.sh script in the game's directory and put that line there. Now I can double-click the file and the game loads. You can also make shortcuts in the menu for the games, but I can't remember how I did that right now. I would also set Wine to mimic Windows 98, or the game installer will fail with the "NT not supported" error. This can be done in applications/wine/configure wine, or by entering winecfg on the command line.

Why not use the native version of Doom 3 for Linux? I don't know if it works with the steam version. http://zerowing.idsoftware.com/linux/doom/ You'de probably get better performance. I've got Thief 1 and 2 running pretty well in wine. The only issue is that the game hangs sometimes when you try to click through a movie. I just disabled the movies. Heck, they don't even work at all under my Vista install.

I too noticed that the player can't toggle the lantern while carrying a body. I suspected this is by design, and not any kind of bug. I mean, it would be pretty hard to carry a body around and fumble with a lantern at the same time... not that I've ever done such things in real life.

What exact error are you getting?

I run this laptop (TDM machine) 24/7. It reduced my power bill by at least $15 a month from that old desktop. It could hardly play TDM and was as loud as a jet.

Here it is. http://www.portatech.com/catalog/viewitem.asp?ID=26773&O=26608%2C25377&r=p I didn't select a video card, because I only saw ATIs and I don't know the status of their Linux drivers. I know a GTX460 can be had for aroun $180 though. I would also get a hard drive with a gift card from best buy, or just use this 1 TB drive here.

About to eat lunch. i'll post it afterwards.

For your grub problem, are you using Grub 2? I think Ubuntu switched to it back in 9.10 and onward. They say the user isn't supposed to edit the grub configuration by hand now. There's a command-line program called "update-grub" that you can run. It will detect all operating systems on any HDD you have plugged into the system and generate the menu file for you. It sure beats having to configure that crap by hand! I myself recently switched to Debian. I'm very happy with it (the testing version). I've got TDM, Thief 1 and Thief 2 here, as well as some great online games like Urban Terror. I've also got tuns of older games installed and running great. I created a backup of the Debian system when I first installed it, so I can just blast that image onto any of my own PCs. Then I use resize2fs to grow the partition and run update-grub and it is all ready to go. I've considered installing the "experimental" or "unstable" versions of Debian on one of these old junker machines I've got here. Perhaps if I get bored enough I'll try it.

Well, I found another system on PriceWatch for $430. It has a Phenom II x4 965 CPU, 4 gigs of DDR3 ram, (mobo supports 16 gigs), and a 650 watt PSU. Now this looks like the best bang for the buck. An I7 920 system would cost *at least* $100 more, and the benchmarks do not justify that price increase. If I put in $100 more, I can get 8 gigs instead of 4.

Just finished playing "Returning a Favor" for T1. I still find myself whistling along with the guards and Hammerites while playing the game. After I get used to how the TDM guards whistle, I'll probably do the same thing while playing TDM.

Wow... that 6-core 1055T does not hold up very well when playing games. Just look at this. http://www.anandtech...055t-reviewed/9 Notice how well the AMD quad 965 does instead. Now, maybe this is a better plan. http://www.newegg.co...st=Combo.472937 Only question is, can that 430 WATT psu support one GTX460 video card? I'm not going to go crazy and buy a top of the line video card or ever go SLI or anything like that. I just want something that doesn't suck EDIT: Bah.. that is a Micro-ATX mobo. That means it probably isn't ideal for a gaming machine. Too bad, because the price is great!

It has always seemed dumb to have to configure a gamepad/joystick for every single game you want to play. Why not make the right-stick control your mouse, and the left control WASD? You can also assign other keys on the joypad to whatever keys/mouse buttons you like. I accomplished this by installing the xserver-xorg-input-joystick package. You'll get a default configuration that is less than optimal, so we'll customize it. Do not customize /etc/X11/xorg.conf! If you have a section in there that references /dev/input/js0 and your joystick is not plugged in when X starts, it will fail to start. Instead, look to /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-joystick.conf. This file stores the configuration for the driver. Setting it up isn't as easy as it could be. You need to know the keycodes for the events you want to bind, along with the names of the buttons on your gamepad. You can find the names of the keys on your keyboard by looking in the keycode at /usr/share/X11/xkb/keycodes. To get the name of a given button when you press it on the gamepad, install and use jstest. What follows is my /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-joystick.conf file. Section "InputClass" Identifier "joystick catchall" MatchIsJoystick "on" MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*" Driver "joystick" Option "MapAxis1" "mode=accelerated keylow=38 keyhigh=40" Option "MapAxis2" "mode=accelerated keylow=25 keyhigh=39" Option "MapAxis3" "mode=relative axis=+1x deadzone=5000" Option "MapAxis4" "mode=relative axis=+1y deadzone=5000" Option "MapAxis5" "mode=accelerated keylow=34 keyhigh=35" Option "MapAxis6" "mode=accelerated keylow=52 keyhigh=53" Option "MapButton6" "button=1" Option "MapButton8" "key=37" Option "MapButton7" "key=41" Option "MapButton5" "button=2" Option "MapButton2" "key=26" Option "MapButton1" "key=54" Option "MapButton4" "button=3" Option "MapButton11" "key=24" Option "MapButton12" "key=27" Option "MapButton9" "key=23" Option "MapButton10" "key=9" Option "MapButton3" "key=29" EndSection With this configuration: Your left stick is WASD, your D-pad is ,. and []. Your face buttons are mouse 1,2,c and e (I think). Your L3 and R3 are q and r for leaning. Your L1/2/R1/2 buttons are Control, F, Mouse 1, and something which I forgot. Your start and select are escape and tab, for showing the objectives and pausing the game. It took me a few hours to get all this crap working well, so perhaps it will help someone.Now we have a tiny driver that runs in the background and enables all of this on the fly. No bloated software required!

hahaha... FBOD: Great name for it. I trust you've seen this video highlighting TDS's greatest bugs? I cannot be held responsible for any soda or food that ends up on one's keyboard or monitor while watching this.

How about adding a bit of whistling to the guards' "inactive" activity? In T1/2, the guards always whistle while on patrol and it adds to their character. I always pictured a guard in a Thief-style game whistling "Greenslieves". What are your thoughts on this? Some old-fashioned music really fits well in a Thief universe. For example, see the John Dowland music that was used in "Saturio Returns Home" for T2. It was light guitar music written back in the 1600s. For those who don't know what Greensleeves is: I'm sure you've heard it at some point but may not have known the name.

^Wow! That looks like a PS1 game. Still quite good graphics compared to the things I've seen over the past 27 years. Will try this on my old Geforce 6200 machine. Who knows? It may get 30 FPS!

My Geforce 4 TI 4600 ran TDS quite well. It was almost two years old when the game came out, but I'll admit it wasn't a mainstream card. I'll bet it could even run TDM, but the performance would not be good. That was the first (and only) time I will ever spend more than $300 on a video card. It doesn't matter how powerful a card is: once a new 3D API like Directx 9 or OpenGL 4.0 comes out, that expensive card won't hold a candle to even mid-range cards released with said features.

With the original (XBOXified) TDS textures, I would say "Of course TDM looks much better". However, if you use the enhancement pack for TDS from John P, it is a more interesting fight. That is obviously cheating though. I don't understand why the TDS crew couldn't have made high-res textures for the PC version and then just downsized them for the XBOX version. With TDM, we also get things like shimmering, refractive water and larger/more open areas.

They can also accept those EULAs for you too. http://www.ohesso.com/essays/essay006.htm Too bad my mom got rid of her cat because she is allergic to it.

"I think the more FM's release, the more complicated they get... the more interested people will become." Absolutely. As more are released, it will draw a larger crowd.

... and don't forget that if a game goes the DLC route, you may NEVER get to see the rest of it. Just look at Sin:Episodes. They released the first one, then went out of business. The fans then get no more content. It is why I will always want a full, complete product.

Yeah my cousin used to have a virus that would pop up messages in XP telling him his machine was going to shut down in 1 minute, with no (easy) way to abort it. Does that happen, or does it just shut down all of a sudden?

Eeek! I'm not sure if a virus could be delivered in game files, because they're (usually) not executable code. However, if there is a flaw in the OS, like a buffer-overflow attack, a specifically crafted image can actually execute code on the machine. This sort of thing happens more often than it should...

While I definitely would like to see more people pick up TDM and start mapping, I just can't say goodbye to Thief 1. The story, ambiance, and levels were just so great, barring a few like Thieve's Guild. There hasn't been anything as spooky, mysterious, engaging to explore, and surprising as "The Sword" from T1 was for TDM yet. I'm not saying someone should re-create the level, but I would love to see some twisted mansion like that, where you never know what to expect for TDM. As for T2, i never really got attached to it. Seriously, I'm down with the Hammerites, the guards, the undead, the pagans and all other factions, but I just never liked the Mechanists. They just feel out-of-place in games like this. I'll shamefully admit that when I got near the end of T2, where the Mechanist levels came into play, I just stopped playing. T2X was completed to the end though, because the story was more interesting than that of Thief 2. Thief 2 is the only game I haven't fully completed yet. I suppose I should buckle down and finish it, just so I can say I've completed all three of them.

Not sure how I feel about that. On one hand, you do have a point that they may withhold an editor to get people to buy DLC, but on the other, look at Doom or Quake. I doubt these games would be as relevant today if they had been closed-up blobs that nobody could produce maps for. I seem to recall some quote from John Carmack that making the games editable was the right decision to make, even though others at the company disagreed at the time.

Well, I just had to re-install Windows XP on a machine this morning. I completed the install up until it asked for the product key. Then I had to hard-power-off the machine because the key is way on the back of the machine and I couldn't access it while it was running. Of course the goons can't be bothered to put a "cancel" button in the dialogue to allow you to shut down your machine safely so you can get them their stupid product key. So, I resume and complete the install. Then I have to activate it, with no network drivers. I could have used Linux to go get the drivers, but I felt it would be better to call them and have a live operator help me activate it, rather than use any automated system. That way, it costs them as much money as possible. "Are you sure you want to be transferred to a live rep? I (the computer voice) can probably help you activate your product much faster." Oh yes, yes I most certainly do. That way, you have to pay as much as possible for subjecting me to this totalitarian, invasive, pointless crap.