Yeah, that’s the kind of bullshit I have to go through every time I re-install my CD versions on a new machine. Damn it, I was hoping GoG would take care of all that for me. Now I’m not sure if it’s worth it. I might as well just get my CDs out again.
I dunno, but $10 for a game that old that you still have to futz with to get it to work – I think it’s wait for a sale with this one.
Fortunately, we know we can pretty much count on GOG games to be half price once or twice a year.
Wow, people on the Internet complain a lot. ;)
I’d be interested to know if GOG at least includes descriptions or links to these fixes in their documentation. If they don’t, there’s really no difference between picking up this version or that CD compilation that Brian mentioned (other than the fact that the compilation apparently fixed everything!). Are those less familiar with Thief’s quirks left to stumble onto things like the movie fix, which is seven pages into the user reviews?
Well, GoG is asking a ten-spot for a game that has either been provided a)free in the past legitimately or b)is regularly provided on-media for stupidly low prices. The reason why I support GoG in repurchasing games of this type is a)no DRM and b)they fix the game so it runs without a hassle. “B” is getting to be a real problem for them – basically, if the game is one of those Win 95/98 nightmares, they can’t fix them. I’76 and DK2 come to mind as the most outstanding examples. Even the pre-GoG hacks for those games don’t work so well. GoG discovered nothing new for those games and didn’t bother doing anything but rewriting the installers. These are huge fails.
GoG is “lucky” with their two new releases in that DX is fairly well-behaved in modern OS’es, but also needs a little patch love…which GoG didn’t do. Thief 1 is much more flaky but can be gotten to run decently with patches…which GoG didn’t do. What are we paying for here?
Sigh, you raise a valid point. My apologies.
Just don’t let it happen again, dammit.
;)
And remember:
The question is, have they ever done any magic to any games or have they always done the bare minimum to get it to work? I don’t recall any brilliant hacking stories coming from GOG. I thought it was assumed they mostly do the simple stuff, like DOSBox or a new installer.
I guess I’m wondering if there’s any reason to be surprised here.
Keep an eye on the GoG Forum page for Thief. The GoG community does a good job of picking up wherever CD Projeckt drops the ball.
I had to do that to get Independence War running properly. Luckily the users on their forums are very helpful and all the info you need is usually there, and if it isn’t, just post the question and someone will answer.
They do some magic stuff. I’ve never seen anyone else have redbook audio work so smoothly. When you play Descent 2 on GoG, for example, it runs the music just like you had the CD in the drive. It’s the same for Heroes of Might and Magic 2 Gold: it runs the opera music which was only on the CD. Before GoG versions, any versions available even on abandonware sites for those games only had the midi music, not the redbook audio that plays off the CD in the CD version of the game. That’s why if GoG ever got Jedi Knight, it will be much better than the Steam version, because that game isn’t the same without the music that plays off the CD version.
If they run at all, I guess GOG can technically say that the games are “compatible” with newer operating systems. But I think customers expect a higher standard. To be fair, I think they’ve received it for the most part, but the titles with outstanding problems should be clearly identified on their home pages and the problems listed.
And it doesn’t take hacker know-how to at least document the issues and the well-known and long-available fixes for a game like this. If they didn’t do this, I agree with scharmers: this Thief release seems lazy.
The forum users at GoG are already working their magic, god bless them. I didn’t know there was an widescreen fix thingie that fixed all the direct3D problems in one swoop and allowed you to do custom resolutions, etc.
Btw, the GoG release does have one thing over the CD version that I forgot about until now: they have their own custom installer. For the CD version I even had to go through hoops to install the game because the original has a 16-bit installer that doesn’t work anymore.
That’s great, but these are fixes that have been around a while and are easy to find if you know there are issues. If they can’t fix problems directly, GOG should at least be addressing this stuff in READMEs with such releases, not relying on the community to pick up the pieces.
True, I’m not letting GoG off the hook. I’m just impressed with how much the Thief community has done since I last checked. I last re-installed the game back in 2006, and back then you had to go through a lot more steps than this to get it working in Windows XP. It seems like a lot of those steps have been combined now, which is nice to hear.
One stop shop: www.ttlg.com
True that. I used to go there regularly, and they still email me a Happy Birthday every year from their forum software. But I haven’t re-installed Thief Gold and Thief 2 since 2006, so I haven’t checked into TTLG for Thief fixes since then. But at least back in 2006, I had to check a lot of different threads to find out the solution to all my issues. They had an FAQ thread stickied, but even that thread linked to other threads on how to solve individual problems, and despite the awesomeness of TTLG and Thief fans, it was a real pain to finally get Thief working back in 2006.
Oh, I know. Sorry if my annoyance seemed directed at you. It’s good to know the GOG community is helping their own.
That’s what I’m asking. Is that from a) experience with prior releases (like Rock8man mentioned), b) good fortune that most old games merely require DOSBox or a new installer, or c) misguided expectations about what GOG is versus what people want it to be?
Perhaps this is part of the process of changing those expectations. I mistakenly thought the narrative had already moved on.
And it doesn’t take hacker know-how to at least document the issues and the well-known and long-available fixes for a game like this. If they didn’t do this, I agree with scharmers: this Thief release seems lazy.
Have they ever done that before? I thought the default step was always to check the forum.
Yeah, it seems a bit lazy on GOG’s part, especially when they are charging a premium price for an old game. We routinely see games that are less than two years old on sale for less on Steam.
I have a copy of Thief Gold somewhere. For $10 I want a smooth install that works. The $10 is paying for convenience. Having to read forums, make a registry change, that kind of thing, isn’t giving me the convenience I expect for my $10.
