Thief: The Dark Project Demo - Software Mode
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- Опубліковано 30 вер 2024
- I managed to acquire a Windows 98 virtual machine and after a lot of struggling I got everything working. It still stutters a lot because not only does OBS take a lot of CPU power to record video, but also I have to forcefully make the virtual machine have a slower CPU speed than normal just to make the game run at somewhat normal speed. The proper way to capture a software rendered game like this would probably be to use an actual capture card.
after looking at the game in software mode, you start to understand why npcs can't see you when you're in full darkness
Yeah and I increased the gamma of this video so viewers could see better
I love how weirdly modern this game looks in software mode. Like it could've been released on itch a year ago. It's pretty dope
Now now, itch io retro aesthetic game devs don't actually try to make their games look retro, because they know their audience can't recognize the parts that don't fit that aesthetic. ;) The audience of nostalgic people _who think they remember_ what PS1 graphics looked like is larger than the audience who do actually remember or have the technical knowledge.
@@Plutonia001 But they would 100% nut over any modern combination of shaders and low res textures and normal/bump maps that can do what Thief's software renderer does to lighting and textures.
Damn, I forgot the puff of smoke from the old one! I always thought it was an ice staff because of that.
holy sovl
I know that software rendering will always be in our heart, but it is possible to imitate the effect with posterization/pixelate filter w/ Reshade (plus all the modern improvement from TFix), which is pretty much what ZB did here with SS2: watch?v=kHeUlHWI3oQ
I don't know how to apply such effects on the Dark Engine. Also, faux-EGA is a nice effect and all, but it doesn't really look like the banded shading of old software mode Dark Engine 🤔Speaking of faux-EGA, another effect that would be cool to see would be one that turns a game into Commodore 64 graphics. 😆 Half resolution, stretched horizontally so you get wide pixels, only 16 colors, and only two colors can exist simultaneously within any given 8x8 pixel square. I've never seen such a filter used but it would be cool
@@Plutonia001
I have made a video to showcase the effect, it is of course *not* the same as software rendering, the size of pixelation can be adjusted as well, so it can look even more grainy, but it messes up ui texts since it is just an overlay.
ua-cam.com/video/Azs0Q9tKa_8/v-deo.html
In any case, it still beats the modern clean "greyish" look Tfix introduced, dark shadows looks properly dark instead of just a pools of middle grey.
This game always blew my mind as a kid. I used to play the crud out of a demo for this game that was on our old home computer with the white yellowing plastic case. It honestly still blows my mind and I can't wait to go home and try to get this working soon... Thank you for uploading this!
I also played the demo a hundred times before I had the full game :D
the high gamma makes it look cartoony
It's not just the high gamma. In software the colors are clamped to a smaller color space, so there are fewer shades available, and the contrasts become more stark.
How do you set up software vs hardware version? I remember back in the day when I play this game the assassin demo on old pentiumII 233 and s3 trio3d, it's was bad experience. Textures was all white. I was very young was trying some games on my mother's office pc. Laughably I later on learned that pc was named "speed demon" by shop where it was bought from.
I got a Windows 98 virtual machine install from someone. There isn't really any way to set up the software version other to use a VM or to play on an actual old OS.
Did you turn off frame interpolation somehow or was it off by default?
I don't know what that is in this context.
You mean the bilinear filter. its not supported in software rendering