Garrett is back and this time, he is looking for answers to some mysterious events. The long-time franchise has a great following and PC gamers who happen to love the stealth genre aren’t going to miss it out at any cost.
Eidos Montreal has publicly stated that the PC version of the game is not just a port but an optimized experience. An optimized experience or not, the game has got its fair share of problems on PC.
If you want your game to run properly, first thing you should do is make sure that your game is up to date.
Consider the update as a day one patch. But if you have any other problems, feel free to browse through the following troubleshooting listing for a possible fix.
#1 Thief – Graphics Tweaks To Make it Run Better
If you are experiencing bad graphics on a machine that can easily afford to run it better/smoother, set SSAA ‘Super Sampling Anti-Aliasing’ to low or off.
The higher you set this setting, the more lag you will encounter in the game.
Problem is the optimization of the game. Even if your PC can handle everything maxed out, try keeping SSAA to low if you want a more smooth gameplay experience.
#2 Thief – Flickering Shadows and Glichy Graphics ‘Disappearing Menu Buttons’
If you are experiencing flickering shadows, glitchy graphics and disappearing menu items, make sure you are running the game on updated drivers.
#3 Thief ‘SLI/Crossfire Fix
Make sure you run the game on a single GPU as SLI/Crossfire may be causing the disappearing graphics and flickering shadows.
#4 Thief Framerate Issues
There are a few things you can try to improve your FPS for thief. First, make sure that your GPU drivers are up to date and your system is not getting overheated.
If you are running SLI/Crossfire, try disabling to see the difference in performance. If you are using a laptop, make sure that your power adapter is plugged in while your are trying to play Thief.
It goes without saying that your system should be good enough to handle the game’s processing and rendering needs. If you are running any third party applications in the background like Dxtory, Shadowplay or FRAPS, try disabling them.
#5 Thief Crashes After Loading a Stage
If Thief is crashed after loading, make sure you verify the integrity of the game cache in Steam especially if you pre-loaded the game and tried to start it as soon as it unlocked. You may have to verify the files twice to make it work!
If that doesn’t work, there is another workaround. I am not sure about this fix but it has helped a few to get rid of the crash, so I think it’s worth of a shot.
The game crash can be associated with the virtual memory size. You should increase your virtual memory page file size to fix the issue.
#6 Thief – Game Crashes to Desktop and Reboot
Make sure you have latest patch for the game installed. It fixes these random crashes and loading issues.
If you pre-loaded the game, make sure you verify the integrity of the game cache. You may have to verify the files twice to make it work!
#7 – Blackscreen When You Launch Thief
Blackscreen issue when launching Thief is also associated with the missing files of the game. Verify the game cache and re-verify if the need be to get it running.
#8 – Can’t Hear Sound? No Voices?
Verify the integrity of the game cache. Download the language packs if need be. Make sure you have voices/music volume up in the sound settings of the game.
You can also trying changing the advanced sound settings in Windows. Open Playback Devices, click on your Speakers and go to Properties. Now in enhancement levels, select CD/DVD quality and see if it helps.
#9 Thief – Won’t Start?
Try logging into Steam after having logged out. It will help!
#10 Thief Config Tweaks – How to Switch Motion Blur and Other Settings On/Off
If you want to play with the settings that haven’t been made available in game’s settings menu, you can always find and edit the game’s config files.
In case of motion blur, you will find relative file to edit in: \Steam\steamapps\common\Thief\Engine\Config. You need to open the file by the name of “BaseEngine.ini” and then set the following values as such:
MotionBlur=True
MotionBlurPause=True
You can also switch on or off other related settings from the same file by setting the values to either true (on) or false (off). Make sure that you always have a backup of the original file in case you mess up with your tweaks.
#11 Thief – Dxtory and Other Similar Tools not Working
Multiple users have reported that the fps monitoring/benchmarking tools aren’t working with Thief and causing the game to crash.
For the time being, I will only suggest that you try running the game without these tools. And if you have any fix of your own related to the issue, share with us in the comments below.
If you come across any other issue, comment and we will help you out!
