Thread:Vorknkx/@comment-3547390-20161116194210/@comment-3547390-20170108190806

The way you made it sound, you pretty much were sleeping for the night, and you made no confirmations. So how on earth was I to know we were streaming? :P

Yes indeed, things are starting to work much better.

I wish I could figure out that DgVoodoo bug. That is the main problem at the moment.

EDIT: I figured it out! DgVoodoo comes with three DLL files and the main executable. Installing it to the first folder works fine, but any subsequent ones fail. This is because there is an apparent fourth DLL that never gets created called "DDraw.dll". If you are to install anything using this wrapper, be sure to remember this little tidbit, I have been going insane and hunting online without getting anywhere. I think it was just sheer luck that I know my Thief installation files and therefore recognized that the file was missing. :P

Tests with vanilla DDraw have been a bit less promising. You can tell it is more unstable in Windows 8, crawling along like I mentioned in my first tests. It also is a bad idea to minimize the windows since it ends up totally distorting the view. Normally I would be bugged by this, but the wrappers are a much better solution and are entirely stable in Windows 8. So they are correct DirectDraw is pretty bad, but all you need to do is use a wrapper and be fine. As a lot of what I do involves recording videos, I basically need a wrapper anyway, since without it the images can't be seen by a screen capture program. Add in the fact that it makes it quite hard to take normal screenshots and it wasn't exactly stable to begin with if getting past normal playing. As we have a solution that is working perfectly to play Thief without resorting to some horrible "modern" update, I am quite happy. At this point I am really disappointed that the Thief community is so quick to just say "use NewDark". In my fresh Windows 8.1 install, I have gotten my copies reinstalled (they were uninstalled due to DgVoodoo's corruption) and more functional then they have ever been in my Windows 7 install.

Windows 8 out of the box is funky and definitely not the best, but with some work it can be made to a good OS. The main problems are that it will require someone who actually knows how to navigate the operating system or is technically able to learn. That mouse thing requires a registry edit. There are plenty of settings that need changing. Plus there are things that are small but cause a bit of hassle, such as removing the shortcut arrow. Until I found this method, a lot were suggesting using a custom icon or some white/black icon, which worked temporarily but would result in visible boxes in the end result. You need to have at least a little Google-fu and a lack of tolerance for anything frustrating you have. Therefore, Windows 8 is for only a small group of users :P

At the end of the day though, Windows 8.1 from Windows 7 is just not worth it, and many will prefer the quick and easy Windows 7 to the setup I had to do. I also got Windows 8.1 Pro so I would have the Group Policy Editor, this turned out to be a good call due to an annoying dialog box constantly appearing when doing stuff in Program Files that was apparently in Windows 7 that I never saw. So you need the better version of Windows 8.1 and then need to spend time working on it, meaning it won't be ideal to most.

From a personal view, most of the benefits a general user would get wouldn't be worth it. The transition from Aero Glass to Metro isn't too bad on 8.1, unlike 10 you still have a transparent taskbar so you can easily see what programs are selected. If you actually install the drivers, the system feels as stable as Windows 7. But the actual benefits generally just are things people wouldn't care about. There is some truth to the faster booting times, Windows 8 can load multiple programs at startup and so it doesn't really get slower when you add more programs to launch. But the main advertisement is due to something called Hyper-Booting that can make your system less likely to get to safe mode, it seems with Windows 8.1 you want to always have a repair disk on hand. One negative I have to mention is that even when I enabled legacy safe mode and disabled faster booting/shutdown I still find myself unable to get to safe mode. Why is a bit impractical to me. Windows 8.1 takes a similar amount of time to boot as Windows 7 with all that disabled and the previous OS was installed on ACHI as well. But I find myself unable to access Safe Mode, I might just go back to hyper booting and shutdown since there is apparently no benefit for me to turn it all off. I still don't like this security risk, especially since getting a SSD would make it even harder to get into Safe Mode. I just hope if a problem occurs that prevents me accessing my desktop that I will have some way to reach it.

The Windows-X menu is definitely a good thing for power users... when it works. Somehow I got mine to fail on me. At least it was a feature I am not missing from Windows 7.

So what is actually good? The underlying hardware support. Windows 7 can get USB 3.0, but it takes a lot of work and requires modifying the installation disk, while Windows 8 works out of box. SSD support is supposedly better. But one thing I can definitely say is that multi-monitor support is definitely better, I can now play Thief and look at OBS, something I couldn't do reliably before. I also like that there is a taskbar on each monitor so I don't have to go back to my main to select something from my taskbar. It also allows more resources to be applied to what you are doing, meaning my CPU and RAM can do a bit more before maxing out. Nothing really needed, but nice little quality of life improvements that might make installing it when you need to install an OS anyway rather worth it.

It even works better for recording Thief. In Windows 7 it can be an annoying endeavor, you have to set up everything, then jump back and forth between menus until it works. In Windows 8.1 it picks it up automatically and works fine as long as you perform the necessary tricks to getting Thief to record done in Windows 7 beyond the randomness of the menu jumping. Once again, I find Windows 8 to be working better with Thief, which leads me to say Windows 8 is a better OS since that of course is my practical benchmark. The quality of an OS should always be determined by compatibility with a game made in 1998.