Running Deadly Shadows in 2024

The ultimate Thief: Deadly Shadows guide to get it working as best as possible on modern systems. A look at mods and a guide on getting it looking as similar to the original version as possible for an identical gameplay experience, except in HD and with minor quality-of-life improvements.

Setting Up Deadly Shadows - Part 1

Sneaky Upgrade - The Modern Compatibility Patch
The game may run well enough on its own, but then you'll get lots of gltiches, no HD support, tiny FOV among many other issues. Similar to Thief Gold's TFix and Thief 2's Tafferpatcher, Sneaky Upgrade is the equivalent for Deadly Shadows. A one-patch beats all fix to have Deadly Shadows run flawlessly on your system. The patch is upgraded reguarely so be sure to check the main page for the latest version.
http://www.moddb.com/mods/thief-3-sneaky-upgrade

Important Note: You will find three versions of the patch. One contains the editor which you will most likely not care about, one of the upgrade patch containing only the patch itself and its tweaker but the Fat Edition is the one I recommend most. It contains a few completely optional mods and the incredible John P texture pack. All of this stuff is optional, so unless your HDD is super small or your internet sucks really bad, there's really no reason not to get Fat. You can enable and disable any of these mods any time you like.

In the next section I will explain the tweaker itself. An equally as important step in the overall guide to getting the game to run perfectly on your system.

Setting Up Deadly Shadows - Part 2

In this section I will go in-depth into the Sneaky Tweaker and how to set your game up perfectly.
In your games folder, go into Systems. Here you will find the Sneaky Tweaker. For this section of the guide we will just be focusing on editing the 'Sneaky Upgrade' portion of the Sneaky Tweaker.
Notes
You can use screenshots by adding a non-Steam game shortcut of the game's T3 .exe from within the game folder. Screenshots do not work by launching the game normally through Steam for some reason. I've asked the creator of the tweaker about this and he said there's nothing he can do on his end about this so you'll just have to settle with the non-Steam game method.

NVidia Control Panel
Here you can set your anti-aliasing and make the game look as good as possible if you have a NVidia graphics card. I highly recommend setting anti-aliasing to 8x, not enabling FXAA and enabling VSync and Triple Buffering for the smoothest, prettiest experience. Anti-aliasing is taxing on the system though, so be careful if your computer isn't all that powerful.

Display
Here you can change to windowed mode and set your max frame rate, among other things.
Of notable interest are the FOV and frame rate settings. Everything else can be left by default unless you're having specific problems, in which case ask me about it in the comments.
Starting with FOV, I personally like an ultra wide FOV of 1.33 for first-person gameplay. Unless you want a higher than normal FOV there's not really any need to change this as the patch automatically chanegs the FOV based on your resolution and aspect ratio anyway. The tweaker recommends nothing over 1.25 but for me 1.33 is perfect. Test and see what you like, or better yet, leave it be.

Second and lastly is the frame rate.
Unless you have a higher refresh rate, leave this be, and leave VSync on otherwise the game will have physics issues and you won't be able to lockpick among other things.

Tweaks
Here you can change stuff to make it different or to improve on the original game. Probably shouldn't be touched unless you don't mind changing specific things to your game that will provide a very slightly different experience. The only things I recommend enabling here are Physics Improvements to help the weirdo ragdoll this game has and to enable No Rotation Blur, because blur is ugly. Everything else can stay the same unless you're looking for something specific.

Gamepad
The last section of this guide goes into depth in getting any controller (I use Xbox One) to run this game perfectly.

FM Loading
This may only be of interest if you want to play fan missions. All other sections of the Sneaky Upgrade can be ignored. Here you can choose what FM loader you'd like to use and whether to launch it when you launch the game by shortcut or Steam.

Alternate Mods and Tweaks

Included in the Fat Edition of the Sneaky Upgrade are 5 additional, optional mods. Here I will explain each one and what it does. In the order listed on Sneaky Tweaker:

John P's Collective Texture Pack
A graphical overhaul to Deadly Shadows that doesn't change gameplay.
There are two bits to this mod: the in-game textures and the menu, header and loading screens.
Within the tweaker you can enable and disable different types of textures and changes. My personal settings include disabling all of the menu and gameplay texture changes as they look uglier and change too much in my opinion, and leave everything else on. You also get different options for Garrett's outfit. I think they all look ugly other than Clothed Arms, and I personally like a masked Garrett myself. Either way, it's all up to you.

Ascottk's Garrett Animation Tweaks
This reanimates most of Garrett's animations. I personally disable this as it's quite glitchy, looks a lot worse and doesn't really work in first-person. Don't take my word for it though, you might totally like it so I recommend giving it a try for yourself.
New Horizon's Minimalist Project
A mod that aims to recreate Looking Glass's original Thief games inside of Deadly Shadows by changing most of the games core gameplay and UI to try and match the original games. I would never recommend this for a first playthrough and most people would agree. I actually really despise this mod as it's quite glitchy but most of all destroys Deadly Shadows' original charm and aims. Again, not to bash the mod or the creators so I highly recommend you try it for yourself. Hell, if you don't like DS but loved the first two, maybe it's the mod for you.

Mensch's Briefing Videos
A mod that adds some really high quality briefing videos similar to the first games with a similar art-style. Not for me personally, but I can definitely see the appeal. Obviously made with lots of love and the pre-text is extremely well done matching both the games atmosphere and the originals perfectly. The screenshots of the game don't hold up as well, but they're still really well done. Much better than staring at text already being voiced. Give this a shot and see whether you like it or not.

Beleg's Thief 3 Gold
This is perhaps the best mod to release for Thief Deadly Shadows yet, and possibly ever. Last but easily the best the mod completely removes the loading screens within levels without ever ruining the AI or gameplay, providing a seamless experience within levels as it probably always should have been. I couldn't imagine playing without this mod anymore. Highly recommended.

That's it for Thief Deadly Shadows mods within Sneaky Tweaker. See for yourself whether you enjoy them or not.

Changing Mouse Sensitivity

Given that, for whatever reason, there's no option for mouse sensitivity in-game (even Deus Ex: Invisible War had this...), you're going to have to use Sneaky Tweaker or go into the game's .ini files to change it.

You can do this by using Sneaky Tweaker and finding the setting under Tweaks, or by going into the game's default.ini in your game's systems folder, looking for [Engine.PlayerInput] and changing mouse sensitivity to a number of your choice.

Getting the Original Experience

To get the most original experience possible while keeping the modern compatibility fixes, get the Upgrade edition or disable all mods in the Fat Edition. In the tweaker located in your game files, set everything to the default setting. Simple as that. The game will run exactly the same as the original, except far, far better.

Using a Controller (Without Third Party Software)

Fortunately, if you don't like to spend forever messing around with third-party apps, you can still use any PC supported controller with Deadly Shadows using the fantastic Sneaky Tweaker patch; in-fact, it works even better since it's perfectly designed for it. First you'll need the Sneaky Tweaker patch. Any one will do, but I highly recommend the Fat Edition nonetheless. Here's a link to the ModDB website hosting the latest versions of the mod. At the moment of posting this the latest version is 1.1.7. Link

First you'll want to run the game. This creates the necessary files. You don't need to do anything, just run it and then exit if you like. Now you'll want to

Now double-click on SneakyTweaker.exe. You can find this .exe on your desktop and/or in your game's Systems folder.

First thing we'll do is click on the Gamepad sub-heading under Sneaky Upgrade, then click on 'Mouse emulation' and set it to the right analogue stick (or left if you prefer it that way). This lets you navigate menu's without ever having to touch the mouse.
Secondly we'll set 'Escape button emulation' to Joy8. On an Xbox One controller this equals the Start button, which is the pause button for every Xbox game.
Ignore everything else but make sure 'Ignore all controller input' is off.

That's all for the tweaker, so you can exit that. Now go into the game and in the menu you will have to manually set each control. Not a daunting process. I do this for every game I play.
My personal control setup is quite different from the original Xbox version of the game as it makes more sense to me, and it's not possible to get identical control setup anyway due to certain things (like missing UI). You can change it to how you like, but my setup is perfect for me personally and includes everything apart from quick-saving and quick-loading as well as the map which I all just one-tap with the keyboard. You can always just manually save in the menu with the controller too, anyway.

Running and progressively slower walking is used by the left stick and the turning is with the right stick, as you'd expect. Right trigger is attack. Left trigger is the use button (opens doors, picks up things etc.). Left stick click is crouch. Right stick click is equip inventory and once equipped, use inventory item. Back is third-person or first-person. Guide button can't do anything. Start button is pause the game. Up DPad Zooms in and Down DPad zooms back out. Left DPad is lean left and Right DPad is lean right. Left shoulder button goes previous weapon and Right shoulder button is next weapon. A button is jump, X is previous inventory item, B is next inventory item and Y is the back to wall thing forgot what it's called. And now you're all set! You need to use the left shoulder button to click on things in the menu for some reason though. Have fun sneaking around with a controller. Feels much better imo :)

[Maverick]

I have a problem with the Sneaky Upgrade: It doesn't save my display config, and saves don't work either. Every time i save the game and reload, it takes me back to the beggining of the tutorial mission. And every time i reload i have to change the brightness setting.

[⁷͠ 7͠ / iNFiNiTE]

WORKED PERFECTLY. THOUGHT THIS GAME WAS GONNA BE UNPLAYABLE!!! GG

[Francisè von Spitroast]

Reinstall the game? Sounds like you don't understand how computers work.

[mininvlad22]

can`t delete or reinstall this bullshit. nice job modders

[missourigirl61]

I'm having same problem as [ACCUsers] Enemy1 Cannot open door in training session, just says nothing there or something like that.

[elder]

I installed the MOD but I can't save my settings. The keys I used in Thief 1 and 2 and every other game just won't save. The original game runs fine, but it doesn't work with the MOD.
Would it be possible to rewrite an .ini file or edit it in Tweeker?
I play on a laptop, x64, Win11, 11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i5.

[Francisè von Spitroast]

Try right clicking on the desktop, going to display options, then changing scale and layout percentage,

[Don Wigglione]

After playing Thief for a bit many of my other steam games won't go fullscreen and all my text on the PC has been enlarged. I've tried switching every display resolution between my PC and the games I'm playing and did the ol' restart to no avail. Any help?

[Francisè von Spitroast]

Not that I'm aware of. I've suggested it to the mod creator. You can possibly use unbind every gamepad control with Steam Big Picture except for mouse look tied to the right stick to change the sensitivity that way but I haven't tried that myself so I don't know if it works.

[trashPANDA]

Is there any way to increase the gamepad sensitivity? It's really slow...