The standalone release for The Dark Mod isn’t too far away. I really hope these guys get more exposure when it releases. There’s over 70 fan missions and a campaign in the works. Here’s a neat video detailing Dark Mod’s features: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNtUQ32eeRM
If anyone’s interested in checking it out, I recommend starting with Alberic’s Curse then moving on to In the North, and The Lich Queen’s Demise.
I was just thinking about removing this from my backlog. I’m asking myself if I really want to play another Thief game.
Broken Glass Studios have just released a standalone version of The Dark Mod. You no longer require a copy of Doom 3 to play this excellent total conversion. I can’t recommend it enough to any fans of Thief, Dishonored, or Deus Ex. You really owe it to yourself to check out a couple of fan missions.
We at Broken Glass Studios are happy to announce the release of TDM 2.0, a free, open-source, completely standalone stealth game!!
Standalone: First and most importantly, The Dark Mod is now completely standalone, which means you no longer need to own Doom3 to play it! We have spent a tremendous amount of time and energy replacing all the sounds, textures, particle effects, and models that we had been using. Hopefully this will open up a whole new audience of people who didn’t want to have to purchase a different game in order to try The Dark Mod.
In addition to going standalone, the following improvements have been made:
AI Improvements: There have been lots of additions and fixes to AI behaviour; characters will now greet each other more regularly, and will properly call for help when they’re in trouble. Guards can now hear slightly better, and we have included a new AI Vision slider to the menu, so the player can adjust how sensitive they want AI vision to be. Characters react to bodies in more varied ways now. A bug that made AI very easy to kill has been fixed. Archers will draw melee weapons if the player gets too close. Guards will turn towards doors that open unexpectedly. There are new vocals for specific situations, like when guards are getting shot at and can’t see their opponent. Searching behaviour has been improved. Plenty of old bugs, like the one where AI would sometimes attack with an empty fist, have been fixed.
New Gameplay: AI can now hear collapsing bodies, especially if the body is wearing plate mail and falls on a hard surface. No longer will a guard stand oblivious while his friend collapses to the ground two feet behind him. The player will have to give some thought to where they take down opponents if there are other guards in the area.
Audio Improvements: In addition to replacing dozens of Doom3 sounds, two new vocal sets have been added to the game. Footstep sounds have been improved. Big changes have been made to the sound propagation system that will allow mappers a lot more control over how players hear sound; for example, mappers can now make doors block different amounts of sound depending on their thickness, or can control how much sound passes through windows or small holes.
Graphical Improvements: You should notice a number of improvements to some character models, especially the skeleton, townsfolk, and beggar characters. Arrows will now leave blood-stains.
There have been plenty of other bug-fixes, like removing the ability to hide in the shadow of an object you’re carrying (no more sneaking under a crate umbrella). See the full change-log here.
Updates to Missions:
Because of the removal and replacement of Doom3 assets, some missions that used them are no longer compatible with TDM 2.0. About two dozen missions have updated .pk4s to fix these issues. New players can ignore this, but if you’re playing missions that you downloaded before 2.0, you may have trouble trying to run them. Most are fine, but a few missions will just crash while loading, and others will load but will have odd visual problems. It is highly recommended that you delete all previously downloaded missions after updating to 2.0!
Going standalone has been a mammoth undertaking. There were literally hundreds of assets that needed to be replaced, and around seventy maps that had to be checked to see whether any of those replacements broke anything. We’ve been testing for months, but it’s almost certain that we missed something, somewhere. If you see a black texture, a model buried in the floor, or something else unusual in a map, please let us know. If it was caused by 2.0 changes, we’ll make sure we fix it in the next update.
To update your TDM installation, simply run the tdm_update.exe file in your darkmod folder. Your darkmod folder no longer needs to sit under Doom3, and you can move it wherever you like (though make sure it is still called “darkmod”). (If the updater fails to start, check to see if a _tdm_update.exe file (note the underscore) has been created in your folder. If it has, rename _tdm_update.exe to tdm_update.exe and run it.)
I downloaded this last night, and played about 20 minutes into the included mission. I then went to load a save, and got a “cannot execute missionname script file” error. What’s up with that?
That link seems to be dead? Have tried to access it all day…
Rename the folder to “darkmod”.
Ah! Great, thanks.
Anyone have any recommended missions?
I would try Alberic’s Curse, In the North, Penny Dreadful, The Thomas Porter series (all by FM mapper Sotha), Return to the City and A Score to Settle. Sotha, Bikerdude, Melan, Grayman are fantastic mappers. You can’t go wrong with any of their fan missions. There’s a good mix of exploration, thievery fun and undead, tomb raiding adventures in the Dark Mod.
I just finished a very recent release, Requiem…I recommend it. http://www.thedarkmod.com/fmdetails.php?id=76
I guess the level designer wrote a novella based on it. I’m almost tempted: http://www.amazon.com/Shadowcursed-ebook/dp/B00BYEW02M
Great mods let us get so much more out of our games, the best mods are games unto themselves, as interesting and worthy as any commercial release. This year we celebrate the mod that revived and reinvigorated a PC gaming classic: The Dark Mod.
CHRIS The first version might have come out in 2009, but this year saw the release of The Dark Mod as a complete, standalone package. It’s a tremendous achievement – a detailed tribute to the Thief series that adds advanced object manipulation to the already broad range of tools at the player’s disposal. When I first played Amnesia: The Dark Descent, I wanted a Thief game made with its sense of physicality. The Dark Mod is pretty much that: the way you can reach out and grab objects in the world is a fantastic augmentation of the fantasy of being a thief in a murky, dangerous, candle-lit world.
I love the way the team encourage players to download, share, and build their own missions. That sense of creativity and community is a great match for the enthusiastic stealth game fanbase, and it’s something that we’d never see from a major publisher. The future of Thief might look uncertain at the moment, but the series’ spirit has a very good home here.
PHIL Agreed: the community is the heart of The Dark Mod. What I love about it is that, as a Thief-inspired project originally created as a Doom 3 mod, it’s different enough from the Looking Glass-era Thief games to give that community a sense of ownership. The lore, setting and systems have been tweaked just enough to provide a framework for its creators’ imaginations.
As a standalone download, The Dark Mod is just a stealth tutorial and single mission, so imagination is the key to its success. Its download page contains over 70 alternative missions, each of which respects, and in some cases adds to, an expanding crowdsourced universe full of rich detail, richer treasures, and cunning taffers who want to enjoy and steal both.
Unlike other tributes to older games, the mod’s makers also weren’t precious about reinventing Thief’s systems to make them better. Every developer with an interest in creating professional pilferers should look to The Dark Mod’s lockpicking system and, well, steal it. It’s not tied to a minigame, but it’s also not a canned animation you have to endure. Instead, you wait while your master thief does the job, and use sound cues to identify and mark the end of the sequence. The result makes you feel like part of the process, but also keeps you detached enough to listen out for approaching guards. It’s a perfect balance of interaction and situational awareness, creating tension and rewarding advanced planning.
The result is an improved and constantly expanding version of a game that’s still notable for how enjoyable its stealth is. I don’t often agree with the idea that the old ways were better, but the series remains uniquely unmatched in its free-form, open ended thievery. More of that is a fine thing.
CHRIS It makes for an interesting case study of the point where triple-A, indie and modding converge. I like the idea that fangenerated games can act as a kind of practical criticism, a way of broadcasting the desires of ‘hardcore’ fans to publishers. I’ve heard a lot of major game developers claim that they covet the attention of those core audiences, but it’s a stance that warrants scepticism. Projects like The Dark Mod are a way for those fans to say “if you won’t make it, we will” – to deftly lift what was good and meaningful about the games that inspired us years ago and run away with it.
Congrats Broken Glass Studios!
Wow, I may have to find my Doom 3 CDs with a review like that!
I was so excited for this & Black Mesa Source about a decade ago, but I forgot all about them over the years.
It’s completely stand alone now, Austin Arlitt. You just have to download the installer and you’ll be ready to go. You can throw away those Doom 3 CD’s if you want. :)
The Dark Mod features a built-in mission downloader, so you don’t have to search the community boards for the latest fan missions or revisions. It’ll also notify you when new missions are released. It’s a really great addition.
Oh, duh. I can read; I just can’t retain information through the end of the post. I’ll see about throwing those CDs away…
If you haven’t yet downloaded The Dark Mod, you should. It’s an excellent stealth game, our Mod of the Year for 2013, and a refreshing reminder of Thief’s better qualities ahead of what would seem to be a troubling sequel. If you have downloaded The Dark Mod, you should probably do it again (or at least run the game’s update application). The standalone spiritual platform for larcenous levels has received a new update, bringing the game to 2.01. It’s a minor update, as the one hundredth of an increase suggests, but it releases alongside details of some brand new missions for taffers to anticipate.
Bikerdude and Goldchocobo have released a new map called The Gatehouse and there’s more fan missions just around the corner. www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqI7OXpOxa4
If you already have TDM installed, just run tdm_update.exe in your Dark Mod folder to get the update.
I wish I bought doom 3 during the sale.
Edit: I’m dumb. Just read a few post up. It’s standalone now and free.
You don’t need it anymore for this mod.
I wish they would “appropriate” Skyrim’s lock picking minigame. I found their system clumsy after playing Skyrim.