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Happy 15th Anniversary to The Dark Mod! As of October 17th. 2024, 15 years have passed since the TDM 1.0 release! In that time, we evolved to most or all of the features that players were asking for since the concept of TDM was first mooted in the TTLG forums in late 2004. Campaign Support, Soft Shadows, EFX Reverb, Multi-Core Rendering, Uncapped FPS, Ambient Occlusion, Subtitles, are among the roster of perennial requested things that have been brought to life by the development team in addition to the core Thief 1 \ 2 game-play items like the Lightgem, Rope Arrows, Swim-able water, lock-picking and ( of course ) advanced AI enemies. To commemorate this occasion, please join us in celebrating the Release of 5 missions for our 15th Anniversary Contest! . The Imperial Sword Bikerdude was encouraged to reclaim an abandoned version of his older mission and rework it into a new one. Now the formerly lost work is a glorious new experience with scripted dialog, special events, and a decayed imperial cityscape! . The Wizard’s Treasure Thebigh has made yet another bite-sized mission with a focus on quality game-play and challenge. The mission is extra impressive for the scope and visuals achieved since his decision to join the contest was fairly late compared to other entrants. . You Only Fly Thrice DeTeEff has continued his progression of high quality and complex releases. Another relative late comer to the contest, this mission is a tour-de-force of excellent game-play ideas and is quite handsome with excellent volumetric lighting and modular asset usage. . Volta 3: Gemcutter Kingsal has decided to release his long awaited Volta Series sequel to be included in the contest. DO NOT MISS THIS MISSION! . Pinnacle: A Test of Talents UncertainTitle and TwilitWitch decided to risk their first mission release to be included in the contest roster. The use of both modular assets and many custom models give this mission a familiar yet refreshing visual appeal. . Please join the celebration and vote in the forum threads for each respective mission based on their contest criteria ( Game-play, Story, Visuals ). . . The Dark Mod 2.13 “Developer Build” The Dark Mod 2.13 is still a few months away from release but we wanted to highlight the fact that a few more of the long requested changes have been added in the upcoming release! . Parallax Occlusion Mapping! In the above video, you can see a that TDM has finally incorporated the long requested effect. This wont be applied to all textures since there may be some problems with visual anomalies and performance but we are already preparing for a future where lots of textures use this new and more three dimensional surface effect. Better AI sight! While the AI have always been good at seeing the player due to the lightgem ( sometimes “too good” so we had to nerf their sight ), AI have had various challenges seeing things like bodies, missing objects, opened doors, weapons, blood, etc. This is because it is not practical to give all entities \ objects their own lightgem. Instead we have used very simple math to represent lights which don’t match shadow and light textures. In 2.13 a new sampling approach aims to improve this so that AI can better see ( or not see ) items and bodies in a way that better matches the actual lighting in the mission. Mission Search! There is now a search window where you can specify the mission author or title to help you find your preferred mission rather than scrolling through over 170 missions. You can also change how mission titles are rendered with either the original title or the title with prefix words like “A, The” moved to the end. Improved Training Mission! The Training Mission has been upgraded to include a Vine Arrow tutorial, a Slow Match tutorial, EFX Reverb, Volumetric Lights, and some performance optimizations! Translation Packs! Between TDM 1.06 and 2.0 Tels and the translating community started translating many missions but these translations required that the original mission be altered in a way that made it harder for the mission authors to revise. The meant that translation packs were in limbo being hosted by 3rd party sites \ forums along with their orphaned old missions. The translators over at the Darkfate forums came up with an solution by including not only the translation strings in the translation pack but also the altered map files, GUI defs, etc that had translation work done to them. This would leave the original mission untouched but allow translation packs to override some parts. We have gone through the old archive of these translations and have reworked them to work with the latest version of TDM (and the associated missions). Most of the translations are Russian ( due to the continued work of the Darkfate people ) but many of the early TDM missions also have German, Italian, French, etc translations too. Subtitles! Datiswous has been creating story subtitles for many of the existing missions in the TDM mission database. Most authors have incorporated these into their official releases, otherwise players can still add them to the FM folder. . Hidden Hands: Blood and Metal Campaign Just before the 15th anniversary entries were starting to arrive, JackFarmer released an enormous 5 mission campaign that continues his well regarded “Hidden Hands” series!

VOLTA 3 : GEMCUTTER 1.1 [ TDM 2.12 REQUIRED] Please make occasional hard saves! There is a rare quick save crash that happens. AUTHOR'S NOTE --------------------------------------------------- Can you believe it's been 15 years of The Dark Mod? Happy anniversary and please enjoy this mission. --------------------------------------------------- DESCRIPTION --------------------------------------------------- This is a medium size, dense city / boat mission that continues the Volta storyline. It's an evolving campaign - some story details in here might not line up with Volta 1 and 2. --------------------------------------------------- CREDITS --------------------------------------------------- VOCALS by Andrew Bartmess, Desino Mortem, Goldwell, and Yandros. TESTING by Amadeus, AluminumHaste, Bikerdude, Dragofer, Epifie, Goldwell Mat99, Mike A, Skacky and WellingtonCrab. ADDITIONAL MODELS AND TEXTURES by WellingtonCrab and Epifire. EDITING by Amadeus and Moonbo. --------------------------------------------------- SPECIAL THANKS TO Goldwell for years of feedback and help Amadeus for helping get the Volta story into a good spot. -------------------------- FAQ / GUIDE (spoilers!) -------------------------- -------------------------- BRIEFING SCRIPT (spoilers!) -------------------------- Youtube link courtesy of Goldwell:

Oohhhh, the day has come! This old lurker releases another creation of his deranged mind...! What has he in store? Does it involve sunlight and pollen and hayfever? Will it involve strange towers and priests with bad breath? Naah, just some mediocre airship type of mission, aimed at the Anniversary mapping contest! I have a lengthy/humourly rant/lore for some of the building process for anyone interrested, in spoiler tags. According to DarkRadiant I have worked 570 hours on this, and that doesn't take into account all hours of coding and scripting. This feels like an insanely huge amount of mapping time for this small mission but I try not to judge myself. DarkRadiant says 570 so...I say thanks to all calm hours at the night shift at work where I could sit and script and write readables. And I also humbly bow myself to the scripting genuses that are on the forums. A special thanks to my girlfriend who (almost) always lets me talk about my projects. She has also written some of the readables and voiced some recordings in the mission. Thanks to Dragofer, Mirceakitsune and Melchior for much needed scripting help. Thanks to YouTube channels BGM President and Sound Effects where I've borrowed some music and sound effects. Thanks to my betatesters; nbohr1more, Bergante, datiswous, Wesp5, nightmare, Jaxa and Cambridge Spy. And a big thank you to the mod in general for still being alive and supportive! ########################################## MISSION RELATED STUFF ########################################## On an airship, heading for Flowerdale a lot of strange things can happen. As some people guzzle down liquor in the bar, some others skulk around in the shadows. Certain people cannot be trusted and there are even those that kill for a living. Somebody may or may not work for foreign powers. But everyone yearns for those shiny pennies. There are some strange things in the cargo, huge coffers that can hold bodies, alive and dead. This story may unfold in several different ways; Three characters can be chosen; Zacharias the thief, Oliver Mortimer, the assassin or Rupert Peabody, youngling of the Wizlas woodfolk. DOWNLOAD LINK https://drive.google.com/file/d/10w_SJSBAxxVFYTwPjJhIo48fEzvuTo1M/view?usp=sharing

Thanks for playing! A heads up, the briefing doesn't have subtitles yet, I'll do that in a future update. I just ran out of time. The OP has the briefing scripts written out along with an FAQ as chakkman mentioned. Goldwell was kind enough to host the briefing on his youtube which does a decent job with automated captions. I made the briefing using photoshop and blender. Cut it all together in premiere.

The Wizard's Treasure Greetings taffers, I'm delighted to release my latest mission, just in time for the 15th Anniversary deadline. The Wizard's Treasure is a beginner-friendly mission suitable for thieving taffers ages 6-99. A powerful wizard is in possession of a huge and valuable emerald. Find it and steal it! The mission should take about twenty minutes to complete for a first-time player, so it will hopefully be a lot of fun if you're in the mood for a casual heist. Credits: Huge thanks to my beta-testers and sanity-checkers Bikerdude, JackFarmer, and nightmare. Available through the in-game downloader. Enjoy!

Edit: There seems to be an issue still with some of the assets used, so the map will need to be updated. 2.0 Various Fixes and changes, a poor, lonely guard added thanks to Bikerdude! ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Pinnacle "Every couple hundred of years, the Church undertakes a massive mission to layer the City. With a combination of ingenuity and magic, the faithful cover old buildings and streets with new roads and homes. Welcome to Pinnacle, the city that hides more than it shows." ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- An extremely quick and painless map that was lovingly rushedreleased for the 15th Anniversary Contest! I have had plans and ideas for this map haunting me for the last couple of years, but each time I've started to work on it, it ended in disaster. (I only just learned to make map backups the second time my map got corrupted, for instance.) Unfortunately around 85% of the planned map had to be left on the cutting-room floor to make it to the deadline. We had an absolute blast working on it, and can't wait to make more! With love, UncertainTitle and TwilitWitch. Thanks to Bikerdude, for beta-testing and contributing to make our map better! https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BYMYlI0iwFGP8JxPxEoRj6c2-Dxg7HCg/view?usp=sharing

The Imperial Sword By: Bikerdude "When passing through the small town of Brouften, the locals mentioned that the Town Council have been having issues with one of the local nobels. One Lord Drafferi, who has been interrupting Town Council meetings and claiming that nobody on the council has any authority on town matters..." Notes: - TDM 2.12 or later is REQUIRED to play this mission. - This FM is based on an abandoned old version of The Elixir that doesn't resemble the current mission at all as a base for town of Brouften. - This FM should play on the vast majority of systems. I have perf tweaked this thing to within an inch of its life. And have moved almost all of the VL ligh effects to the ‘ better’ LOD level. - min recommended spec (as per beta testing) Intel Core i7(3rd gen), nvidia 1030 4gb (GDDR5), will get you 60fps inside and 45fps outside. - Various areas will look better with shadow maps enabled (SoftShadows set to high and Shadows Softness set to zero) at the possible expense of performance. - When you play there are 2 LOD settings of note, normal and better. On better all of the VL lights and alpha shadows are turned on. - I also suggest using MAPS shadows with softness set to low and quality so to medium or high. - And lastly this mission has subtitles for all the custom audio and briefing. Tip: - When searching for needed items, use the "F" \ "Lean Forward" Key Brunting Steel: The sword in this mission is made of Brunting Steel which is a semi-mythical metal in the TDM universe. It is similar to Damascus Steel which was famed for it's strength in comparison to other steel swords. In TDM mythology, it was originally forged on an island utopia, similar to the fabled metal "Orichalcum" crafted in Atlantis. The first mission to mention Brunting Steel is "Crucible of Omens: Behind Closed Doors" Download Link: - (v1.3.6) - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mu-FdGH1FivMgt4Fy1OgwiDjvIpA1Uck/view Changes: The briefing has been tweaked to remove some of the confusing aspects, aswell as the audio, so the narration is easier to understand. There is now more than one exit point to complete then mission. A number of annoyances that some players reported have been tweaked or outright changed. In game map ( The mission is also available in the Mission Database ) https://www.thedarkmod.com/missiondetails/?internalName=imperial_sword Credits: A big thanks goes to - - nbhor1more for his fantastic story and readables. - WellingtonCrab for the fantastic signs, plaques, decals & other textures. - Mortem desino, Narrator for their awesome and subtle custom dialog. - Goldwell for the "Grumpy old man voice" - Datiswous for the subtitles - Kingsal for the awesome new grass and flowers. - Flanders and Melan for their excellent models and textures. - Nobiax for his excellent small plants - nobiax.deviantart.com. - kyyrma and GigaGooga for thier ever-handy sounds packs. - Obstortte for the custom frob script. - Jackfarmer for the brilliant custom briefing. - freesound.org for ambient tracks, further details in sndshd file. - Beta testers: Mat99 (star tester), Nbhor1more, Amadeus, Xak, Jackfarmer, MikeA1 and S1lverwolf. Teaser: Before and After screens: 15yr Anniversary Contest Thread:

Same here. Regarding the secrets, there are hints in the first post of this thread.

Last month I replaced the animation of the md5.mesh flag, as the original was horrible. It's still not very realistic, for a better looking flag I suggest using this one: I would like to add another animation and blend the two randomly for a variation. I thought it would be easy, but I don't know how to do it. //waving flag model flag_pirate_01 { mesh models/md5/props/flag/flag01.md5mesh anim idle models/md5/props/flag/idle01.md5anim anim idle_01 models/md5/props/flag/idle_no_wind.md5anim { random_cycle_start } } entityDef atdm:flag_waving_pirate { "editor_displayFolder" "Animated Props" "spawnclass" "idAnimated" "model" "flag_pirate_01" "start_anim" "idle" } random_cycle_start does absolutely nothing.

Delving into a small FM since I want to actually get something done instead of endlessly working on open worlds. Copied the church from another project I posted previously, I'm using some base architecture between missions to save time albeit with each one modified and made more unique. Amazing what projector lights can do when used right.

I downloaded another plugin for Stable Diffusion for depth and normal maps. It has additional options and renders 16 bit images. They still have large tonal variation, so I created 3 different versions by simply rotating the diffusemap. I overlayed them in GIMP, which leveled the image somewhat. Then I applied high pass filter with high contrast. I had to smear the seams, but that wasn't a big problem. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VsvnCuK_U9JYLY4mY-4HTScYdyMi9maV/view?usp=sharing

Yessssss... Thank you. Already finished the other missions. Thank you for your work, I really enjoyed it

This was an aboslute blast to play! I did not expect anything less after other fms from you So far, my most favourite of missions from this contest, with imperial sword as a close second. Still have 3 more left to play. Again - I loved the setting (I always wonder how do you do this life-like level design, where you use a lot of sharp angles and symmetrical geometric shapes (i.e. the square with the warehouses and a statue in the middle), yet the levels doesn´t seem bland nor boring), whole middle-eastern aesthetic and setup of the story. Also lightning and whole lot of a new textures (?). And making a boat - a limited space of usually rectangular rooms not boring and monotonous and dividing it into sections, which are vastly different to have for a player something to explore - hats off. I also noticed some of the missions have this ability where if you take a loot, it does not just disappear, but it instead fly over screen to you - is that something you as a mission creator have to turn on? I find that effect cool. I absolutely enjoyed the shooting minigame - that was brilliant idea, as I find those targets underutilized in missions and this finally forced me to shoot something else beside rope arrows I was able to find 6 out of 8 secrets, 7th I had to help myself with , but I couldn´t find the 8th secret, although I have all the loot, so maybe some script didn´t execute properly? Can I have a list of secret locations (in a spoiler tag, of course)? PS: Oh, and I forgot to mention that beautiful intro animation - did you do that yourself? That was breathtaking - I love the original Thief (or Black Parade intros, for that matter, as they are homage to the original), but this was very nice upgrade and modernization over the traditional style.

Mathematically it is possible to extract heightmap from normalmap by solving partial differential equation. If heightmap is f(x, y), then normal vector is proportional to N = (-df/dx, -dy/dx, 1). Hence we can find df/dx = -Nx / Nz, df/dy = -Ny / Nz. So normalmap gives us partial derivatives of heightmap in pretty straightforward way, but their precision is around 0.4% at best. If normalmap was generated properly from a real heightmap, then this problem is called "reconstructing potential function for conservative vector fields". But since our values are rather imprecise, we need some stable solution, not just some trivial prefix sums. I'm not sure how stable the possible solution could be, and how good will be the quality of the output. Even if they would be OK, this approach can only be usable as offline tool to be run explicitly.

Yeah I would do that at this point.

yeah the number scheme jumped somewhat after the polaris models eg. vega 56 etc. then onto the 5000 series for the navi models, but has been more consistent since then with the 6000 models taking over and then the 7000 series. polaris was probably the first series who could contend with the old R9 series while using less ressources (the R9 series were power hogs with the 390X sucking upwards of 500 watts) in 4k the R9 series still held its own but like polaris it really did not have the muscle for upcomming game titles.

I still have some heightmaps lying around from the olden days of normalmap making in GIMP. Less exaggerated:

Hello kingsal as i said before : an other gem - cutted by kingsal one of my most beloved mappers i´m still not sure how to vote : but for sure - you now get some " - " sorry but you are kingsal - you get some extra expectation for you´re a profi . in the outside area of the ship - not everything is accessible as it should be . sorry - i understand it´s in addition to to the mission - to get a proudly atmosphere but since " Hazard-Pay " i expect that every thing is consistent and here one can´t climp everywhere where it looks possibele also - wooden stuff is not allways wooden stuff where rope-arrows fit . I´m sure you´l accept this as an minor critics - and i may ask you : is it you - who is a genius - to know what solutions are needed - to give a sup.ghost a chance to fulfill his ambitions ? --- or is it my genius to allways find one ? your secrets are very well done ! and the statues value and the second builders cross needed some extra ideas to get them unseen . By the way ?

Holy crap TwilitWitch and I could NOT figure out where the last coin was after she went on a loot placement binge. Thank you for the advice, we're still learning and appreciate anything people can give us!

@Bergante Regarding that picture; it's the most...hmm...easy...lady on the ship as well. She's a cheese crazy nymphomaniac

@DeTeEff & @Sotha ahhh --- So it takes mappers to understand certain circumstances . yes Zach is hard - but as you try to sneak - one wants to be quiet . but as Mr.Peabody when i was going for my revenge tour as Maniac - i felt some groups have a Telepathic Connection - killing one guard often let the others run for help . i accepted this as a special Challenge to find a way for every person on board to do it in a right place & right way without being heard or seen . P.s. : Loot ! --- i never sorted Loot ! and i don´t remember - sorry - just have your eyes wide open ( instead of EYES WIDE SHUT ) these hundreds of keys have to be sorted if you want to quick search for a specific one . ( only for collectors ! --- as sup.ghost one only takes the one that´s needed ! ) And yes, the sacrifices to group them together - To take my photo as a souvenir - before I put them in the fridge , if future inventions can bring them to life . PPs : @Melchior i pretty often had a look for when the passengers stared to have fun by dancing PPS ? up to what date the voting has to be done ? i have to sort

Is parallax even working in this image? It looks.....weird? Like something is off.

Congrats! Thats was great little mission with a tight layout and fun twist. Thank you.

Thank you! Originally we had plans for AI, but ran out of time to implement it (hence the random weapons stash) Those drawers are just super shy, actually! They hide from everyone though, so don't worry it's nothing personal (I fixed them in the latest update that will be uploaded later today) I'll have to do some flying around noclip to see if I can find this roof strip you're referring to. MY HERO!!! I kept thinking I had to make a new text file for every skin! That removes so much tedium! I went ahead and made a master skin file and got rid of the rest of them in an update that will hopefully be uploaded today ^ ^

A simply gorgeous mission! I love the unique textures, especially the stonework in the storehouses/market area. Intriguing layout, both of the storehouses and the ship. The lighting was outstanding - visually, and from a gameplay point of view. Here is some z-fighting that I noticed: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/prpoujb1lhd5ybftw3von/ACbqye0LJOevb6FZipoS8sM?rlkey=cyfx6z3st6v1du0cmedoi51od&st=zldqvjoh&dl=1

All set, update is in the mission database

wow kingsal great mission a real adventure thank you

@nbohr1more Sorry to BOHRther you again. A New version is up There were problems with angry thunder and too propagating sound Should be fixed now, I hope. (I have added sound_loss 30) on all locationseparators so the thunder is more distant AND hopefully the AI are more isolated (before, I believe the sound traveled out through the windows and up into the next floor and too easily startled the rest of the ship). I have updated the download link. @Sotha Get your finnish butt to the computer! PS: I have no issue whatsoever with other contestants updating small or big stuff in their missions, even after deadline. The goal (at least for me) is to get more good missions out and if someone spots an error, it should always be okay to update that.

Hello Kingsal! I see that you ahve left Discord, so i had to come here to tell you! Your new mission is a blessing are you doing all the 3d meshes yourself? Its so professional! Really good job.

Damn, a Kingsal FM is like an entire game

Just started and I love the intro that is obviously inspired from the "sword" mission in T2. The "sword" was one of my favorite missions. Something tells me that this one is going to be a winner.

Fixed version is up by the way.

Picked up an old mountain FM, I decided to scrap the original idea and repurpose the town I made for my multiple city hub idea which required expanding it. This is a new area I added, the large structure in the last two shots is meant to be a castle that may not look as I originally envisioned but I'm happy with the result none the less.

Oh my, this was quite a FM to try out. Possibly the tiniest ever made, I can think of one more about a bread shop who's name I long forgot. Found all loot and secrets and played all 3 difficulty levels. Something tells me more effort went into the intro video than the FM itself, it was tastefully uncharacteristic of anything TDM!

Good idea! If you set the dampening to same level as closed doors, it will probably do the trick!