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The Dark Mod 2.13 has been released! A new era in accurate AI Vision! When id Software released the Doom 3 modding SDK, The Dark Mod team saw the potential for something more than a multi-player cops vs robbers game like Thievery UT. The sheer amount of access to essential game-play systems meant that a true Thief style experience could potentially be created. One of the first things the team did was to investigate how a light-gem system could be implemented. Having a good way for both the player and AI to know when the player is visible to others is a crucial part of the Thief experience so if we couldn’t build it then the dream of a Thief style experience was over. Fortunately, there were enough parts of the AI visual logic and more than a few stub pieces of the Render code that gave us the ability to build a robust system. The downside of the light-gem system was performance. Even though we did our best to limit the viewport and resolution of the light-gem image captures, often the light-gem would cut FPS in half ( or less ). This was pretty painful, especially since most computers could just barely run vanilla Doom 3 at acceptable FPS. After this system was fully functional, other aspects of AI vision were investigated. Obviously, we could not afford to run the light-gem render for every object or body the AI might see so it was decided that the AI would do a more simplified light-gem calculation for things other than the player. This meant that ( to the AI visual scan ) all light volumes would be either cubes or pyramids with perfect exponential falloff. We would run a line-of-sight check to the objects then ( if it hit ) calculate the pixel brightness by the location of the spot in relation to the center of the light(s). This was far cheaper than rendering the whole scene but heavily impacted accuracy. Many solutions were proposed to improve things but a solution evaded us for years. 2.13 changes things! Now we have a "stochastic sampler" model that does regular measurements of the actual light volume pixels and builds a "running average" of how illuminated different entities are. The days of seeing knocked-out AI in the middle of a bright spotlight get ignored are over. Now all AI and loot entities (etc) essentially have their own light-gem and it performs excellently! Magnificent Mission Management! Daft Mugi has drastically improved the GUI menus for mission management. The Dark Mod mission list and in-game downloader now have a search filter window that follows modern conventions of reducing the listed items as each new letter eliminates a possible matching mission name. Both lists can be sorted by actual name ( The Rats Triumphant ) or Chicago Style ( Rats Triumphant, The ). Additional mission details ( readme data ) can now be scrolled so players can see more information about the mission without having to navigate to the darkmod/fms folders. The menus have also been tuned with smaller font sizes for more practical mission listing and have been hardened against buggy order of operations issues so that you will be far less likely to encounter strange issues or crashes when downloading and installing missions. Parallax Occlusion Mapping! Stgatilov has added the oft requested POM feature to the latest Dark Mod release! WellingtonCrab has coordinated with him to provide examples and check the functionality and quality. Now The Dark Mod is ready to offer a quantum leap in perceived geometric detail with all sorts of surfaces realistically showing 3D parallax rather than the flatter looking normal maps we usually offer. WellingtonCrab also created many texture variants that are tuned to look better with POM enabled. Other Graphics Goodies! Now cubemaps \ environment maps respect more stage keywords. This means that faked reflections on water shaders can now move in relation to the water texture movement offering a more convincing illusion! Subviews ( cameras, portals, mirrors, xray, etc ) can now be nested. You can now have a skybox render in a camera view, etc. Volumetric lights and particles now render in mirrors! Alpha-tested surfaces get alpha shadows in Shadow Maps mode. Tone-mapping now supports range compression to prevent unwanted overbright areas. Arcturus has introduced some new metal materials that use improved cubemaps as well as skyboxes with clouds that use POM! Stability and Performance! The console variable system ( CVAR ) has been improved to be thread safe. This should resolve some rare crashes that involve weapon scripts that rely on CVAR values. We now automatically detect the number of CPU cores and allocate Jobs based on the detected specifications. Level loading has been given more parallel execution optimizations including optimizations for loading audio samples in parallel. Uncapped FPS is enabled by default so Linux players will not have a poor first time experience and many audio and video playback timing bugs that occur only in classic capped mode are avoided. Finally, Linux vsync support has been greatly improved. Improved Training Mission! The Training Mission is supposed to help players understand the basics of Dark Mod game-play and controls. It was created to coincide with The Dark Mod v1.0 and was not significantly altered until TDM v1.08 ( when Bikerdude did some texture replacement for 2.0 standalone and improved the overall visuals ). As such, many new game-play features that were added since 1.0 were never included in the mission. Now the mission has been upgraded to include more game-play features such as the Vine Arrow as well as getting further visual upgrades and EFX Reverb! Drunken AI! Now that the AI have better visual accuracy, Amadeus decided to balance things out by fixing many of the broken behaviors of Drunken AI so that they are more reliable and consistent for use in missions by default ( no need to extensively customize the defs or use scripting to improve them ). Potions! Dragofer and Amadeus have completed the work on the Slowfall potion originally prototyped by VanishedOne. They also incorporated the invisibility potion by Kingsal ! These now have pre-defined slots in the gameplay menu as well as the default shop menu design. Assets Galore! Along with new POM textures, we now have: A new modular pipe set A new Lampion entity Some new Factory Machine entities Ornate wood and stone relief textures A new AI praying animation A new AI smoking animation And many fixes or improvements to existing assets EFX Reverb Location Preset! Frost_Salamander took some time away from his continued work on the excellent “The Lieutenant” series missions to make EFX reverb setup easier for himself and other mission authors. You can now add EFX preset spawnargs to location entities rather than having to use the EFX def file. 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. That 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 archives 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. Also Nolok contributed a brand new Catalan menu translation! 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. A detailed list of changes can be seen here: https://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=What's_new_in_TDM_2.13 To UPDATE, simply run the tdm_installer.exe file in your darkmod folder. Note that tdm_update.exe is no longer supported, but you can download the new installer from the Downloads page if you don’t have it yet. Please be aware that old saved games will not be compatible with 2.13, so finish any missions you might be in the middle of first! Also, some missions created prior to 2.13 may need to be updated so they will be playable in 2.13. Before upgrading, set TDM to use one of the built-in missions ( Training Mission, A New Job, Tears of St Lucia ) then use the in-game mission downloader to check for updates

Hidden Hands: Blood & Metal Available via TDM Mission Downloader ============================================================== Title: Hidden Hands: Blood & Metal Filename : hhbam.pk4 Author: Jack Farmer Date of release: 01.09.2024 (Version 1) - 14.09.2024 (Version 2) - 28.09.2024 (Version 3) - 28.11.2025 (Version 4) EFX: Yes Subtitles: Yes ============================================================== Hidden Hands series: I - Initiation II - Vitalic Fever III - The Lost Citadel IV - The Anomaly V - Blood & Metal ============================================================== Jack Farmer: mapping & drafts, briefing videos Amadeus: revision/editing of all texts for readables, narration and dialogues Joebarnin: custom scripts & prefabs and trouble shooting Datiswous: subtitles for all conversations, broadcasts, recordings and thief comments Dragofer: consultation for scripts, models and trouble shooting =============================================================== Beta testers: Cambridge Spy Mat99 Bergante Joebarnin wesp5 grodenglaive TheUnbeholden Acolytesix CrisiusXIII Release testers: Mat99 AluminumHaste =============================================================== Voice actors: AndrosTheOxen (all missions) Bikerdude (mission 1 and 2) Boylag (mission 1) Goldchocobo (mission 2, 3 and 5) Malasdair (all missions) Mary-Anne Stanke (mission 4) Narrator (mission 1 and 4) Purgator (mission 1 and 3) scodysk (mission 4) the double dutch king (mission 3 and 5) Xander Grant (mission 4) Yandros (mission 2 and 4) ================================================================ Pilfered items: - roulette wheel and alien model with thanks to Goldwell (taken from "AC II: New in Town") - pagan woman character and a select building facade with thanks to Fidcal (taken from "Heart of Lone Salvation") - skybox in mission 4 taken from Sotha's "TP: The Transaction" - mission 3 ("Down we go.") previously known as "The Cloister" - taken from the abandoned "Crucible of Omens" campaign, mainly created by the Dudes (JDude and BikerDude) and some other legacy missions makers ================================================================ New assets: - radio model and skin by Epifire, prefab produced by Bikerdude - several technical drawings provided by wellingtoncrab - keypad designed & coded by MirceaKitsune - flying bats designed & coded by STRUNK ================================================================ New sound fx / music: - factory and machine noises by inspectorj - machine sounds by lupalenzuela - rocks_falling_in_cave by unidentified contributor from freesound.org - vinyl_record_pop by joedeshon - ambient_battle_noise by pfranzen - distorted-wolf-howl by hail_pinson - roaring_sea by allthingssound - slideshow_projector by andreaskg - whistling-in-cave by retroguy23 - scary-ghost-wolf-howling by brainclaim - "Rivercare" by Adrian Wilaert - "Leave Her Johnny" by Roger McGuinn used under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/ All other new ambient tracks & sound fx created by Jack Farmer, occ. with gigagooga sound samples ================================================================ Special thanks go to: @joebarnin, who completely altruistically analyzed many game bugs, provided several clever scripts and even played through the initially very buggy game twice. It was an ordeal not even described in the first Builders book! Jeff, thank you very much! @datiswous, who, despite the enormous scope of the game, did not let himself be deterred from creating suitable subtitles for all dialog, comments, briefings and recordings. A truly monumental task! @Mat99 & @Bergante, who tried out things I would never have thought of and showed me once again that I absolutely have to take part in the next brain function enhancement surgery! ...and finally our friend, the incredible @AluminumHaste, who dared to do another detailed run-through at the end of the beta testing, which allowed for several more improvements and polishings. ================================================================ Thank you everyone at Fractured Glass for consultation and help in general! ================================================================

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:

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!

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:

I'm proud to announce the release of The Lieutenant 4: A Reciprocal Gambit Huge thanks to beta testers: @Mat99 @Bikerdude @Cambridge Spy @Shadow @DavyJones Screenshots: https://flic.kr/s/aHBqjCit3B 800x600 versions for @nbohr1more: https://flic.kr/s/aHBqjCir1t Download link (version 2): https://drive.proton.me/urls/PV79JTNVAW#7zDvAvipKG0I TDM 2.13 required. Enjoy! Frost

Hello! To celebrate 15 years of TDM, and because so amazing missions have been made in my absence, I felt compelled to made a small mission for everyone to enjoy: The Last Offering! Mission briefing: Build time: roughly 30 h darkradiant time during october-november 2024. AI has been used for initial mission brainstorming, proofreading and polishing readables. Thanks: *Whole TDM community for everything. *Betatesters: thebigh, datiswous, Shadow Other: I challenge you to play this short mission without saving or loading! The player gets plenty of gold for gear: buy a good thieving kit and enjoy the mission without saving! It is quite possible it is more exciting that way. Let me know what you think replying to this thread: I'd love to hear about your experiences and opinions. Enjoy, and I hope you have as fun playing as I had making this! Download link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HthqgoeBKf7kgYTRm5ice5t31_90_PRu/view?usp=drive_link

A Winter's Tale By: Bikerdude "One of the few pleasures I have as a man of the thieving profession is to return to my old home town for the holidays and relax in the company of friends and relatives. But a local lord has been going out of his way to making the lives of the locals a miserable." Notes: - TDM 2.12 or later is REQUIRED to play this mission. - This is my entry for the speedbuilding jam. - This FM should play on the vast majority of systems. I have perf tweaked this map with low end players in-mind. And have moved the globale fog/moon lights 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 medium/high, Shadows Softness set to zero and LOD set to 'better'), at the possible expense of performance depending on your system specs. - this mission continues the imperial theme, with this being a border town slightly further out from the main imperial lands than Brouften. - build time roughly 130hrs. Download Link: - (v1.4) - https://discord.com/channels/679083115519410186/1310012992867405855/1310022631415746632 v1.4 changes: I have been tweaking the LOD levels through-out the map - - Snow fall has been moved to LOD low/normal. - world fog moved to LOD better. - fireplace grills to LOD better. - world moonlight moved to LOD high. Other tweaks - - reduced light counts in all the fireplaces. - reduced the length of the looping menu video background. - Some new assets Gameplay: - added more ways for the player to get around. - tweaked existing routes to make some easier or more of a challenge. - and added an additional option objective. Credits: Special thanks go to - - Nbhor1more, flashing out the briefing and creation of readables. - Amadeus, Help w/custom objectives, script work, proof reading, mission design & testing. - Dragofer, for custom scripts and script work for the main objective. - Baal, for additional tweaking of the main objective and script work,. - Beta testers: Amadeus, Nbhor1more, Mat99, DavyJones, S1lverwolf, Baal & Dragofer. - Freesound.org, for ambient tracks, further details in sndshd file. Speed Jam Thread: - https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=152747

It all started last year when my other better low end laptop died on me, at the time I played the first Dishonored game. When I started to play on my lower end laptop, I couldn't really play a lot of games. I tried Splinter Cell Chaos Theory but it didn't really stick, I scoured the internet for a low end stealth game and that's when I discovered the original Thief series. The thief series was just different I, was free, I was a sly little thief who could go anywhere and there were countless missions online. Fast forward to this year when I finally got another better, better low end laptop and can finally try The Dark Mod. I first heard about The Dark Mod in the r/thief subreddit, I didn't know it was a fan game from the fans of the original thief series. I tried a bunch of missions and oh boy does it really give off thief vibes, even on the lowest settings it looks good, I also like the fact that it is free. In my opinion The Dark Mod is harder than the original Thief series, the tappy tappy on the forward button while creeping just gets annoying but still a pretty good game for it's time, but in The Dark Mod it's harder to tail on npcs since they're more sensitive and my ego doesn't let not get a 0 in the stealth score. Though I wish that the peaking option from the unoficial patch or the modpack was a game feature, where if you long press right click while the door is in frob you can do the peeking option. Did I mention the mantling? It is so good, but I still make quicksave just in case when it's time to parkour in the game. I do wish that there would be an official campaign one day following the story of Corbin. Though even with a game with better graphics, my friends still don't want to play it. I guess pacifism and running around a manor or a city finding loot isn't their cup of tea. I guess the original Thief series and The Dark Mod is just for those who are real stealth lovers, not for the stealth/action ones. I love The dark mod and the Thief series because it isn't a hassle it's quite literally a waiting game, a game of patience and reading, lots of reading. They even thought me how to read maps to read the environment, not to kill first ask questions later and to figure out where in the f*** I am in the map. Overall I love this game and its inspiration, though I'm quite literally in too deep in The Dark Mod I can't stop playing. Thank you to the people who made this wonderful game and to the people who are creating mods or addons, for it, I hope it'll stay free, more features will be added, and hopefully an official campaign.

Aight well if I'm poking around posting fm reviews, code change suggestions, and asking for tech help I might as well also put up my work. Putzing around with DarkRadiant is quite fun. Not sure when or if I will produce a full map but, considering that I haven't touched dromed or made maps for other games before, I'm really happy with what I've got so far. Kudos to the tooling designers for making something reasonably idiot-friendly. One of the first things the A-Z tutorial tells you is to not use 0 0 0 for ambient lighting, and I immediately said nuts to that lol. I'm really enjoying the harsh darkness and the contrast from light sources. I didn't intend for it to happen, but I've ended up with something that looks like it crawled straight out of TDS. It also makes traversing the level have an interesting trade off - you need light to see, but enemies can see you carrying it and if its in your hands you have to drop it to pull out the bow or mantle stuff. I'm trying to build a whole level around this "mechanic"/"gimmick".

anyone fancy a drink?

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

Here are some screenshots of Skacky's textures that Biker and I have been trying to make TDM-ready. We could actually use some testers to if people would like to try them out:

Robot spider / scorpion, can be lockpicked. Monocycle robot opening / closing doors. First one uses modyfied tdm spider, just noticed that they dont have rotation animation, just slide around axis without proper leg movement. Razor rider is a simple script without any tdm ai thinking, with customised navigation points.

Coming along nicely...

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!

Winner: Volta 3: Gemcutter ! Rankings: 1: Volta 3: Gemcutter = 95.2% - WINNER! 2: The Imperial Sword = 89.4% 3: You Only Fly Thrice = 87.2% 4: Wizards's Treasure = 71.9% 5: Pinnacle: A Test of Talents = 57.7% Breakdown: Best Visuals: 1: Volta 3: Gemcutter = 4.83 / 5 2: The Imperial Sword = 4.80 / 5 3: You Only Fly Thrice = 4.50 / 5 4: Wizard's Treasure = 3.47 / 5 5: Pinnacle: A Test of Talents = 3.26 / 5 Best Gameplay: 1: Volta 3: Gemcutter = 4.83 / 5 2: The Imperial Sword = 4.34 / 5 3: You Only Fly Thrice = 4.21 / 5 4: Wizard's Treasure = 3.75 / 5 5: Pinnacle: A Test of Talents = 2.69 / 5 Best Story: 1: You Only Fly Thrice = 4.54 / 5 2: Volta 3: Gemcutter = 4.41 / 5 3: The Imperial Sword = 4.19 / 5 4: Wizard's Treasure = 3.39 / 5 5: Pinnacle: A Test of Talents = 2.74 /5 Calculations: Max Possible = Total Votes * 5 (Outstanding) TotalMaxPointsPoss (TMP) = AllCategoryVotecount(ACV) * 30 Full Weighted Score (FWS) = (Gameplay score*3 + Visual score*2 + Story score) / TMP

"Dame Fortune is a fickle mistress. Every time she opens a door, she throws a brick through your window..." I'm happy to announce that my second FM, "The Last Night on Crookshank Lane", is now available on the Mission Database: https://www.thedarkmod.com/missiondetails/?internalName=crookshank Backup download is also available here: https://share.anon-kenkai.com/crookshank.pk4 Big thanks to @Airship-Ballet, @wesp5, @JackFarmer, @taffernicus, @Bergante for beta testing and feedback. Special thanks to @datiswous for generously providing in-mission subtitles. This is a much bigger and more ambitious FM than my first attempt, and it ended up taking a year and a half to complete. It was also a very educational lesson in the importance of proper map optimization. It's a sort of soft-sequel to "The Threepenny Revue", but not part of a series per se, and can be played as a standalone mission. I took inspiration from FMs like "The Painter's Wife" in TDM, and "The Sound of a Burrick in a Room" from Thief Gold, and although I'd never put myself in the same league as either, I was always impressed by their size, scope, and detail. City exploration FMs have always been my favorite, and those maps and others like them inspired me to take a crack at something similar. Enoy!

Made Daraan's texture pack, (books, plaster & misc), TDM ready, I would welcome testing - - Linked removed for now, verifying CC compliance of plaster textures, because in typical ttlg style, its not clear.

I'm happy to announce my second FM, 4 years after my first release. I've focused on large maps and open world projects, most of which are nowhere near finished: Inspired by short FM's posted recently, I decided to try something simpler and smaller that could be done in time. As Halloween is upon us, I put together a 10 day FM using pieces from other projects to speed things up. Since my previous FM I've gotten more experienced with DarkRadiant and haven't repeated a lot of its mistakes. While I haven't had time to put this up for beta testing, I've played it so many times I don't expect major bugs, though this is a quick project so don't expect everything to be perfect. Eager to hear what you think and what you find! Until this is in the mission downloader you can get it at the following mirrors: Google Drive Mega.nz Notice: This FM uses the newly added debrief stage. At the time of this post the latest TDM release doesn't contain the new system: You should still be able to play on the release version, but for the full experience consider running the latest DarkMod development snapshot from the installer. This mission is story oriented, it's encouraged to explore and look attentively at things. I found it a bit on the difficult side, not as a deliberate choice but a consequence of its design. Definitely play on the easiest difficulty if this is your first time, a normal run should take over an hour. Content warning: Short guide if you find navigating difficult, contains only minor spoilers: If you're stuck on a specific task, the following spoilers provide a guide for the most common challenges, contains major spoilers so I advice only checking this if necessary until finishing your first run:

Hey all. I spoke to Biker and @nbohr1more about this but wanted to ask everyone participating. @Ansome@thebigh @xlm @Nico A.@jonri@Petike the Taffer @grodenglaive@Uncertain Title@DeTeEff I had some time free up in October, potentially allowing me to finish Volta 3 for this. Would it be fair to enter this late? The mission's been in the works for a long time. At the end of the day, I just want to celebrate 15 years of TDM with everyone . Either by participating in this, or just releasing Volta 3 later in the month, around Halloween this year.

An abandoned underground pagan temple...

Hello everyone! I created a mod for TDM that enhances immersion by adding visible hands and animations when the player is crouching or holding an item. Let me know if you find any strange behaviors with the animations or have suggestions for new ones you'd like to see added! You can download it here: Visible Player Hands This mod requires some modifications to the game engine, which you can check out here: GitHub repository SHOWCASE

Sorry, didn't find a thread for praise yet. You guys did an absloutely great job with 2.13. Not only did the loading times improve massively, the light gem/A.I. visibility is much more consistent now, but, also the changes to the Training Mission are great. Thanks for still maintaining the mod, and improving it with literally every new version.

Thanks for compling the list, GW! 15 years of TDM with 189 missions means almost 13 missions per year. Let's think what it means in a rough comparison: Thief 1 had 13 missions. Thief 2 had 15 missions. Therefore, on average, this community has created a new thief game worth of content every year. For fifteen years! Every year! This is definitely something to be proud of, methinks! Congrats everyone! Thank big thanks for your hard work!

Testing a custom skybox in Frobable Cause (working title). It's hard to find nighttime forest scenes with trees at the right distance. This one is working pretty good in all directions. The HDRI is from Polyhaven, then converted to a cube map and darkened a lot.

Biker's mission "The Imperial Sword" is almost ready for release! The town of Broufton awaits:

Made Skackys T2 texture pack, TDM ready, I would welcome testing - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JWZ9fQYnMpEAB6pEnpiTPmqbFZHQOn5-/view?usp=sharing

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

This is the opening scene in Shadows of Northdale Act 3. Sometimes I like to take a break after finishing a scene and just take it in. This scene was inspired by the calm and comfy feeling I felt when I first played @Moonbo's A House of Locked Secrets mission, in particular that first scene with the beautiful scenery and calming ambient. Right before diving into one of the best Dark Mod missions. Good times!

And for my fellow authors out there, some DR shots -

First of all wow so much impressive stuff recently in the thread. I can't compete at all. What I've got is definitely rough, and I am well aware that certain textures are muddy at the moment. Second, this isn't quite abandoned yet, but don't get your hopes up. I'm usually very tired from work and if my stuff gets finished at all it will be a miracle. Yes, I am disregarding the advice to make your first stuff simple. Yes, I am being a hardhead. Gamma and brightness adjusted to make things more visible in the screenshots. It's a prison break-in mission with a twist. No interior to the prison yet, just exterior walls and a safehouse far in the countryside. Not exactly "Victorian" design. I'm going for a feeling that the institution is more modern than most stuff we have seen in TDM. The "death antennas" surrounding the walls are just cobbled together from previous contributor's work. An upside down water tank on a steel pole, with some high voltage transmitter looking stuff on the sides.

Version 2.1 released! Hello everyone! I just uploaded version 2.1 of the Visible Player Hands mod to the ModDB page. Here's everything that's been added: • Updated to version 2.13 of The Dark Mod. • Added new item animations. When any of the following items are selected, they appear in the player's hand, each with a unique animation that plays when the item is used: - Health, Breath, Invisibility, and Slow Fall Potions: when used, a drinking animation plays. - Holy Water: when used, an animation shows the player applying the holy water to a water arrow. - Mine, Flash Mine and Flash Bomb: when used, the player performs a throwing motion - first pulling the hand holding the item back, then swinging it forward to release the item. - Triangle and Snake Lockpicks: when used, the player initiates a lockpicking animation, bringing both hands forward and rotating the lockpicks, to simulate the act of picking a lock. • Fixed items clipping through map geometry. • Improved switching between weapons while holding an item, making it much less likely to cause animation overlaps. Here's a video showcasing the new version. Let me know what you think!

Hello, my name is Wolfmond, I am 41 years old and I come from Northern Germany. I am your new member. In my youth I played Thief: The Dark Project with great enthusiasm. Recently I discovered and started playing The Dark Mod and I am very happy that there is still an active community around this beautiful game. I am especially interested in level design and creating my own campaigns. In my spare time I like to walk around, record sounds (field recording), make dark ambient and experimental music, and code. My dark ambient music is available for free at https://wolfmond.bandcamp.com I'm currently working through the Youtube Tutorial from @Springheel and I'm really enjoying learning level design. I look forward to getting in touch with you and contributing my skills to the community. Best regards, Wolfmond ___________________________________ Hallo Ich heiße Wolfmond, bin 41 Jahre alt und komme aus Norddeutschland. Ich bin euer Neuzugang. In meiner Jugend habe ich mit großer Begeisterung Thief: The Dark Project gespielt. Vor kurzem habe ich The Dark Mod entdeckt und begonnen zu spielen und bin beigestert, dass es immer noch eine aktive Community um dieses schöne Spiel gibt. Mich interessiert vor allem das Leveldesign und die Erstellung eigener Kampagnen. In meiner Freizeit gehe ich gerne durch die Gegend, nehme Geräusche auf (Field Recording), mache Dark Ambient und und Experimentelle Musik, und programmiere gerne. Meine Dark Ambient Musik gibt es kostenlos auf https://wolfmond.bandcamp.com Aktuell arbeite ich das Tutorial von @Springheel durch und habe große Freude daran, Leveldesign zu lernen. Ich freue mich darauf, mit euch in Kontakt zu sein und meine Fähigkeiten in die Community mit einfließen zu lassen. Viele Grüße, Wolfmond

Victorian cooking book as .xd Today I implemented an idea that I've had in my head for a few days. Since the setting of The Dark Mod also blends with elements from the Victorian era, I started to copy a few first pages from a very popular German cookbook from 1849. The cookbook is one of my favorites. I've attached a few screenshots. The current version of the cookbook is 2025-04-20_b. This book is optimized for the GUI: book_calig_mac_humaine.gui File: davidis_kochbuch_2025-04-20_b.xd I will gradually add more recipes to the cookbook. BTW: Happy Easter

Changelog of 2.14 development: dev17330-10984 * Tonemapping is now applied to game frame only, HUD and menu are not affected. Includes major & breaking changes in X-ray implementation (6606). * Now engine defines macros TDM_VERSION/TDM_REVISION/TDM_VERSION_FULL in game scripts and GUI. * Added all missing mipmaps in DDS textures (post). * Fixed crash from having many localization packs (6611). * Fixed comments parsing and automatic collision model for OBJ models (6610). * Ported some fixes from dhewm3 repo: save/load, snprintf, bad memset, some RenderSystem shutdown fixes. * Fixed number = 1 in inventory GUI on non-stackable items (thread). * More fixes in fonts (post). * Added cvar r_ssao_insubview which enables SSAO inside subviews. * Split oversized tdm_modelsXX.pk4 packages into more pieces. dev17332-10999 * Fixed Linux crash when material with custom shader is loaded during gameplay (6510). * Completely disabled old light estimate system (6546). * Now it is possible to use larger mesh models... at least static ones. * Ported some more fixes from dhewm3 repo: mostly warnings and uninitialized memory use.

A few new articles popped up: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2025/03/thief-like-free-and-open-source-game-the-dark-mod-2-13-brings-better-ai-vision-and-new-graphical-goodies/ https://www.pcgamesn.com/thief/the-dark-mod-update https://www.dsogaming.com/mods/version-2-13-of-the-dark-mod-thief-game-in-the-doom-3-engine-released/

Detection of player, bodies, ropes, etc. by AI depends a lot on how well-lit the object is. The player case is the most important one. It uses its own system to compute lightgem value, which renders additional views on GPU. Even with many improvements over the years, this approach costs a lot in performance, so it cannot be used for all objects which AIs can see. That's why there is another system for computing light values for the other objects. Since the engine was closed source when TDM was originally created, this system is very approximate. It takes into account light intensity and size, but mostly ignores the other factors like shadows, light projection/falloff textures, light texture transforms, blinking lights, lights with some material stages disabled etc. A new light estimate system has been implemented, and it is going to be default in 2.13. In fact, it has already been default since dev17104-10844. As far as I know, it accurately takes into account all the properties that our lights have. It has its own issues of course. It relies on a few samples on the object surface, and it is rather performance-intensive because it casts shadow rays all other the world. I had to distribute its work over several frames to reduce performance cost, so now it takes some delay to compute the proper value (which can also cause problems sometimes). Here is how it works on a test map: What it means for us? On the good side, you should no longer have a problem when you put a corpse into a dark spot under a table but guards still detect it easily as if the table did not exist. On the bad side, the new light values are inherently different, so guards might detect objects in situations where they did not detect them before or vice versa. Also the delay can probably cause some issues e.g. guards acting upon an obsolete value which is updated just afterwards. The effort is tracked in 6546. There are several cvars about this: g_lightQuotientAlgo: value = 0 uses the old system, value = 1 uses the new system. g_showLIghtQuotient: enables debug visualization like in the video above. g_les*: lots of internal parameters to tweak the system (you should not mess with them).

well that was a huge PITA, but it seemed to work. Here's the before and after with the custom ambient cubemap in the second pic instead of ambient_world. The church is a bit too bright, so I'll need to play with it, but at least now the shading isn't so flat. (edit) note that ambientCube will also appear on the interiors. Here's another angle. Now the bumpmap is actually bumpy!

Naturalist yet industrial mountain side town, coming together very well so far and quite close to what I imagined. Quite happy with the detail even if that part of me feels it needs more. From the same FM as the church I posted last time, that's the interior of the white mansion building.

I have Act 3 almost done, it is very very far along. It's been through many iterations, but so far this year I haven't had much personal free time to work on my map which is why it's so delayed. My hope was to have it already released, but yeah life has a way of distracting us. I'm going to be buying a laptop next month, and I will rent a hotel room and lock myself in it, away from the distractions of the world to get this done! Act 4 is also very far along too, so if I can get some free time after act 3 is out, I am hoping to get them out relatively close together. And just as a very special treat... here's the briefing video for act 3 (but shhh don't tell anyone!) Hehe thanks mate! I do the same thing whenever looking for stuff, it's no worries

I wish you a merry Christmas and stay healthy

SLOWFALL POTION @Dragofer and I have been working on making a slowfall potion that we would like some feedback on. Keep in mind, this will only work if you have the latest dev17234-10914 build installed otherwise TDM will not startup. If you want to put this in an existing FM, simply add the pk4 to the FM folder and type #include "script/slowfall_potion.script" in your tdm_custom_scripts.script file. This slowfall potion has several spawnargs that mappers can customize for their own special use cases: "duration" ---- How long the slowfall effect lasts. Default value is 15s "gravity" ---- Affects the strength of the player's gravity. Default value for slowfall potion is 125 "braking rate" ---- Deceleration rate in units per second squared when the player's falling velocity exceeds the maximum allowed fall velocity. Default value is 150 "max_fall_speed" ---- Maximum velocity a falling player will reach. Default value is 500 "horizontal_velocity_multiplier" ---- How much the player can move forward/backward while falling. Default value is 1.005 "end_sound_lead" --- Lets the end sound start playing this number of seconds before the potion effect ends. Much like the invisibility potion in Kingsal's Volta campaign, this potion has a "potion_end" sound that goes off just a second or before the slowfall effect ends, allowing the player to make any last-second maneuvers before they fall normally. I've included a test map as well, so you can play around with it and fall to your heart's content. Hope you like it! Special thanks to @kingsal for letting us use a custom sound and doing some early testing! slowfall_test.pk4

Moddb promo article: https://www.moddb.com/mods/the-dark-mod/news/happy-holidays-from-the-dark-mod

It's nice to get back to modelling sometimes. Probably one of my last ones. Original painting by AB, virtual carpentry by me.

This pinned thread's purpose is to collect links to all the discussion threads for new features to be added in 2.13: [2.13] AI Light Estimation Changes Experimental support of Parallax Mapping in 2.13 [2.13] Interaction Groups in Materials: new behavior [2.13] Environment Mapping + Bumpmap Tone mapping Lightgem improvement for leaning Support for GUI-based debrief Slowfall Potion Test r_lockview debug cvar EFX preset spawnarg for location entities Mission overrides for cvars Sound Parameter 0 overrides Inventory Grid Item Sorting [2.13] Main menu Mission name sorting [2.13] Textures with broken mipmaps As well as older feature collection threads: [2.12] Feature discussion threads [2.11] Feature discussion threads [2.10] Feature discussion threads

New idea I'm working on. Does this look good to everyone else?