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Author note: A couple of weeks ago Kingsal & myself set ourselves a challenge, to see if we could make a small wholesome winter themed Dark Mod mission. And if we could do it as a speed build in two weeks. The final result was Snowed Inn. Enjoy and Merry Christmas! Thank you to our beta testers Epifire & Skacky. Thank you to Moonbo for his briefing video script revision. NEW UPDATE AVAILABLE 1.1 Version 1.1 Mega Mirror Version 1.1 also available via the in-game downloader File Size: 379 mb

Speaking of nautical themed missions, here's some from On Silent Waters:

I'm back trying to finish what I started a year ago. I haven't had the pleasure of finishing or releasing any FM's just yet, but hopefully that will change soon! This mission is called Vertigo, I'll follow up with more screenshots as I progress. This project is a labor of love for the original thief games. Map is divided into smaller shape segments to help with optimization, it also gives me more flexibility with visual fidelity. I'm (mostly) using Springheel's modules. Visual inspiration: Thief 2014 Let me know what you guys think! Side note: I'm in the process of blending the road in better with grass, any suggestions would be appreciated.

The wall / window piece is now complete:

5 year challenge

Progress on the lava room I'm working on.

I've also created a few alternate zombies, to add a little variety to your local necromancer lair. The first is a fairly straightforward variation that uses the hunched over animation set Kingsal created for his beastmen. Unlike typical zombies, these are fast runners.

This is a new wrapped corpse model, kindly created for the campaign mission by epifire. There are multiple versions, including a sitting version, and a couple piles of bodies. The City is now ready for the plague!

A new Gondola for Neon's project. (NOTE the background map isn't related to it). Still kinda swamped with stuff to do (and other requests!) but least to say the Epi is still cranking models here and there.

I made this a couple of months ago, I was curious how a thief scene would look in TDM. And here’s the result: I might strip away the copyrighted narration and ambient music and release it in a mission of mine as an Easter egg somewhere. But for now it just exists as a YouTube video

Here are some more shots from Shadows of Northdale Act 3

"Hidden Hands - Vitalic Fever" is almost ready - I received the missing files for the ingame comments yesterday and there is only one final problem with integrating one voice file left (see Newbie thread). A friend of mine is working on the intro. We will meet and finish it during the next weekend. Below you can see a shot from the very first scene:

There isn't much that draws an honest man to a place like Wrecker's Reach. Once a well-known port under a name no one remembers, it was a hub for lucrative trade in colonial wares and a warm shelter for those crossing the great oceans. Now it's just another stinking hole, like all the others I've been scratching out a living in. The ale is poor, a knife awaits you down every dark alley, and the rich folk have long since abandoned their crumbling residences to petty barons. Imagine my surprise, then, when I saw a grand merchant ship arriving in the dark of night. It's anyone's guess what brought it here, and more importantly what lies in its cargo hold, but I intend to be the first to find out. Not that this will be easy, though: a vessel like this will be sure to draw plenty of attention, and I've made something of a name for myself around here, so I'll have to be cautious the moment I step out into the open. Well then, it seems holing up at these wretched docks is finally paying off. Notes This is a standalone harbour mission set in Wrecker's Reach, taking a smaller section of a former Crucible campaign map as its starting point. My stated aim with this one was to create something a little simpler than what I did previously, with most of the weight on exploration and looting. Simply an unexpected nighttime excursion in a locale that hasn't been visited before. Download Google Drive Dropbox As well as some screenshots for anyone uploading this mission to their servers Simply place the mission archive in your darkmod/fms folder and start TDM. The new mission will appear. Credits Beta testers - Amadeus, Cambridge Spy, lowenz, VanishedOne, Boiler's_hiss, acolyte6 Harbour building exteriors - bikerdude as part of the Crucible Campaign Team Editorial consulting - Amadeus Custom environmental ambients - AugustSandberg, jimsin, deku, kangaroovindaloo, all of Freesound, dario Custom wooden floor texture - judith <dr.judym81@gmail.com> Prescott Stahl's writings - Spooks Painting in splashscreen and briefing - John Atkinson Grimshaw Painting in briefing - Ivan Aivazovsky Boiling water sound - Kyyrma Improved animated flag - Arcturus Improved nautical models - Xendrox

Finally integrated the road, thanks to @Amadeus, I copied the settings from Good Neighbor. Added a few effects and made myself a wallpaper to keep myself motivated while I continue this project, what do you guys think?

Making some lava flow and sculpting some rock today.

A screenshot from my upcoming FM "A Good Neighbor"

On the subject of new content, here is a clothed zombie I created using Kingsal's Volta corpse textures and an old corpse head I'd used for my first mission. These guys can be used for zombies who were never buried, or some type of infected commoner, or any other situation where the zombie would be likely to still have clothes on. The ragdoll also makes a convenient dead body that has been exposed to the elements for a while.

I was thinking how far into industrial era the consumerism starts to drive some big numbers of major group society. Mass-producing of cheap things from celluloid (combs, kitchen utensils, etc.) making modern marketing and advertisement spread around streets and people's minds. Child labor and 12-hour shifts, seven days a week is one thing about factories dominating the world, but putting more modern image of a human in basically dark age grounded society needs some serious rethinking of the whole world set. And for now, a tank. With no context.

Level design is a funny thing, I was looking through some old screenshots and compared them to scenes now. Here's a street section from August And here's that same street section in November What a difference just a few months makes!

Biker asked if I would post this screenshot of his WIP on Shadowhide's city map ...

During my mapping session today I wanted to try something I haven't really ever done before.. draw concept art and then build a scene based off of it. As you can tell I am a very talented drawing artist But I gotta say it actually helped with the direction of the scene overall

I'm trying to break up the monotony of flat surfaces a bit, in similar fashion to what modern games do. Typically though, you'd need photoscanned assets or hi poly sculpts that go both as bakes for low poly geometry, and then for flat tiling materials. Since this is way too time-consuming for one person, I decided to take slightly more simple approach, where I'm just modeling shapes based on tiling material made with Substance. The result is similar to what parallax mapping would do, except no "jelly effect" and hopefully less stretching. Good thing is that this geometry doesn't need to cast shadows, and every stone is like 50-100 triangles, so not that much. So far the engine seems to handle that without any problems, but I'll wait with my optimism until I get both walls and floor covered with this additional geometry

Description: The venerated Judge Malffourt lives in a fine house in an immaculate neighborhood of Bridgeport. But rumors have been spreading about Malffourt; something about a bribe? There is only one way to find out... Download Link: https://storage.googleapis.com/krrg-tdm/indangerofjudgment.pk4 Special Thanks to my beta testers for their great feedback! (Bienie, Cambridge Spy, Shadow, VanishedOne, acolyte6) Screenshots Helps and Hints: Author's Notes: This is my first ever fan mission, built over a period of ~6 months. I hope you enjoy playing it as much as I did building it!

There are rumors that a legendary ruby, the Heart of Saint Mattis, actually exists. Break into the the Northgate Cathedral, find it, and steal it. Background This is my second Dark Mod mission (Mission of Mercy was the first). This is a small-medium mission, with some extras. See below for hints. My wife just gave me an idea for mission number three, so look for that next year. I notice that Dragofer just released a mission today. I hope I'm not violating an unwritten protocol by releasing another mission on the same day. Download The mission is available in the in-game downloader. As well as here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/jah5svj5eagnhs8/heartstmattis.pk4?dl=1. (<-- NEW LINK. Per grayman's request, the name of the pk4 and map have been changed). Place the PK4 in your \fms folder. TDM will recognize it as a new mission. I18n I have not done the work required for internationalization. OpenAL EFX This mission uses it (version 2), so I recommend turning it on in the Audio Settings. Thanks Many thanks to the beta testers, who really helped me get this mission into shape: Cambridge Spy, Shadow, Jedi_Wannabe (who also did some performance work on the map), SuaveSteve Thanks to Mike and Chloe for their outstanding voice work! The cathedral in this mission was inspired in many ways by bikerdude's excellent St. Albans Cathedral. I haven't played all of the DM missions, but to me St. Albans is the gold standard of cathedrals. Music includes Cantus Firmus Monks by Doug Maxwell/Media Right Productions (royalty free) The video series by Springheel and Sotha were helpful and energizing. Thanks to the entire Dark Mod community for building an amazing project. Hints and Tips (warning: contains progressive spoilers)

Dragofer asked me for a lighthouse engine, giving 160x 160x 160 units as a maximum dimensions. It is a bit rushed (few hours) and looks more like a clock tower mechanism as I think about it now.

There was this epidemic outbreak, starting at a rock crystal mining facility, deep in the marshes of Rahena. Some poor burglar manage to survive all horrors of the seemingly undead, deranged crew spreading havoc as their flesh started falling apart. He escaped, only to bring the new pathogen to more densely populated areas. Many lives perished in flames of this terrible disease, but much more were kept at the brink of death, but still able to fight it. A victim of the crystal leprosy disease, kept alive by a carapace of prosthetics, servomotors, with all organs sustained in bath of nutritious liquids. Remaining flesh keeps peeling off, and the mind of now unrecognizable human being deteriorates, poisoned by the necrosis - at this point one may ask if there is a living creature still there or is it just an autonomous yet mindless machine with bits and pieces of decaying body.

We seem to have just flown by the 10th anniversary of TDM's 1.0 public release, which was on Oct. 18, 2009. I didn't see any threads on it (were there any I missed?), and now it's like 2 weeks past. But it feels like it's important enough that it's worth acknowledging anyway. So, Happy 10th Birthday TDM! Here's to 10 more of our favorite game in the shadows. Huzzah! o/"

So, Taaaki got the new server running now. You can now download missions as usual again. Have fun, taffers!! ?

So in an effort to shake up my usual style I have begun building a city mission that fits into the Northdale campaign arc which features huge tall buildings on a rainy and foggy night. The main aim there is to really focus on cramped streets with huge vertical buildings on either side, I really want to put that rope arrow to good use! So far I have built a dark back alley in the city and really like how it turned out, quite a bit different to my usual MO. And for reference, this is what the original street looked like before the do over

The next 2.08 beta update is going to include a new Bloom effect and the ability to render to a floating-point (HDR) buffer. While that may sound very technical, it gives you new options to represent bright light sources in your maps. As an example, look at this screenshot courtesy of @peter_spy: No particles effects are involved. The lamps have a simple blend add stage with a texture and an 'rgb 20' factor, which means that the color values of the texture are multiplied by 20. They will therefore exceed the normal color range and go into HDR range. And while they will eventually be clamped back down to the standard [0,1] range and thus appear white on the screen, the new Bloom effect collects these values, blurs them and adds them to the final image - that's what gives the lamps that glow and makes them look bright. So, if you'd like to play with that, with the next 2.08 beta you'll be able to enable Bloom in the advanced settings under experimental features and also set the color precision to 64 bits (float). Hope this will give you some new options to accentuate your lights Or if you're impatient, you can try this build: https://ci.appveyor.com/api/buildjobs/at3a0wyvy3kgt0ep/artifacts/TheDarkMod.7z (The downside, of course, is that both Bloom and 64 bit color precision are not going to be on by default in 2.08. If they are off, the lamps will just appear white without glow.) Btw, aside from that nice glow around over-bright light sources, the higher color precision won't really make much of a difference. But it does help with banding artefacts - fog and similar things will look noticably smoother.

Thank you STRUNK and Geep for posting so many new stuff. That's a good distraction for everybody these days. Thus I have decided to post a few more pics from my upcoming mission before we go beta. And for those who want see more, here comes an ingame video from the starting point showing a peaceful and silent lakeshore...with an invisible infiltrator in action! https://streamable.com/ixzp0

Not sure if there are any Minecraft players on this forum, but I thought I'd share my Thief-inspired map anyway. While it does not take place directly in the Thief universe, I've included some nods to the series, like Heartless Perry's pawn shop, Trickster's forest, a Keeper compound, Thieves guild, Hammerites, Mechanists, City watch and Garrett's place. There is a questline at the museum which is about retrieving seven legendary items for its collection. One quest has you finding the Keeper compound and another one requires you to do some jobs for the Thieves guild. There's also a mission which takes you into long forgotten Hammerite crypts. Download: http://www.mediafire.com/file/em6mky6qu676cz2/oakhold-2.0.zip/file It currently works in Minecraft version 1.14.4 only. I recommend pureBDCraft resource pack and Optifine to help with FPS and dynamic lighting. https://optifine.net/ https://bdcraft.net/downloads/purebdcraft-minecraft/

I've created a walking flame-bearer skeleton as a security device for crypts or mage towers. The held brazier is part of the md5mesh, and the mapper binds a flame to it. The skeleton is a functioning AI, but he can't attack or let go of the brazier, so if alerted, he will search for and track the player, but won't be able to do damage. He works best when combined with other AI for that reason. You can set them to a neutral team to the player if you don't want them to react, and I've included a static model as well if you don't want any AI functions. The only thing about the current implementation I don't like is that the flame stays burning if you kill them...it would be nice to have it go out like a dropped torch. Probably just requires a script, so if anyone feels inclined to add that, feel free.

It has been over a year since I did any work on the map for the final campaign mission, and I think the chances of me ever building back up the energy and commitment to finish such a massive project by myself are slim to none. I'll probably be putting the map (actually 3 separate maps at this point) up for adoption at some point, but in the meantime there are dozens of custom assets I was holding back for that mission, including new AI and some necromancer assets, that have been sitting on my HD unused. I want to release them so that other mappers can benefit from them. I'll post them here gradually, a few at a time as I get them uploaded to SVN. All these should be available to mappers when TDM 2.08 is released. First of all, a new standing sphere light (modified from the existing wall one) and a new magnifying glass & stand. There are 4 new "anatomy" skins for book and paper models, suitable for the desks of doctors or necromancers. A few new "clutter" models, including 2 collections of scattered rocks and 2 batches of scattered papers, to easily add some visual interest to scenes. And a new tile texture with a few colour variations. Each colour has a set with red squares as well so you can create various geometric patterns. (While I'm at it, Kingsal gave his permission to use his amazing beastmen AI in the core mod, so I've finished converting and uploading them--they'll be in 2.08 as well).

Biker asked that this be posted:

A screenshot from Shadows of Northdale Act 5 (and my first on the new forum!). Corbin will be venturing across the Northdale river to break into the infamous inventors guild.

Story: Build Time: Thanks: Download: In the in-game downloader, when it's back up* or at the following locations: Dropbox http://darkmod.taaaki.za.net/fms/lhl.pk4 http://fidcal.com/darkuser/missions/lhl.pk4 http://www.southquarter.com/tdm/fms/lhl.pk4 *right now the mission server is down, which means you will need to manually download and install this mission. Download the pk4 file from dropbox above, and place it in your folder called LhL inside your "fms" folder in your TDM install directory. Let me know if you run in to problems! Gallery: Hints, Tips, Walkthrough, Spoilers(!):

Story Tease On the run from her husband, me and my girl. With a bribe to a ship's captain, we're away. What could go wrong now? Oh, dammit. Links "Away 1 - Air Pocket" Version 1.0 is available from the in-game downloader and its mirrors. As well as here. There are two extra documents contained in your installed .pk4 and also conveniently available here - For gamers needing hints, this Q&A uses "invisible ink" to selectively hide the answers: Air Pocket - Hints and Spoilers [Jan. 29, 2020].docx For understanding what's under the hood: Maintenance Guide to Away 1 - Air Pocket [Jan 29, 2020].docx For more about the innards and interations, see this FM's Beta Testing thread. Author's Note This is my first substantive TDM FM, a nautical adventure, and what I hope will be part of a longer story arc. Enjoy. Gallery Credits & Acknowledgements Thanks to TDM community members for encouragement - and assistance with newbie questions - while building this, my first FM (not counting an earlier nanoMission). Kudos in particular to Dragofer for the wonderful ship models (modified here), newly-created ship davits, and assets like kelp models from 'Down by the Riverside'. Also a custom cannon-ball hole through the hull, and much helpful guidance. The skybox is adapted from 'lagoon' by Hazel Whorley (CC BY-NC; hw_lagoon.zip at www.custommapmakers.org/skyboxes). Finally, my deep appreciation to all who tested or assisted during the beta: Biene, Cambridge Spy, Dragofer, duzenko, peter_spy, and stgatilov

The nights are getting colder and you need to pay your rent on time before you get tossed out into the winter air. Luckily, your neighbor told you about a mysterious merchant from faraway shores who has come to the small hamlet of Wilford's Hollow, and he's staying at the inn next door. What's more, he's brought something with him... Gameplay Notes: 1) This is a fairly small map, but I did intend for this map to be a bit harder than normal Dark Mod missions, even on the lowest difficulty setting. But there will certainly be plenty of rewards for the careful thief... 2) This map implements the func_peek mechanic by allowing players to peek through any door that has a keyhole by leaning forward. PLEASE NOTE: This function has been known to cause crashes for players using the 32-bit version of the Dark Mod 2.07 (should be fine for those running the 64-bit version). While this function has worked painlessly for some, please be aware that crashing may occur. At no point in this mission is it required to use the func_peek mechanic, it is purely optional, so feel free to not use it. Download: This FM is available via the in-game downloader FM: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jNAirhBAB0MPWaXzQO6crCgJVZeOcFFl/view?usp=sharing Promotional Screenshots: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1bwuy0QPhaGpV32CgEdXhBIA5KgvcRueN?usp=sharing Credits: A HUGE thanks goes out to JackFarmer, Dragofer, and Bikerdude for scripting, EFX, custom ambient tracks, assets, answering a billion of my questions and doing so, so, so much more to make this mission something special. Thank you! Another GIANT thank you to my beta testers: Jedi_Wannabe, Bienie, Filizitas, joebarnin, bikerdude, Cambridge Spy, STRUNK, Lonewanderer, Rezar. Thank you all very much for your wonderful work and eye for detail! And another thank you goes out to Goldwell and Grayman for scripting help and patient guidance. Assets are from: Springheel's Superb Modules Dragofer's Delightful Assets dmw's Dazzling Textures Spooks' Spectacular Painting for the Loading Screen R Soul's Fantabulous Assets JackFarmer's Miraculous Machines and Sounds Bikerdude's Bountiful Assets ***PLAYER BEWARE*** SPOILERS lie in the depths below. I strongly suggest playing it first so you don't spoil the fun for yourself ***

Spices! I modified the bottom of the jars a bit: And added a .pk4 with all the spices: Basil, Chili, Black Pepper, Coriander, Oregano, Ve-tsin, Cacau, Curry, Tyme, Cinnamon, Black Thea, Tumeric, White Pepper, Nutmeg and Salt : ) Spices.pk4

Another wiki topic added: Your Mission - From Beta Testing to Release and Beyond with links from the endings of: A - Z Beginner Full Guide Page 6 How to pack your Mission The material here will be largely obvious to old hands, but worth stating explicitly for the benefit of newcomers. From the Introduction: This article elaborates typical steps for beta-testing a mission beyond its packaging, namely: distribution, forum presence, and testing. This process continues to Final Release and any updates. Consider this a follow-on to - * A - Z Beginner Full Guide; and * How to Pack your Mission, which fully describes the vital process of packaging and testing a .PK4 archive.

Just a heads-up to anyone who might be interested in beta testing of a watery mission, "Away 1: Air Pocket". This, my first full-fledged FM, re-deploys Dragofer's ship models, familiar from "Down by the Riverside". By next weekend, I'll create a new Air Pocket thread in the Beta Forum, with the link to the download.

Finished a floor grate with some pipes and pistons. The latter will be moveable. It could use some "tech lights" too, will make those some other time. Edit: oh shoot, I accidentally deleted those, see this post below: http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/10003-so-what-are-you-working-on-right-now/&do=findComment&comment=440421

In honor of completing the architecture for my small map, here are some screenshots. All that's left is.... everything else

One last sneak peak from Shadows of Northdale Act 3. Lord Edgar's estate!

I actually have just the thing to get this thread back on track. Here's a lineup of most of the ships I made in DR over the years, including the most recent addition, 2nd from the left. That one was this week's weekend project, a galleon-sized steamship sharing a lot of elements with *that* ship all the way to the left. From left: Barque, Barquentine (new), Merchantman, Schooner, Sloop, Brig, Yacht. The 4 to the right are available to other authors already now; the Merchantman is done and will be made available after release of its respective mission; the Barque will probably stay unique as I think its size makes it unlikely to be reused. For the Barquentine I have no real plans at the moment as it was made as a fun side project. If someone's interested in using this ship now they'd be welcome to do so and I'd then prioritise getting it finished. Otherwise I'd probably make a simple stowaway mission like Pandora's Box out of it sometime down the line.

I've been doing a lot of fantasy illustrations lately, and just finished a piece that seemed appropriate to share with the forum...it's a slightly more medieval take on TDM's citywatch. I'm currently selling stock illustrations on DriveThruRPG, so if you know anyone producing fantasy material who is looking for illustrations, the stock art there is a really great resource. My page is here: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse/pub/14731/Mindplaces

You can almost feel the bumps and cracks in the oil on that canvas. Bravo, Toni & peter! Every week I am blown away by the creativity of this community. A courtyard at the back of my mansion/villa is finally taking shape. Almost nothing is complete or final yet, lots of optimization to do, but I can finally see my first mission coming together. Messed around with the model scaler a bit to get some new trees, I was shooting for a Tuscan villa vibe. I was trying to scan some sheets out of my notebook, but I needed a firmware update and didn’t have time to mess with it before work. I draw out a top down view and go loosely off of that, scribbling notes here and there.