TDM in The News

[Serpentine]

I wondered why my mirror was suddenly running full steam again

[lowenz]

http://www.pcgamer.c...e-dark-mod-2-0/

Added!

[AluminumHaste]

This sounds really good:

 

I've been playing this non-stop since it went 2.0 (and a little before that) and I'll have to say that this is seriously good. For those of you who loved the Thief series I would highly recommend to play this! (I've still yet to complete Thief 2 & 3 myself)

I've been playing through the missions (on expert mode, naturally) as they have been released (http://www.thedarkmod.com/missions/?sort=releasedate) and you can really see that the authors have put some serious work into their maps.

I completed the first part of "No Honor Among Thieves" last night and I was completely knocked out by the level of detail and lighting! Some of these fan missions can structurally rival maps from the Thief games, the architecture, the ambiance and even the dialogue is passable!

("Can't blame that one on me, wasn't even theeeeere!" ~ A Darkmod Guard)

If anyone loved the Thief series, they are going to get on well with this. Yes there are a few quirks that might need to be ironed out, but getting all this out of the Doom 3 engine is a massive achievement and well... I'm loading it back up now for some Sunday morning Taffing about!

[Springheel]

From Sikkpin on Doom3World:

 

 

Finally got around to installing this, was never able to really play the mod before due to poor performance on my old pc, messed around in the training mission a bit and all I can say is: HOLY SHIT!!! You guys absolutely nailed the Thief feel! So much so it's criminal. I'm a big Thief fan and regularly play Gold & TMA so I went in expecting a similar experience to TDS, where it takes a little getting used to (different engine so different physics and all) but everything felt so natural. It's hard to believe this is idTech. The movement, the general feel, the expected results from player actions, everything... it's all so Thief and, if I may be so bold, perhaps even better (at least where frobbing and lockpicking are concerned). It makes me feel a little (and only a little) sorry for EM because I don't know how they can possibly do better than this. Even with their superior graphics, the art isn't very Thief-like and you know it sure as Hell won't feel like Thief (not to mention the countless other things wrong that leave a sour taste in my mouth).

 

So, congratulations to the entire The Dark Mod team for the stand alone release and for keeping the spirit of LGS alive. And if you all ever need a hand with anything, let me know.

[AluminumHaste]

Yeah we can always use more hands on deck! I love Sikkpin's work.

[chakkman]

http://www.pcgamer.c...e-dark-mod-2-0/

Little rant: The lockpicking is actually one of the few things i don't like so much in TDM. An example of a well made lockpicking system is Fallout 3. It feels natural, and isn't as frustrating as some of the other implementations (Gothic series, Oblivion, awful...). Not that i want to say the TDM lockpicking is bad, i just feel like it could be better.

[Serpentine]

Not totally related: But do any of the mirror hosts have logs of downloads from launch of 2.0 onwards? Mine only started a day or two later.

 

I just rewrote my little heatmap script to a fully pythonic solution, so I'd like to try do a little time lapse video of the downloads Hopefully be able to see the solar terminator moving, news article timing.

 

Edit: Updated map with new softer points, a little hard to see at sea. Semi-related : 12.1k unique downloaders (>100mb from my mirror).

Edited October 20, 2013 by Serpentine

[lowenz]

IMHO the only real "problem" (?) about picklocking in TDM is that it is not deafpeople-friendly, when a mapper doesn't or can't use any graphical feedback.

Edited October 20, 2013 by lowenz

[AluminumHaste]

Those downloads in the middle of the pacific is Hawaii, French polynesian islands

[demagogue]

IMHO the only real "problem" (?) about picklocking in TDM is that it is not deafpeople-friendly, when a mapper doesn't or can't use any graphical feedback.

 

We might have an optional visual feedback popup for hearing impaired you turn on in the options. That might be worth doing.

[AluminumHaste]

Not necessary, hearing impaired people can just turn the lockpicking down to easy. When it's that low, you have like 3 seconds to respond to the lockpick not moving anymore, so you can just watch it. Or turn lockpicking to auto so it completes on it's own.

 

EDIT: And seriously, 80% of Thief/TDM is based on sound, I can't picture my deaf grandmother even bothering to play a game like this.

[nbohr1more]

Alright, sent a slashdot submission. I cant believe they haven't had one yet.

 

Here's hoping it works.

 

http://slashdot.org/submission/3058969/the-dark-mod-20-standalone-id-tech-4-gpl-yields-a-free-thief-a-like-game

[AluminumHaste]

+1'd that bitch right up

[nbohr1more]

It worked. We are slashdotted!

 

http://games.slashdot.org/story/13/10/21/1325200/the-dark-mod-20-standalone-id-tech-4-gpl-yields-a-free-thief-a-like-game

Edited October 21, 2013 by nbohr1more

[STiFU]

What's the deal with this slashdot thingy? How does it work? Why do you need to submit something?

[nbohr1more]

Slashdot has traditionally had all the eyes of the tech industry, IT workers, and the like. When a story hits their page, it will usually drive so much traffic

it will crash the site. This phenomenon is actually known as "The Slashdot Effect" in geek parlance and is even referred to when slashdot is not involved.

 

Slashdot will take submissions from anyone but will only promote stories if they are found to be noteworthy. We apparently meet this criteria now

[grayman]

Perhaps this is why I can't get to our root server.

[Bikerdude]

Ah that would explain why the main forum logo is doing a noshow and thet the main site is non-responsive.

[New Horizon]

Any idea how many downloads there have been since the mod went standalone?

[STiFU]

Slashdot has traditionally had all the eyes of the tech industry, IT workers, and the like. When a story hits their page, it will usually drive so much traffic

it will crash the site. This phenomenon is actually known as "The Slashdot Effect" in geek parlance and is even referred to when slashdot is not involved.

 

Slashdot will take submissions from anyone but will only promote stories if they are found to be noteworthy. We apparently meet this criteria now

Thanks for clarifying...

[SeriousToni]

Europe is doing well on this map, heh. But what about the asians

[demagogue]

One of those Tokyo downloads is me anyway.

[Serpentine]

One of those Tokyo downloads is me anyway.

There has been a pleasantly surprising number of .jp downloads. I will do some per-country numbers in the next little bit. Currently waiting on the server so that I can start getting a fresh svn checkout to start work on Edit : See next post!

 

Any idea how many downloads there have been since the mod went standalone?

My mirror has seen about 13k people that have downloaded 100mb or more. I started mirroring about 18 hours after release, when the servers initially started to fall over. So between then I'd say maybe 3k downloads happened. In the first day of seeding the torrent, we saw about 2.2k peers finishing - however this is not always very accurate as people using pure DHT or not using the only tracker I could see would not be counted, so make that about 3.5k. I didn't check the torrent later on as it seemed to slow down quite a bit. However I would guess maybe 6-7k in total. So that would put us around 24-25k?

 

Then you need to count the number of downloads from places like ModDb. However it seems a fair number of people also got it off some German sites, and other torrents. So really, guessing those... I have no idea.

 

I think the more interesting number will come from people downloading fm's. I only started mirroring a bunch of them 2-3 days ago, so I cant comment, but within about 10 minutes 16 fm's had been downloaded. Pretty good I think.

[Serpentine]

Well, Germany -- You won this one

 

 

 

Total Resolved:  11670 (Edit: This is pretty old data, about 2k more DL since)
Total Countries: 104

pos] Country                    | IPs   | %tot
--------------------------------------------------
1  ] Germany                    | 2514  | 21.54%
2  ] United States              | 2441  | 20.92%
3  ] United Kingdom             | 1010  | 8.65%
4  ] Poland                     | 654   | 5.60%
5  ] Russia                     | 443   | 3.80%
6  ] Canada                     | 393   | 3.37%
7  ] Finland                    | 361   | 3.09%
8  ] France                     | 341   | 2.92%
9  ] Australia                  | 313   | 2.68%
10 ] Hungary                    | 281   | 2.41%
11 ] Czechia                    | 214   | 1.83%
12 ] Austria                    | 196   | 1.68%
13 ] Sweden                     | 193   | 1.65%
14 ] Spain                      | 160   | 1.37%
15 ] Italy                      | 159   | 1.36%
16 ] Denmark                    | 139   | 1.19%
17 ] Netherlands                | 131   | 1.12%
18 ] Brazil                     | 117   | 1.00%
19 ] Ukraine                    | 104   | 0.89%
20 ] Norway                     | 91    | 0.78%
21 ] Romania                    | 81    | 0.69%
22 ] Belgium                    | 72    | 0.62%
23 ] Switzerland                | 68    | 0.58%
24 ] New Zealand                | 67    | 0.57%
25 ] Ireland                    | 66    | 0.57%
26 ] Slovakia                   | 64    | 0.55%
27 ] Portugal                   | 64    | 0.55%
28 ] Croatia                    | 64    | 0.55%
29 ] Greece                     | 60    | 0.51%
30 ] Japan                      | 58    | 0.50%
31 ] Singapore                  | 57    | 0.49%
32 ] Turkey                     | 55    | 0.47%
33 ] Argentina                  | 48    | 0.41%
34 ] Israel                     | 44    | 0.38%
35 ] South Africa               | 43    | 0.37%
36 ] Serbia                     | 32    | 0.27%
37 ] India                      | 31    | 0.27%
38 ] Philippines                | 24    | 0.21%
39 ] Belarus                    | 24    | 0.21%
40 ] Mexico                     | 23    | 0.20%
41 ] Bulgaria                   | 22    | 0.19%
42 ] Venezuela                  | 22    | 0.19%
43 ] Slovenia                   | 21    | 0.18%
44 ] Malaysia                   | 21    | 0.18%
45 ] Lithuania                  | 20    | 0.17%
46 ] Estonia                    | 20    | 0.17%
47 ] China                      | 19    | 0.16%
48 ] Pakistan                   | 17    | 0.15%
49 ] South Korea                | 15    | 0.13%
50 ] Taiwan                     | 14    | 0.12%
51 ] Chile                      | 13    | 0.11%
52 ] Latvia                     | 12    | 0.10%
53 ] Kazakhstan                 | 11    | 0.09%
54 ] Uruguay                    | 9     | 0.08%
55 ] United Arab Emirates       | 8     | 0.07%
56 ] Costa Rica                 | 7     | 0.06%
57 ] Vietnam                    | 6     | 0.05%
58 ] Hong Kong                  | 6     | 0.05%
59 ] Indonesia                  | 5     | 0.04%
60 ] Iceland                    | 5     | 0.04%
61 ] Honduras                   | 5     | 0.04%
62 ] Bolivia                    | 4     | 0.03%
63 ] Saudi Arabia               | 4     | 0.03%
64 ] Bosnia and Herzegovina     | 4     | 0.03%
65 ] French Guiana              | 4     | 0.03%
66 ] Peru                       | 4     | 0.03%
67 ] Dominican Republic         | 4     | 0.03%
68 ] Iran                       | 4     | 0.03%
69 ] Colombia                   | 4     | 0.03%
70 ] Monaco                     | 3     | 0.03%
71 ] Kenya                      | 3     | 0.03%
72 ] Thailand                   | 3     | 0.03%
73 ] Moldova                    | 3     | 0.03%
74 ] Cyprus                     | 3     | 0.03%
75 ] Macedonia (FYR)            | 3     | 0.03%
76 ] Egypt                      | 3     | 0.03%
77 ] Jersey                     | 2     | 0.02%
78 ] Albania                    | 2     | 0.02%
79 ] Kosovo                     | 2     | 0.02%
80 ] Azerbaijan                 | 2     | 0.02%
81 ] Réunion                   | 2     | 0.02%
82 ] Uganda                     | 2     | 0.02%
83 ] Faroe Islands              | 2     | 0.02%
84 ] Ecuador                    | 2     | 0.02%
85 ] Algeria                    | 2     | 0.02%
86 ] Isle of Man                | 2     | 0.02%
87 ] Malta                      | 2     | 0.02%
88 ] Bahrain                    | 1     | 0.01%
89 ] Tanzania                   | 1     | 0.01%
90 ] Jamaica                    | 1     | 0.01%
91 ] Guam                       | 1     | 0.01%
92 ] Bangladesh                 | 1     | 0.01%
93 ] San Marino                 | 1     | 0.01%
94 ] French Polynesia           | 1     | 0.01%
95 ] Luxembourg                 | 1     | 0.01%
96 ] Gibraltar                  | 1     | 0.01%
97 ] Syria                      | 1     | 0.01%
98 ] Brunei                     | 1     | 0.01%
99 ] Iraq                       | 1     | 0.01%
100] Tunisia                    | 1     | 0.01%
101] Barbados                   | 1     | 0.01%
102] Nepal                      | 1     | 0.01%
103] Trinidad and Tobago        | 1     | 0.01%
104] Guadeloupe                 | 1     | 0.01%
--------------------------------------------------

 

 

Edited October 22, 2013 by Serpentine

[STiFU]

Moddb alone lists 5200 torrent downloads. Seeing that so many gaming sites have also posted the torrents and wrote about server issues, I'd tend to estimate the total number of torrent downloads A LOT higher, like 30k or something like that.