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!

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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!

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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.

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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.

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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!

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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.

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Please join the celebration and vote in the forum threads for each respective mission based on their contest criteria

( Game-play, Story, Visuals ).

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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!

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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 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.

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.

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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!

To celebrate our 15th year, we are holding a fan mission contest!

The Dark Mod project trundles onward for it’s 15th year in a row. In that time we have improved our game engine in countless ways and have grown to over 170 missions!

To celebrate our perseverance and the years of improvements to come, we are hosting a contest to mark 15 years since the 1.0 release!

Now is your time to demonstrate the mission design that best exemplifies your personal style and capabilities! Please consider entering this event!

Unlike most recent contests, there is no defined theme and we are simply going to score based on our standard metrics of Story, Gameplay, and Visuals with our standard weighted scoring:

Max Possible = Total Votes * 5 (Outstanding)

TotalMaxPointsPoss (TMP) = AllCategoryVotecount(ACV) * 30

Full Weighted Score (FWS) = (Gameplay score*3 + Visual score*2 + Story score) / TMP

Contest Submissions should be provided before October 16th so that players can start playing and celebrating on the 17th!

The players have been keen to relay that they would like really creative missions so it may be worthwhile to examine our “Community Unusual Contest” to get an idea about the wild range of possibilities we offer to designers.

Also, since the contest submission is in October, there will probably be an increased desire for Horror themes.

The Dark Mod 2.12 was just released so including new 2.12 features is strongly encouraged.

Finally, it might be nice if authors name their protagonist Corbin to match the included missions.

( None of the above suggestions are requirements for the submissions. )

Please visit the Fan Mission Forum to declare your intention to join and to discuss anything related to the contest. Thank you!

The Dark Mod 2.12 is a major step forward for mission designers!

The culling system has been extensively overhauled to ensure that your CPU and GPU are not wasting resources rendering unseen geometry, lights, and shadows. Some of our best map optimization experts have achieved similar performance gains to what this new culling system does but it is a rare skill and we have even managed to improve performance on missions that were generally regarded as “well optimized”. Mission authors both new and old can follow standard mapping practices with no need to dive deep into sophisticated optimization techniques even for some pretty challenging scenarios such as wide open areas and long views. Players will immediately notice many missions that have made their system struggle with FPS now may be running much more smoothly!

Smoother controls for players!

Also during the 2.12 development cycle, work has been done to make controls more seamless and accessible. Frob can now use hold or click actions to use items. Once you get used to the mechanic, it will be hard to go back to using a separate “use key”. Mantling is now smoother, faster, and less prone to cause the player to clip through geometry. Leaning is now more subtle and less prone to cause motion sickness. To reduce the tedium of shuffling knocked out AI around to search for loot, you can now configure TDM to automatically loot any frobbed AI.

A special thanks must go out to community member Geep!

Over the course of 2.12 development, Geep has created Subtitles for nearly all AI barks
along with developing testing tools and procedures for this gargantuan task! You can see these changes in action by changing the Subtitles setting to “On” ( rather than “Story” ) on the Audio settings page.
Geep also provided substantial feedback for our GUI and Subtitle design process and edited font data to improve text quality overall.

Turrets are now natively supported in The Dark Mod and can paired with Security Cameras!

Datiswous has complimented the massive work by Geep to create AI bark subtitles by creating mission story subtitles for a large number of missions. Thank you!

Finally, the nasty 2.11 bug that caused AI to allow arrows to pass through them at certain angles was fixed by Joebarnin! Your assassin style play-throughs should be far less frustrating.

A detailed list of changes can be seen here:

https://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=What%27s_new_in_TDM_2.12

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 2.12, so finish any missions you might be in the middle of first! Also, some missions created prior to 2.12 may need to be updated so they will be playable in 2.12. Use the in-game mission downloader to check for updates

The Dark Mod 2.11 is primarily a bug-fix release. The majority of development time was dedicated to fixing or improving long-standing bugs or problem areas with the project rather than focusing on new features.

That said, some of the improvements that were introduced to address these issues could very well be classified as new features in terms of the amount of changes required to bring them to life.

A full changelog can be viewed here, but some highlights include:

Major gameplay improvements!

For players, Stealth Score and AI alert behavior has been improved to better detect tactile contact with AI and proximity.
An older TDM release introduced a grace period feature that was overly broad and made some AI ignore players that were right in front of them. This has been substantially improved so stealth scoring and AI reactions should be a lot more consistent and logical.

Players will also have a new Blackjack experience with better cues about whether a blackjack attack will succeed and improvements to the way that the blackjack attack is executed.

Players can more smoothly transition from climbing as the player is now permitted to be crouched during the climb.

There is a new multi-loot feature which allows you to pickup multiple loot pieces by holding down the frob button!

Performance Improvements!

The new volumetric light feature has been improved via a new blur phase. This means that you no longer need to increase the samples to reduce or remove banding and performance should be substantially improved.

Before ( 2.10 with dither and low sample artifacts, click to view):

After ( 2.11 with the new blur algorithm, click to view ):

Soft Shadows now utilize scissors and tile-based evaluation in stencil mode so that Anti-Aliasing no longer need be applied to the entire shadow buffer.

Shadow Maps have improved mipmap, LOD and texel utilization. There should be fewer artifacts and better performance.

Large models are now evaluated via a BVH structure so that they can be split for lighting and culling optimizations.

AI think cycles have been optimized and perform less work per-frame.

GLSL programs have been rewritten to have better performance on AMD graphic cards.

Included mission improvements!

Mission 1: A New Job now features subtitles!

Mission 2: Tears of Saint Lucia has been improved with EFX reverb and a few bug fixes!

Asset fixes and additions!

Dragofer has fixed hundreds of assets that were missing setup definitions or other components that would cause the console to flood with errors on TDM launch or on the launch of missions. In addition, he has added hundreds of new and old assets from both TDM team members and members of the TDM community.

Improvements for Mappers!

The Engine now supports Obj model format

Material Shaders no longer require you to add frob stages. Frob is now auto-generated. You can still add custom frob effects to materials if preferred

Missions can now include decls that override those in the core TDM without using an override file to replace the entire core file.

GUI scripting has been overhauled with better syntax and error reporting

Dmap precision has been increased and Dmap T-junction performance has been optimized

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 2.11, so finish any missions you might be in the middle of first!

ALSO, SOME MISSIONS CREATED PRIOR TO 2.10 OR 2.11 MAY NEED TO BE UPDATED SO THEY WILL BE PLAYABLE IN 2.10 AND NEWER. USE THE IN-GAME MISSION DOWNLOADER TO CHECK FOR UPDATES

We are proud to announce the release of The Dark Mod 2.10!

The Dark Mod 2.10 comes with considerable improvements to loading times as well as a slew of new visual and gameplay features for mappers to experiment with, such as volumetric lighting (“god rays”) and more advanced security cameras!

Many of these new features are prominently on display in the six new missions released for the 2.10 Connections Contest that are now officially available in the mission downloader!

A full changelog can be viewed here, but some highlights include:

For Players

Loading Times
Considerable effort has gone into streamlining how textures are loaded, making more effective use of multiple CPU cores, and removing artificial delays. This even includes new handwritten algorithms for normalmap compression and mipmap generation so that TDM no longer relies on graphics card drivers.

Performance Improvements
As part of ongoing performance improvements, soft stencil shadows with anti-alising will be faster to render.

Object Handling
Afraid to grab a candle near a sleeping guard? Handling objects will now produce less noise, or none at all if holding down the “creep” button. You can also now control how far an item is thrown based on how long you hold down the “throw” button. Lastly, dragging unconscious bodies should feel better now (even if rats did their best to spoil the fun a little).

Main Menu Interactions
Tooltips have been added for many of the items found in the settings menu: a long-awaited feature! We’ve also reorganized the procedure for switching between missions to make it more intuitive for newcomers.

Window / Input Changes
The Linux build now relies on the GLFW library to create windows and handle the keyboard & mouse, eliminating many of the issues with OS integration on Linux.
On the Windows side, some minor changes were made to fullscreen/borderless modes.

For Mappers

Entity limit is no more!
What was once the bane of TDM’s most ambitious mappers, the entity limit has now been raised eight-fold to 65,536. No longer will mappers need to spend long hours merging entities.

Compilation Times
To complement the faster loading times, compilation times have been brought down too. Optimizations were made all over the dmap code, adding new algorithms and data structures to improve both speed and precision.

Advanced Security Cameras
Security cameras have been reworked from the ground up with the aim of bringing them to the same level of polish as TDM’s AIs, both in stealth gameplay and customizability. Most importantly, security cameras in new FMs will track the player or AIs and react to bodies. Wiki

Volumetric Lights (“God Rays”)
Unlike adding fake translucent geometry around lights, volumetric lights automatically match their source light, including light volume geometry, projection & falloff textures, and even shadows. Note that shadowcasting currently only works in “shadow maps” mode. Wiki

Xray Screens
Xrays are a Doom 3 feature that has been reintroduced to TDM and developed further. The screens are able to change the appearance of entities seen through them, even making them appear or disappear if desired. Look out for them in future Inventor’s Guild or magical-themed FMs. Wiki

Subtitles
Subtitles can now be assigned to sound files and have been added to the pre-bundled mission “Tears of St. Lucia”. Note that we did not consider localization of subtitles yet. Wiki

Tracking Secrets
Secrets are now easy to designate, with no custom scripts required. They’ll also be shown on the mission statistics screen at the end of the mission if the FM uses the new system. Wiki

Main Menu GUI Customisation
Mappers can change much of the main menu from a single purpose-built “customisation” .gui file instead of having to replace core files. You can find more details in guis/mainmenu_custom_defs.gui inside tdm_gui01.pk4.
Since several missions had to be updated to this new system, their customisations will no longer work in 2.09 or earlier versions.

Location Diagnostics During dmap
Location overlaps should now be much easier to find and fix thanks to new console output and pointfiles created during compilation.

Image Formats
As a compact alternative to TGA for uncompressed images, PNG images can now be used in materials. Note that loading PNG images may be slower than TGA.
DDS images can now be used in image programs, although doing so is discouraged because of the additional quality loss due to compression.

New Script Events
The mapper’s scripting repertoire has been expanded by new script events for dealing with vectors and bounds, setting solidity, detecting surface type via trace, and reading more properties about entities and the player, such as “notarget” or the calibrated light gem value.

New Assets

Fancy Wooden Furniture
A whole new suite of fancy wooden furniture pieces including prefabs has been contributed by Wellingtoncrab. They can be viewed in the release thread.

Automaton AI
The semi-robotic AIs from Sotha’s Ulysses mission have been added to the core mod, together with new prefabs for cosmetic recharging stations to include in patrol routes as well as a camera screen showing what the automaton sees.

Programming

Tracy Profiling
TDM’s rudimentary GL profiling has been replaced with the Tracy profiler, which has its own cool viewer. It has already greatly helped the TDM development team in their optimization efforts.

Mission Database
The mission database has been moved to an SVN repository which automatically synchronizes all mirrors and makes backup copies of old versions of missions.

More Technical Stuff
A generic hash table has been added. “Clear” in the idlib method now works as most programmers expect and unit test integration has been improved.

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 2.10, so finish any missions you might be in the middle of first!