Voting for our Christmas Contest is now complete. There were half a dozen entries, all of which were built in less than two months. Seeing the amount of quality that was achieved in that time (by mappers completely new to Dark Radiant) was really encouraging. All of the missions were a blast to play, but the winner (sweeping all three categories of Gameplay, Visual Appeal and Story) was Melan, for “Return to the City”. If you haven’t played his mission yet, you should. Get it here.

Sorry I haven’t updated before this, but a lot has been going on since the last news update!

The team is working hard on the first update to TDM 1.0. Springheel (me) has been adding some more zombie types to the game, and Crispy has been setting up “sleeping” behaviour on them, so zombies can suddenly get up and ambush you.

More excitingly, a number of completed missions for our Christmas Contest are starting to roll in. “The Parcel” and “Too Late” were the first, and “Trapped!” has just been released today (see our FM forum for specific download details). At least three other maps are in the beta-testing phase and should be released soon. While these contest maps are generally small, it is exciting to see what people are doing with only a few weeks of exposure to Dark Radiant! There are two other, larger maps created by team-members which should be released in the next few weeks as well.

Since the downloads page on the website is too slow to keep track of every mission released, Sneaksie Dave has started a wiki list of all completed missions. Check it out if you want to stay up to date on new releases.

The response to the release of The Dark Mod has been very gratifying. There have been over 3000 downloads thus far, and the vast majority of the comments we’ve received have been very positive. Thanks to all those who took the time to offer feedback! Rest assured, we’re working on several fixes and improvements for our first update (likely due sometime before the end of the year).

Be sure to visit our forums if you’re having any problems installing TDM…we’ve also put together a FAQ on our wiki with solutions to common problems.

In other exciting news…although it’s only been two weeks, we’ve already released our first new Fan Mission! Demagogue is the author of “Patently Dangerous”, a city mission about inventor espionage. Get it on our Downloads page, and post comments here.

It’s here!!

It’s been a long, five year journey to this point, and Broken Glass Studios is proud to present the beta of The Dark Mod. We are also releasing four missions, including a beautiful and extensive training mission where you can practice all the new TDM skills. Visit our Download pages for instructions on how to download the Mod and Missions.

Thanks to all those who cheered us on over the years. We hope you enjoy! Please visit our Forums to share any feedback or ask for help.