We’re very gratified to be chosen as the 2013 Mod of the Year by PC Gamer. You can read the article here:
In other news, we should have a new update out in a matter of weeks that addresses some combat issues and improves some female character models, among other things.
We at Broken Glass Studios are happy to announce the release of TDM 2.0, a free, open-source, completely standalone stealth game!!
Standalone: First and most importantly, The Dark Mod is now completely standalone, which means you no longer need to own Doom3 to play it! We have spent a tremendous amount of time and energy replacing all the sounds, textures, particle effects, and models that we had been using. Hopefully this will open up a whole new audience of people who didn’t want to have to purchase a different game in order to try The Dark Mod.
In addition to going standalone, the following improvements have been made:
AI Improvements: There have been lots of additions and fixes to AI behaviour; characters will now greet each other more regularly, and will properly call for help when they’re in trouble. Guards can now hear slightly better, and we have included a new AI Vision slider to the menu, so the player can adjust how sensitive they want AI vision to be. Characters react to bodies in more varied ways now. A bug that made AI very easy to kill has been fixed. Archers will draw melee weapons if the player gets too close. Guards will turn towards doors that open unexpectedly. There are new vocals for specific situations, like when guards are getting shot at and can’t see their opponent. Searching behaviour has been improved. Plenty of old bugs, like the one where AI would sometimes attack with an empty fist, have been fixed.
New Gameplay: AI can now hear collapsing bodies, especially if the body is wearing plate mail and falls on a hard surface. No longer will a guard stand oblivious while his friend collapses to the ground two feet behind him. The player will have to give some thought to where they take down opponents if there are other guards in the area.
Audio Improvements: In addition to replacing dozens of Doom3 sounds, two new vocal sets have been added to the game. Footstep sounds have been improved. Big changes have been made to the sound propagation system that will allow mappers a lot more control over how players hear sound; for example, mappers can now make doors block different amounts of sound depending on their thickness, or can control how much sound passes through windows or small holes.
Graphical Improvements: You should notice a number of improvements to some character models, especially the skeleton, townsfolk, and beggar characters. Arrows will now leave blood-stains.
There have been plenty of other bug-fixes, like removing the ability to hide in the shadow of an object you’re carrying (no more sneaking under a crate umbrella). See the full change-log here.
Updates to Missions:
Because of the removal and replacement of Doom3 assets, some missions that used them are no longer compatible with TDM 2.0. About two dozen missions have updated .pk4s to fix these issues. New players can ignore this, but if you’re playing missions that you downloaded before 2.0, you may have trouble trying to run them. Most are fine, but a few missions will just crash while loading, and others will load but will have odd visual problems. It is highly recommended that you delete all previously downloaded missions after updating to 2.0!
Going standalone has been a mammoth undertaking. There were literally hundreds of assets that needed to be replaced, and around seventy maps that had to be checked to see whether any of those replacements broke anything. We’ve been testing for months, but it’s almost certain that we missed something, somewhere. If you see a black texture, a model buried in the floor, or something else unusual in a map, please let us know. If it was caused by 2.0 changes, we’ll make sure we fix it in the next update.
To update your TDM installation, simply run the tdm_update.exe file in your darkmod folder. Your darkmod folder no longer needs to sit under Doom3, and you can move it wherever you like (though make sure it is still called “darkmod”). (If the updater fails to start, check to see if a _tdm_update.exe file (note the underscore) has been created in your folder. If it has, rename _tdm_update.exe to tdm_update.exe and run it.)
To download TDM 2.0 for the first time, please follow the download instructions on the website here.
Not sure what TDM is? Watch an introductory video here.
Enjoy!
Rest assured that we’re still working hard at getting TDM ready to go standalone, which means that you will no longer require Doom 3 in order to play it. Before we can do this, we need to make sure no Doom 3 assets are being referenced by TDM anymore, so most of our time since the release of 1.08 has been spent making replacements for those assets. It’s a great deal of work, as there are sounds, textures, models, particles, and even animated characters that need replacing.
I can tell you that work is progressing well, however. Several members of the TDM community have chipped in contributions, including sounds from Simplen00b and plasticman, models from RPGista and Baddcog, and textures from SeriousToni and Radiant. Greebo contributed our new zombie character, and Arcturus has been working on animations for it. Mr. Lemony Fresh has contributed an absolutely fantastic new skeleton mesh, and Springheel has replaced all the D3 heads and body parts being used. I think you’ll be happy with the quality of the replacements when you see them.
We are getting there. I was able to load up Chalice of Kings last night and play through start to finish with no Doom 3 in sight, and no missing assets either. If things continue to go smoothly, we’re hoping for a standalone version of TDM sometime this fall.
In case you’re worried that the next update will only provide replacement assets and nothing else, fear not! Grayman has been coding like a madman, solving dozens of annoying bugs that have plagued TDM from the start, including the infamous “sleepers falling through the floor” and “AI attacking with no weapon” bugs. He has also fixed a lot of AI communication, so AI talk to each other more, and notice when each other are in trouble in ways they weren’t doing previously. He has also fixed some major sound issues, added the ability for archers to switch to melee weapons at close range, created new behaviour for AI who witness someone killed, and so many other things I can’t keep track.
With all the excitement surrounding the announcement of the new “Thief”, we know people are eager for stealth games to play. TDM is proud to be able to help fill that niche while we all wait to see what Eidos has to offer in 2014. The first mission of our upcoming “Unusual Gameplay” contest has already been released, and others are coming before the August deadline. Enjoy!
It’s the third anniversary of The Dark 
Mod’s release today. What better way to celebrate than to present our most significant update ever?
The 1.08 update contains nearly a year’s worth of updates and improvements. So many, in fact, that it’s hard to remember them all. Some of the improvements, like getting TDM ready to go standalone, are fairly transparent to the user. Others will have a noticable impact on your game.
IMPORTANT: Because of changes to the way TDM is run now, (in preparation for going standalone) the first time you run TDM 1.08, you will need to reset your keybindings and other settings. Additionally, “tdmlauncher.exe” no longer starts TDM. Users will need to change any shortcuts to darkmod/TheDarkMod.exe, in Windows, and thedarkmod.x86 for Linux users. As always with an update, saved games from earlier versions will no longer work, so finish any missions you’re in the middle of!
Additional Note: TDM will NOT work with the Doom 3 BFG edition.
Richer audio: TDM 1.08 should provide a much more immersive sound experience. We’ve added over 200 new impact sounds, as well as two new vocal sets. Many things that used to be silent now make appropriate noises. Falling bodies now make impact sounds, arrows have sound as they whiz past you, and AI make rustling noises as they move based on what they’re wearing.
AI Improvements: The lightning-fast reactions of AI have been toned down, so that they don’t leap immediately to combat after a half-second glimpse of you down the street. AI now react to things getting thrown at them, and can be knocked out by heavy things
being dropped on their head. AI are smarter about using elevators and will use them while searching now. Several new AI character models have been added, including the Builder Acolyte and the Elite Citywatch.
Additionally: The Training Mission has been revamped by Bikerdude for 1.08, with a few new sections and beautiful improvements to the visuals. The team’s second demo mission, The Tears of St. Lucia, has also been updated for 1.08 and is now included with the mod by default.
There have also been dozens of new art assets added, an entire series of new light entities, improved flame particles, performance improvements, additional animations, fixes to some physics issues, and well over 100 other bugfixes. You can see a full changelog here: What’s New
To get the update, simply run tdm_update.exe in your darkmod folder. If you’ve never downloaded TDM before, visit our Download page for full instructions: Download
Thanks to our new coder, Taaaki, who did a great deal of work on this update preparing TDM to run standalone. And special thanks to grayman, without whom the update would never have happened at all.
Hope you enjoy!
We normally don’t post news about new missions on the news page, but this stunning piece of artwork by Grayman is by far and away the best mission for the darkmod we have ever had the distinct pleasure of playing. We won’t be surprised if this becomes most people’s favourite TDM mission of all time. The bar has been raised again!
See the full announcement and media release here.
It was three years ago today that TDM 1.0 was released to the public. Hard to believe so much time has gone by. Behind the scenes we’re still working diligently to get 1.08 ready for public consumption. There are more than 100 bugfixes for this update, and it changes a lot about the way TDM installs and runs missions, so it is taking longer than we had hoped to get the details out. Keep watching this space for more information.
Work on the 1.08 update continues behind the scenes. We’re changing the way the folder structure works in TDM to prepare for going standalone, and that is requiring a lot of extra time. Version 1.08 will not be fully standalone; it will run without Doom3, but most missions won’t load properly without Doom 3 assets.
There will also be many noticable improvements in 1.08, including a much richer sound experience, new characters, more forgiving AI, and improvements to object physics. A full changelog is here: 1.08 Changelog
While the team are beavering away on the campaign we thought we would post a series of regular updates to show the community what we have been doing over the last 12 months, Enjoy!
Arches that show the age and grandeur of the city: What we have here is a melting pot of Hungarian heritage, Gothic & Romanesque styles that result in a cohesive and believable steam-punk universe that the player can immerse themselves in like a warm blanket on a cold winter night.
Plenty of vantage points, exits and entries – multiple ways to plan your route through the byways of Bridgeport: In this shot we spent quite a bit of time getting the perf to acceptable levels with out sacrificing artistic vision and intent. Its a mixture of imposing framework of the city, and dark nooks and crannies.
Imposing city streets that twist and turn, hiding dark secrets & resourceful opponents: The city looks alive and believably organic in a pre-contemporary vision. This is tempered by the need for consistent performance so that even players with low end hardware will have a rewarding experience.
The Dark Mod has won the 2011 Editor’s Choice award from ModDB for “Best community integration in a modification”!
“Without communities mods would be nothing more then a static object on the web, communities are responsible for keeping mods relevant, motivating the developers and expanding on the mod in their own way. To win the Community Award the mod needs to support the fanbase around the modification giving the masses a chance to participate within the overall design of the mod. The Dark Mod is the most deserving this year.
“Building a community is quite a difficult and drawn out process, it first takes a good product to bring in people, then a reason for those people to stick around. The Dark Mod has an amazing collection of user created levels and theme packs built for competitions held by the developers. A shining example of how communities are important for all mods!”
A Dark Mod Campaign is in the works!
Announcing The Crucible of Omens, a full-length campaign for The Dark Mod. Playing as the thief and adventurer John Welland Hadley, you will embark on a quest to find a powerful artifact inherited from a shadowy past. The Crucible of Omens spans multiple large missions and is being worked on by many well-known TDM mappers.
See the full announcement and media release here.