The Dark Mod was developed by a solid group of professionals and talented amateurs from all over the globe. Most were motivated by their love of Thief 1 and 2, and saw the mod as a way of delivering the stealth experience they wished T3 had been. The Dark Mod was first released as a mod for Doom 3 in October 2009. It became its own self-contained game in October, 2013, and since then has been updated on a regular basis.

Active Developers

Springheel, Creative Director (retired)

Officially an “old timer”, Eric “Springheel” Pommer joined the mod right at the beginning in 2004, as a concept artist. Since then, he became involved in just about every area of the mod, including texture assets and menu design, modelling, character rigging and animations, not to mention writing all but one of the scripts for the character vocals. He has also produced 4 missions, and a video series of tutorials designed to help new mappers get started building their own. Springheel retired from the Lead Artist position in 2016 but continues to contribute actively to TDM.

New Horizon, Team Member (retired)

Another “old timer”, New Horizon joined the mod in 2004. He is responsible for a number corrections to the mod’s code, but his biggest project was overhauling the code for the black jacking system. Tim is a Jack of many trades, and earns a crust as a professional actor, theatrical sound tech and as the lead vocalist of a Rock Rhythm and Blues band. Currently exploring the freedom and imprisonment of self employment, he can still occasionally be found visiting the forums.

Greebo, Lead Programmer (retired)

Greebo joined TDM in 2006, and became an invaluable part of the mod’s early success, working on AI, physics, GUIs, inventory, and the built-in mission downloader and campaign support. While he retired as Lead Programmer in 2012, he continues to put out regular updates to our specialized editor, Dark Radiant. Greebo, along with his wife Angua, created the third TDM mission of all time, The Outpost.

stgatilov, Lead Programmer

Stgatilov watched the mod silently in the early days, and recalls playing the first Thief’s Den beta and St. Lucia alpha. He joined forums soon after TDM was finally released. He gained contributor status in January 2011 with his savegame compression patch. Half a year later he left TDM, but returned back in spring of 2017 as part of the coding team, and in 2018 he took over from Grayman as Lead Programmer. Stgatilov has a mathematics education and defended PhD in the domain of solid modelling. He has notable accomplishments in algorithmic programming contests and now works as software developer in CAD field. He plays the trumpet in his spare time.

Cabalistic, Coder

Cabalistic joined the team in 2018. He was instrumental in radically improving our multi-core code and merging some Doom 3 BFG designs into the project. He also implemented Ambient Occlusion, the new Bloom system, Parallax Corrected Cubemaps, some OpenGL AZDO optimizations ( New Backend 2.09), Contrast Adaptive Sharpening, integrated GLFW window management, and created the experimental Frob Outline feature along with many other engine fixes and optimizations. He also maintains The Dark Mod VR project and is currently working on HL2 VR among many other high profile projects.

duzenko, Coder

Duzenko joined the team in 2016. He is responsible for major optimizations to the Lightgem Code, the initial Soft Shadows implementation in 2.06, the uncapped FPS mode, the initial Shadow Map implementation, the introduction of multi-core features in TDM, the initial Volumetric Lights implementation and many other fixes and optimizations.

nbohr1more, Mod Promoter & part time Engine Coder

nbohr1more joined TDM in 2010. He has done a lot of work on the TDM code, fixing various issues that (while small) have a beneficial impact on the mod. He also runs the TDM moddb page as well as spreading the gospel of ‘The Darkmod’.

Demagogue, Legal Consultant

Demagogue joined the TDM team in 2005. He is our resident legal eagle, who is versed in international law, cognitive science and in his spare time plays the piano & guitar. He has produced one of the earlier TDM missions, Patently Dangerous.

Obsttorte, Programmer, Scripting guru, Mapper

Obsttorte joined the TDM team in 2012. He is our resident scripting guru, and has created a number of beneficial tools for mappers, including mechanisms for player disguises, combination locks, and cameras, among others. Obsttorte has produced several missions, including The Builder Roads.

Dragofer, Programmer, Scripting guru, Asset Creator, Master Mapper

Dragofer joined the TDM team in 2020. He has high aptitudes in nearly all areas of TDM development including AI code, entity definitions, animations, modelling, texture creation, scripting and even some rendering knowledge. He spear-headed enormous asset fix-up projects which eliminated more than 90% of the console errors in the project along with adding countless new assets from himself and other contributors. He also collaborated with Kingsal and Obsttorte to get the (new) Werebeast operational.  Dragofer has produced or co-produced several missions, including the acclaimed “Down by the Riverside”.

STiFU, Coder

Stefan “STiFU” Eickelberg has been contributing to the mod every now and then since 2006. His contributions range from textures and technical write-ups to coding for Dark Radiant, specifically the Readable Editor, and the core game.

Arcturus, Modeler/Animator

Arcturus joined the team in 2007. He has contributed a lot of high-quality textures and some animated models, like the horse, and new zombie animations.

Epifire, Modeler

Epifire joined the team officially in 2017. He has produced a number of excellent mechanical models.

AluminumHaste, Team Member

Our resident combat expert, Aluminum Haste started getting interested in The Dark Mod back in about 2005 when he first heard about it. Once the first playable mission was out, he was hooked and just wanted to help with anything he could. Over the years he has contributed assets such as textures, sounds, gui changes, and a lot of beta testing.

Melan, Master Mapper

Melan has been a master mapper (See Disorientation for Thief 2) before he started making map’s for The Dark Mod in 2007. He smashed onto the scene with his first FM “Return to the city“. Melan & Bikerdude collaborated on many FMs, notably the “Penny Dreadful series“.

Amadeus, Asset Creator, Master Mapper

Amadeus joined the team in 2024! He has contributed a lot of high-quality textures and has assisted with adding models and other assets to the repository. He has also been instrumental in contributing to missions by “Fractured Glass Company”, a splinter group of expert mission authors who have made some of the largest and most feature-rich missions in the repository. Amadeus also independently released the acclaimed mission “A Good Neighbor”

Wellingtoncrab, Asset Creator, Master Mapper

Wellingtoncrab joined the team in 2024! He is an expert at texture creation and modelling. Over the past several releases his asset submissions have been incorporated into The Dark Mod repositories. He also has contributed to missions created by the “Fractured Glass Company” team and has released the highly regarded mission “Iris” that won the 2022 “Christmas Connections Contest” and stands as an example of one of the largest city missions to date.

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Inactive Members

Thanks go out to our former Team Members who have either moved on or are no longer contributing:

Grayman, Lead Programmer (Deceased May 19th 2021)

Grayman joined the mod in 2010, and quickly became a TDM hero, sometimes putting in 70 hours a week working on the mod. He is responsible for more improvements and bugfixes than can be counted, including improving AI behaviour in multiple ways (like path-finding, relighting behaviour and noticing doors), as well as getting the TDM vine arrows working. Grayman took over Lead Programmer position in 2012, but retired from that position in early 2018 in order to focus on mission-building. He has produced half a dozen popular missions including the William Steele series. Grayman passed away while still working on William Steele missions in 2019. To pay your respects, please visit the forum thread dedicated to him.

Kingsal, Animator, GUI Designer, EFX Expert, Scripting Guru, Master Mapper

Kingsal joined the team in 2020. His invite was possibly one of the easiest decisions ever given that he created a new AI type from scratch for is own missions and was instrumental in resurrecting the Werebeast AI for TDM 2.08. He was one of the first mission authors to embrace and implement EFX reverb into their missions after TDM 2.07 and assisted with adding EFX to the included mission “A New Job”. He is most well known for his Volta missions “Volta 1: Volta and the Stone” and “Volta 2: Cauldron of the Gods”. Kingsal has temporary relinquished his developer role but is still actively working on TDM projects when he has time to spare.

Goldwell, Voice Actor, Master Mapper

Goldwell joined the team officially in 2017 after creating a number of missions, like the Accountant series. He has also done a lot of voice acting, including the vocals for the protagonist of the official campaign. His video trailers are highly regarded and he created the official trailer for TDM. Goldwell has retired from The Dark Mod team but is still actively working on Dark Mod projects when time permits.

SteveL, Senior Coder

SteveL contributed a number of valuable things, including setting up the LOD system to work with AI and creating working soft particles.

Bikerdude, Mapper, Vocals

Bikerdude has released several maps of his own, including the acclaimed Business as Usual, and co-authored a further 7. He is also the voice behind the Average Jack vocals. With a lot of teamwork, he released the massive mission “Behind Closed doors“. Bikerdude retired from mapping in early 2018.

Nosslak, Modeler, 2010 – present

Knows to his friends as Robin  Karlsson, he produces great models, including the recent plague mask.

Serpentine, Texture Artist, 2007 – 2015

Has added a number of terrific textures and improved many of our early efforts.

Angua, Programmer, Mapper 2006 – 2012

Graduate engineer (technical physics). Started as a beta mapper and together with Greebo created the third TDM mission ever released, The Outpost. Has moved on to AI coding since 2007 (door handling, searching behaviour, alert states, AI optimisation). Enjoys playing the bass and volleyball when not mapping. The first Dark Mod girl!

Goldchocobo, Vocals, 2009 – 2012

Marcus Zuhr stepped in at the right moment and gave the mod an awesome set of vocals, including builders, nobles, guards and zombies. He also created the first TDM campaign, No Honour Among Thieves

Fidcal, Lead mapper (retired), 2006 – 2015

Since joining Fidcal has added an extensive amount of documentation and tutorials to our wiki, invaluable work which future mappers will surely appreciate. He’s constantly pushing the mod towards higher levels of mapper-friendliness. Fidcal was responsible for the very first TDM mission, our Thief’s Den demo, and has since released several other missions, including the massive Heart of Lone Salvation.

Mortem Desino, Programmer, Sound, 2006 – 2013

Ben Rusch – Early on, Mortem Desino worked on bugfixing and light programming tasks such as redesigning the rope arrow. Later, he moved on to writing and recording impact SFX and vocal recordings — including the well-loved “Drunk Guard” vocal set.

Tels, Programmer, 2007 – 2013

Tels is a computer programmer at day and a dark modder at night. He’s done the packaging scripts and oversight for the first two releases, Thief’s Den and Saint Lucia. When not cleaning up, fixing bugs or documenting things, he writes support scripts, like the new documentation GUI, as well as works on in-game entities like the extinguishable light system and the translation system.

Fingernail, Original Mod Founder, 2004

David Massey (UK) – “Student, guitarist, musician, fancies himself as a bit of a polymath. Never expected the mod to take off quite like it has but it’s been a rather pleasant surprise.”

Sparhawk, Programmer, 2004 – 2006

Gerhard W. Gruber – “Married, three kids. A computer freak since about 1983 and a professional programmer since 1991, working currently for a telecommunication company as a software developer, project manager, functional responsible, kind of business analyst and SLS lead. Somehow I lost track of all the computers and languages I learned, since most of them I havn’t really used much, except in school, so the only ones really still counting are SQL, 80×86 assembly and C/C++.”

Ishtvan, Programmer, 2004 – 2009

Born: 1981. Ishtvan is a graduate student in the field of physical science, and occasionally programs simulations as part of that job. Brought Sound Propagation the and the Melee Combat System into the game.

SneaksieDave, Quality Control, 2004 – 2009

Straight from the unsung hell-world of software quality assurance, Dave contributes whatever he can manage to learn, including textures, models, particles, and arguments. He enjoys mapping above all, but rarely actually finishes a map. Damnit.

Domarius, Animator, 2004 – 2009

“Born 1978, Australia. Illustrates, models, animates and programs, self-taught and through Uni. Currently working at Halfbrick. Started out joining the mod as a programmer, and was the only scripter in the beginning. Created the scripts for the blackjack, sword, and the base arrow weapon, and also the broadhead and the fire arrow. Moved to animating when there were programmers but no animators.”

Dram, Mapper, 2005 – 2011

Name: Martin Melicharek. Born: July 3rd 1987 in Czech Republic.
Studied Electronic Arts for a Bachelor Degree at the University of Western Sydney in Australia and has been a mapper for the Dark Mod since its creation. He is currently employed at Bohemia Interactive in Czech Republic as a Level Designer. His largest solo creations were a “Bullet-time” mod for Unreal 1, where the players could dodge bullets in slow-motion like in the Matrix, and a “Ghoster” mod for Thievery, which made sneaking as difficult as Thief on Expert and allowed AI to notice missing loot, among other things.

OrbWeaver, Programmer, 2005 –

“Original DarkRadiant project lead and (very) small-time modeller/mapper. Outside the Dark Mod I am an office-based wage slave and amateur pianist.”

Squill, Animator, Modeler, 2005 – 2009

“Animator with a strong passion for games and graphics. Started out with creating maps for various FPS games and developed some modeling and texture skills to enhance his environments. When not into games he enjoys being a animation student, musician and film junky. Joined The Dark Mod team as a mapper but extended with some model and texture creation and is currently doing character animation at the animation department.”

Komag, 2006 – 2009

Ben Ramsey, born 1976 in Michigan USA. Being a Thief “super fan” ever since the first Bafford demo came out in 1998 complete with rope arrows and swimmable water, he has been running www.KeepofMetalandGold.com since 1999 and www.ShadowdarkKeep.com since 2005. Komag has written some widely used beginner tutorials for the three Thief games, hosted numerous fun small mission contests, and is now excited to be contributing to The Dark Mod as a beta mapper and tester.

Baddcog “Schwaa”, Modeler, 2007 – 2010

Baddcog contributed a whole lot of awesome Thief-style models, including the lantern steambeast.

Noisycricket, Animator, 2007 – 2010

Noisycricket did an excellent job giving us quality animations, including big improvements to the combat animations.

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Other Members

• Crispy (Coder) is a computer science student at the Australian National University who dreams of someday escaping the clutches of academia. When not plotting his escape, he’s been helping out with various programming tasks, almost all of which involve AI.”
• Ascottk (Modeler)
• BlackThief (Modeler, Texture Artist)
• Gildoran (Texture Artist, Coder) – Gildoran worked with the 2d textures in the game for some time, and tackled programming and GUI tasks on the side.
• Subjective Effect –  Coded the original version of our first website.
• sophisticatedZombie (Coder) – AI coding (search algorithms, interactions). Coded the mantling system.
• joebarnin (Coder) – Joe did work on our main menu GUI and FM loading code.
• oDDity (Modeler) – Provided a tremendous number of high quality modeling contributions to the mod in the early days, including 80% of the current character models.
• Juliusz “PinkDot” Kaczmarek (Modeler) – Has single-handedly fleshed out (so to speak) our graveyard models, among other things.
• Darkness_Falls (Concept Art & Audio) – Ideas, concept art and audio for the mod. Created the name ‘Broken Glass Studios’.
• pakmannen (Audio Lead) – Jens Ljungblad (Sweden) – “Born: 1986. Studied English and Literature for a year and is now moving on to a master degree in Entertainment & Technology. Also a freelancing web designer. Has worked on SFX, Ambients and those pesky re-organizations. Designed the game menus together with Springheel.”
• phide (Audio)
• comp-music (Audio)
• god_is_my_goldfish (Concept Artist) – A film student at Columbia College of Chicago in Illinois, he has done some concept work for the mod.
• Solis (Animator) – Solis joined The Dark Mod as an animator in late 2006. Having been a fan of the Thief games since playing the original nearly 8 years ago, he happily took up the role as animator for The Dark Mod. He is currently a college student working toward an Associate of Arts degree.
• Schatten (Audio) – Has created a lot of music for TDM, the most outstanding one being the main menu track.
• _Atti_ (Modeler)
• Renzatic (Mapper, Texture Artist)
• KFMcCall (Concept Art)
• Corth (Modeler)
• Lloyd (Coder)
• Thelvyn (Coder)
• Napalm (GUI Coding)
• gleeful (Mapper)
• DeepOmega (Modeler)
• Magnesius (Modeler)
• Doug (Animator)
• drumple (Mapper, GUI Coder)
• Diego (Modeler)
• alan9000 (Modeler)
• drewb50 (Audio/Trailer)
• saxmeister (Audio)