Happy Halloween

Today is the 31st of October, or Halloween as we all know it by.

Why am I posting about this here? Because today is the last day you may submit missions for the Halloween Speed Build of 2011 - a Dark Mod competition which was announced in September. All in all there were four submissions for the competition. Most of them arrived just in time - the authors of these missions took the time to polish their FMs.

The five FMs are:

A Night to Remember by Fieldmedic
The Creeps by Mortem Desino
House in Blackbog Hollow by Stumpy
Samhain Night on Bone Hill by PranQster
Dragon's Claw by Bikerdude

A sixth mission, Let Sleeping Thieves Lie was uploaded during this period, but is not an official competition entry.

I haven't played them all - only Samhain. But I will get around to playing and reviewing them now on All Hallow's Eve! Expect the winner of the contest to be announced... some other time. Personally my fave would be either "The Creeps" or "House in Blackbog Hollow".

By the way, if you hadn't noticed, the TDM website has changed its look - again.

The Dark Mod Website Updates, Info on Version 1.07

The Dark Mod’s website has undergone a change lately - and for good reason, perhaps. It’s two years this month since The Dark Mod’s first release, v 1.00, went out. The date was 17 October, 2009.

The website has a new, maybe even better look, and there’s even an RSS feed now, so you can subscribe and be informed when there are new updates posted in the news section. There’s still no way to be updated on new mission releases yet, unless you check the forums regularly or the FM section under “downloads'” off of the main website. I make sure to check practically every day and post updates here on new releases as soon as I can.

I might point you in the direction of a tool called Page2RSS which can help in cases where there’s no option to subscribe to a website or page. It’s a plugin for your browser (FireFox and Chrome are supported I think).

As for TDM version 1.07, it seems that it will soon go in to the testing phase before being released publicly, so look out for a 1.07 update for TDM next month maybe – hopefully by the end of the year. Word of warning that savegames from whatever version you’re using now (preferably 1.06) will not work once you’ve updated to 1.07. So finish your FMs before updating!

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Source: The Dark Mod

New TDM FM Release: Let Sleeping Thieves Lie

Hot on the heels of PranQster’s entry in the Halloween Speed Build contest this month, “Samhain: Night on Bone Hill”, comes a new fan mission for The Dark Mod.

This one is called "Let Sleeping Thieves Lie", and it’s by Sir Taffsalot, with a bit of help from Bikerdude. I've played a bit of it so far and it's no too bad. Will get a review of it up soon.

You can check out the FM details page here.

TDM FM Release: Samhain: Night on Bone Hill

After a 3 and a 1/2 month drought with no TDM FMs, this mission comes in to save us all from boredom.

It’s the first entry in the Halloween Speed Build contest of 2011, and it’s called “Samhain: Night on Bone Hill”. It’s an average size mission which weighs in at about 10 MB. It was released just this week, by PranQster. He also brought you the above-average mission, “Siege Shop” – his first.

You can grab the mission over at the usual places. I might well have a review of the thing up at some point, too.

FM Discussion thread
FM details page with download links

TDM FM Updates: Business as Usual and The Siege Shop

I was over at ModDB the other day, and saw that there are some updates for a couple of great mods for The Dark Mod. First off, as the title suggests, “The Siege Shop” by PranQster has been updated to version 1.2. The Siege Shop is one of the latest FMs released for TDM – it was uploaded back in about June this year. And if you haven’t played it yet – you should. It boasts originality that will wow you.

The other FM is “Business as Usual” by Bikerdude. This is quite an old FM that’s easily over a year and a half old now. It was also BD’s first mission for TDM, released under the Grand Christmas Contest (GCC) of 2009. It’s not that big of a mission, but it has plenty to explore. And playing it, you’ll probably get a Thief: Deadly Shadows feel – but TDS done right, that is. BAU has been updated to version 2.0.

So you can download the new versions of these FMs from the TDM forums (look under ‘Fan Missions’, taffer). There should be threads with the titles of these missions right in plain view. I’d link to them, but what sort of a thief are you if can’t find them for yourself, anyway? You’ll have to uninstall any existing versions of these FMs you have in your Doom 3 directory. Just delete the folders with the names of these mods (careful to select the right ones). Then you can just copy and past the new pk4 files into the FMs folder inside the doom3/darkmod directory. Easy.

This should tide you over, perhaps until we start to see the new entrants in the Halloween contest ‘2011. By the way, Bikerdude was announced as the winner of the Spring Seasons Contest, for his entry, “Alberic’s Curse”. It’s not too shabby. He beat out Jesps with “Rake-Off”, Fieldmedic with “Reap As You Sow”, and the absolutely dismal “Winter Harvest” by Shadowhide.