New TDM Campaign Announced: The Crucible of Omens

I remember reading some time ago on the TDM FAQ or another source where it it was asked if there would ever be an official TDM campaign. It’s been two years since the mod’s release (version 1.07 was brought out just the other day). During this time there have been over 50 fan missions released by various mappers.

But finally the day has come. It was announced just this week that there is a campaign that has been in the planning stages at least for the last four years, whereas for the most part has really existed in earnest for the past year or so. Some of the screenshots shown over at the forum thread where the announcement was originally made look familiar to me – particularly the ship.

The campaign is called “The Crucible of Omens”, and will follow the story of a thief and adventurer named John Welland Hadley. You’ll traverse several different locations of the TDM universe (covered in the Wiki to some extent), and will no doubt go on a tour of probably every possible environment; you’ll bump into new AI factions, opponents and NPCs to interact with. The campaign also promises animated briefings, cutscenes, scripted sequences like conversations between characters. Let’s hope the production quality is on par with the original games by Looking Glass Studios – a bit ambitious, but I think it’s possible. Look what the people behind T2X did – it was a bloody good effort.

Chief mappers for this campaign include Bikerdude, jdude, Fidcal, and Melan. Some of the best mappers for the mod. If you chucked Sotha and Jesps in there at some point, you’d have a full house.

It all sounds terribly exciting, and like one forum dweller commented: "It’s about time”.

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Sources:

http://www.thedarkmod.com/posts/a-dark-mod-campaign-in-the-works/

http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/13280-announcing-the-crucible-of-omens-a-campaign-for-the-dark-mod/

http://www.moddb.com/mods/the-dark-mod/news/announcing-the-crucible-of-omens-a-campaign-for-the-dark-mod

https://twitter.com/#!/thedarkmod/statuses/148540518224244737

TDM FM Review: The Creeps

This is a review of one of The Dark Mod’s (a mod for Doom 3) fan missions. It may contain traces of spoilers. You have been warned.

Author(s): Mortem Desino
Version: 1.0
Date released: 2011-10-30
Other info: Halloween Speed Build Contest 2011 entry
Theme: City/Haunted
Download FM here

MD or Mortem Desino is a name I’m sure I’ve read somewhere before, but to my knowledge this is his first mission. And it’s not too bad.

When starting up, I was greeted with a voiceover during the briefing section, which felt very Thief: Deadly Shadows-esque. A little bit of extra effort there, then. Indeed, at several points during the mission there are some voiceovers.

The mission is to sneak inside a “superstitious” family’s home while they’re out for the night, and case the joint. You begin on the streets outside as usual and make your way towards the tree in the centre of the courtyard. From here you fumble your way around, interact with some frobbable objects, and get inside a tower of sorts.

You eventually get around to jumping out the window and on to the roof outside. There’s plenty of open windows and multiple entry points in this mission – especially the Creeps’ manor – making for some interesting routes to take – and limited replayability. Most of these alternate ways you’ll only discover after having gone the long way perhaps.

After entering the Creeps’ household through one of several entry points, you’ll likely stumble upon the main focal point of the building: the dining room. Here you have a few surprises waiting for you.

There’s always the promise of some sort of encounter in this mission. I was expecting to run in to something or someone. I thought I’d be facing off against pagans – who rarely make an appearance in any TDM FMs, or maybe some zombies or a haunt. But there was hardly anything. It’s not really scary at all – maybe moody; a tad tense, perhaps. That’s the aim of the contest I suppose. Zombies and the like are so old hat; overdone, and not many players really like “undead missions” anyway. I don’t.

Hover mouse over pictures for captions, if available.

I definitely noticed the contrasting use of colour and lighting between the starting point of the mission and the area in and around the Creeps’ place. It went from the more traditional blue, brown and grey hues you’d expect, to yellow and orange. This complements the Halloween theme and the season of Autumn (or Fall) quite nicely – even though it’s Spring over where I am at the time of writing this fan mission review.

But all that I’ve spoken of so far is what you’ll encounter on the surface level. There’s also a subterranean section which you’ll need to find in order to finish the mission (especially as far as loot goes on the highest difficulty setting). Here you’ll needless to say, get most of the loot, plus experience some scares, too – predictable, but it’ll make you jump, nonetheless. The style of scares is almost right out of a commercial title like F.E.A.R. – but the first one, which was best in the series. Let me just say that it’s very difficult if not impossible to get a perfect stealth score in this mission.

There was one nice touch that I liked in this mission, and that was another sort of object – an obstacle – to interact with. Up until now I’ve come across locked doors that you either need keys for, or you have to pick; there’ve been locked chests, too. These are the main two obstacles separating you from success, and after several FMs, I’m dying for a little originality. Well, it’s here in this FM, in the form of a mere padlock. You can only interact with this padlock once inside the house, but when you pick it and the window swings open – I must confess that I thought that was rather nifty. It’s a small thing and yet it adds positively to the overall impression I get from this FM. Also, the massive tree outside with the falling leaves was great, if a tad unrealistic. That tree drops leaves faster than my cat sheds hair.

There was that and a bit of texture misalignment, plus some messy management of heights as far as negatives go. You can climb on top of roofs and look in to the empty abyss which is the skybox that surrounds the map. It takes away from the good that this mission had going for it. That and there was another small error in mission objectives depending on difficulty settings. Playing the medium difficulty or “Spirit” was just the same as playing on easy, or “The Wind”, because the loot goal was exactly the same.

But all in all, for this author’s first FM - it’s quite good.

Pros:

+ Multiple entry points for some buildings.

+ Extra effort with the voiceovers.

+ Some tension and atmosphere.

Cons:

- Silly mistakes that could have been avoided.

- Quite short.

FM score: 8.4/10

The Dark Mod Makes the Top 100 List, ModDB MOTY

I just read over at TDM’s official site that The Dark Mod has made it to the Top 100 list over at ModDB in their Mod Of The Year Awards  - this was after the first round of voting. So the mod is still in the game, so to speak.

Now comes the most important vote – it’s round two. So you need to get over to ModDB again and cast your vote AGAIN, so that the mod progresses through. If you’ve ever played the mod, you’ll know it’s well worth it.

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Source: TDM

New TDM FM Released: House of Theo

There’s been a welcome resurgence in new TDM FMs following the recent Halloween Speed build competition. To start off the Silly Season, we have a new FM up for download. It’s called “House of Theo”.

It’s by Theothesnoop, and it weighs in at just over 6 MB. You’d think then that it’s a rather small FM, but just looking at the screenshots over at TDM alone, it looks to be a pretty big map. Most of it takes place in a huge castle. I just so happen to love castles – this is a big reason why I’ve always been a big fan of the original Thief series: the architecture.

So go ahead and grab the FM over here. I’ll no doubt have a play and have a review up soon.

Vote for The Dark Mod at the ModDB MOTY [The Dark Mob]

ModDB is holding its annual Mod of The Year award, and as can be expected, The Dark Mod team wants you to vote for their stellar mod, which naturally has a presence on the website.

As has been stated on their official blog and twitter page, you must have a ModDB account to be able to vote – if you want said vote to count anyway. Votes from unregistered users will only count in the event of a tie – and what’s the likelihood of that happening anyway? We all know that one mod developer is going to get tons of people to mob the voting system so they win. These things are hardly fair, most of the time.

“Help The Dark Mod win the @moddb #moty 2011 Mod of the Year: moddb.com/mods/the-dark-… you must have a moddb account for the vote to count.”

“Voting for “Mod of the Year” is now under way at ModDB. Votes from unregistered users only count in case of a tie, so please register for a free account and support The Dark Mod!”

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http://twitter.com/thedarkmod/statuses/142824234157219841

http://www.thedarkmod.com/posts/vote-tdm-for-mod-of-the-year/