Tuesday, December 20, 2011

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 Some of the screenshots shown over at the forum thread where the announcement was originally made look familiar to me – particularly the ship.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”.

----

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

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

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.

The Creeps 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.

The most eye-catching place in this FM."Supper time!"Timmy from the well: "wish you were here instead".Predictable scare here.

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

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

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.

----

Source: TDM

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

New TDM FM Released: House of Theo

house_of_theo182_thumb[2]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.

Sunday, December 4, 2011

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!”

----

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

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

Monday, November 28, 2011

The Dark Mod Version 1.07 Released

I was just reading yesterday that the latest version of The Dark Mod, 1.07 is now out!

There’s plenty of bugfixes and AI has been improved quite a bit. NPCs now notice ropes dangling from wooden structures (rope arrows), interact better with doors and so on, and combat animations have been improved too (about time).

In addition to, that I’m quite excited to see that for the first time, vine arrows are now available for mappers to use in their fan missions. Vine arrows differ from rope arrows in the way that they can be used on both wooden surfaces and metal grates. Traditionally they are more expensive than rope arrows in official Thief games (they’ve only appeared so far in Thief II: The Metal Age – late in the game, too).

It’s always the little things that count…

There’s plenty of other improvements in this release - there’s an entire list for you to read. The download weight should be about 184 MB, apparently. Run your tdm_update.exe file to update your version to the latest one. Finish your FMs first. Savegames won’t work after the upgrade.

By the way, I took a look over at The Dark Mod’s Moddb page, and I saw that now they have a version 1.06 file (going on 2 GB) for download. Previously there was only a version 1.03.

----

Source: TDM

Saturday, November 26, 2011

Id Tech 4 Source Code Released

I didn’t want to make any predictions on when the Doom 3 source code would be released – because I somehow knew it would be sooner than I thought.

The deed was done on the evening of Tuesday, November 22 and was widely reported yesterday on several gaming  and technology blogs – after several years of waiting. News and speculation surrounding the release of the id Tech 4 source code began as far back as 2007.

As I’ve been reading online, we can expect to see graphical overhauls for Doom 3, mods being turned in to standalone games, and even entirely new games being developed – although only for non-commercial purposes. Sounds exciting to say the least.

The id Tech 4 engine is far from being completely obsolete. Titles such as Wolfenstein used it as recently as 2009, and the upcoming Prey 2 uses the engine, much like its prequel, released in 2006.

One wonders what will become of The Dark Mod in the future.

----

Source: Joystiq

Monday, November 21, 2011

TDM Comments on id Tech 4 Source Code

Over on Twitter, the TDM team thanked John Carmack of id Software for his dedication to releasing the id Tech 4 or Doom 3 engine source code.
“The Dark Mod thanks you for your dedication getting (sic) the D3 source code in to mod teams (sic) hands. Knowledge should be shared!”
As you may know, The Dark Mod is a thief-inspired mod for Doom 3 and so naturally uses the same engine. There has been talk in the past about the TDM team focusing on working on TDM as a standalone game at some point in the future, with all the complications that would involve having been discussed at length in the forum. The TC wouldn’t need Doom 3 to run, and therefore the space requirements needed on one’s HDD would drop. The limits with building upon Doom 3 as of right now would very likely be lifted, and the possibilities would become nearly endless as to what could be achieved within the modding community with this near 10-year-old engine.

If one looks at what the guys in the Duke Nukem community have done with the Build engine, which is over 15 years old, then one can only imagine…

It was believed for a long time that the id Tech 4 engine would be made open source after the release of Rage (which utilises id Tech 5). And true to his word, Carmack said after Rage was released, in October this year, that they just had some final legal issues to work out before the source code was released – but reassured the masses that it would happen.

This month it was reported that Carmack is working on replacing some code inside the engine seeing as there was some work borrowed from another company used for free when the game was released. Now that it’s due to be re-released, that code needs to be taken out to avoid any legal woes, it seems
.
Resources:

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/numb-thumbs-blog/2099819/id-software-release-doom-source-code
http://www.linuxgames.com/archives/9374
https://twitter.com/#!/ID_AA_Carmack/statuses/136614459887202305

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

New TDM FM Release: Crystal Grave

I was thinking more or less the same thing you are right now when I first saw this. It’s a new FM up for download on the official TDM website, but it originally appeared on Darkfate.org – a Thief fan site.

This FM is purported to be in Polish – right from the title (Krysztalowy Grob), to the instructions, to everything therein. I don’t know if that will bode well for most TDM players. I for one get very leery about anything foreign, but that could just be my xenophobia kicking in. I even sent the file to Jotti for scanning just in case (Virus Total is down for some or other reason).

Anyway. Better than nothing. Download it and give it a go.

Monday, November 14, 2011

TDM Version 1.07 Comments, Highlights

I read about updates on both the TDM Twitter account, and the TDM’s official site declaring that TDM v 1.07 is is testing and nearly within our grasp after a long 5 or  month wait.

It’s been said that the AI has received some huge improvements in this release. There was a blog post on TDM’s official website that sheds light on what to expect in this release as far as artificial intelligence goes: NPCs will now notice and comment on doors being left open by the player character; they’ll notice rope arrows in lit areas, and even look to see if anyone is on the rope; they’ll notice arrows sticking out of things, including themselves; guards will warn other guards and servants etc. about the sighting of a thief or a dead body.

This will lend some increased replayablity and challenge to fan missions which were considered to be a bit too easy. To date, I’ve only really noticed glimpses of the above advanced AI interaction on a few select fan missions. “Crown of Penitence”- as small as it is - is one of them, as is “Sons of Baltona”.

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

TDM Version 1.07 Close to Release

I had a look at the official TDM Twitter account and it looks like version 1.07 is getting closer to release.

“1.07 is on the way.”

So like I was saying in an earlier post: finish up your FMs, before upgrading. You’ll obviously need to use the TDM updater, which is located in your TDM directory to get it up to v 1.07, when it’s done.

----

Source: The Dark Blog on Twitter

Monday, November 7, 2011

TDM FM Review: Dragon’s Claw

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.

Dragon's Claw Author(s): Bikerdude, Flanders
Version: 1.0
Date released: 10-31-2011
Other info: Halloween Speed Build ‘11 entry
Theme: City/Haunted
Download FM here

Whenever I see a Bikerdude mission, I instantly think that it’s going to be one hell of a lot of fun ahead of me.

Missions of the past like the fantastic “St. Alban’s Cathedral”, or the awesome “Caduceus of St. Alban” left me with a very positive perception of an author’s work who I admittedly didn’t like much to begin with. Bikerdude’s missions are in a way sort of like watching a Quentin Tarantino film. You dislike it the first time – you might even be a it bewildered. But after the second viewing, you understand the genius behind it. It grows on you and you appreciate it for the brilliance it is supposed to convey.

This mission is not like that at all. This mission is a poor excuse for an FM in comparison to the aforementioned ones. It’s the worst of Bikerdude’s mission’s I’ve played. It’s not that bad, but it’s not that good either.

The story sounds like it could be interesting. You’re a thief as usual who wants to get a hold of the legendary “Dragon’s Claw”, which is holed up in a section of town known as the Plague Ward. It’s walled off from the rest of the city, much like the Old Quarter was in Thief: The Dark Project. But even though they might be similar in story, there’s no comparing this FM for The Dark Mod to “The Haunted Cathedral”. I might sound a little harsh here, but bear with me.

Starting off in the city, I was in familiar territory. I expected to be able to pick any lock, open any door, and go pretty much anywhere, much like in the beginning of St. Alban’s Cathedral – a mission which I hold in regard, and like the best from this author so far.

But you can’t. Exploration is limited, and the only real area of appeal is the canal. There’s a bit of loot here, and a few guards. This area presents the most challenge you’ll face in this FM.

screenshot649screenshot654screenshot655screenshot652

Hover mouse over pictures for captions, if available.

But this limited exploration actually detracts from the experience as far as being able to find the entrance to the Plague Ward is concerned. It’s an unnecessary distraction. Once you navigate your way around the underground, and make your way up to the plague ward, again things seem familiar. It’s like a lesser version of one of the undead missions from T2X, the unofficial expansions for Thief II: The Metal Age. Everything looks nice graphically speaking – at least on the outside. There’s some nice effects like low lying fog and dust particles, and even a rare sighting of a will o’ the wisp.

But there’s just a real feeling of laziness or incompleteness that lies behind the fancy texturing. If you were to look inside some buildings here, you just see black – well, I do. I don’t know if this is a graphical glitch, or it was intentional on the author’s part. Having a look through the official forum thread dedicated to this mission, Melan (who tutored Bikerdude, so some say) claims it’s a caulk texture, and thinks it wasn’t that good an idea to use it so generously.

And it’s here that some other major gripes of this mission come in to play. There are some severe slow downs (literally 0 FPS) during this part of the mission that either require you tap the forward key to move out of this slowdown zone, or just reload a savegame… again.

Again there’s the illusion of exploration here, as there are some places to go, but not much to do or find. There’s not a lot of interactivity on offer. It’s way too easy to get the main objectives and get out of there. But like most BD missions, there’s always a stash of loot somewhere that you never seem to find. This might make things trickier on harder difficulty settings.

Exiting the Plague Ward with my prize, I was on the way to the tavern to finish the mission, and then I was hit with 0 FPS again, but this time it froze completely, forcing an alt+ctrl+del solution.

I’m disappointed in Dragon’s Claw. It had the promise; the potential of a great mission, but just fell flat. I wouldn’t say it’s the worst FM I’ve played, or even the worst in the Halloween Speed Build competition. But it could have used a bit more polish and testing, bug-fixing, and a lot more challenge. Those undead lying around in the Plague Ward are far too easy to step around and avoid. They should have been upright and patrolling. I’d rather have a tough undead mission than one that hardly even tries.

Pros:

+ Good story.

+ Level design is decent.

Cons:

- Bugs, bugs, bugs.

- Practically no challenge whatsoever for the most part.

FM score: 7.0/10

Monday, October 31, 2011

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.

Sunday, October 23, 2011

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!

----
Source: The Dark Mod

Saturday, October 22, 2011

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.

Monday, October 17, 2011

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

Monday, October 3, 2011

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.

Popular Posts