New TDM FM Released: The Phrase Book

Earlier on this month, Sotha released the latest instalment in the Thomas Porter series. Going back a bit, if you’ve played Glenham Tower and The Transaction, you’ll vaguely remember something about a book that Thomas had to collect called De Vermis Mysteriis. In this FM, Thomas sets out to look for the Phrase Book, to help end the occurrences that have taken place since he took possession of this previously mentioned tome – namely being hunted down by the Hag.

I won’t spoil it too much for you, but you’re in for quite a treat with this one, as you’ll get to ride on the Thieves Highway yet again – for the first time in a long while!

You can read up about it and download it here.

TDM FM Review: Let Sleeping Thieves Lie

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): Sir Taffsalot, Bikerdude
Version: 1.0
Date released: 10-20-2011
Theme: City/Haunted
Download FM here

This FM was never going to be a magnum opus of any sort. The main reason why is the fact that it’s by a relatively unknown author, even though he had help from Bikerdude – one of the more seasoned FM creators.

You start off on the streets and it’s fairly straight forward. You have to enter the sewers to reach the hideout of one Jack Blackthorn - a man who some say is the devil himself. He’s wanted you dead for some time seeing as you refused to join the Unseen Thieves guild. Whispers around town say that he’s back from the dead, even though you assassinated him a little while back by putting an arrow through his heart. Now he wants you dead more than ever.

It’s best to go straight for the sewer. There’s plenty of time and motive to explore the rest of the city later on. The key is easy to find seeing as it’s hanging on the one patrolling citywatchman’s belt. Down here in the sewer, I was greeted by some ugly textures and level design. What else would you expect to find in a sewer, anyway? The water for instance didn’t look right – it wasn’t the same pretty, fluid liquid I’d seen in other FMs. And the reflection of items on said water surface just wasn’t done right.

 

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There were some nice additions, such as mushrooms decorating the entrance to the Unseen Thieves’ lair and water dripping from the pipes above. The lair itself has one eye-catching room with plenty going on, and without spoiling much, it’s the last room, and there’s a huge haul here – enough to fulfil your loot objective. There’s some other grisly things to see here, too.

Then after this it’s back to street level, and here you can rope arrow up to several rooms above you. Doing this will eventually lead you on the path to the crypts below the cemetery. This is probably the scariest, most atmospheric place in this FM, and there’s some good loot to be had here. After ascending to ground level it’s off to the church through the misty cemetery, where you’ll notice the empty grave – the one that was meant for Jack.

All in all this mission is too easy. There could have been more challenge in areas like the cemetery and church. But there’s these large, empty, unpopulated areas punctuated with some small interesting areas that have something going on. I see Bikerdude’s name when this FM loads, and in the credits – but this isn’t a Bikerdude mission. It’s not a bad first attempt by a new mapper. I have played worse, for sure.

I initially thought that this mission was an entry in the Halloween Speed Build Contest of 2011 – but it turns out that it isn’t. This FM has been a long time in the making, apparently. I was going to say that I’ve played moodier missions that weren’t submissions for this competition; that overall the theme was quite understated. But none of this matters seeing as it isn’t a submission for the contest, it turns out.

This counts against the map’s overall score, seeing as I could have overlooked most of its flaws if it were a speed build, but it isn’t. If that much time had been spent on it, I think more effort could have been spent on making it look and play a bit better, personally.

Pros:

+ The author gave it a good try.

+ One or two good moments to be had.

Cons:

- Ugly texturing.

- Clipping issues.

- Uninspired design.

FM score: 6.5/10

New Fan Missions Released

After a long spell where there were absolutely no new fan missions to be had for TDM, except for the release of a previously unreleased FM in “Closemouthed Shadows”, this month we finally have three new ones to download. They are “Sneak and Destroy”, “Rightful Property”, and In “Remembrance of Him”. And all three FMs seem to be from thus far little known authors, which isn’t a bad thing. New blood is always welcome, I say. Especially when there’s a fan mission drought going on.

These fan missions are entries in the new contest for 2012, the Beginners Contest.

Sneak and Destroy is a particularly weighty download, coming in at over 150 MB, making it one of the largest FMs in terms of file size, while Rightful Property is a lot less, but still bigger than average I would say. I’ve managed to play all of them all ready, so I may have reviews up at some point in future. I’ve mainly got a back log of old FM reviews that I’ve been trying to upload to make way for the newer ones, so no promises on when it will be up.

“When it’s done” ®.

Head over the thedarkmod.com to get the missions.

Progress Update on TDM: Crucible of Omens

A while back, a little after the 2nd anniversary of the TDM, it was announced that there would be a full campaign developed for The Dark Mod, by the actual team who has been working on it for over 7 years.

I was pleased to see that in the last week there has been a progress update on this. In the post on TDM’s official site, there were some new screenshots. As was said in the post, the team has been working on this for a while (12 months) – in fact for years. If you were a visitor to TDM’s website years ago you would have seen that the screenshot gallery that existed back then had several screenshots that would eventually be unveiled as belonging to missions that make up this very campaign.

So far the TDM community (which won best community award over at ModDB late last year/earlier on this year) has brought us some spectacular fan missions as well as some mini campaigns, showcasing what can be achieved using DarkRadiant, the mods level editor, and of course the power of the ageing id Tech 4 engine.

TDM FM Review: Crystal Grave

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): ERH+
Version: 1.0
Date released: 11-12-2011
Other info: First completely foreign FM 
Theme: Builder/Haunted
Download FM here

I first saw this FM up for download on The Dark Mod’s official website. But the file was actually hosted over at Darkfate – a thief fan site of sorts. A mirror still hasn’t been put up over at TDM.

I was a bit apprehensive about downloading and installing this FM. I’m just so paranoid, and the last thing I needed was some fan mission made in a foreign country. I tend to get a bit suspicious. That and it wasn’t hosted at the usual place, but off-site, and that made me a little wary.

But security concerns aside, I learnt by reading through the thread over at the TDM forum that this mission was well worth a play. So I decided to give it a go. Starting off, I found myself on an island. I’d somehow rowed out here, got past the large walls surrounding the property, and run aground. Ahead of me lay a large building, surrounded by water – perhaps a moat - which towered into the skies above. My FPS was getting a kick in the balls all ready.

I noticed straight off the bat that there are several entry points – from picking locked doors in the dock below, to climbing up ivy vines and pipes to reach one of the higher floors. I was highly impressed. Once inside, this feeling of amazement was extended by the rather good level design. A good mixture of small, pokey rooms, with larger occupied rooms – there’s not a lot of space wasted here. Everything seems functional. It works, and like I said: there are multiple ways to get from one floor to the next, whether you take one of the stairwells, or climb up a chain linked to a crane of sorts. The layout is rather good. There’s seemingly endless areas to explore. And just when you’ve seen it all, there’s more on the next level.

I will say that despite several keys being around for you to find, there’s once again on overreliance on lockpicking which is so addictive with mappers for TDM. And the locks aren’t even that complex to pick, ironically.

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Lighting is used to good effect in most areas, and there are different light sources – not just fire-lit torches, but also electric lighting, too. And most of the rooms have light switches that even AI interact with occasionally. I wasted most of my water arrows and holy water potions dousing a haunt after he saw me when switching on the bloody light in one room.

But despite this one experience, overall there isn’t much challenge as far as AI goes. There are two or three areas where AI is heavily concentrated, which means two things: first off, it’s easy to gain access to the place using most entry points, and two, it’s nigh impossible to get past said areas because the AI have overlapping, confusing patrol routes which guarantee the player will be seen and murdered instantly.

It’s also difficult to know where to go and what to do, as this FM’s greatest flaw is revealed right from the get go (and I mentioned it earlier too): it’s foreign. The objectives are in Polish, the text and readables in-game are in Polish too. It’s been weeks (months now) since its release, and someone has yet to come up with a decent translation for it. So I’m wandering around this otherwise great map but I don’t know what the hell is going on – and that takes away a lot of this map’s charm; it’s done almost everything else right. The good news is that not only will someone eventually get around to getting a translated version up, but from TDM v 1.07, internationalization is being featured in the mod, which is supposed to help in situations like this… somehow.

Crystal Grave (probably the most awesome name for an FM I’ve heard so far) reminds me a lot of “The Outpost” – one of the first TDM FMs ever released, back in late 2009 - except it’s probably bigger, and better in several respects. There are a few niggles with it, such as the ones outlined above. I’ll also add that the texturing could have been better, and there were a few bugs – particularly with lighting. I would stand in shadow and yet my lightgem was lit up like a Christmas tree (sorry for the reference, but it’s December at the time of writing this). That and opening some doors and windows resulted in the infinite looping slamming bug which would really put a damper on things if the AI actually noticed it.

Despite its flaws, it’s not bad; not bad at all.

Pros:

+ Great level design.

+ Layout provides smooth play.

+ Multiple entry points.

Cons:

- Foreign with absolutely no translations for text, objectives, etc.

- Buggy.

- Not too challenging.

FM score: 8.8/10

TDM FM Review: House in Blackbog Hollow

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): stumpy
Version: 1.0
Date released: 2011-10-29
Other info: Halloween Speed Build Contest 2011 entry
Theme: Builder/Haunted
Download FM here

Stumpy has made two missions in the past – neither of which I enjoyed much, to be honest. But “House in Blackbog Hollow” (which I will from now on refer to as HIBH – not a rude word) is mostly better than said missions. In case you’re wondering – the missions I speak of are “Lord Dufford’s” and “Illusionist’s Tower”.

You start off on the streets hidden away in an alley of sorts, and make your way in to the large area ahead. You’ve got two patrolling guards here but they’re easy to avoid. First thing you’ll notice is the large black house – more on this later. The mission is to grab some ancient treasure outside a warehouse nearby. But it turns out it’s not that simple: some bastard got there first and nabbed it – and he’s hiding in the house you couldn’t help but notice earlier.

I managed to enter the place after several minutes of mucking about; missing the obvious way in. After seeing a pumpkin kill a nobleman sitting at a table, I knew I was in for something else. From then on, I was wary of every bloody pumpkin I came across. I tried shooting them with arrows, or slicing them with swords – to no avail.

And there were spiders, too. Very large, patrolling spiders. This mission pretty much has everything scary you could possibly want in a mission. Never mind zombies – they’ve got nothing on seemingly invincible pumpkins.

Stumpy pulls some tricks similar to the ones seen in “Illusionist’s Tower”. Upon entering the house, it grows larger than initially thought. It’s positively massive with several floors to explore. There’s some interesting illusions besides this, such as walls that can actually be walked through to reach the corridor behind. It wouldn’t have been so obvious if it hadn’t been for the spiders, that basically showed me it was possible in the first place. Otherwise I’m sure it might have stumped (no pun intended) a few people. There’s also a crying baby, which turns out… not to be. Rather creepy, that part.

 

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There aren’t any guards anywhere, but you’ll come across some corpses every now and again – these are supposedly the people who lived here before the curse came along. I won’t spoil it too much for you, so that’s all I’m saying.

After some looking around, you reach the study near the top of the mansion and discover that there’s more to the pumpkins than you originally thought. The pumpkins you avoided earlier actually need to be collected and taken to a temple beneath the surface. They need to be used to end a curse that resulted due to the mansion being built on top of the temple. Sounds similar to the old “house that was built on top of a sacred Indian burial ground” cliché, but nonetheless. That’s what we were all expecting to come out of this competition: clichés.

So we went from trying to retrieve the treasure to helping end the curse.

The mission was enjoyable in the end. Stumpy pulled out the usual tricks; some new, and others old. From what I can tell, he’s not as amateurish as I thought he was initially and has shown that with some general messing around in DarkRadiant, he can put a decent, and sometimes challenging map together. But this mission is his best so far, because it doesn’t stray too far from the norm as far as a TDM mission goes. The level design isn’t anything too special, but it is a step up from the likes of Lord Dufford’s large, empty, uninteresting rooms. The soundtrack that accompanies the FM consists of some new tracks, as well as some old ones with a twist.

Lord Dufford’s was an average at best mission for several reasons among which included some gameplay faux pas that could have been avoided with some beta testing. That and it was a bit too loony for my liking. And Illusionist’s Tower was too frustrating – it tried to be overly technical. This mission is a sort of happy medium, or balance between the expected and outrageous. It’s not too challenging, and the best bit of the FM will be the story, more than likely, which isn’t bad.

Overall the FM is unconventional, rather wacky, but for this Halloween Speed Build Contest – it works; almost perfectly.

Pros:

+ Good story.

Cons:

-  Not that challenging.

FM score: 8.8/10

Thief and Thief II over at Good Old Games

I received this info this month while visiting Cheap Thief Missions recently. It seems as though GOG finally got a hold of Thief Gold and Thief II: The Metal Age!

Going over there to have a look at the games’ pages, the user reviews are in and it’s 5 stars all round – and it should be, because these truly are classic titles that served to inspire further games that took a more stealthy route rather than all-out gunplay.

They both currently go for $9.99, but that price may well drop as time goes by, as the average price for games on GOG is about $5.99. But still, both games for $20 – that’s not too bad at all. Of course, these are digital downloads and both game are a bout a CD’s content in weight. For those of you who don’t have a decent internet connection, you can still get these games as retail products, with boxes and manuals – everything. And they’re not too expensive. Really, from Amazon you can get Thief and even full Thief series bundles (including Deadly Shadows) if you shop around a bit for less than $9.99 and shipping is free. So while digital might be more convenient for those in the first world, in my opinion GOG should lower the price for competitive reasons soon.

Now all they have to do is get System Shock and System Shock 2 on there – they’ve been two of the most demanded titles yet to appear on GOG for some time now. Then the Looking Glass collection would be a little nearer to being complete.