Happy Holidays from The Dark Mod!
15 years of continued development!
As of October 17th. 2024, 15 years have passed since the TDM 1.0 release!
In that time, we evolved to most or all of the features that players were asking for since the concept of TDM was first mooted in the TTLG forums in late 2004.
Campaign Support, Soft Shadows, EFX Reverb, Multi-Core Rendering, Uncapped FPS, Ambient Occlusion, Subtitles, are among the roster of perennial requested things that have been brought to life by the development team in addition to the core Thief 1 \ 2 game-play items like the Lightgem, Rope Arrows, Swim-able water, lock-picking and ( of course ) advanced AI enemies.
We are currently hard at work on TDM 2.13 and plan to start beta testing in late January or early February. Players can get a sneak peek at some of the upcoming changes by using the tdm_installer tool to install the latest 2.13 dev builds ( semi-stable releases that provide the latest snapshot of our progress ).
15th Anniversary Contest Winners!
WINNER: "Volta 3: Gemcutter" by Kingsal
Kingsal's 3rd entry in his acclaimed Volta Series missions was well received by players and scored the highest in both game-play and visuals! Just as with other Volta series missions, Kingsal goes the extra mile by creating new AI entities, lots of custom assets, and unique scripted events.
2nd Place: "The Imperial Sword" by Bikerdude
Bikerdude was encouraged by Amadeus to resume work on an older version of his mission "The Elixir" which he had completely scrapped in favor of a fully new design for that mission. The resurrected map has been extensively improved to include new models, textures, entities and script events.
3rd Place: "You Only Fly Thrice" by DeTeEff
DeTeEff ( AKA Fieldmedic ) has had a long history of high quality mission releases and this is among the best of his works. Given how late DeTeEff joined the contest, this mission has incredible depth and quality. Due to DeTeEff's innovative use of difficulty settings, the mission is really 3 missions in one ( similar to his other highly regarded mission "Not An Ordinary Guest" ). Players gave this mission the highest story score so along with all the innovative game-play, stellar visuals, there is a compelling narrative too.
4th Place: "The Wizard's Treasure" by TheBigH
TheBigH is always ready to assist and join the contest scene even though he prefers to make more conservative \ smaller missions ( a trait he shares with Sotha ). The Wizard's Treasure is a well rounded mission with lots of clever features and a handsome presentation. With great missions like this one and the magnificent "The House of deLisle" I would personally be eager to see a larger project by TheBigH.
5th Place: "Pinnacle: A Test of Talents" by UncertainTitle, TwilitWitch
UncertainTitle and TwilitWitch joined the contest at the very last second and initially had an entry that was all treasure finding with no AI opponents due to the amount of asset customization and visual finesse leading up to the deadline. The contestants graced them a little extra time to improve the mission and it is now both great to look at and fun to play ( phew ). We hope to see more from these new mission authors!
Other Mission Releases!
"Hidden Hands: Blood and Metal Campaign" by JackFarmer
Yes, you read that right. JackFarmer joins the rare few mission authors to make a multi-mission campaign package. In this case, we have 5 all new missions in JackFarmer's Hidden Hands series. Players are still puzzling through this monster-sized campaign that was released just prior to the 15th Anniversary contest entries.
April Fools Missions!
The normal tradition for The Dark Mod is for one or more of our top mappers to create a mission release thread for a fake new mission with some absurd attributes to see whether anyone falls for the April Fools antics. This time, 4 mission authors released real missions in threads that looked very much like April Fools threads. If you ever wanted a little humor to go with your stealth gaming, these missions have a little more than most!
"Eye on the Prize" by Amadeus
"Moongate Ruckus" by Kingsal
"Sneak and Soufflé" by Goldwell
"Moving Day 2: Look Who's Moving Now" by WellingtonCrab
I'm not sure who laughed more, the players or the mission authors! All I know is that it is hard not to smirk every time I write out these mission titles.
Releases since TDM 2.12
"The Terrible Old Man" by Ansome
H.P. Lovecraft fans rejoice! The story "The Terrible Old Man" has been adapted into a TDM mission by Ansome
"The Lieutenant 3: Foreign Affairs" by Frost_Salamander
Frost_Salamander continues his "The Lieutenant" series with another visually striking release! This time it is set in a Moorish harbor and has one of the most stylized cityscapes yet!
"Gem of Souls" by MirceaKitsune
MirceaKitsune's 2nd mission was released just in time for Halloween with a fitting horror theme! The mission is notable for it's use of advanced lighting techniques ( cubemap based ambients, volumetrics ) and some interesting rain and water effects. Note: This mission is not compatible with the Fresnel Shader Mod.
"The Last Offering" by Sotha
Somehow, even though Sotha has "retired" as a mission author, he continues to release excellent little missions. This time Sotha returns to a horror theme!
"A Winter's Tale" by Bikerdude
As part of the TTLG "Speed Jam" contest, Bikerdude has partially adapted a "well known Christmas story" into a small but well made new mission.
2.13 Development Preview!
Parallax Occlusion Mapping!
In the above video, you can see a that TDM has finally incorporated the long requested effect. This wont be applied to all textures since there may be some problems with visual anomalies and performance but we are already preparing for a future where lots of textures use this new and more three dimensional surface effect.
Better AI sight!
While the AI have always been good at seeing the player due to the lightgem ( sometimes “too good” so we had to nerf their sight ), AI have had various challenges seeing things like bodies, missing objects, opened doors, weapons, blood, etc. This is because it is not practical to give all entities \ objects their own lightgem. Instead we have used very simple math to represent lights which don’t match shadow and light textures. In 2.13 a new sampling approach aims to improve this so that AI can better see ( or not see ) items and bodies in a way that better matches the actual lighting in the mission.
Drunk AI
The rules for how drunk AI have been audited and massively improved. Missing or broken parts of the drunk definitions and scripts have been completed and fixed. Mission authors can now expect more consistent and reliable drunken AI reactions.
Mission Search GUI!
There is now a search window where you can specify the mission author or title to help you find your preferred mission rather than scrolling through over 170 missions. You can also change how mission titles are rendered with either the original title or the title with prefix words like “A, The” moved to the end.
Improved Training Mission!
The Training Mission has been upgraded to include a Vine Arrow tutorial, a Slow Match tutorial, EFX Reverb, Volumetric Lights, and some performance optimizations!
Translation Packs!
Between TDM 1.06 and 2.0 Tels and the translating community started translating many missions but these translations required that the original mission be altered in a way that made it harder for the mission authors to revise. The meant that translation packs were in limbo being hosted by 3rd party sites \ forums along with their orphaned old missions. The translators over at the Darkfate forums came up with an solution by including not only the translation strings in the translation pack but also the altered map files, GUI defs, etc that had translation work done to them. This would leave the original mission untouched but allow translation packs to override some parts. We have gone through the old archives of these translations and have reworked them to work with the latest version of TDM (and the associated missions). Most of the translations are Russian ( due to the continued work of the Darkfate people ) but many of the early TDM missions also have German, Italian, French, etc translations too.
Subtitles!
Datiswous has been creating story subtitles for many of the existing missions in the TDM mission database. Most authors have incorporated these into their official releases, otherwise players can still add them to the FM folder.
More improvements documented here: