JUNE MEGA UPDATE!!! news

The Dark Mod Version 1.06 is now available!

The 1.06 release has LOADS of new content, both for players and for mappers.

This release includes two new characters (the inventor scientist and builder forger/engineer) as well as dozens of new animations.

Grayman has given AI relighting behavior the deluxe treatment--AI will now notice and comment when lights are out, and will relight lights that mappers set as "should be on". This applies to candles, torches and even electric lights.

Greebo has added campaign support, allowing multiple missions to be properly linked together! For the first time, TDM can now be run on Mac OSX! Please refer to the wiki for further instructions, as the support is still somewhat experimental.

A new optional bow sight has been added for those that find aiming difficult. Tels has added improved support for Widescreen gaming, Multi-Monitor and Television aspect ratios:

Stgatilov has added savegame compression:

"Savegames are now compressed on-the-fly, which reduces their size further by a factor of 2..4 depending on the mission. For example, saving at the start of "Heart of Lone Salvation" yielded 85 MB with v1.03, 11 MB with v1.04 and will yield 2.5 MB with v1.06."

Many other assets and improvements have been added. See our changelog for a full list.

Note: Remember, you cannot load older saved games after uploading to 1.06. Please finish your current missions before updating!

To update your existing installation, just run your tdm_update.exe file. The download size for upgrading 1.05 to 1.06 is about 48 MB; a fresh download will be about 2 GB.

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Seasons Contest Final Releases!

The final Fan Mission releases from our Seasons Contest have been released a day before the (extended) deadline of June 20th.

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Rake Off

Jesps Season Contest entry, and 2nd mission from the Selis Woderose series, has been released!

Briefing:
Flakebridge brought me a fine haul. It didn't last long however. I have aquired a treasure map that supposedly leads to the treasure of 'Francis Rake'. Apparently the treasure is hidden somewhere in the Rake family's castle located on an island in Lake Coulter. The castle is now in the possession of Rake's grandson, Francis Rake III.

Thanks:
A big 'thank you' goes out to the people who made this possible: My beta testers for rigorous testing, the team for making the mod, and the forum community for helping and inspiring me.

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Reap as you sow

Fieldmedic's Seasons Contest entry "Reap as you sow" has been released!

Briefing:
Dear Sir,

I send you this letter as a request for aid in a delicate matter. My name is Oscar Powell, and I assure you that the rumors of my death were greatly exaggerated. I am, in fact, merely in hiding after the unfortunate incident that took the life of my father. You come highly recommended, and I trust in your complete discretion in what I am about to tell you. The incident that claimed my father and nearly myself was no accident - it was a clumpy attempt at an assassination. A band of pagan brutes assaulted the summer home, seeking to claim my life and that of my beloved father. And given the recent death of my beloved brother Bernhard, I now know where to point the accusing finger. My sister Alma, thrice-cursed be her name, must have hired them to rid herself of us. I have no doubts to her ambition to claim the family holdings, nor do I know her soul to contain any compassion. But the law is blind, they say, and I am but one man in hiding. But with proof I could challenge her and bring her to justice. Which is where you come in, as I am told you are without peer in bringing light to the ugliest of truths. So I ask of you to go the Powell summer home, where my beloved father and brother met their end, and find out the truth. With this letter you will find a ticket to the Powell hedge maze, which will give you an excellent chance to enter the estate. Use any means necessary and leave no stone unturned in this and you shall be richly rewarded when I am restored to my rightful place as owner of the Powell holdings.

Yours humbly, Oscar Powell

Important player information:

Because this is quite different mission from the rest, there are a few things to be aware of when playing.

1. You are in essence a thief, but has chosen the approach of a private eye. This mission has lot of emphasis on story and most of the story is told through readables. As with most missions, the mission is enjoyable without reading all readables and most of them can sometimes be skipped. But in order to get the full experience from this mission, I recommend the player to read all the readables.

2. This is a daylight mission and this means that you aren't directly cosidered a villain unless you show socially unacceptable behaviour such as stealing, walking in flower beds or going where you don't belong. (Note that on expert difficulty the mission begins with you breaking inside the main house and thus start in a high tension area). You will have a tension meter that goes up when you do something socially unacceptable. If anyone sees you during this state, the tension will go up on red and you will forever be considered a villain and will be chased. On expert difficulty this will result in instant failure. One another aspect on the daylight theme is that this mission is set on a farmland and to simulate these lands I have chosen a quite open map layout. This is contrary to all recommendations for the IdTech 4 engine and as a result, performace may be lacking in some places. I have tried my best to keep a good balance between good looking exterior parts versus good performance.

3. This shouldn't have to be something to point out, but I've got to known that some players have some issues against "violence-control" in missions. My personal gameplay puts lots of emphasis on stealth and sneaking. Therefore I consider detection a failure and almost never kill anyone besides animals/undead. Violence is sparse in this mission and you're not allowed to kill anyone (that doesn't pose any immediate threat to you) on any of the difficulties. KO:s are perfectly alright although limited.

Enjoy!

Thanks:
A special thanks to my friend Ziggun and Ash that have helped me work out the story and write the readables. Also a thanks to my friend Henrik Swenson that has produced some of the sound effects. And also a big thank you to all team members and people developing this brilliant mod!

And also a big thank you to the various guys and gals that help testing this mission and found some crashing bugs and helped me through the tempest.

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Alberic's Curse

Bikerdude has released his Seasons Contest entry, "Alberic's Curse" which is also an homage to darkangel's 2001 Thief 2 fan mission:

"The Cathedral of the Damned".

Briefing:
"At night, they say, the Builders' hand comes loose from his mighty hammer and creatures wander out from their hiding places while he slumbers. But tis this night, above all others that unholy vapours cloak the land with gloomy curtains and night creatures dance and sing in the twilight. I can't say I'm looking forward to my endeavors this night.... I've been given a job by a Priest to retrieve two holy artifacts from an abandoned cloister in Eldin woods north of the city, simple job I thought, but the priest failed to mention the placed was haunted."

Player information:
Repeat after me, "Read and explore, Read and explore"

Known Issues:
# This mission will have less than optimal fps at a few points on the map, but most of my testers with lowish end rigs ( P43.0ghz /HD4650 AGP ) are getting 30fps+ at the worst spots)

# For very low end PCs I recommend the following settings: V-sync is off, AA is off, Aniso is 4x or lower, advanced settings are simple/default & Post processing of disabled and as a last resort the command line arg ' r_skipFogLights 1 ' (turns off the fog)

Thanks:
Respect to the Dark Mod team for putting up with all my questions and knocking up the various updates in short order!. Special thanks to Flanders and Springheel for their models and my testers for helping me squash all the bugs etc.

Testers: Flanders, Jaxa, nbohr1more, Aluminumhaste, Baal.
Readables: Darkangel/b1k3rdude with suggestions from my testers.
Resource: Flanders/Springheel - art direction and models.
Misc: This is a homage to the original Thief2 mission from 2001 (The Cathedral of the Damned)

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This has got to be one of the biggest news days for

* The Dark Mod * and added to all the above is the fact that there are now over 45 missions!

Please visit The Dark Mod site: www.thedarkmod.com or use the in-mod downloader tool to download these latest mission releases! To place your votes, please visit these Forum Threads:

Sotha's mission "Mandrasola" :

Modetwo.net

ShadowHide's mission "Winter Harvest" :

Modetwo.net

Jesps mission "Rake Off"

Modetwo.net

Fieldmedic's mission "Reap as you sow" :

Modetwo.net

Bikerdude's mission "Alberic's Curse" :

Modetwo.net