The Dark Mod 2.0 Standalone! news

Standalone:

First and most importantly, The Dark Modis now completely standalone, which means you no longer need to own Doom3 to play it! We have spent a tremendous amount of time and energy replacing all the sounds, textures, particle effects, and models that we had been using. Hopefully this will open up a whole new audience of people who didn’t want to have to purchase a different game in order to try The Dark Mod.

In addition to going standalone, the following improvements have been made:

AI Improvements:

There have been lots of additions and fixes to AI behaviour; characters will now greet each other more regularly, and will properly call for help when they’re in trouble. Guards can now hear slightly better, and we have included a new AI Vision slider to the menu, so the player can adjust how sensitive they want AI vision to be. Characters react to bodies in more varied ways now. A bug that made AI very easy to kill has been fixed. Archers will draw melee weapons if the player gets too close. Guards will turn towards doors that open unexpectedly. There are new vocals for specific situations, like when guards are getting shot at and can’t see their opponent. Searching behaviour has been improved. Plenty of old bugs, like the one where AI would sometimes attack with an empty fist, have been fixed.

New Gameplay:

AI can now hear collapsing bodies, especially if the body is wearing plate mail and falls on a hard surface. No longer will a guard stand oblivious while his friend collapses to the ground two feet behind him. The player will have to give some thought to where they take down opponents if there are other guards in the area.

Audio Improvements:

In addition to replacing dozens of Doom3 sounds, two new vocal sets have been added to the game. Footstep sounds have been improved. Big changes have been made to the sound propagation system that will allow mappers a lot more control over how players hear sound; for example, mappers can now make doors block different amounts of sound depending on their thickness, or can control how much sound passes through windows or small holes.

Graphical Improvements:

You should notice a number of improvements to some character models, especially the skeleton, townsfolk, and beggar characters. Arrows will now leave blood-stains. There have been plenty of other bug-fixes, like removing the ability to hide in the shadow of an object you’re carrying (no more sneaking under a crate umbrella). Doom 3 modder "7318" contributed his Skybox fix so now TDM can have Half-Life 2 style skyboxes. See the full change-log here.

Updates to Missions:

Because of the removal and replacement of Doom3 assets, some missions that used them are no longer compatible with TDM 2.0. About two dozen missions have updated .pk4s to fix these issues. New players can ignore this, but if you’re playing missions that you downloaded before 2.0, you may have trouble trying to run them. Most are fine, but a few missions will just crash while loading, and others will load but will have odd visual problems. It is highly recommended that you delete all previously downloaded missions after updating to 2.0!

Going standalone has been a mammoth undertaking.

There were literally hundreds of assets that needed to be replaced, and around seventy maps that had to be checked to see whether any of those replacements broke anything. We’ve been testing for months, but it’s almost certain that we missed something, somewhere. If you see a black texture, a model buried in the floor, or something else unusual in a map, please let us know. If it was caused by 2.0 changes, we’ll make sure we fix it in the next update.

To update your TDM installation, simply run the tdm_update.exe file in your darkmod folder. Your darkmod folder no longer needs to sit under Doom3, and you can move it wherever you like (though make sure it is still called “darkmod”). (If the updater fails to start, check to see if a _tdm_update.exe file (note the underscore) has been created in your folder. If it has, rename _tdm_update.exe to tdm_update.exe and run it.)

Not sure what TDM is? Watch an introductory video here.
Enjoy!

Experimental Native OSX Build:

Forums.thedarkmod.com

Other News:

The Dark Mod has not remained idle in the months leading up to the 2.0 release. Many high quality missions have arrived as either part of the "Unusual Contest" or simply with new members arriving to completely blow our minds with high quality releases...

Unusual Contest:

Here are the entrants to our Community Unusual Contest:

Jesps has thrown us for a loop here. This missions is unusual yet also quite familiar. It's a technical achievement to be sure... Can't say much without spoiling the surprise..

Sotha took this opportunity to add yet another entry into his acclaimed "Thomas Porter" series. He also decided to debut new modular mapping methods and the use of colored dynamic ambient lighting. And lots of zombies...

There's no two words about it, this mission is HUGE! You may need to use the image_downsize cvars in Darkmod.cfg just to get this one to load. It has 3 play modes: Thief, Assassin, and Saboteur... I haven't even begun absorbing this mammoth...

Sir Taffsalot gives us a massive museum heist mission with neutral civilians and bizarre TDM history exhibits.

(non contest missions)

Master author "Melan" took some time away from his work on the Crucible of Omens campaign project to finish a speed-build mission he was tinkering with. While he refers to this as "nasty, brutish and short"... obviously his standards are very high when you consider the amount of custom textures, new models, and the pitch perfect atmosphere. A worthy (highly acclaimed) entry in Melan's stellar mission release catalog by anyone's standards. It seems that the author intends to release a few more of these little missions. I say "PLEASE DO!"

New author Kvorning gives us a Tour de Force mega-sized mission with fantastic architecture, wonderful story elements, and enough roof-top action and mantling to win over a mountain climber. What did we do to deserve this?

What's this? Another "new" author produces a jaw-droppingly good mission? Moonbo can be forgiven for his facetious "new guy" thing with such a praiseworthy mission. The story is of the caliber you'd expect from this Amazon published book author. What you wont expect? A moody custom music score, animated cut-scenes up the wazoo, balanced game-play, well crafted architecture, thrilling finale sequences... Many are giving this one a 10 out of 10.

Not to be left out, Tr00pertj's mission "Solar Escape 1" is a nice short mission from a new author with a few interesting twists like hidden rooms and a warehouse sized sewer sanctum.