The Dark Mod

[Hewer]

I can understand a giant spider attacking me.
I can understand a giant rat from some fantasy RPG game attacking me.

But seriously, why would a "realistic" tiny city rat even start attacking a fully grow up human ? They´re perfect for ambiance but they would never pose a treat as an enemy.

They're an enemy in that they can give away your position if you step on one or scare it out of a dark corner or something.

OTOH, it would be really fun for them to save you from discovery.

(step on tail) *squeak!* (scurry) "Who's there! Show yourself!...Oh- this time it IS just a rat."

[clearing]

The picture at the beginning of this entry shows a character model from ↑The Dark Mod, a "Doom 3" (↵ID Software 2004) total conversion. "Doom 3" itself is a perfect example of letting the things which go bumb in the night pass the threshold. During the first chapters everything possible by the tremendous resources the computergame medium offers is done to install and ambience and mood of threatening but yet unseen horror. And I did shit my pants. Then the door crashes open and the player literally encounters zombies, the undead and all kinds of monsters. From that point on the game falls flat in my opinion. The beautiful lighting and the meticuously designed and rendered architecture and characters can't help anymore. The second picture I took several nights ago. It shows the waiting bench where I found the man—he was sitting at the far left chair. Now he's absent.

http://xirdal.lmu.de/cgi-bin/blosxom...ce_and_absence

[Springheel]

this entry shows a character model from ↑The Dark Mod,

Not quite. That is a picture of a (very old) model Oddity did, long before he joined TDM.

[New Horizon]

He was supposed to finish that model for us but never did. I was looking forward to that one...it's probably one of the best zombie models I've seen.

[Volca]

I'm not sure if it was already mentioned or not, but this podcast seems to indicate (didn't listen to it, but there was a summary on one Czech site) that Carmack wants to release Doom3's source as open source next year. Good news for The Dark Mod, I'd say!

[sNeaksieGarrett]

If that's true, that is great; not just for The Dark Mod, but for all aspiring doom 3 editor users.

[New Horizon]

Just listened. He said that there is a good chance that next year he will open source the full code base.

If it happens, this will be a great thing for Dark Mod. We will be able to merge a lot of the D3 editor into Dark Radiant.

[Yandros]

\O/

[New Horizon]

This will also be huge for the community. It may very well be that we will have the full source code by the time we hit our first non-beta 1.0 release! We'll have access to all the little issues that we had to find fixes to get around. I'm very hopeful.

[The Magpie]

To say nothing of what this would mean to the peeps still holding off the purchasing of Doom 3 awaiting more TDM releases.

--
Larris

[Volca]

This will also be huge for the community. It may very well be that we will have the full source code by the time we hit our first non-beta 1.0 release! We'll have access to all the little issues that we had to find fixes to get around. I'm very hopeful.

This is exactly what came to my mind when I read about it

[The Magpie]

Oh. I just thought of something.

When the code is released, there's little reason not to offer a full-game distro, right? Like other free idTech variants are released under labels like Nexuiz, etc.

Then I start having more than a little trouble with the name "The Dark Mod." A mere "mod"? In the old days this would at least be called a TC - a Total Conversion. But I have troubles with both "Mod" and "The". "Mod" suggests that the original must be present, and right now that's correct. But it's also an extra-gameworld reference, which is unusual for any game title, let alone a standalone game. I can only think of NetHack right now.

Now, TDM is as good an acronym as any. Good, Thiefy letters, those. But let's imagine that the abbreviation is kept, but the meaning changed. What would it be? Some ideas might be

Theft: The Dark Metal
Thieves' Doom Maker

which both are blah, but just to get the discussion started.

I don't know if this has been debated elsewhere, but to me, this is almost disproportionally important, lame as it is. So I thought I'd offer my opinion.

--
L.

[Springheel]

After four years of development, I don't think a name change is on the table.

Besides, the name is a fairly obvious nod towards "The Dark Project".

[New Horizon]

Besides, the name is a fairly obvious nod towards "The Dark Project".

Exactly!

"The Dark Mod"
"Broken Glass Studio"

All in honor of Looking Glass and it's legacy.

[cacka]

That's good news. I guess the only reason JC wouldn't release the d3 source next year is if someone picked up the license last minute. That happened With q3 source. JC planned to release it the end of 2004, but then they had a late buyer, and pushed it back to summer 2005 to avoid treading on toes.

Though of course q3 was a very popular engine, d3 isn't so much, so that seems unlikely I guess.

[New Horizon]

Though of course q3 was a very popular engine, d3 isn't so much, so that seems unlikely I guess.

Which is really strange, as it's such a fantastic engine...but oh well, when our work is finished...the community will have a fully sourced engine!

[The Magpie]

Exactly!

"The Dark Mod"
"Broken Glass Studio"

All in honor of Looking Glass and it's legacy.

Oh, I did get the nod, obvious as it is. That's not the issue. I'm all for a title honoring the legacy, don't get me wrong. I merely aired my dissatisfaction with the particular title, and tried to explain why I'd like to see an alternate title.

But while we're discussing that, the first game was not actually called "The Dark Project", was it? Not the English version, at least. You must have been thinking of the German title: - "Dark Project: Der Meisterdieb". And even the English version changed titles a couple of times prior to release (during which period it actually was called The Dark Project for a while), landing on "Thief: The Dark Project". I imagine there would have been some pulling and shoving internally at LGS before that title was finally decided, too.

What I'm saying is that I'd naturally like to keep TDM referencing the original, but that I think the current title falls far short. Let me reiterate. "Dark" is excellent. "Mod" is teh fail. "The" - well, if it can be substituted with something Thievish, so mcuh the better, but if one must, one must.

"The Dark Machine", then, seeing as it's an engine for developing FMs? Plus it contains a nod to both the Dark Engine titles? Or Theft: The Dark Machine, I don't know. Had it supported co-op, I'd probably have gone for Thieves: The Dark Machine.

Because the moment the source has been recompiled, the game has really moved on from being a mere mod. It deserves a better title. Think about it.

--
L.
Only wanting TDM to become the very best it can be.

[Wille]

Could the D3 source be used to create radiosity style lighting and combine that with dynamic shadows? Something like T2 with dynamic shadows would be awesome .

[demagogue]

@The Magpie, The DarkMod grows on you. Give it time. It's being coyly modest, exactly opposite of the tendancy to throw out extreme "Thiefish" words, like "Deadly Shadows". I dig that.

Also -- don't believe I didn't think of this right away -- there's the obvious fact that it isn't a game at all ... it's just the toolset. You don't want to confuse things by giving it a game title. (Edit: oh, well you already thought of that in your last post, I guess. "Machine" does have a ring, but the whole thing has already sort of crystallized.)

I hope an open source D3 engine will allow someone to get some Quake 4 improvements in there ... the improved ambient lighting, maybe lip synching...

[New Horizon]

I hope an open source D3 engine will allow someone to get some Quake 4 improvements in there ... the improved ambient lighting, maybe lip synching...

Quake 4 ambient lighting has been available in D3 for years. It's just a simple light shader and was in D3 but it was hardly used within the game. Even the quake 4 ambient suffers from the same issue as D3 ambient lights though, that problem being that they're from a weird angled direction rather than non-directional.

One of our coding contributors fixed the directional issues several months ago, so our ambient lighting is far superior to Quake 4 or Prey. It is slightly more taxing on older hardware since it performs a few more mathematical equations, but we have also implemented some new optimizations for the lighting which allows Dark Mod to run far better on older hardware.

[cacka]

Could the D3 source be used to create radiosity style lighting and combine that with dynamic shadows? Something like T2 with dynamic shadows would be awesome .

I think Crysis does that.

Well, they did get doom3 style real time lighting on the quake 1 engine, so who knows what is possible? Depends how difficult things are to implement and how much time people are willing to spend on them, I guess.

Would love to see the dark mod with soft shadows though

[Wille]

Soft shadows could be quite hard and hardware demanding. I would be very satisfied with current D3 shadows (lighter shadows like in Blade of Darkness would be much better though) and radiosity lighting.

Without radiosity lighting maps tend to be too dark or too light (D3, Quake4, Prey, FEAR etc.), contrast is just too heavy .

[New Horizon]

Well, when the source code is released...you can throw all the bells and whistles onto it you want, but the question is...does a Thief styled game NEED them. Thief at the very core is simple. A game of darkness, with tiny patches of light. I don't think it needs all that other stuff...it would add nothing to the basic gameplay and would only prevent older machines from running it well. The key to having the source code for this work in the future, will be more than simply being able to add new things...it will also be about optimizing what already exists within it and making it even more accessible to classic Thief players.

Biggest is not always best, and just because you can do something...doesn't mean you should.

[Gambit]

Well, TDM seems gorgeous and I think it would be excelent if a great light/shadow engine shined all the models and textures that were done with hard work.

(And let me praise again your hard work, creating something new from Thief instead of stealing from it like some three idiots who are now lost in limbo).

[Wille]

I didn't mean big changes New Horizon, just something that could improve the experience even more . I just find radiosity lighting far more superior than direct lighting.

But would it be even possible to add radiosity lighting and combine that with dynamic shadows in D3? Or do you always have to choose between direct & dynamic or radiosity & smooth dynamic lighting?