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May 14th, 2009Progress continues towards getting TDM ready for a 2009 beta release. Fidcal has been working to set up movable/droppable objects so that the noise alerts AI; while you can quietly set things down, if you drop a vase on a stone floor AI will certainly notice.Angua has implemented blood decals that alert AI and can be washed away with water arrows. Ishtvan continues to fine tune combat and has also added the ability to "moss" glass with moss arrows so that it can be broken quietly. We also had an internal map contest, to see what mappers could produce in about a month. The result has been four or five very cool little missions, including a very Thiefy sequel to 'Thief's Den' by Fidcal. These missions (plus a few others, hopefully) will provide players with lots of stealth fun when the mod is released. Flanders has also been working on a beautiful training map, where players can learn all the new features TDM offers. There are a few new screenshots of various maps for you to see on the screenshots page. As well, we have a new video. It is an example from a map in progress, by Mortem Desino, that demonstrates a few TDM features in action, including a (strange) example of custom conversations.
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March 23rd, 2009Greebo has finished off our TDM lockpicking system; the last major feature yet to be finished. Lockpicking in TDM is (I say modestly) great fun. It is immersive, challenging, and yet does not require any special 'suck in' animations or gui overlays.Angua has added code support for sleeping AI, which essentially works like sitting AI below. AI can be set to sleep on map start, or can walk over to a bed, lay down, and go to sleep (and later get up) as part of their patrol.
Oh, a small but neat feature slipped by me, so I don't even know exactly when Ishtvan implemented it. But the player now has the ability to swing on hanging ropes. By holding down the attack key and moving forward and back, the player can swing back and forth, gaining momentum to jump across chasms or the like. With lockpicking and combat nearly complete, we've now reached a new phase in the development of The Dark Mod. We decided a while ago that we wanted to release TDM sooner rather than later. We could keep working for years adding more features and better assets, but we believe the community would be happier if we released a fun but unpolished product this year, rather than wait another two years or more for everything to be perfect. That means, if all goes as planned, the TDM beta will be released this year, probably sometime in the fall. It will have bugs and rough edges, but those of you who played the St. Lucia demo have seen how fun TDM missions can already be (and that code is already half a year old). Unfortunately we've had to make decisions about what is necessary for the release and what can wait until later. Things like our beloved vine arrow and certain AI models, for example, will not be part of what we're calling TDM 1.0. Work will continue on the mod after release, however, so those things will eventually be added through regular updates, much like the way Dark Radiant is. The next few months are going to be devoted to getting all our existing features into a user-friendly state. There are hundreds of things to tweak, polish, improve and organize to get ready for a release. We also have half a dozen mappers working on small but playable maps (using Fidcal's pre-made "mapper startpack") which will be ready for release. Thanks, everyone, for your support, and we'll keep you updated as we get closer to our (undertermined) release date!
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February 19th, 2009Good progress is being made on combat. AI now parry the player's attack as well, allowing for drawn-out duels. Strikes to unalerted AI do more damage, so you have a much better chance taking them by surprise.Angua has added a spawnarg to path nodes that allows mappers to dynamically change AI patrols depending on their alert state. An AI could be set to sit casually in a corner when not alert, but to move to block an important doorway if alerted. See our wiki path node page for more info. We are still moving towards getting TDM into a releasable state for later this year. At least four or five new mappers have signed up since our release of St. Lucia, and are already working on a batch of small missions to share when the mod itself is released. Last month I told you about the sitting behaviour Angua added for AI. Here's a short video of it in action:
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January 2nd, 2009The rest of the team got a Christmas surprise, when two of our coders, Angua and Greebo (they rock!), dropped a completed mission on the rest of us. They both spent a week working on it in secret, to see what kind of mission could be finished in that time, and to see how close we are to being complete. Although it was a short mission (a bit larger than Thief's Den) it was great fun to play and shows that we are not too far away from being able to release the tools to the community.In terms of progress, Angua has been working on the AI, adding sitting behaviour. AI can be set as "sitting" at the start of the map, or you can use pathnodes to tell a patrolling AI to sit down somewhere, either for a set or random period of time. The AI can perform other animations (like warming hands) while sitting. You can even leave the AI sitting indefinitely if you like, though they will get up when startled or attacked. With the ability to have random pathnodes, that means you can have a patrolling guard who will, occasionally, sit down beside a fire to rest for a few seconds. Ishtvan has been continuing to work on combat--players can now parry with the sword, either using a system like Mount and Blade (you choose the direction of the parry and it has to match the direction of the AI attack to work) or an easier auto-parry system (you hit 'parry' and the computer automatically matches the correct direction).
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November 21st, 2008The response to our St. Lucia demo map has been very gratifying. Seems like people agree that we're on the right track, and we're now pushing ahead to try and prepare a beta release of TDM 1.0 by mid 2009.There has been good progress since St. Lucia. One of the most consistent negative responses was about the incidents of "rising up" (where clipping something causes you to float out of the map). Happily, Ishtvan has modified our code so that this problem is virtually eliminated. Greebo also found a fix for the "blurry font" problem, making all our fonts crystal clear and allowing us to fit more text onto readables. Greebo has also fixed up the inventory system and implemented Holy Water. Tels has implemented edible food. Komag has created a very cool video demonstrating some of the puzzle possibilities that our object-handling system allows.
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October 21st, 2008Broken Glass Studios is proud to present a new demo mission for The Dark Mod! The map for this mission is at least five times larger than our previous demo, "Thief's Den", and is on par with the map sizes of Thief: Deadly Shadows. It showcases many features that were not present in our first demo, including the purchase menu, flashbombs, swimmable water and AI conversations. This map demonstrates the progress that has been made on The Dark Mod over the past eight months or so since our last demo. Although the mod itself is still not ready for release, I think you will be impressed with how beautiful and immersive this map is. Although there are still some bugs and unfinished features, it is an excellent example of what fan missions for The Dark Mod will be like. Please visit our Wiki page for download instructions.
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"The Tears of St. Lucia" is a complete and fully-packaged mission. All you need to be able to play it is an updated copy of Doom3.