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April 2nd, 2008The time just before the release of Thief's Den was very busy for the entire team, and afterwards, we were ready for a vacation. That lasted for about two days, and since then work has continued at a renewed pace. We were all excited by the positive feedback we recieved and we were eager to address many of issues, known and unknown, that Thief's Den made evident.Squill and Domarius have been working on improving many of the placeholder animations. Greebo and Angua have been working hard on improving AI behaviour--they now accurately open and close doors, and recognize when their key has been stolen. Small tweaks to swimming and player footstep sounds have made the game more imersive. New textures and models have been added, and existing ones cleaned off and improved. At the same time work on Dark Radiant continues - the next release of the editor is scheduled to happen very soon. In all these areas, feedback from the alpha release proved very valuable, so thank you to all who played it and then send in bug reports or comments.
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January 18th, 2008 Instructions for installing the alpha can be found here: http://modetwo.net/darkmod/wiki/index.php/Thief%27s_Den Download sites:
http://www.shadowdarkkeep.com/missions/thiefs_den_v1.0.exe http://www.strategyinformer.com/pc/doom3/mod/20875.html Torrent: http://bloodgate.com/mirrors/tdm/pub/thief...1.0.exe.torrent
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January 15th, 2008Well, I held out announcing the release date until I was pretty sure we would meet it, but unfortunately the release will be delayed for a few more days. There were a batch of last-minute bugs and tweaking to do, and we want at least a day or so to fully test all the changes out.
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January 12th, 2008As you may already know, the team here at The Dark Mod is planning on releasing a small demo map on January 15th. Things are still on track, and barring any unforseen problems, the release will be made on time. More information will be posted here in a few days when the package is available for download.For those who haven't heard of the demo yet, it is a small, fully-playable map, complete with objectives, AI opponents, and everything else you would expect in a full (but tiny) mission. Of course, it will be far from polished--the beta-release of the mod is still a year away, so there will be plenty of bugs and unfinished features--but it is chalk full of atmosphere and is an excellent example of what The Dark Mod will be capable of. Please visit our forums for more information.
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November 18th, 2007
Some great mapping work has been done the last few weeks. Fidcal has produced a small map to go along with his 'A to Z' mapping guide on the wiki. It is a fully-working map dripping with atmosphere. Pinkdot has produced a very cool model of a galleon, showing how mapping can be a combination of brushes and models. Our beta-mappers continue to do excellent work as well--check out the screenshot section for a few new ones.
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November 4th, 2007Not a lot to report this month. Greebo has been working hard at taking our AI scripts and moving them into the SDK, making improvements as he goes. Oddity has returned to the team to work on improving our current animations (which we certainly need). The biggest news this month is the release of a new video (which was actually released a week or so ago on a few forums). It is a WIP movie from Dram's massive map. This will be one of the maps released with the TDM toolkit. Warning--the video does contain spoilers. It is about six minutes long and includes raw, unprocessed clips from the map, including a few bugs.
Low Res:
For Hi-Res links or to comment:
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September 22nd, 2007I forgot to mention that greebo has got in-game saving and loading working--a very important, if unsexy, task. Sure makes playing through testmaps more enjoyable though. The player spyglass is working as well. Progress continues on lockpicking. New models and textures continue to be added. Steady progress, but nothing overly exciting except for some great new screenshots from Dram's mansion mission. I've also included two new gameplay videos of a wip city environment for your enjoyment.
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August 21st, 2007A LOT of improvements have been made by Ishtvan and greebo to physics in TDM. The technical details are beyond me, but the effects are cool. Ropes will now transfer the player's weight realistically to whatever they're attached to. If you shoot a rope arrow into a small crate and hop on the rope, you'll pull the crate over the edge instead (this wouldn't happen with standard D3 physics). Improvements have also been made to the physics of carried objects (eg, you can't swing a big crate around as quickly as you can a small book).A lot of other improvements have been made by greebo to rope arrows themselves--they now spawn a rope of variable length depending on the space around the arrow. Which brings me to the next bit. Since we're hopefully about a year and a half away from a beta-release, updates are tending to be less and less interesting...more tweaking as opposed to entirely new systems. But the good news is that we're accumulating a lot of in-game video--quick movies created internally to demonstrate a new feature or effect or map to the rest of the team. They're not polished, but they'll give you some insight into what's going on behind the scenes and a better sense of what things look like in game. Hopefully you'll enjoy them. Since so much work was done on the rope arrow last month, I'm going to start with three different videos demonstrating different rope-arrow effects. Using Rope Arrow to Climb Down
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July 15th, 2007We've had a new coder, joebarnin, join the team, and he's been working on the pre-map purchase screen. Mappers can now set which objects are available to purchase before the map begins, and can modify the number of objects based on the difficulty level the player selects.Our map system is now working, thanks to greebo. Maps in TDM will be inventory items, which work like readables. When you 'select' them, a parchment gui is displayed on screen. Time is not stopped, and you can turn, move, etc, seeing the world around the edges of the paper. See an example readable. We have several very active beta-mappers at the moment, who are building some very beautiful and inspiring maps (and our team-mappers, Angua and greebo, continue to show awesome screens from their bonehoard map). Check the screenshot page for more.
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June 20th, 2007So, what's been happening the last month? Greebo has breath potions working. Crispy has been reorganizing the way AI process stimuli. Ishtvan has been starting on a basic combat system. SophisticatedZombie has improved the way AI determine where they should search. We've also been going through a big reorganization of the way textures are organized, which will make things much easier for mappers.Speaking of mappers, Dram has been adding huge new sections to his mansion map, and our beta-mappers are also busy. New screenshots have been added.
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May 21st, 2007
Sparhawk has got the first incarnation of our new lockpicking system working. It still needs some tweaking but the hard part is done. We're excited about this new design and hope people will enjoy playing around with it as much as we are (more description to come later). A new modeller, Baddcog, has joined the team and already contributed a number of industrial-themed models, including our very first Inventor's Guild automaton.
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Apr 28th, 2007Greebo is working on our inventory items--we now have working flashbombs, flashmines, and explosive mines (the latter two can be triggered by hitting them with arrows as well). We've had a few new modelers join up lately, and we're at somewhere in the vicinity of 300 static meshes.In the mapping department, we have some screenshots of Angua's "Bonehoard" style map to share. Our beta-mappers have now been set up with direct acceess to the mod, so they no longer have to wait for release packages--they can use features as soon as they're completed, just like team members. There are some great beta-maps under development. We also have a new site for Dark Radiant, the customized editor for TDM. Stim/ Response is essentially feature complete and an Objectives editor is on the way. The Dark Radiant site has just barely gone live, so it will likely be updated in the next few days to reflect the latest developments. http://darkradiant.sourceforge.net/
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Mar 25th, 2007
The number of opponents for our thief keeps rising. Ascottk has added Inventor engineers and Belchers to the game, as well as getting Oddity's giant spiders working. Ishtvan has finished our new climbing system that allows players to climb vines or other surfaces; climbing around corners is also now quite easy. Mappers can set especially rough walls as climable if they wish. Pinkdot has finished modelling our thief's equipment. I've added several new images to the screenshot section to showcase these.
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Broken Glass Studios is proud to present Thief's Den, a short alpha demo of The Dark Mod. Thief's Den is just a few rooms but it is a complete, fully playable mission, and includes a good selection of the main Dark Mod features. Keep in mind that The Dark Mod is still a work in progress and this is reflected in the demo. Voices are temporary placeholders, for example, and AI behaviour is not yet fully developed. You will certainly find bugs and glitches but we hope that doesn't spoil your enjoyment too much.
