THE DARK MOD is a total conversion for Doom 3, turning it into a dark and moody stealth game inspired by the Thief series by Looking Glass Studios. We have created a toolset with revamped gameplay, AI, graphics, HUD and weapons to allow fans to create missions in a gothic steampunk universe. The Dark Mod went beta on October 17th, 2009.
Want to help? Please drop a message in the "I Want To Help" section on our forums.
February 1st, 2010
Voting for our Christmas Contest is now complete. There were half a dozen entries, all of which were built in less than two months.
Seeing the amount of quality that was achieved in that time (by mappers completely new to Dark Radiant) was really encouraging. All of the missions were a blast to play, but the winner (sweeping all three categories of Gameplay, Visual Appeal and Story) was Melan, for "Return to the City". If you haven't played his mission yet, you should. Get it here.
December 30th, 2009
Sorry I haven't updated before this, but a lot has been going on since the last news update!
The team is working hard on the first update to TDM 1.0. Springheel (me) has been adding some more zombie types to the game, and Crispy has been setting up "sleeping" behaviour on them, so zombies can suddenly get up and ambush you. 
More excitingly, a number of completed missions for our Christmas Contest are starting to roll in. "The Parcel" and "Too Late" were the first, and "Trapped!" has just been released today (see our FM forum for specific download details). At least three other maps are in the beta-testing phase and should be released soon. While these contest maps are generally small, it is exciting to see what people are doing with only a few weeks of exposure to Dark Radiant! There are two other, larger maps created by team-members which should be released in the next few weeks as well.
Since the downloads page on the website is too slow to keep track of every mission released, Sneaksie Dave has started a wiki list of all completed missions. Check it out if you want to stay up to date on new releases.
October 31st, 2009
The response to the release of The Dark Mod has been very gratifying. There have been over 3000 downloads thus far, and the vast majority of the comments we've received have been very positive. Thanks to all those who took the time to offer feedback! Rest assured, we're working on several fixes and improvements for our first update (likely due sometime before the end of the year).
Be sure to visit our forums if you're having any problems installing TDM...we've also put together a FAQ on our wiki with solutions to common problems.
In other exciting news...although it's only been two weeks, we've already released our first new Fan Mission! Demagogue is the author of "Patently Dangerous", a city mission about inventor espionage. Get it on our Downloads page, and post comments here.
October 17th, 2009
It's here!!
It's been a long, five year journey to this point, and Broken Glass Studios is proud to present the beta of The Dark Mod. We are also releasing four missions, including a beautiful and extensive training mission where you can practice all the new TDM skills. Visit our Download pages for instructions on how to download the Mod and Missions.
Thanks to all those who cheered us on over the years. We hope you enjoy! Please visit our Forums to share any feedback or ask for help.
September 13th, 2009
Well, I had hoped to be able to announce TDM's release before now, but we've had a couple kinks in the road. Our primary coders, Greebo and Angua, have had a new addition to their family which is keeping them pretty busy (basically they now contribute at human levels, rather than super-human). The mod is about 98% ready for release--all that's left is some final testing of the package and the 3 FMs that will come with it.
We're a bit held up by a fairly sizable Training Mission, however. It's taking much longer to finish than we had hoped. We'd like to be able to release the training mission with the mod itself, as there are lots of new skills players might want to test out before leaping into their first mission. Not only that, but it's quite a beautiful map (see images). Either way, we're planning on having everything that 
will be released ready by the end of this month. We'll then be letting some non-team members do a sanity test of the package before officially releasing it to the community.
If you've been waiting for the mod to be finished before going out and buying D3 (or getting it from Steam), I'd suggest looking around on your next shopping trip. :)
July 24th, 2009
Things are continuing to progress towards our 2009 beta-release. We're not prepared to set a firm date yet, but I can say that (barring unforseen problems) this will probably be the last website update before that announcement.
Over the past two months we have had some impressive steps forward. A new member, Marcus Zuhr (Goldchocobo), has provided us with some professional quality vocals for the mod. Currently we have four character sets complete and will likely finish a few more before release. Dram has recorded new footstep sounds for us; a big improvement over our previous ones. Springheel has been working on adding new head entities to the mod...there will be over 50 to choose from when we release (you can see them on our wiki page. And our animators, NoisyCricket, Squill, and Domarius, have been working hard to expand the range of AI movement.
Ishtvan has completed our combat system, which works in a similar fashion to Mount and Blade. You select from four different attacks and four different parries (or allow an "auto parry" system to do it for you). You can see combat (as well as the new vocals and footstep sounds) in action in the videos below.
May 14th, 2009
Progress 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.
March 23rd, 2009
Greebo 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!
February 19th, 2009
Good 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:
January 2nd, 2009
The 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).